Search

The aim of this paper is to survey the iatrochemists' and iatromechanists' explanations of digestion, from the sixteenth to the early decades of the eighteenth century. The iatrochemists substituted the Galenic thermal digestion with a series of chemical processes, the same as those produced in the laboratory. Jean Baptiste van Helmont marked a turning point in the chemical understanding of digestion, indicating the acid ferment in the stomach as the digestive agent. In the wake of van Helmont, an increasing number of physicians rejected the traditional Galenic theory of digestion, turning to the chemical reactions taking place in the ventricles. The iatrochemists saw nutrition as the outcome of the separation of an active invisible substance, i.e., spirits, from a thick inert covering. The emergence of the mechanical physiology, with its emphasis on the shape, size and motion of parts, did not bring about a decline of the chemical investigations of digestion. Descartes ruled out chemistry in the study of physiology, while a number of physiologists-notably in England-adopted a compromise between iatrochemical and mechanical theories. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the view of acid as an agent of gastric digestion became popular among physiologists. Late in the century, the acid-alkali doctrine spurred further investigations on digestion and nutrition., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This paper presents the latest results of geoarchaeological research on the Upper Pleistocene sequence in the Jebel Gharbi (previously called Jebel Nafusah), a mountain range located in Tripolitania, northwestern Libya. Numerous archaeological sites are found adjacent to springs that formed as a consequence of tectonic activities. The springs originated when Upper Pleistocene earthquakes produced ground displacements that created water outlets, some of which are still active. Springs are spread all along the massif and at the foot of the mountains in Jebel Gharbi. We suggest that they offered attractive resources to populations coming from drier parts of North Africa or the near-by Sahara. The earliest sites associated with the springs include Aterian lithic techno-complexes that have been dated between 80,000 and 40,000 BP. Since then, these springs have attracted many populations, as documented here by settlements belonging to the Later Stone Age (Upper Palaeolithic), Iberomaurusian (Late Upper Palaeolithic or Epipalaeolithic), Neolithic, Roman period, and present time.

Medical and scientific Middle Age manuscripts are often richly illustrated, even when texts, written in the early and the late Antiquity, were not supposed to be accompanied by pictures or diagrams. Technical or practical treatises - especially herbals - were thus transformed in volumes meant for entertainment, which exploited the myths and the possibility of fabulous digressions implied in scientific information. This is particularly true of manuscripts from Southern Italy, and from the milieu of the Frederick II's court, produced for a non-professional public. Miniatures and illustrations from the Swabian age mark a difference with the preceding epoch, exhibiting the results of close empirical observation and the restoration of classically styles images. medical books in particular bear a novelty: scenes of therapeutic and surgical interventions, full of realistic details.

Medical and welfare centers (xenodochia, diaconiae), were built in Rome in the early Middle Age under the Byzantine influence. The Byzantine influence played a very important role in organizing these welfare institutions as well as in promoting cultural, ethical and religious patterns in order to provide treatments and aids for the poor and sick people.

The passage between theurgical to secular rational medicine in the ancient Greece is due to the naturalistic philosophers of the Ionia and the Hippocratic school, between 5th-4th century. However, we have a testimony that both theurgical and rational medicine coexisted in the temples of healing deified gods of medicine, i.e. Asklepion, Amphiaraos, etc. In fact, inscriptions, lat. sanationes, found in few Asklepíeia, i.e. Epidaurus, Lebena, Rome Tiberina Island, show clinical cases solved by the god. The dream is the bridge between the sick persons and the healer god, who acts during the incubation (incubatio) of semisleeping patients in a forbidden room (the [Greek]), near the temple. On the other hand, the dream in the Hippocratic medicine is useful for diagnostic purpose, other than for therapy. An extraordinary case of therapy for psychoneurotic diseases, such as melancholy or hypochondria, was the example of Aelius Aristides, who described his twelve-year experience of dreams related to Asklepiós in the Asklepieion of Pergamon.

Although rational secular medicine, i.e. medicine founded on clinical observation and on the exploration of the natural causes of diseases, prevailed in Greece as late as the IV century B.C., testimonies of theurgical medicine survive in temples dedicated to the gods of medicine, e.g. Maleatas, Amphiaros and Asklepios. Votive inscriptions (Latin sanationes) show clinical cases, solved with the aid of the physician-god, who acts during the dream, which is an essential component in classical medicine and art of the medical treatment. It is worth noting that sanationes have been found in temples of many healing cities, e.g. Epidauros and Lebena and in Tiberine Island in Rome, but not in Kos and Pergamon, where Hippocrates and Galen were active, respectively. Is it just fortuitousness or testimony of the prevailing "scientific" meaning due to the work of the two most representative physicians of the classical world?