Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Machines of the Body in the Seventeenth Century

  • Chapter
Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy

Part of the book series: History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences ((HPTL,volume 14))

Abstract

This essay discusses the role of new mechanical devices put forward in the seventeenth century in anatomy and pathology, showing how several of those devices were promptly deployed in anatomical investigations. I also discuss the role of dead bodies as boundary objects between living bodies and machines, highlighting their problematic status in experimentation and vivisection.

This essay was conceived as a stimulus for discussion at an oral presentation and retains its relatively informal character even in its present form. I am grateful to all those who offered comments and suggestions, to the anonymous referees, who forced me to expand and clarify my views, and to Joshua Ewigleben for his insightful comment on Hooke’s experiment and organ playing.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Belloni 1963. Des Chene 2001. Aucante 2006. Manning 2012.

  2. 2.

    Duchesneau 1998. Von Staden 1997. Lennox 1992. Lenoir 1989. Manning 2012. Bertoloni Meli 2011, 12–16.

  3. 3.

    Gaillard et al. 2013, especially the essay by Roux (2013). Bertoloni Meli 2006, 14–6. Machamer et al. 2000. Keller 2010. Craver and Darden 2013.

  4. 4.

    Whitteridge 1971, 169–72, plates IV and VII. De Caus 1624, 4 and problem XX. O’Rourke Boyle 2008. Harvey 19933, 65. Harvey 1957, 186.

  5. 5.

    Bertoloni Meli 2006, chapters 3, 4, 6, 8.

  6. 6.

    Hooke 1665, quotation at 173. On the early history of the pendulum see Büttner 2008; Bertoloni Meli 2006, index. On microscopy see Wilson, Catherine 1995. Ruestow 1996. Fournier 1996.

  7. 7.

    I wish to thank my colleague Armin Moczek for informing me about halteres and their role in the flight of “Diptera”, the two-winged insects (as opposed to all other winged insects, which have 4 wings).

  8. 8.

    Borelli 1989, 318, 185, 283. Borelli is a complex thinker; I am not even confident that he could license for publication the posthumous De motu animalium, especially the second book. Therefore my comments refer to the specific passages cited and should not be taken as representative of his general views.

  9. 9.

    Galen 1916, I.7 and II.3.

  10. 10.

    Des Chene 2005, especially 251–4, discusses several examples.

  11. 11.

    The treatise by Magiotti is discussed in Belloni 1963, and is reprinted there at 271–82.

  12. 12.

    Bertoloni Meli 2011, 95–6. On the rise of animal electricity see Piccolino and Bresadola 2013.

  13. 13.

    Belloni 1963. Middleton 1971, 105–66, especially 159–66. Borelli 1989, 183–202, especially 197–202. Hooke 1665, 147–52, quotation at 152.

  14. 14.

    I cite from the contemporary English translation: Pecquet 1653, 89–92. Bertoloni Meli 2008, 670–7.

  15. 15.

    Pecquet 1653, 141–8.

  16. 16.

    Pecquet 1653, 149–50.

  17. 17.

    Pecquet 1653, 144.

  18. 18.

    Pecquet 1653, 135–6.

  19. 19.

    Harvey 1993, 10–1 and 112–4.

  20. 20.

    Borelli 1989, Part II, chapter 8, especially Propositions 115–6, pages 318–20.

  21. 21.

    Grew 1682, 188–9. Bertoloni Meli 2011, 266–7. Dear 2006, chapter 1. Craver and Darden 2013, 15–20.

  22. 22.

    Hooke 1678, 1. Bertoloni Meli 2006, 242–6.

  23. 23.

    Malpighi 1967, 491–631, especially 512–16. Bertoloni Meli 2001, especially 517–20. For a recent philosophical analysis of health and disease in Descartes see Manning 2012; for broader reflections on diseases see Canguilhem 1978; Wilson 2000. Giglioni 2000, 97–142.

  24. 24.

    I have treated some of these views in Bertoloni Meli 2013a. Malpighi 1975, 3:1268–69, Malpighi to Tarantino, 29 March 1687.

