Alcmaeon of Croton
Alcmaeon, an ancient Greek natural philosopher interested in particular in medicine and physiology, lived sometime around 500 B.C.E., during and near the times of Pythagorus (ca. 570 – 490 B.C.E.) and Hippocrates (470 – ca. 370 B.C.E.). Scholars have no extant writings of Alcmaeon’s, but his ideas did not die with him. According Galen, Alcmaeon authored a book, On Nature, to which, before it disappeared, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and others had direct access for some time after Alcmaeon’s death. Alcmaeon’s ideas have earned him, according to various scholars, the honorific cognomens, Father of Physiology, Father of Anatomy, Father of Psychology, Founder of Gynecology, Creator of Psychiatry, and indeed, by some, Father of Medicine.[1]
Andreas Vesalius’s biographer, C. D. O’Malley, credits Alcmaeon as the earliest known “genuine student of anatomy”:
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The earliest known genuine student of anatomy appears to have been Alcmaeon of Crotona, who lived in southern Italy, c. 500 B.C. Only the slightest fragments of his writing remain, but from these it does appear that he was the first to make dissections of animals, probably goats, and although almost nothing is known of the results, he did make the very important declaration that the brain is the central organ of intelligence. [2] |
J. B. Wilbur and H. J. Allen give this introduction to Alcmaeon:
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Nothing is known of Alcmaeon's life beyond the fact that he flourished early in the fifth century B.C., [citation] that he was from Croton [city in southern Italy], that he at one time studied with Pythagoras, and that he probably wrote a book which was the source of his remaining fragments. [citation] Physiology and medicine were Alcmaeon's prime interest, which accounts for his concern with cognition and the nature of the soul. Because medicine had not yet emerged as a distinct discipline, however, Alcmaeon also expressed opinions on the immortality of the soul as well as on astronomy and cosmology--thus going beyond the limitations of his own medical empiricism. There are no fragments and little other information concerning his views on these last two subjects, but in any case it would seem that Alcmaeon's contributions are his ideas concerning knowledge and the soul. [3] |
References
- ↑ Longrigg J. (1993) Greek Rational Medicine: Philosophy and Medicine from Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians. New York: Routledge.
- ↑ O'Malley CD. (1964) Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Note: Considered the definitive biography. Renown historian of medicine, F. N. L. Poynter, stated of Dr. O'Malley's book: "What strikes me immediately on reading Professor O'Malley's monumental work is the coolness of its judgment, the absence of any kind of special pleading or even of that warmth of expression which comes from the biographer's identification with his subject. This almost Olympian detachment is rare indeed and not to be found in any of the outstanding examples of the biographer's art which readily spring to mind." (See F. N. L. POYNTER. 1964. Andreas Vesalius of Brussels — 1514-1564: A Brief Survey of Recent Work. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 1964 XIX(4):321-326. PMID 14215447
- ↑ Wilbur JB, Allen HJ. (1979) The Worlds of the Early Greek Philosophers. Prometheus Books: Buffalo, NY.
- About this book, from its Preface: The authors of this book have tried to do two things in presenting the written materials ascribed to the early Greek philosophers (c. 585 B.C.-400 B.C.) and the historical context in which those writings occurred. The first was to present a more fully fleshed out picture of the ideas of these men than has been given in the past. Perhaps under the influence of a narrow empiricism there has been a preference for letting the fragments speak for themselves. The trouble with this approach is that, even where there is a goodly number of fragments left, as, for instance, by Heraclitus, an adequate context for interpretation is not always evident from the fragments alone. And in the case of a thinker such as Anaximander, on the other hand, where there is so little firsthand evidence, what does remain is obscure taken solely on its own terms. Opposed to this Scylla of parsimony, there is, of course, the Charybdis of prodigal speculation. But we did not wish to hew a predetermined course equidistant from these two extremes. Rather the goal was to suit our passage to the winds and waters, sometimes nearer one than the other, as seemed best....The second aim, also in the nature of a mean between extremes, was to find a happy balance between overwhelming the reader with all the scholarly paraphernalia of etymology and philology, and presenting a stripped-down version of the ideas that conveys no sense of the condition and source of our knowledge about them. While, for all but the specialist, the former detracts from the ideas presented, the latter fails to give a proper appreciation of the subject. In practice, this means that we<tried to indicate, whenever possible, who attributed an idea to a given philosopher while at the same time providing the student with the relevant passage so he can read for himself what, for instance, Heraclitus said about Pythagoras. For this reason, the fragments themselves as well as essential interpretive passages are included in the text. Testimonials by other thinkers, which are of great importance to our knowledge of the earliest of these Greek philosophers, are either included in the body of the text or referred to at the bottom of the page, depending upon their relevance. A guide to these testimonial sources appears at the end of the book, along with a selected bibliography for the period as well as for the thinkers.