Abstract
By the mid-seventeenth century, philosophy, anatomy, and chymistry were inextricably bound together, and concentrated in lively debates over the action of the heart. In the wake of Harvey’s anatomical demonstration of the circulation of the blood, and Descartes’s provocative but error-prone anatomical speculations, Dutch physicians adopted varied positions on the sources and status of anatomical knowledge. This article attends to Leiden professor Franciscus Sylvius’s central place in this history, beginning with his early demonstrations of the circulation and his dissections and disputes with Descartes. His collaboration with Johannes Walaeus produced innovative experimental work on the circulation and the origins of the blood in digestion. Sylvius and his colleagues were generally comfortable with mechanical explanations, which they had already met in Galen’s depictions of the mechanical anatomy of Erasistratus, but only as far as they squared with sensory experience. Even prominent mechanistic anatomists such as Sylvius’s student Nicolaus Steno would accept ideals and methods of mechanistic explanation, while rejecting extant mechanisms for their sensory and experimental inadequacy. Our own, anachronistic sense of early moderns’ errors is of little use to our historical understanding, but their perceptions of error, especially in the combination of philosophical systems and the autoptic anatomical tradition, were essential to their history.
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- 1.
- 2.
Comparing to the account of the motion of the heart found in the 1637 Discourse to his letters reveals Descartes changing the details of his mechanism in response to empirical and experimental criticism. Descartes Discours AT VI 46–55; CSM I 134–39.
- 3.
McGahagan 1976; French 1994, ch. 8. This article greatly expands our understanding of Sylvius ’s work and his place in these debates, and also adds new material on Walaeus and corrections to previous accounts. Unfortunately, for example, French, pp. 186 and 207, mistook Sylvius’s later disputations of 1659–1663 for his earlier Dictata of 1640–1641.
- 4.
Descartes , Passions, AT XI 333–334; CSM I 331. There, Descartes writes only that “there is a continual heat in our hearts, which is a kind of fire that the blood of the veins maintains there. This fire is the corporeal principle underlying all the movements of our limbs. … Its first effect is to make the blood which fills the cavities of the heart expand.”
- 5.
Descartes explicitly compared the motion of the heart to that of a clock, its “movement follows just as necessarily as the movement of a clock follows from the force, position, and shape of its counterweights and wheels.” AT VI 50; CSM I 136.
- 6.
Description AT XI 245; CSM I 319.
- 7.
Letter to Mersenne, 9 February 1639, AT II 501; CSMK 134.
- 8.
Sakellariadis 1982.
- 9.
- 10.
Pagel 1967.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
Bono 1995, 85.
- 14.
AT I 521–34; CSMK 79–85 and AT II 62–69; CSMK 92–96. Some of these experiments appear in the Description of the Human Body AT XI 242–243; CSM I 317–318. A recent analysis of this controversy in Leuven stresses the importance of theological concerns in shaping the acceptance or rejection of the Cartesian explanation of the heart’s action: Petrescu 2013. In Leiden, I think things proceeded differently, since even those who rejected the Cartesian explanation on empirical grounds accepted something very like Cartesian ontology and mechanical explanation as an ideal.
- 15.
Discourse, AT VI 46–55; CSM I 134–39.
- 16.
Garber 2001, ch. 5.
- 17.
Buchwald 2008.
- 18.
Passions, AT XI 333–334; CSM I 331. Though, as an anonymous reviewer kindly points out, there are mentions of a leavening agent or levain in the Description of the Human Body. Descartes insists that the source of the heat in the heart is perceptible, and that it is no special sort of heat, but only that which is generally caused by a mixture of some liquor, or by some leaven. AT XI 228.
- 19.
- 20.
Goldberg 2012, 244–245.
- 21.
Aucante 2006, 200–206, 314–329.
- 22.
Aucante 2006, 200.
- 23.
Harvey 1649, 135. Descartes and the others with him “hardly observe rightly” (“haud recté mecum observant”). For Harvey, when the heart is rigid, raised up, and envigorated, then it is contracting in systole. In Harvey’s view, Descartes’s relative inexperience in anatomy allowed him to mix up systole and diastole. When Descartes insists on the same cause for both systole and diastole, rather than contrary causes for contrary effects, Harvey concludes he is not following proper anatomical method. After all, “all anatomists know sufficiently that opposite muscles are antagonists. Thus for contrary, and diverse, motions, contrary and diverse active organs have been fabricated necessarily by nature” (Harvey 1649, p. 136). To Harvey, Descartes follows Aristotle (“secundum Arist.”) in holding that the efficient cause of the pulse is the same for systole as diastole, namely the effervescence of the blood, brought about as if by boiling.
- 24.
