Jean Fernel's On the Hidden Causes of Things. Forms, Souls and Occult Diseases in Renaissance Medicine (review)

Our understanding of how early modern conceptions of human nature emerged out of the intellectual tumult of the Renaissance and the Reformation has been greatly enhanced by a growing recognition of the way in which these developments built not only on contemporary scientific advances and a recovery of ancient learning, but also on the philosophical psychology of the late ancient schools and the Middle Ages. It is increasingly acknowledged how not only Aristotelian and Platonic, but also Hellenistic and Galenic elements contributed to transformations in ideas about human physiology and psychology, and the immensity of the Arabic contribution is also beginning to be appreciated in earnest. It is therefore cause for celebration when a major Renaissance work comes on the market which exhibits all of these traits in abundance, and which, in addition, has an intriguing viewpoint all its own to advance regarding the philosophical foundations of the physician's art. This handsome bilingual edition provides a window into a crucial point in Western intellectual history, and gives much for the historian of philosophy to ponder.

Jean Fernel's (d. 1558) De abditis rerum causis is indisputably an eclectic work, but it is one fashioned by an unusually disciplined and analytical mind. Out of a heady admixture of Neoplatonic and Stoic ideas, many of which the author props up by proof-texts from the pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo, Fernel claims to have uncovered an entire ancient tradition of "occult" medicine which has a basis in universal principles of natural philosophy. Not all human dysfunction is due to a bad temperament, wrongly flowing spirits, or some material defect: just like in nature in general, immaterial form plays an irreducible and "divine" role in the formation of disease. It is this that accounts for the so-called occult properties of things, and an acceptance of these will open up new avenues for more experience-based and properly pious modes of healing.

This is a fascinating thesis, but the work is not without its problems, some of which are due to the original author and some to his modern interpreters. Despite the impressive pedigree of its philosophical underpinnings, Fernel's new "ontological" interpretation of disease is left frustratingly vague. The very intriguing notion of "total substance" is left rather underdeveloped by the author, for instance, just as its intellectual provenance goes largely unexplored by the editors. Nor does Fernel's appeal to experience amount to much outside a familiar retread of assorted exotica. It is not anachronistic to expect more. But is this because Fernel's work belongs not so much to the beginning of one era, as to the end of another?

The editors astutely point out that Fernel's work is put forward as a contribution to the general debate in natural philosophy over matter, form, and generation (28). Yet it is precisely in light of this that their decision to omit any substantial references to the scholastic tradition, let alone serious discussion of it, shows itself to be a regrettable one. Avicenna correctly receives passing mention by Fernel (153) for recognizing the difficulty involved in fixing on the essences of substances instead of merely picking out their inseparable qualities. Yet his and Averroës' seminal debate, well known to the Latin scholastics, regarding the role of the heavens and the separate intelligences in the creation and perpetuation of form passes almost without notice—this despite the fact that Fernel's developing theory quite clearly incorporates the findings of the Arabic Aristotelians. These, plus the Latin scholastics' further elaborations and glosses, were readily available to sixteenth-century scholars, and we have no reason to think that Fernel did not know what he was doing; the fact that Fernel does not openly acknowledge his late ancient and medieval sources is no excuse not to point...