Descartes and Medicine

Problems, Responses and Survival of a Cartesian Discipline

Edited by Fabrizio Baldassarri

Book cover: Descartes and Medicine

Extent: 484, 484 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Early Modern & Renaissance Studies, Medicine, Philosophy

Series: Age of Descartes

Series volume number: 9

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(August 2023)

ISBN: 9782503594613

Price: $157.00

In stock

This book explores Descartes’ possible sources, his medical texts and observations, his collaborations and adversaries, and the reception of his medical work in seventeenth-century culture.


This volume provides a more exhaustive interpretation of Rene Descartes’ medical views and its reception in the seventeenth century. Filling the gap in the recent scholarship, the contributions in the volume follow four axes: exegetical, textual, philosophical, and contextual. Authors in this book deal with Descartes’ physiology, anatomy, and therapy by reconstructing Cartesian texts, detailing possible medical and philosophical sources, discussing medical collaborations and oppositions, and exploring obscurities and failures in Descartes’ medicine. In laying bare the more promising issues of Cartesian programme and discussing the reception and opposition in the seventeenth century, the volume also uncovers the limitations within his interpretation, ultimately revealing a more nuanced application of his methodology to a field of natural philosophy. While medical studies play a not secondary role in Descartes’ entire work, the volume aims to discuss in detail the importance of medicine as a suitable field to understand Cartesian philosophy from a significant perspective in seventeenth-century Europe.

  • Edited by Fabrizio Baldassarri