Descartes AT I 527; CSMK 82. Descartes’ experiment here involved vivisecting a young rabbit, cutting off the tip of the heart, and then supposedly observing that the chambers of the ventricles grow larger at ‘diastole’ and smaller at ‘systole.’ Descartes claims that Harvey has it the other way around, but Harvey was quite clear that the ventricles of contracting heart grew smaller in systole, forcing out the blood into the arteries.
- 25.
- 26.
Descartes to Regius [before mid-October 1641], AT III 440–441; A recent edition makes several significant corrections to the dating and contents of the Descartes- Regius correspondence: Bos 2002, 83–4: “When your letter was sent, I was not here, and now that I have first returned home I am taking it up. Sylvius ’s objections do not seem to be of any great moment, in my opinion, and they bear witness to nothing other than that he has an insufficient understanding of Mechanics; nevertheless I wish you to respond to him more gently. I noted in the margin by transverse lines the passages that seemed somewhat harsh.” Descartes to Regius [November 1641], AT III 390–392; Bos 87–89: “Those who say that the motion of the heart is an Animal motion, say nothing more than that they should confess that they do not know the cause of the motion of the heart, since they do not know what an Animal motion is. When, moreover, the dissected parts of eels are moved, in truth the cause is nothing other than when the dissected point of the heart pulses, nor different than when the sinews/nerves [nervi] of a tortoise are dissected into particles, and existing in a hot and humid place, contract in the likeness of worms, although this motion is said to be Artificial, and the former Animal; in all of these things the cause is the disposition of the solid parts and the motion of the spirits, or more fluid parts, permeating the solid parts.” These and all other translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own.
- 27.
- 28.
Rose-Mary Sargent argues that Harvey ’s example “typified the experimental program and became the paradigm that Boyle would follow in all of his investigations.” Sargent 1995, 83.
- 29.
Harvey 1649, 118–119.
- 30.
- 31.
Harvey 1993, 132–133.
- 32.
- 33.
Clarke 1992, 260–261. CSM I 126–131; AT VI 31–40. Although in the Sixth Meditation Descartes restores some of the senses ’ reliability for everyday life in general, they still do not render up “the way things really are,” and the inspection of clear and distinct ideas remains far more reliable. See Garber 2001, 280.
- 34.
Aucante 2006, 314–322.
- 35.
Educated in medicine at the University of Leiden, Johannes Walaeus (Jan de Wale) had recently received his M.D. (1631) when Sylvius arrived at the university in 1633. Since Walaeus began teaching as an extra-ordinary professor in 1633, it is likely that Walaeus instructed Sylvius at some point. We know little of Walaeus’s work until 1639, when Sylvius’s demonstrations of the circulation of the blood turned Walaeus from a harsh critic to a zealous supporter. His 1640 writings supported Harvey ’s account of the heart and the circulation. Schouten 1972, 14–19, 80, 108.
- 36.
Descartes to Regius [before mid-October 1641], AT III 440–441; Bos 2002, 83–4.
- 37.
- 38.
Sylvius 1679, 22. Cf. Walaeus 1645, 477. Walaeus 1641, 408, has slightly different text, singling out Sylvius as “most accurate in dissections,” and listing the names of three figures left out of the witnesses in the 1645 and later editions: Philippus de Glarges, Roger Drake, and Henricus à Schaeck. The 1645 and subsequent editions add the names of Johannes van Horne and Ahasuerus Schmitnerus. It is interesting that the printed versions of the letters—which retain identical dates throughout—show these and other changes from the 1641 to the 1645 editions (see, e.g., Walaeus 1645, 445 for an addition, as well as the illustrations added to the 1645 edition). The 1645 versions have a title page indicating they are the “Fourth Edition” (Editio Quarta) of the letters.
- 39.
Rupp 1990, 263–282.
- 40.
Bartholin and Bartholin 1641, 290 and 395. Also see the end of the preface: “In novis Cerebri iconibus calator accuratissimi Francisci Sylvii ductum sequutus est & cultrum, cui hac in parte debemus quidquid cerebrum vel augmenti habet, vel ornatus: sicut ad Cl. Walaeum grati referimus universi operis & nitorem & renatae vitae causas.” Bartholin 1655, 331–337 and passim.
- 41.
Sylvius 1679, 882: “Hoc Chylificans Fermentum in recens natorum Vitulorum Ventriculis reperitur crassiusculum, diciturque Coagulum. Sensim autem minuitur, ac in Adultis Glutinis instar offenditur liquidiusculum, inter Ventriculi rugas haerens.” Compare to Joanne [Jan] Baptista Van Helmont, Febrium Doctrina Inaudita (Cologne 1644), 181: “Vitulus namque, dumtaxat lac maternum bibens, ostendit mox à nece, quod lac statim grumescat in coagulum acescens, & liquorem aqueum acidum: utrumque caseis parandis expetitum.” I have checked for similar passages in Van Helmont’s earlier writings, and find none. This is strong evidence for the circulation of some of his writings in manuscript several years before they appeared in print.
