Occulto e demoniaco nella medicina francese del Cinquecento:Symphorien Champier e Jean Fernel

DESSI', MARIA CRISTINA

2008-01-01

---

Abstract

Occult and demonic in the French medicine of sixteenth century: Symphorien Champier and Jean Fernel. It deals with two doctors’ dialogues which in the French sixteenth century helped to improve the relationship between medicine, magic and demonopatic phenomena. In Dyalogus in magicarum artium destructionem, S. Champier used the Avicennian theses on imagination to give account of many of the acts that “fascinatores” believed to make, but which, in his opinion, they had only imagined. Fernel’s De abditis rerum causis, starting from Hippocrates’ Prognostico, regarded the "diseases Totius substantiae" as a class of diseases which were not possible to enumerate among humoral categorization. The introduction of causae abditae, along with those manifested, led the French doctor to admit both the evil and demonic possession as he found them in a patient who was initially treated as epileptic.