The Smoke of the Soul: Anatomy, Medical Spirits and the Rete Mirabile: 1538–1643

Abstract

The history of the soul seems to be as old as the history of literature itself. In the Vedas, and in the books later categorized as the Christian Old Testament, there is a sense of a vital principle at once continuous with breath, yet exceeding the ordinary limitations of the material world.¹ In the primal event of Genesis, when Yahweh blew his ruach into Adam, he made him into a living being.² For Christianity, which significantly altered Hebrew notions of divine and human ’spirit’, this meant that God had instilled a soul into Adam, and thereby quickened him into life by essentially unifying body and soul.