Religious motives in medical biology

ABSTRACT IN the April issue of the Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine Dr. Walter Pagel deals successively with the doctrines of Paracelsus, Hieronymus Hirnhaim, the

alchemists of the seventeenth century and their adversaries, Marcus Marci, Robert Fludd, Mersemie and Robert Boyle, to illustrate the presence of religious motives in the medical biology of

the seventeenth century. Dr. Pagel first shows that to Paracelsus and his religious view is due the modern conception of diseaso in the establishment of three new doctrines, namely: (1) the

external cause is the essence of disease; (2) the organ involved and the anatomical changes decide the nature of the disease; and (3) disease consists of a complicated disturbance of organ

metabolism which secondarily reflects upon the whole system. Hirnhaim, who regarded sympathy and antipathy as fundamental phenomena, adopted a pious scepticism which was the philosophical

basis of idealistic biology and pathology. On the other hand, the pious conceptions of Nature and magic in tho writings of the seventeenth century alchemists led to their embarking on. a

course of independent empirical research, their point of view being partly due to a positive appreciation of magic as a systematic imitation of Nature by means of arbitrary variation of the

conditions of natural processes. After discussing the speculative embryology of Marcus Marci and his application of the physics of light to the explanation of life according to the

principles of optics, Dr. Pagel gives an account of the “Medicina Catholica” of Robert Fludd, and shows at once the similarity of his conceptions with, and the fundamental differences from,

the Romantic natural philosophy during the early nineteenth century. In conclusion, consideration is given to Robert Boyle and his theory of corpuscles as a scientific explanation, of the

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136, 367 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136367c0 Download citation * Issue Date: 07 September 1935 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136367c0 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following

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