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 some scholars, the honorific, 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 bHJ. (1979) The Worlds of the Early Greek Philosophers. Prometheus Books: Buffalo, NY.