The history and heroes of the art of medicine / by J. Rutherfurd Russell.

  • Russell, John Rutherfurd, 1816-1866.
Date:
1861
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history and heroes of the art of medicine / by J. Rutherfurd Russell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    tions. Milton probably had these passages of Aristotle in his mind when he wrote :— “ Since light so necessary is to life, And almost life itself, if it be true That light is in the soul, The all in every part.” 1 And here we ascend another step which identifies the or the soul, with life, or the vital principle. “ And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul. ’ 2 We are here introduced to another element in addition to body and soul ; we have the breath of life,” or the living or vital breath, or pneuma, or spirit. What the exact office held by pneuma, or spirit, was in the opinion of the ancients, it is very difficult to determine ; it was in some way essential to life. “ The soul, ^rv^r], slipped into the body along with the pneuma/'3 according to some Hippocratic treatises. According to the Stoics, “ the soul is sensible, and is a spirit which is born with us ; consequently it is a body, and continues to exist after death. . . . “The soul is a warm spirit (or pneuma) ; by it we have our breath (or life), and by it we are moved. 4 Sleep, according to Plato,0 is the re- laxed tension of this pneuma—the slackened speed of a train when some of the steam is let off; death its entire cessa- tion—the train stopping when there is no more steam to be had at all, the fuel exhausted, the vital breath no longer generated. According to Erasistratus, this pneuma, or spirit, is double ; the one division occupies the breast as the breath of life, or vital air 6 as we now call it; the other inhabits the brain as the soul-spirit.7 1 Samson Agonistes. haps,” observes Sprengel, “a spurious 2 Genes, ii. 7. ■vj'v^wv %uj<rxv, so addition to the views of Plato.” Per- translated in the Septuagint. haps ! 3 Hippoc. de Diaet. I. p. 342. 6 ^vtufta^a-rixot. Sprengel, Yol. I. p. 502. 7 <rviuycc^u^ixov. Galen de Dogm. i Diogen. Laert. p. 310. Hipp. Plato, Lib. II. Quoted by Spren- 5 Plutarch. Plac. Phil.,5-24. “Per- gel, Vol. II. p. 544.