Medicina nei secoli: Journal of history of medicine and medical humanities

Memory and Recollection in Antiquity. Introduction

Marco Cilione — 2022-06-15

In the ancient Greek world, memory permeates every aspect of human life. Memory plays a central role in the compositional and ecdotic phases of the ancients' literary production and has long been linked to a mode of oral-aural transmission, in which poetry survives without support from writing. The 'book of memory' metaphor appears in ancient philosophy. the transformation of figures and utternances into μνήματα (records) by iconography and writing leads the ancients to a metaphorical interpretation of cognitive processes. Memory plays a central role in theurgical medicine. Acting as the pivot around which dream therapy revolves, memory requires dream recollection and cataloging. Memory plays a central role in rational medicine as well: dreams amplify perceptual phenomena, so analyzing them may improve clinical diagnosis, as in the Hippocratic authors, establishing a functional link between the pathophysiology of the body, understood as humoral δυσκρασία (bad temperament), and the φαντάσματα (sensations) produced during sleep. This special issue of Medicina nei Secoli aims at investigating the role accorded to memory in the ancient Greek world . The issue covers various topics, from the role that memory plays in explanations of cognitive processes and in the exercise of medical art, up to the emotional salience that memory assumes in literature, especially in the private dimension of writing, or in real life, including pathological manifestations.

Aristotle on Remembering and Memory. Toward an Interpretation of Mem. 1

Andrea Falcon — 2022-06-15

At the outset of De memoria 1 (hereafter Mem. 1) Aristotle promises a scientific definition of memory, a causal account that explains how episodes of memory occur, and a clarification as to the location of memory that identifies the main part of the soul involved in the exercise of memory. All these promises are fulfilled by the end of Mem. 1. While Aristotle has a great deal to say on human memory, his first and foremost goal is to develop an account that explains the role of memory and remembering in animal life. This article discusses the explanatory and definitional strategies adopted in Aristotle’s exploration of the phenomenon of memory. It also offers an interpretation of the whole chapter from a methodological perspective.

Memory, Hearing and Learning in Aristotle

Luciana Repici — 2022-06-15

The essay is intended to be a reflection and a proposal to interpret the link between memory, hearing and learning posited by Aristotle himself. It will try to show that this link opens up to a range on different disciplinary fields of Aristotelian philosophy, from psychology to gnoseology, physiology, teleology, zoology and anthropology, in an interweaving of correspondences and complementary suggestions. These different conceptual contexts will then be analysed singularly and comparatively, in the search, that is to say, for possible differences and similarities between them, to verify what consequences the resulting approaches have on the interpretation of the link in question. The analysis will also touch on the aspect for which it can be said that any défaillances concerning, in the human animal particularly, activities that, like these, involve sensory as well as mental operations, fall within its nature as an entity undergoing generation and corruption.

Galen on the Anatomy of Memory

Ricardo Juliao — 2022-06-15

Memory is a well-researched topic in classical philosophy and literature, but it has often not been addressed in Greco-Roman medical texts. In this text, I aim to survey some aspects of the concept of memory in Galen’s oeuvre (129 - c.216). Albeit Galen did not write any text devoted to the topic of memory, we do find in his oeuvre quite a few considerations about the role of memory in the ‘economy’ of human life. As a doctor with genuine interests in philosophy, Galen’s observations on memory are at the crossroad of philosophical and clinical ideas about remembering and forgetting. Therefore, I will look at Galen’s conception of memory in its ordinary and pathological aspects, e.g., its role in learning, epistemology, and memory disorders. This research emerges as a central aspect of Galen’s thought that the psycho-physiological condition of the organism impacts memory’s performance.

