Tag: Sylvius
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The two Sylvius anatomists
Buried deep in the cobwebs of medical history lies the persisting misconception that a single person called Sylvius made important advances in the discipline of anatomy. But in fact, there were two persons remembered by that name. There was Jacobus, whose name is most commonly linked to the Aqueduct of Sylvius, and there was Franciscus,…
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Giovanni Alfonso Borelli: De Motu Animalium, an iatromathematic and mechanical understanding of the body and health
Philippe Campillo France Portrait of Borelli by Pierre-Roch Vigneron. Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia. Public domain. Iatromathematics, also known as iatromechanics or iatrophysics, is above all a designation applied to a school of thought or to a sect of physicians. It claims to be able to subject all living phenomena to the rigors of computation,…