- 42.
On the use of the term ‘chymistry,’ see Newman and Principe 1998. Walaeus 1641, 406 and Walaeus 1645, 445–448 [sic, 446]. “A little later both the more tenuous and thicker food is cut into minima as if plucked off into little torn bits; in dogs, even the very shells of eggs. Without a doubt this happens due to a certain acid humor, which has the power of dissolving. Thus we tested [experiri] a ventricle heavy with a mass or thickness of food, which felt alleviated by taking in vinegar, lemon juice, and oil of sulphur or vitriol. And this should not be referred to anything in the saliva or bile regurgitated into the ventricle, since bread soaked in hot saliva or cow bile, seemed in a few hours to be softened, but by these, moreover, it is not broken into little pieces. In a hundred dogs and more, which, for this reason we have dissected while still living, we have found only in two that some bile flowed into the ventricle, one of which spent three days fasting, and in his ventricle, marvelous to see, the bilious froth was so dense, as if boiling, of such kind as we see to float in lye, in the washing of laundry-women. … Thus the food is thoroughly mixed by the liquor per minima, arriving at the consistency of thin barley gruel in a length of time. When it has arrived at this point, then the food is pushed out into the intestines.” Talk of foods thoroughly digested per minima was characteristically Helmontian language. Like Van Helmont, Walaeus thought that the acid humor arose from the spleen, a conjecture he confirmed by perceiving a sharp humor there and noting that a bit of boiled spleen aids the digestion of meat. See Pagel 1978, 130.
- 43.
This passage does not appear in the 1641 edition and I have not found it in the 1645 edition. It is likely that Walaeus added this particular passage to the 1647 edition, but I have not been able to examine a copy to confirm this. I have used Walaeus 1655, 534.
- 44.
Walaeus 1655, 534. “By reason of its being cooked, bread seems to have a middle sort of substance, and after an hour and a half is seen to be changed very little, and in the following hour becomes entirely rare like a wet sponge. When that second hour has passed, then it is divided into the very smallest little morsels [in minima dividi frustilla], and is thoroughly mixed with the draught so that it appears wholly liquid, and is soon greatly concocted. At last, between the fourth and fifth hour after it was eaten, what has been concocted from the bread is propelled by the pylorus from the stomach into the intestines. Some relic of the bread remains, and this gradually receives its proper perfection, just as happens if any other food was ingested with the bread, which makes its concoction more difficult. We have observed these foods to be concocted in this order: First beans, then fish, then soon flesh, which is perfected and excreted within the sixth or seventh hour; beef within the seventh or eighth hour; and indeed the membranous parts of animals and eggshells more slowly. We saw that bones remained in the stomach into the third day, in which time they were made like cartilage. … We readily observed these things in dogs which we cut up alive at various times after they had eaten food.”
- 45.
Walaeus 1641, 400–402.
- 46.
Walaeus 1641, 401.
- 47.
Walaeus 1645, 465–466: “Protrudi sanguinem viri quidam ingenio praeclari arbitrantur, quod calore cordis immensum rarescens, majorem locum exposcat, ideoque eum cor dilatare & attolere; cumque nec in dilatato corde contineri queat, in venam arteriosam arteriamque aortam tali effundi impetu, ut omnes distendat arterias & faciat pulsare. Suae autem opinionis hoc argumentum adferunt, quod cor anguillae alteriusve animalis, ubi pulsare desinit, si à substrato calefiat igne denuo pulsum edere conspiciatur. Sed an is pulsus fieri non posset, quod spiritus à calore vegetior factus, melius ei causae possit inserviere quae in corde pulsum facit? non aliter ac calefactis in vivorum sectione intestinis, musculisque, in quibus tamen nulla ebullitio est, restitui motus videtur. Omnino enim levis tantum quaedam rarefactio à tepore quodam in corde est, nulla ebullitio, aut diffusio subita. Et revera ob rarefactionem sanguinem è corde non exilire, in validis saepe canibus conspeximus, quorum cor discisso mucrone; cum ob effluxum sanguinis dimidia parte non repleretur, id erectum, à rarefactione repletum non fuit: sed accedente constrictione, portio illa sanguinis quae in corde reliqua erat, ultra quatuor pedes fuit ejecta, ut in magna frequentia nos & vicini conspurcaremur. Vnde evidens est, sanguinem à parte propelli.”