  25. 25.

    Malpighi 1967, 513. On Cassini and Malpighi see Bertoloni Meli 2008, 692–3. Bertoloni Meli 2011, 317–8.

  26. 26.

    Malpighi 1967, 513. Harvey 1993, 124–25.

  27. 27.

    Malpighi 1967, 189–216, especially 203, 215; 514–6. Malpighi 1995, especially 485, 492. Belloni 1956, at 28–35. Bertoloni Meli 2001, 519–20. Albertini in Jarcho 1980, quotation at 332.

  28. 28.

    Malpighi 1967, 513–14. Swammerdam 1667, 30, 36–37. Schierbeek 1974, 67–71.

  29. 29.

    Malpighi 1967, 513. Eriksson 1959, 252–55.

  30. 30.

    Aristotle 1937, I.1, 640b34–641a21. Baker 2014.

  31. 31.

    Aristotle 1937, I.1, 641a17–36. Bertoloni Meli 2013b. On boundary objects the classic paper is Leigh Star and Griesemer 1989.

  32. 32.

    Wear 1995, 315. Harvey 1653, 292.

  33. 33.

    Jones 1960, 113. Keel 2001, 186–254.

  34. 34.

    French 1985, 51.

  35. 35.

    Harvey 1993, 65. O’Rourke Boyle 2008.

  36. 36.

    Harvey 1993, 26–7. Borelli 1989, 283–5.

  37. 37.

    Schouten 1974, 262, 271.

  38. 38.

    Harvey 1993, pp. 140–5, at 140–1, from the letter to Schlegel dated London, 26 March 1651. French 1994, pp. 279–85. Cole 1917–1921, 2:290–1. French 1985, p. 54, deals with injections using a syringe in order to study the passageways of fetal anatomy .

  39. 39.

    Pugliese 2004. Descartes 1972, 71–2. Descartes’s relevant passage is discussed by several authors; see for example Gaukroger 1995, 279–81.

  40. 40.

    Frank 1980, 213–7, at 214. Lower 1669, 163–71, quotations at 165, 171.

  41. 41.

    Des Chene 2001, 2005. Craver and Darden 2013. Dear 1995, chapter 6.

References

  • Albertini, Ippolito Francesco. 1980. Animadversiones super quibusdam difficilis respirationis vitiis a laesa cordis et praecordiorum structura pendentibus. In The Concept of Heart Failure from Avicenna to Albertini, Trans. Saul Jarcho, 324–336. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aristotle. 1937. Parts of animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Aucante, Vincent. 2006. La philosophie médicale de Descartes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Baker, Tawrin. 2014. Color, Cosmos, Oculus: Color, vision, and the eye in the works of Jacopo Zabarella and Hieronymus Fabricius ab aquapendente. PhD thesis, Indiana University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belloni, Luigi. 1956. Introduzione storica alla patologia dell’aterosclerosi. In Aterosclerosi umana e sperimentale, ed. Società italiana di patologia, 25–66. Milan: Ambrosiana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belloni, Luigi. 1963. Schemi e modelli della macchina vivente nel Seicento. Physis 5: 259–298.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bertoloni Meli, Domenico. 2001. Blood, monsters, and necessity in Malpighi’s De polypo cordis. Medical History 45: 511–522.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bertoloni Meli, Domenico. 2006. Thinking with objects. The transformation of mechanics in the seventeenth century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bertoloni Meli, Domenico. 2008. The collaboration between anatomists and mathematicians in the mid-seventeenth century with a study of images as experiments and Galileo’s role in Steno’s Myology. Early Science and Medicine 13: 665–709.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bertoloni Meli, Domenico. 2011. Mechanism, experiment, disease. Marcello Malpighi and seventeenth-century anatomy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bertoloni Meli, Domenico. 2013a. Machines of the body between anatomy and pathology. In L’automate, ed. Gaillard et al., 53–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bertoloni Meli, Domenico. 2013b. Early modern experimentation on live animals. Journal of the History of Biology 46: 199–226.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borelli, Giovanni Alfonso. 1989. On the Movement of Animals. Berlin: Springer. English translation by Paul Maquet of De motu animalium , 2 vols. Rome: Angeli Bernabò, 1680–1681.

