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KMID : 0857920220250010321
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Yonsei Journal of Medical History
2022 Volume.25 No. 1 p.321 ~ p.357
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Some Notes on Giles of Rome’s De formatione humani corporis in utero, Cap. VI and Thirteenth-Century Embryology
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Chung Hyun-Sok
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Abstract
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Giles of Rome’s De formatione humani corporis in utero, written probably around the last 15 years of the thirteenth century, is the first medieval treatise focusing explicitly on embryology. In this treatise, especially in chapter 6, Giles provides seven polemic arguments(viae) against some medieval variants of the Galenist thesis on the active role and the nature ascribed to the vaginal secretion(called in his days “female sperm”). in this process, Giles wrestled with the most influential medieval authorities of both Aristotle and Galen: Avicenna and Albert the Great. Against those two great medieval authorities who envisaged assimilating the Galenist thesis on the basis of Aristotle’s theory, Giles launched his counter-arguments which consisted in isolating and rejecting the Galenist idea on female sperm in question by appealing to another peripatetic authority: Averroes, the Commentator. And he arrived at his conclusion that the so-called “female sperm” had no essential role in the generation process and showed the Galenist thesis incorporated in the thoughts and works of the two medieval authorities entails some futile duplications of active principles in the ‘orthodox’ Aristotelean point of view.
In these Egidian arguments in Chapter 6 of De formatione humani corporis in utero, one can find some interesting medieval contexts that reflect how the intellectuals of the thirteenth century, in conformity with their theoretical interests mainly based on Aristotle’s natural philosophy, dealt with some medical problems handed down to them, and in consequence, articulated them as much more for speculative philosophers or metaphysicians than for practicing medical doctors. In this respect, in Giles’s work, one can find a case of the medieval theories on medicine before the rise of in centuries yet to come.
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KEYWORD
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Aegidius Romanus(Giles of Rome), Avicenna, Averroes, Albert the Great, female sperm, medieval embryology
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