Schultheisz Emil: Traditio Renovata. Tanulmányok a középkor és a reneszánsz orvostudományáról / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 21. (Budapest, 1997)
10. The beginning of quantification in physiology
THE BEGINNING OF QUANTIFICATION IN PHYSIOLOGY* In the history of medicine it is uncertain what time can exactly be mentioned as 'the beginning 1 of the physiological era. Personally, I am convinced that clinical and non-clinical medicine did not develop separately, but that their history nearly followed the same path. So its beginning must have been in the time which I would like to call the 'classical-backgroundperiod' of modern, partly experimental medicine, both in the clinical and the non-clinical disciplines. It is generally known that non-clinical medicine is not equivalent to experimental medicine. It might be said that experimental medicine started to develop in the Renaissance, but its predecessor is Herophilos. Markellinos writes: Herophilos placed such a great faith in the frequency of the pulse as a reliable symptom that he constructed a clepsydra wirth a capacity corresponding to the normal pulse beat at each age. In visiting patients he set up the clepsydra and felt the pulse of the feverish, then the more the pulse beats exceeded the normal number by time the clepsydra was filled, all the more was the pulse accelerated, according to his explanations, that is to say the more or less was the fever' Nicolaus ofCusa (1401—1464) was an abundantly productive writer: in addition to his theological writings he touched upon various topics such as law and government, metaphysics, astonomy, philosophy and science. The works of Nicolaus Cusanus were widely known to scholars of that time. Therefore it is not surprising that the subject of later experiments and the way of thinking of van Heimoñ are very similar to those found in Cusanus' Idiota de S aids Experimentis. The 'Idiota' comprises four books: De Sapientia (two books), De Mente and De S a ids Experimentis. This work was finished in September of 1450. The four books of the 'Idiota' have been written in the dialogue form in which Cusanus' opinions are expressed by the Idiot or citizen (i.e. the layman, in modern terms) in response to the questions posed by the Orator. The style of communication between the 'Orator' and the 'Idiot', and the concept of the knowledge that can be gained by understanding the differences existing between Orator and Idiot are both clearly revealed in the passage quoted from a later English translation of 1650 (printed for W. Leake, London). * Pub , in: Clio Medica, Vol. 17, no. 4 193-197. 1 Schöne, H., Markellinos' Pulslehre. Festschr. z. 49. Versamml .deutscher Philologen. Basel, 1907, p. 452. — See also Magazis. G. et al., Perspectives on Physiological monitoring: Markellinos "On the pulse". In: Cardiovasc. Res. 1978, 16, 83-109.