Why Weren't You Remember of Us Too? Emotional Aspects of Memory in Graeco-Roman Egypt in the Private Letters in the Greek Papyri

Nicola Reggiani — 2022-06-15

“You also know that I’m mindful of you: why weren’t you mindful of us too, but forgetful?”. So an ancient Egyptian from Kellis wrote to his sister, in the early 4th century AD. Feelings and emotions rarely surface in the private letters on papyrus from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, mainly because they could be easily read by third parties and did not grant sufficient privacy. Nevertheless, it is possible to glimpse some emotional aspects from the survived texts: love, fear, anger, distress, and so on, some of which have already been studied. However, memory is still unexplored topic: through the discussion of the extant sources, it will be shown that in several cases memory - in the perception of the ancient letter writers - was felt as a timeless and endless dimension, which connected the correspondents’ minds, thoughts, and souls, by means of the written word but at the same time overcoming it in an emotional impulse, which is perhaps the liveliest and most moving representation of ancient yet present feelings.

Memory and Imagination. From Aristotle's Silent Speech to Euripides' Tragic Utterances

Claudia Zatta — 2022-06-15

The aim of this study is twofold: to elaborate on Aristotle’s nexus of memory, “mental speech”, and phantasia in relation to sensation pursuing the implications of such view, i.e., the relevance of the individual’s experience and the consequent individualization of memory and its content (section 1), and to look at a selection of Euripides’ tragedies (namely, Trojan Women, Iphigenia in Aulis, and Medea) where this nexus is made explicit in the characters’ utterances and exploited for the creation of pathos (section 2). I will show that Euripides uses the tragic characters’ awareness of past happy experiences (i.e., their personal memory) to deepen the sense of loss and misery that accompany their fall into misfortune; and he does this in a nontechnical way that anticipates the Aristotelian linking of memory and imagination.

Remembering to Predict, Classifying to Remember. Two Aspects of the Use of Memory in Ancient Medicine

Daniela Fausti — 2022-06-15

The aim of the research is to examine two aspects of the use of memory in ancient medicine: a theoretical-methodological one (in Hippocratic texts) and a more technical one in the pharmacology of the imperial age. In the first case memory is the basis for recording symptoms, which must be collected and examined by the λογισμός (theoretical reasoning) in order to formulate the prognosis; the λογισμός is defined as a kind of memory that collects data grasped with perception and stores them up in itself and remembers (Precepts chap. 1). Pharmacology to facilitate mnemonic learning and the consultation of texts can follow various systems: the classification of φάρμακα according to the properties, supported by Dioscorides or the classification according to the alphabetical order approved by Galen or finally can use verses.

An Unpublished Manuscript by Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla on Giovanni Battista Morgagni

Maria Carla Garbarino — 2022-06-15

Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla, personal surgeon of the Emperor Joseph II and Protosurgeon of Hapsburg Army, worked for several years on the drafting of an unfinished work dedicated to the Italians who made important contributions to the development of medicine and surgery. Among his papers preserved in the historical civic archive of Pavia there is an unpublished profile of Giovanni Battista Morgagni whom Brambilla met personally. The deep admiration shown in the text - here fully transcribed - by the imperial surgeon offers evidence of the consideration that Morgagni’s work enjoyed among contemporary scholars.

Giuseppe Levi and Rita Levi-Montalcini. The Long Way of a "Dynamic Biology", from Embriology to the Modern Neurosciences

Paolo Mazzarello — 2022-06-15

A recent volume, edited by Marco Piccolino and entitled Rita Levi Montalcini e il suo Maestro, una grande avventura nelle neuroscienze alla scuola di Giuseppe Levi, is the stimulus for situating in a historical perspective the formidable achievements in the twentieth century neurosciences of Rita Levi-Montalcini. The volume points to the importance for Levi-Montalcini of the technical and theoretical background acquired during the period spent in the Turin Anatomical Institute directed by Giuseppe Levi, a prominent figure of the twentieth century biology. In opposition to a static conception of the morphological research, Levi promoted a dynamic and functional approach based on the modern technologies. This attitude, which had a long tradition in the Italian biomedical research, dating up to the epoch of Marcello Malpighi, was revived by Levi and by his master Giulio Chiarugi, and represented Rita’s atout in her path of discovery of the Nerve Growth Factor, one of the main breakthroughs in the history of the modern neurosciences.