    Google Scholar 

  • Büttner, Jochen. 2008. The pendulum as a challenging object in early-modern mechanics. In Mechanics and natural philosophy before the scientific revolution, ed. Walter Roy Laird and Sophie Roux, 223–237. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Canguilhem, Georges. 1978. On the normal and the pathological. With an introduction by Michel Foucault. Dordrecht: Reidel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caus, Salomon de. 1624. Les raisons des forces mouvantes, avec diverses machines tant utiles que plaisantes. Paris: Hierosme Droüart. First published in 1615.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, Francis Joseph. 1917–1921. The history of anatomical injections. In Studies in the history and method of science, 2 vols., ed. Charles Joseph Singer, 285–343. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Craver, Carl F., and Lindley Darden. 2013. In search of mechanisms. Discoveries across the life sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dear, Peter. 1995. Discipline and experience: The mathematical way in the scientific revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dear, Peter. 2006. The intelligibility of nature: How science makes sense of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Des Chene, Dennis. 2001. Spirits and clocks. Machine and organism in Descartes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Des Chene, Dennis. 2005. Mechanisms of life in the seventeenth century: Borelli, Perrault, Régis. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36: 245–260.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Descartes, René. 1972 (originally published in French in 1664). Treatise on Man. French text with translation and commentary by Thomas Steele Hall. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duchesneau, François. 1998. Les modèles du vivant de Descartes à Leibniz. Paris: Vrin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eriksson, Ruben. 1959. Andreas Vesalius’ First Public Anatomy at Bologna. 1540. An eyewitness report by Baldasar Heseler. Uppsala/Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fournier, Marian. 1996. The fabric of life. Microscopy in the seventeenth century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank Jr., Robert G. 1980. Harvey and the Oxford physiologists. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • French, Roger K. 1985. Berengario da Carpi and the use of commentary in anatomical teaching. In The medical renaissance of the sixteenth century, ed. Andrew Wear, Roger K. French, and Iain M. Lonie, 42–74. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • French, Roger K. 1994. William Harvey’s natural philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gaillard, Aurélia, Jean-Yves Goffi, Bernard Roukhomovsky, and Sophie Roux (eds.). 2013. L’automate: Modèle Métaphore Machine Merveille. Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galen. 1916. On the Natural Faculties. Trans. Arthur John Brock. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaukroger, Stephen. 1995. Descartes. An intellectual biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giglioni, Guido. 2000. Immaginazione e malattia. Saggio su Jan Baptiste van Helmont. Milano: Franco Angeli.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grew, Nehemiah. 1682. The anatomy of plants. London: W. Rawlings.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, William. 1653. Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures. London: James Young. English translation of Exercitationes de generatione animalium. London: Typis Du-Gardianis, 1651.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, William. 1957. De motu cordis. Movement of the heart and blood in animals. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, William. 1993. The Circulation of the Blood and Other Writings. London: Everyman. English translation by Kenneth J. Franklin of William Harvey. 1628. Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus. Frankfurt: Wilhelm Fitzer; and William Harvey. 1649. Exercitatio anatomica de circulatione sanguinis. Cambridge: Roger Daniels, 1649.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hooke, Robert. 1665. Micrographia. London: John Martyn and James Allestry.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hooke, Robert. 1678. Lectures de potentia restitutiva. London: John Martyn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Ellis W.P. 1960. The life and works of Guilhelmus Fabricius Hildanus (1560–1634). Medical History 4: 112–134 and 196–209.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keel, Othmar. 2001. L’avènement de la médicine clinique moderne en Europe, 1750–1815. Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montreal.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keller, Vera. 2010. Drebbel’s living instruments, Hartmann’s microcosm, and Libavius’s thelesmos: Epistemic machines before Descartes. History of Science 48: 39–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leigh Star, Susan, and James R. Griesemer. 1989. Institutional ecology, ‘Translation’, and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907–1939. Social Studies of Science 19: 387–420.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lennox, Jim. 1992. Teleology. In Keywords in evolutionary biology, ed. Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth A. Lloyd, 324–333. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lenoir, Timothy. 1989. The strategy of life: Teleology and mechanism in nineteenth-century German biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lower, Richard. 1669. Tractatus de corde, item de motu et colore sanguinis et chyli in eum transitu. London: Typis Jo. Redmayne impensis Jacobi Allestry. Facsimile edition with introduction and translation by Kenneth J. Franklin, in Early Science in Oxford, vol. 9, ed. Robert T. Gunther. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932.