- 48.
Walaeus 1645, 465.
- 49.
Walaeus 1645, 475–76: “Sunt quoque qui arbitrantur sanguinem è corde delatum retrorsum cedere & per arterias denuo ad cor redire. Quod illis ideo videtur statuendum, ut causa dari mechanica possit, qua cordis valvulae in orificio arteriarum, decidant & occludantur. Nos equidem praeclarum semper Erasistrati institutum aestimavimus, omnia quae in copore nostro contingunt Mechanice explicare, sed divinam sapientiam sua metiri temerarium judicamus. Eas vero machinas esse statuendas quas evidens ratio & potissimum sensus ostendant. Hic contra sensus observant à corde non ad cor per aterias sanguinem moveri … Ea quippe fibrarum in corde contractio passim obvia in conspectum prodit.”
- 50.
Lonie 1964, 431 n. 18.
- 51.
Descartes AT XI 354; CSM I 341.
- 52.
Bartholin 1651, 336: “According to the Observation of Sylvius a little nervous string fastens this gland firm between the testes [structures of the brain]. Who also observed more than once some grains of sand in this pineal gland , and sometimes also a little stone as big as the fourth part of a pea, and somewhat round.”
- 53.
Bartholin 1651, 336–37: “Sed multa sunt, quae ab opinione hac nova & ingeniosa me dimovent. Nam
-
1. Nimis exile est corpus, & obscurum, quàm ut omnium species clarè repraesentet.
-
2. Species omnium sensuum huc non appellunt, quia nervi non tangunt glandulam.
-
3. Posita est excrementorum loco, qui per tertium & anteriores duos ventriculos expurgantur, ubi species rerum inquinarentur.
-
4. Species sentiuntur potius, ubi deferuntur. At ad principium spinalis medullae quilibet nervus sensorius defert species suo quovis loco, unde singuli suo loco in principio medullari ab anima dijudicantur & reperiuntur. Est praeterea haec medulla magna satis globosa, durior, & illustrior colore.
-
5. Fieret in exili hoc corpusculo idearum diversarum confusio. Oculos quidem etiam minimus sine confusione species recipit, sed visibiles tantum, quum hic sensuum diversorum diversae species debeant recipi.
-
6. Nullus hinc ductus apertus ad nervos, aut cognitus, sicut à principio medullari, nec ulla communio cum quibusdam nervis sensuum externorum.”
-
- 54.
We might also add the anatomy of Henricus Regius, which articulated a strong doctrine of empiricism, yet entertained many speculations about subvisible mechanisms. Gariepy 1990, 211: “Also, the sheer number of anatomical errors in the Physiologia was astounding.” For Regius’ doctrine of empiricism, see Bellis 2013.
- 55.
Harvey et al.1647.
- 56.
Cf. French 1994, 214–220.
- 57.
Bos 2002, xxi.
- 58.
Clarke 2006, 212–3. As Clarke reports, Descartes and Van Hogelande consulted together on the case of a girl with rickets, one Johanna de Wilhem, on 6 June 1640.
- 59.
The details remain to be worked out. Descartes remarked to Elizabeth that Van Hogelande “does just the opposite of Regius, in that everything Regius writes is borrowed from me and yet manages to contradict my views, whereas everything Van Hogelande writes is quite alien to my own views (indeed I think that he has never even read my books properly) and yet he is always on my side, in that he has followed the same principles.” Descartes to Elizabeth, March 1647, AT IV 627; CSMK 315.
- 60.
Van Hogelande 1646.
- 61.
Van Hogelande 1646, 276: “… omnia corpora quôcunque modô agentia, tanquam machinas consideranda, eorundémque actiones atque effectus, tanquam mechanicos & corporeos, & per consequens non nisi mechanicé, id est, secundùm leges mechanicas, explicandos aut explicabiles existimamus.”
- 62.
- 63.
Van Hogelande 1646, 14, 83, 94. French, Harvey ’s natural philosophy, p. 215.
- 64.
Clarke 1992, 258–85. See also Garber 2001, ch. 5, who argues for a shift from intuition over experiment to hypothetical argument as Descartes moved from the Discourse to the Principles. Garber also recognizes that some key passages in the Principles continue Descartes’s early privileging of intuition over experimentation.
- 65.
Descartes AT VI 63; CSM I 143: “I also noticed, regarding observations [expériences], that the further we advance in our knowledge, the more necessary they become. At the beginning, rather than seeking those which are more unusual and highly contrived, it is better to resort only to those which, presenting themselves spontaneously to our senses , cannot be unknown to us if we reflect even a little. The reason for this is that the more unusual observations are apt to mislead us when we do not yet know the causes of the more common ones, and the factors on which they depend are almost always so special and so minute that it is very difficult to discern them.”
- 66.
Descartes AT VIIIA 328–29; CSM I 290–91.
- 67.
Descartes AT IXB 325, trans. in Clarke 1992, 278–79.
- 68.
Van Hogelande 1646, 24–25. “Quae ratiocinationis actio, cum nullô modô à corpore, qualicunque ratione agitatô vel motô; neque ab ullis imaginibus aut ideis, incertô casu per sensus illatis vel oblatis cerebróque impressis, prodire possit (licet ipsemet homo, imagines sive ideas, etiam corporeas, intentioni suae inservientes, sibi ipsi liberè & pro arbitrio suo proponat; atq; ut ad optatum ratiocinationis finem, quaesitam scilicet veritatem perveniat, liberè & pro arbitrio sup sibi proponere debeat, non autem incerto casu oblatas vel illatas accipere.”
- 69.
Van Hogelande 1646, 273.
- 70.
- 71.
Van Hogelande 1646, a5–a6: “Great man, what in this kind of argument I can put forward given the thinness of my powers, is yours to judge. For it is yours, or ought to be joined to you, the plain and easy rule [ratio] of reasoning, which I followed in order to track down the truth. And indeed, I gave this one work so that I would assert nothing without doubting, which was not sufficiently perceived by me. By your example, I myself proposed the opinions of no one, nor obscure dubious reasonings, but sought the perspicuous and easy principles, according to the motion of matter, and its form and magnitude, in the oeconomy of the animal body.”
- 72.
Van Hogelande 1646, 272–276.
- 73.
Van Hogelande 1646, 54 and 124. Contraction could also come about due to disease, external cold, or old age, but was usually due to the fermentation of the blood.
- 74.
Van Hogelande 1646, 53.
- 75.
Van Hogelande 1646, 75–6, 81, 118.
- 76.
Van Hogelande 1646, 81: “Thus whenever blood has flowed into the heart, in a way similar or analogous to that which spirit of niter excites when infused into butter of antimony, rarefaction and effervescence follow; (as will be shown more clearly in the following) All philosophers teach that entities should not be multiplied without necessity: Here, the continuous heat of the heart and of the blood (which is united with the blood, mediated by the arteries, and communicated to the whole body, and commonly said to be innate or native) is analogous or similar to the heat of the butter of antimony and the spirit of nitre, and it seems that it should be attributed to their manifest action and motion (that is, to the rarefaction and effervescence, born from the diversity of the motions of the internal parts, and the certain quantity and quality of the motive particles, otherwise accidentally called antipathy), rather than to any other sort of incomprehensible or occult quality.”
- 77.
Van Hogelande 1646, 98–99.
- 78.
Van Hogelande 1646, 144–146, and 154, where he lists experiences to support the claim that heat consists in motion.
- 79.
Van Hogelande 1646, 144–146.
- 80.
Van Hogelande 1646, 143. Van Hogelande added an experiment from one “Doctor Honinga” that the heart of a hunting dog expanded both laterally and longitudinally without an influx of blood, pp. 160–162.
- 81.
Van Hogelande 1646, 147–149: “Licet quilibet ex supra dictis clarè satis intelligat, citatas cordis particulas à fermentatione sanguinis, per arteriam coronariam ejusdem parenchymati immissi, motum suum recipere; in gratiam tamen omni ratiocinationi diffidentium, solique experientiae credentium, sequens hoc & satis quidem facile experimentum, in praedictae veritatis confirmationem hisce adjungere non gravabor. A corde itaque anguillae majoris bisecto, atque in aqua aliquamdiu detento, omnem sanguinem mediocri pressione ita separavi, ut partes ejus orbi ligneo (secundum eam superficiem quâ laesae sive bisectae erant) satis diu impositae, nullum amplius ederent motum; donec eôdem à sanguine ei infuso madentem collocatae, paulatim, i.e. prius aliquamdiu null, deinde lentissimô, posteà [149] verò velocissimô moverentur motu: atque hoc experimentum eisdem particulis simili etiam successu iteravi; dum typographus festinat. quod ideo addo, ne quis existimet, me praecedentes rationes à posteriori (scilicet praedictô experimentô prius factô) collegisse.”
- 82.
Van Hogelande 1646, 198.
- 83.
Van Hogelande 1646, 200.
- 84.
Van Hogelande 1646, 195–6: “Noeterici verò, autore Clariss. Hervejô [sic] (cujus benignae liberalitati hanc cognitionem debemus) non solum secundam manifestas mechanicae leges, ex dictae venae cavae amplitudine, auriculaeque capacitate, ac crebra sanguinis in cor ex citata auricula injectione, solidè firmiterque ratiocinantes; verum etiam in gratiam ratiocinationi non satis fidentium, ad investigationes vel disquisitiones reales & sensuales sese accingentes, easdémque aggredientes, omnis generis animalia viva dissecando: Tantam sanguinis copiam in variorum animalium corda infundi notarunt, ut comparatione secundum magnitudinem & constitutionem eorum cum homine factâ, facilè dimidiam unciam sanguinis singulis auriculae aperturis in cor humanum infundi, probabili conjecturâ aestimaverint.”
- 85.
- 86.
Sylvius 1679, 128: “Whatever we might consider in regard to the Proper sensible Qualities, and then the Common, and should propose for their Remedies, I would not wish anyone to be carried away with madness, so that he would think that we should be so insane, from these things said, that we would consider that from the Proper sensible Qualities, as such, Changes are produced in Natural things, and other Functions in Men other than those External Senses; with us, as with the judgment of others, all those Qualities are not Real, as the Philosophers speak, but rather Intentional. That is, natural Things do not act on other natural Things so that they are changed by the power of the Proper Sensible Qualities; but merely in the External senses , as the Soul notices them, and according to their representation to it.”
- 87.
- 88.
Sylvius 1679, 128–129.
- 89.
Sylvius 1679, 896: “Quicquid in sensus externos, à quibus omnis cognitionis nostrae initium naturaliter fieri tam mihi certum est, quàm quòd certissimum; unde etiam ab antiquis Philosophis sancitum verissimè, Nihil in Intellectu, quòd non priùs fuerit in sensu.”
- 90.
- 91.
Wear 1983. Sylvius takes his distinction between primae notiones and secundae notions from Jacopo Zabarella . Zabarella 1608, c. 6 B; cf. Sylvius 1679, 896, 395, 415, and 647. As these references from the 1658 Oratio through his posthumous works show, Sylvius expressed a broadly Aristotelian view of the generation of universals from sense experience throughout his career.
- 92.
For more on Sylvius ’s use of the senses , see Ragland 2012.
- 93.
Sylvius 1679, 311: “XXVI. Quapropter videntur mihi, quos idcirco & Ego secutus sum, aptius & naturalibus rebus accommodatius philosophari, qui in rebus obscuris & ab externis Sensibus abstrusis secundum Chymicas mutationes Sensibus patentes Operationes in corpore nostro factas explicant, licet ne sic quidem omnem tollant difficultatem: plus tamen luminis afferunt nostris tenebris, quam caeteri, qui, utut similitudinibus sensilibus utantur, non utuntur tamen talibus, quae satis quadrant cum iis, quae fiunt in corpore nostro.”
- 94.
This qualitative approach to principles and substances is especially clear throughout the works of Sylvius ’s immediate chymical predecessors and sources, Daniel Sennert and Van Helmont. Ragland 2012.
- 95.
Sylvius 1679, 896 and 900.
- 96.
E.g., Sylvius 1679, 30–31.
- 97.
Sylvius 1679, 43: “Docuit autem Harvejus, Medicorum, utpote Sensilium Philosophorum, sequutus morem ac Sensuum externorum testimonium, Arteriaq Dilatari, quando Cordis contrahuntur Ventriculi! & vice verâ, Contrahi easdem Arterias, quando Dilatantur Cordis Ventriculi.”
- 98.
Sylvius 1679, 43: “Cartesius verò, Mechanicae suae legibus, quàm Sensibus suis externis magis fidens, suspicatus est & opinatus, Dilatari simul, & Contrahi simul Cordis Ventriculos & Arterias.”
- 99.
Regius had defended just this account in a June 1640 disputation, and Descartes approved of the account. Van Hogelande also took up this account. See Bos 2002, 47.
- 100.
Swammerdam 1667. Swammerdam’s treatise also added other experiments, and observations on muscular action and hermaphroditic snails.
- 101.
Quote and trans. in McGahagan 1976, 307.
- 102.
He taught Cartesian physiology into the 1660s, as evidenced by Ole Borch’s lecture notes, in which de Raey even argued that “no one before Descartes had demonstrated that there was something corporeal in those natural actions of the body, or how it could be distinctly conceived.” March 1661, Borch 1983, vol 1, 47: “… adesse sed neminem ante Cartesium, quid esset praeterea, demonstrasse, aut quomodo distinctè id posset concipi.”
- 103.
Sylvius 1679, 34: “Ego sanè, qui me non tantùm in rebus naturalibus Tractûs possibilitatem (ut Scholasticorum termino utar) mente assequi, at insuper, quod primarium est, plura ejus exempla, sive experimenta observasse puto, haud accedo illis, qui Motum omnem solo Pulsu absolvi docent.”
