Vesalius on the Anatomy and Function of the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerves: Medical Illustration and Reintroduction of a Physiological Demonstration from Galen

The purpose of this article is to review the anatomical illustrations and physiological demonstrations of sixteenth-century Flemish-born anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius concerning the recurrent laryngeal nerves. Although Vesalius was primarily an anatomist, he also used vivisection as a pedagogical device to help his students understand the function of structures within the fabric of the body that they had previously studied in anatomical detail. Vesalius’s masterwork, De humani corporis fabrica or simply the Fabrica (1543, 1555), was ostensibly an anatomy text, but Vesalius included textual and figural references to his use of vivisection to explicate the function of specific structures. Even as he began to criticize the errors in Galen’s anatomical works, Vesalius nevertheless adopted some of Galen’s classic physiological demonstrations, in particular the ligation (and subsequent release) of the recurrent laryngeal nerves of a pig to demonstrate their role in generating the pig’s squeal. Vesalius’s illustrations concerning the recurrent laryngeal nerve in the Fabrica were of two types: elegant anatomical woodcut plates—unsurpassed for their clarity, accuracy, and detail — and the distinctly inelegant historiated initial Q, depicting a throng of putti busily engaged in vivisecting a pig. Vesalius’ anatomical plates were heavily plagiarized while the historiated initials, showing the rough work of an anatomist or surgeon, were largely ignored and remain little recognized today. While Vesalius’ anatomical illustrations of the recurrent laryngeal nerves contained some errors, they were a dramatic departure from prior meager efforts at medical illustration and indeed far surpassed all contemporary published illustrations by others. Vesalius was also influential in reviving Galen’s approach to vivisection, at least for pedagogical purposes, if not really then yet as a full-fledged investigative technique.     

The business relations,identities and political resources of Italian merchants in the early-modern Spanish monarchy: some introductory remarks

Abstract

This article offers a preliminary approach to the special volume entitled Business Relations, Identities, and Political Resources of the Italian Merchants in the Early-Modern Spanish Monarchy. It discusses the major issues and debates addressed in the five contributions collected here about the central role played by the Genoese, Florentine and Milanese commercial networks in the framework of a polycentric imperial structure as was the Spanish Monarchy.     

为成吉思汗之死问题说几句话

作者用《蒙古秘史》、《史集》、《蒙兀儿史记》等八种文献记载的史实,辩驳了所谓"成吉思汗是被西夏打死的"、"成吉思汗是被西夏打伤后逃走而亡的"等错误说法.其次,对西夏灭亡后,西夏人到哪里去了的问题,谈了自己的看法.最后还简单介绍了世界上有很多国家或地区,研究成吉思汗的状况.     

Thomas Traherne,Thomas Hobbes,and the Rhetoric of Realism

Abstract

Thomas Traherne has often been seen as a mystic detached from the turbulence of his period. Recent scholarship has attempted to place him more firmly in context. This article contributes to this trend in arguing that Traherne's late works, especially Commentaries of Heaven, were shaped by the pressure of responding to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Though Traherne makes only one direct reference to Hobbes, his idiosyncrasies in thought, argument, and mode of expression are all fundamentally influenced by the need to counter Hobbes's account of ethics, metaphysics, and language. Traherne is particularly concerned to assert and display an ardent realism against Hobbes's nominalism. In doing so, he creates a complicated play of rhetorical figures, especially abusio or catachresis, as embodying theological commitments. This both places Traherne more clearly against the background of the intellectual history of the period in which he lived, and demonstrates his particularity as a writer.     

Dr Thomas Beddoes The Interaction of Pneumatic and Preventive Medicine with Chemistry

Abstract

Chemistry has often been pressed into the service of medicine. In the years following Lavoisier's chemical revolution, the attention of chemists focused upon gases. Thomas Beddoes (1760–1808) developed a research programme that explored the therapeutic effects of different gases in the treatment of tuberculosis and other diseases. Beddoes was inspired by the discoveries of Joseph Priestley, employed young Humphry Davy as an assistant in his researches, received advice and encouragement from Erasmus Darwin, and used pneumatic apparatus designed by James Watt. He also engaged in efforts directed at social reform and at reforms in public health, being especially concerned with the condition of the poor. His Pneumatic Institution in Bristol was at one and the same time a research centre and a health clinic. This paper explores the interaction between chemistry and medicine in Beddoes' career, within a context of scientific and social ferment.     

The life and times of Thomas Willis and his impact on contemporary medicine

Thomas Willis made numerous contributions to the neurosciences that were broad in scope. In an age of scientific breakthroughs and intellectual revolutions, Willis bestowed upon medical research the clinical rigor that set the stage for subsequent medical breakthroughs. In Cerebri Anatome, Willis introduced a measure of empiricism hitherto unknown in medieval times. By coupling the delineation of brain and neural anatomy with functional studies, Willis brought the science of clinical neurology into fruition. Psychiatry, too, benefited from Willis' elucidation of mental illness and intellectual disability, and modern behavioral psychologists claim Willis as one their early, most ardent champions.     

Tradition and the individual talent: remarks on the poetry of Michalis Ganas

Abstract

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. (T.S. Eliot)