    Google Scholar 

  • Machamer, Peter, Lindley Darden, and Carl F. Craver. 2000. Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science 67: 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malpighi, Marcello. 1967. Opere scelte, ed. Luigi Belloni. Turin: UTET.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malpighi, Marcello. 1975. Correspondence, 5 vols., ed. Howard B. Adelmann. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malpighi, Marcello. 1995. “De polypo cordis. An Annotated Translation”, by John M. Forrester. Medical History 39: 477–492.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manning, Gideon. 2012. Descartes’ healthy machines and the human exception. In The mechanization of natural philosophy, ed. Sophie Roux and Daniel Garber, 237–262. New York: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Middleton, W.E. Knowles. 1971. The experimenters. A study of the Accademia del Cimento. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Rourke Boyle, Marjorie. 2008. Harvey in the Sluice: From hydraulic engineering to human physiology. History and Technology 24: 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pecquet, Jean. 1653. New Anatomical Experiments. London: Octavian Pulleyn. English translation of Nova experimenta anatomica. Paris: Sebastian and Gabriel Cramoisy, 1651.

    Google Scholar 

  • Piccolino, Marco, and Marco Bresadola. 2013. Shocking frogs: Galvani, Volta, and the electric origins of neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Originally published in Italian, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pugliese, Patri J. 2004. Robert Hooke. In Oxford dictionary of national biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13693. Accessed 31 Mar 2015.

  • Roux, Sophie. 2013. Quelles machines pour quels animaux? Jacques Rohault, Claude Perrault, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli. In L’automate, ed. Gaillard et al., 69–113.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruestow, Edward G. 1996. The microscope in the Dutch Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schierbeek, Abraham. 1974. Jan Swammerdam. His life and works. Amsterdam: Sweets & Zeitlinger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schlick, Arnolt. 1511. Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten. Speyer: Peter Drach.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schouten, Jan. 1974. Johannes Walaeus (1604–1649) and his experiments on the circulation of the blood. Journal of the History of Medicine 29: 259–279.

    Google Scholar 

  • Swammerdam, Jan. 1667. Tractatus physico-anatomico-medicus de respiratione usuque pulmonum. Leiden: Gaasbeeck.

    Google Scholar 

  • Von Staden, Heinrich. 1997. Teleology and mechanism: Aristotelian biology and Hellenistic medicine. In Aristotelische Biologie, ed. Wolfgang Kullman and Sabine Föllinger, 183–208. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wear, Andrew. 1995. Medicine in early modern Europe, 1500–1700. In The Western medical tradition, 800 B.C. to A.D. 1800, ed. Lawrence I. Conrad et al., 215–361. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitteridge, Gweneth. 1971. William Harvey and the circulation of the blood. London/New York: Macdonald/American Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Catherine. 1995. The invisible world. Early modern philosophy and the invention of the microscope. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Adrian. 2000. On the history of disease-concepts: The case of pleurisy. History of Science 38: 271–319.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA

    Domenico Bertoloni Meli

Authors
  1. Domenico Bertoloni Meli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Domenico Bertoloni Meli .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of St. Thomas Department of Philosophy, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

    Peter Distelzweig

  2. Department of Humanities and Cultural, University of South Florida Department of Humanities and Cultural, Tampa, Florida, USA

    Benjamin Goldberg

  3. Department of History, University of Notre Dame Department of History, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

    Evan R. Ragland

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Bertoloni Meli, D. (2016). Machines of the Body in the Seventeenth Century. 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_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation