Medicine - Mathematics & History
'We now come to the input of mathematics into medical history, and to the related questions of arithmetic and quantification, ratio and proportion, geometrical argument and diagrams, and probability. Mathematics (consisting in arithmetic, geometry, astrology and music) had an established place in the quadrivium of the medieval arts course; its application to medicine is demonstrated in such textbooks as the Articella, which include treatises on weights and measures, and in studies of proportion and ratio such as those of the medieval Oxford calculators which Italian doctors among others caused to be revived at the beginning of our period. In the sixteenth century, it was a vigorously debated subject; there is a well-documented discussion of the certainty of mathematics, concerning its status in respect to the logical adequacy of its proofs, in which some natural philosophers and doctors (notably Cardano) take part. It will come therefore as no surprise that it was prescribed for doctors by most Renaissance pedagogical writers; this prescription is often specifically linked to Galen's geometrical (axiomatic) method whose operations are the constitution of objects from elements, the comparison of existing objects and their reduction into their constitutive elements.
Associated with mathematics are diagrams, that is, abstract quantified spatial representations. There is a modern debate about the contribution of technical innovations in illustration in the Renaissance (most notably perspective) to the scientific revolution: this is only relevant here insofar as some participants in this debate argue for the importance of diagrammatic symbolisation of mental abstractions above those, like perspective, which are still representations of the real world, and see the former as a step on the path to full algebraic notation of geometry. Not all Renaissance thinkers were persuaded of their usefulness: Argenterio describes the diagrams of Manardo and Akakia reproduced below as 'vain and false tables and figures'; but I shall argue here that they were related to the uptake of doctors from the arts course insofar as well-known logical diagrams reproduced above (4.3:3) were adapted by them for their own purposes.' pp.171-172.
Maclean, Ian. 2002. Chapter 5, Beyond logic: geometry, proportion, quantity. In Logic, Signs, and Nature in the Renaissance: The Case of Learned Medicine. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Related to ongoing reading, Maclean provides two (among several) historical illustrations (with apologies for the quality) on pp.174-175, the first is from the Wellcome Collection:
Dubois,
Jacques, 1478-1555 (Boe͏̈, Jacques, Bois, J. d., Boë, J., del, Boë, J.,
Del Boë, J., DelBoe͏̈, J., . . . Sylvius/de Bois). (1548). Methodus
sex librorum galeni in differentiis et causis morborum et symptomatum
in tabellas sex ordine suo conjecta paulo fusius ne brevitas obscura
lectorem remoretur & fallat. de signis omnibus medicis, hoc est
salubribus, insalubribus, & neutris, commentarius / ... per jacobum
sylvium ..Paris: Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/books/methodus-sex-librorum-galeni-differentiis-et/docview/2090356749/se-2
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| Jacobus Sylvius, 1539 |
Which Maclean then translates / interprets (p.174):
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| Maclean. Figure 5.1, p.174. |
This adaptation of the square of contraries (which has precedents in the medieval period) shows the appropriation for their own use by doctors of the logical instruments at their disposal.
As we have seen, it is a feature of medical thinking to take into account many circumstantiae or variables, and, over time, the numbers of variables taken into consideration increases.' p.174-175.
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| Figure 5.2 Giovanni Manardo, p.175. |
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
quality | quantity symptoms - signs |
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