The Philosophical Physicians: Huarte de San Juan, Pereira and S. from Nantes

The medical philosophers are independent thinkers of medical training, who assume the Hippocratic-Galenic doctrine of the typological differences based on constitution and temperament as causes of behaviors psychological.

Medical Philosophers: a summary of their lives and contributions

Next we are going to know several of these Medical Philosophers who, during the Late Middle Ages and the Modern Age.

1. Gomez Pereira (1500-1560)

Gómez Pereira was a Castilian doctor who can be considered a precursor, almost a century in advance, of Discards. In his work "Antoniana Margaret”, Makes thought the essence of the soul and defends the automatism of animals. The following sentence, prior to the famous Cartesian “code”, can give an idea: “I know that I know something, and who knows exists: therefore I exist”.

2. Sabuco olive from Nantes

The work of Olive “New philosophy of the nature of man”(1587) was attributed to his father, Miguel, who was blind, which gives an idea of ​​how unusual it was for a woman to sign a scientific work.

It is written in the form of a colloquy between three shepherds and can be considered a treatise on the passions and their relationship with physiological life. It establishes the psycho-somatic or psycho-physiological interaction as an explanation of all kinds of human behavior. He also defends the effectiveness of verbal therapy along with other organic therapies.

3. Juan Huarte de San Juan (1529-1585)

Patron of psychology in our country, he is one of the Spanish authors who has achieved the greatest universal projection for his work "Ingenuity test for science", Published in 1575. Huarte's work was translated into Latin, English, French, Italian and Dutch, being reissued in some of these languages.

Part of the doctrine that all souls are equal, being the cerebral temperament the cause of the different abilities of the man, according to the predominance in him of the primary qualities (heat, humidity and dryness). Dryness favors wisdom or intelligence, humidity favors memory, and heat favors imagination.

Huarte calls himself a "natural philosopher" and as such he wants to look for the particular causes of any effect. Even recognizing that God is the ultimate cause, he is interested in natural causes, and avoids explanations of a supernatural nature. It will be up to the scientist to discover the cause-effect relationship between things "because there are ordered and manifest causes from which such an effect can be born“.

Huarte is a thinker empiricist. He therefore takes the position Aristotelian-Thomist by defending the idea that if souls are equal, individual differences appear due to the difference between bodies. Matter thus becomes the differentiating principle. Huarte rejects the previous existence of a soul capable of knowing the Ideas. He recognizes, however, that the soul - in its rational as well as in the sensitive and vegetative aspects - is wise, without being taught by anyone. He establishes a mediating instrument in the brain regarding the abilities of the soul, which affects all kinds of abilities.

He is the creator of a first evolutionary psychology by admitting that the temperament of childhood is more suitable for souls. sensitive and vegetative than rational, little by little, acquiring a temperament more inclined to imagine, understand and remember. In the old, the understanding dominates because they have a lot of dryness and little humidity, the scarcity of which causes their little memory, while the The opposite would happen to young people, that is why childhood would be more suitable for learning languages, an activity that according to Huarte depends on the memory.

Huarte can also be considered as a pioneer of the eugenics, since the temperament would depend on the seed of the parents and, later, on the regime of life.

The notion of temperament dates back to Greek thinkers. HippocratesIn the 5th century BC, he explains health as the balance of four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. If heat and humidity (air) predominate, a sanguine temperament results. If the cold and dryness (earth), typical of phlegm, the phlegmatic; if the heat and dryness (fire), typical of yellow bile, the temperament will be choleric, and if the cold and dampness of black bile (water) predominate, the temperament will be melancholic. (See Table 1).

Huarte combines the Hippocrates' Mood theory with the powers of the "rational soul" established by Aristotle: memory, imagination and understanding.

Memory passively receives and holds data. For the brain to be a good instrument of this faculty, it must be dominated by the humidity. The imaginative, according to the Aristotelian notion, is the one that writes the figures of things in memory, and is responsible for introducing and retrieving them from memory. For the brain to be a good instrument of this faculty, heat must predominate in it: "The heat lifts the figures and makes them boil, whereby everything there is to see in them is discovered."

The understanding needs the brain to be dry and composed of very subtle and delicate parts. Inferring, distinguishing and choosing are tasks of the understanding.

These three powers are mutually exclusive: with memory and the predominance of humidity, understanding is lost, which requires dryness and heat, and vice versa. He who has great imagination will not be able to have much understanding either because the heat that it requires "consumes the most delicate of the brain, and leaves it hard and dry."

Huarte refutes Cicero's opinion that all the arts could be reached with study, since they are based on principles that can be learned. For Huarte there are three types of ingenuity: the intelligent, the memorable and the imaginative. Each trade, on the other hand, will require a certain type of ingenuity.

A preacher needs understanding to reach the truth, memory to quote phrases from others and a good imagination to know teach eloquently and attract attention, so a good preacher should have great understanding and great imagination. However, as great imagination predisposes to pride, gluttony and lust, he recommends that the Do not be overly imaginative as a preacher, as he may incur evil and draw the faithful to him.

A good lawyer or judge will need a great memory to learn the many laws and a good understanding to distinguish, infer, reason and choose.. Although it is always preferable that a lawyer has a lot of understanding and little memory to the contrary.

Medicine also needs good understanding and memory, although it requires imagination for the clinical eye, the conjectures of medicine, hitting the causes and remedies for each patient.

The military profession requires a certain malice for which a special type of imagination is required that confers the ability to divine the "deceptions that come under some cover." In his opinion, the game of chess is one of those that most develops the imagination.

Lastly, the office of king would find his ideal temperament in a “temperate man“, That is, with a balanced or balanced temperament. This is accompanied by hair that turns golden with age, and grace, grace and a good figure. Other signs of this temperament are virtue and good manners.

If coldness and dampness predominate in the engendered body, a woman will turn out. In his life he will manifest poorly the qualities that the soul possesses to a high degree. If heat and dryness predominate, instead a man will be born, whose qualities will be skill and ingenuity. From variations in bodily temperament derive greater or less clumsiness in women and greater or less ingenuity and skill in men.

Huarte picks up from Aristotle the idea that desire, imagination and movements during the carnal act contribute to begetting good children. According to this doctrine, wise parents tend to have foolish children, because they are clumsy in the sexual act, while foolish and instinctive ones, being more skillful, can beget ingenious children.

Huarte is considered a pioneer in different fields: for Menendez Pelayo is the father of the phrenology; can also be considered the forerunner of the differential psychology and professional orientation and selection. He is also a pioneer, as we already said, of eugenics and the psychology of the ages.