- 104.
Sylvius 1679, 34: “Nec assensum meum coget facilè, qui ex suis praesuppositis, nec probatis, tanquam principiis, modo suo explicabit, nec clarè ac distinctè demonstrabit Pelli id, quod Trahi testatur Sensus externus non deceptus, sed integer ac ritè agens.”
- 105.
The reference is to Horace’s Satire 5. The context is that someone tries to persuade Horace that incense will melt on the temple steps without flame. He withholds belief in what he takes to be flimflam. Horace 2012, 47.
- 106.
Sylvius 1679, 34–35: “Quid si tubulo ex coriis densissimis & nullum Aëri transitum concidentibus parato, atque non dicam per aquas [sic] medias & profundas, sed per transversum parietem undique arctissimè iterum circumclusum transmisso annecteretur similis Ventriculus; dum alterum tubuli extremum asperâ arteriâ strictissimè concluderetur; an diceremus tunc Aërem thoracis, abdomisque expansione pressum per nescio quae longissima & imaginaria itinera vias sibi quaerere ac invenire ad illum Ventriculum, quem tunc tam potenter premat, ut cogatur contenti aëris pars ingredi Pulmonem? Id, si volet, credat Judaeus Apella, non Ego; qui abhorreo & caveo mihi ab omnibus praejudiciis Experientiae evidenter contrariis.”
- 107.
September 1661, Borch 1983, vol 1, 216: “Cartesium non quidem scriptis, sed linguâ in contradicentes sibi valde fuisse obliquum, dixisse Sylvium non intelexisse mechanicum (quia in secto cuniculo non respondebant omnia Cartesii principiis), per mechanicam a. nil aliud intellexisse quam suae philosophiae commenta.”
- 108.
Sylvius 1679, 14: “Secretus sic ab Alvinis foecibus Chylus per carneam& spongiosam Intestinorum Crustam, veluti per pannum laneum, transcolatur quasi, exprimiturque in Venas Lacteas memorato Intestinorum motu peristaltico.” “The Chyle thus secreted from the Alvinis feces through the fleshy and spongy Crust/surface of the Intestines, as if through a woolen cloth, as it were, filtered, it is squeezed into the Lacteal Veins by the previously mentioned peristaltic motion of the Intestines.”
- 109.
Bertoloni Meli 2011, 12–16 and passim.
- 110.
Bertoloni Meli 2011, 284–289. It is interesting that even by the much later date of Malpighi’s Vita, mechanistic anatomy had no empirically acceptable account of kidney secretion.
- 111.
Sylvius 1679, 722: “CCCIV. Quamvis autem vulgò Cipiosae hujus Urinae secretionis, mox & exretionis Causa tribui soleat Renibus potentiùs serum ad se trahentibus: non satisfacit tamen mihi haec ratio, quamdiu non constat, vim attractricem inesse ipsis Renibus, quam illi duntaxat tribuere non suffiicit, nî quoque talis evincatur ac probetur. CCCV. Accedo autem illis magis, qui, quantum licet, omnia mechanicè in corpore nostro perfici autumant, & mechanicè demonstrari cupiunt: Id autem nunquam fiet, nisi corporis fabricam cognoscamus, & cum mechanicis organis similitudinem habere ostendamus.”
- 112.
Sylvius 1679, 722–723: “CCCVI. Nam, ut hoc obiter moneam, graviter mihi peccare videntur, quotquot mutationes in corpore mechanicas urgent, interim omnen laborem subterfugiunt, ex quo corporis nostri partium cum mechanicis instrumentis similitudinem ac conformitatem deducere licet. CCCVII. Unde videas hîc quoque nonnullos quaevis pro lubitu Corpori affingere, fabricam ipsius partium nescio quam comminisci, non item talem actu existere autopsiâ demonstrare, quod tamen omninò necessarium.”
- 113.
Sylvius 1679, 723: “Utique ab invicem sejungenda non sunt, sed conjungenda Mentis Corporisque opera; quin imò quoties aliquis effectus notabilis & abstrusis occurrit Medico circa suos aegros, toties & Ingenio sagaci excogitandae sunt aliquae probabiles illius effectûs Causae, & Manûs industriâ vel quovis alio experimento examinanda est, trutinandaque Causarum excogitatarum soliditas & veritas, & Judicio severo decernendum, num secundùm experientiam, rejici, admittine debeat Ingenii foetus.”
- 114.
- 115.
Sylvius 1679, 43.
- 116.
Wilkin 2003.
- 117.
