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Chapter 11 - The Mechanics of Galen’s Theory of Nutrition

from Part III - Towards the Mechanization of the Human Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2023

By
Orly Lewis
Edited by
Maria Gerolemou  and
George Kazantzidis
Maria Gerolemou
Affiliation:
Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington
George Kazantzidis
Affiliation:
University of Patras, Greece
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Summary

This chapter explores Galen’s ideas concerning the digestive-nutritive process. It focuses on his explanation of the motion of nutritive matter from its ingestion as food through its alteration into blood until its complete assimilation to the different body parts. The discussion follows its path inside the body from the mouth to the individual parts and describes the changes it undergoes in its different anatomical ‘stations’ and by what means it moves through these ‘stations’. In so doing it brings to light a fundamental but generally overlooked part of the digestive-nutritive process in Galen, namely physical motions of the parts such as the oesophagus, stomach and intestines. The chapter shows how these motions of contraction and extension actively and ‘mechanically’ move the nutritive matter into and through the body by pulling, pushing and compressing the parts of the body and the matter they hold inside them.

Keywords

Galendigestionnutritionfibresbloodanatomyphysiology
Type
Chapter
Information
Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity , pp. 262 - 295
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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