Sylvius 1679, 43: “Quicquid enim Ingenium etiam subtilissimum & sagacissimum excogitare potest humanae Menti maximè probabile atque plausabile, id omne, Artem Medicam si spectet, tantisper Falsi suspectum esse Prudentibus debet, donec id ipsum Verum esse, hoc est, tale, quale fingitur, in rebus ipsis actu observari manifestârit Veritatis Magistra Experientia.”
- 118.
Sylvius 1679, 44: “Absit autem, ut inter legitimos Medicorum Filios aliquis reperiatur tam socors, cui (repugnante licet cum Aegrotorum nonnunquam damno Experientiâ) suis, alienisve adhaerere lubeat figmentis ac Chimaeris, quoniam malè sanae placuerunt Menti, aliquando & saepenumerò serò cum Medeâ exclamaturae,—Video meliora proboque;/Deteriora sequor.” The lamentation of Medea is from Ovid 1972, 59.
- 119.
Sylvius 1679, 44.
- 120.
- 121.
Steno 1669 in Scherz 1965, 132–133.
- 122.
Ibid., 129; italics added. Orig.: Ie me serois contenté de l’admirer avec quelque-uns, comme la description d’une belle machine, & toute de son invention; si ie n’avois rencontré beaucoup de gens qui le prennent tout antrement, & qui le veulent faire passer pour une rélation fidele, de ce qu’il y a de plus caché dans les ressors du corps humain. Puis-que ces gens la ne se rendent pas aux démonstrations tres-évidentes de Monsieur Silvius, qui a fait voir souvent que la description de Monsieur des Cartes, ne s’accorde pas avec la dissection des corps qu’elle décrit, il faut que sans raporter icy tout son syste[15]me, ie leur en marque quelques endroits, où ie suis assuré qu’il ne tiendra qu’a eux du voir clair, & de reconnoistre une grande difference entre la machine que Monsieur des Cartes s’est imaginée, & celle que nous voyons lors que nous faisons l’Anatomie des corps humains.
I should have been prevented from referring to the faults in this treatise by the respect that I feel is owed by everyone, myself included, to intellects of this order, I would have been pleased to admire it, with the rest, as a description of a beautiful machine, invented entirely by him, if I had not met many persons who take it as [129] quite the opposite and who wish to pass it off as a faithful representation of what lies hidden in the compartments of the human body. Since these men do not accept the very clear demonstrations of M. Silvius, who has shown many that Descartes ’ description does not tally with what is revealed by dissection of the body, it is necessary for me, without describing all of his system here, to note certain parts where I am sure that eyes alone are required to observe and recognize a great difference between the machine imagined by M. Descartes and what we see when we study the anatomy of the human body. [pp. 128–129, trans. by Alexander J. Pollock]
- 123.
Descartes 1972, 1–2. AT XI 119–120.
- 124.
As Steno 1664, 5 mentions, both Harvey and Sylvius had observed that the heart was indeed a muscle.
- 125.
- 126.
See Steno 1944, vol 1, 388–390.
- 127.
This was the case even for Cartesians outside of the Netherlands. See Smith 2013.
- 128.
Nuck 1691: “Traveler, stop a moment and consider with every endeavor the buried conarium as it once was, the first part of your body and the seat of the soul , the PINEAL GLAND, his majesty and splendor in this age born and extinguished—fame established it and opinion preserved it for as long as it lived, until the aura of divine particles completely flew away, and the clear waters/lymph filled its place—go, without the gland, traveler, give up the endeavor/conarion, lest posterity marvels at your ignorance.”
- 129.
Anstey 2000.
- 130.
Of course, English solidarity for Harvey ’s doctrines and anti-French sentiment no doubt played a role.
- 131.
Des Chene 2001, 153: “Not only did Descartes not manage to complete the science of life: in respect to particulars, he failed even to begin it. Within fifty years of his death, most if not all the mechanisms proposed by him were rejected outright, as were the feu sans lumière in the heart, the role of the pineal gland in sensation and memory, and most of his embryology, or substantially modified.”
- 132.
Descartes to Mersenne, 20 January 1639: “In fact, I have taken into consideration not only what Vesalius and others write about anatomy , but also many details unmentioned by them, which I have observed myself while dissecting various animals. I have spent much time on dissection during the last eleven years, and I doubt whether there is any doctor who has made such detailed observations as I.” AT II 525; CSMK 134.
- 133.
For England, see the superb study of Frank 1980.
- 134.
- 135.
Ragland 2014, 135.
- 136.
E.g., Anstey and Vanzo 2012.
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Ragland, E.R. (2016). Mechanism, the Senses, and Reason: Franciscus Sylvius and Leiden Debates Over Anatomical Knowledge After Harvey and Descartes. In: Distelzweig, P., Goldberg, B., Ragland, E. (eds) Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7353-9_8
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