This volume offers a new annotated translation, also with a new introduction, of the Dialogue on the True Medicine, one of a series of dialogues published in 1587 as Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del Hombre (New Philosophy of Human Nature), under the name of Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera. Believed for centuries to be a woman’s work, the book was attributed to Oliva’s father, Miguel Sabuco, in the early twentieth century, and its authorship remains a matter of controversy today. Sabuco’s work is one of the most intriguing texts of sixteenth-century medicine. Defined by its author as “a book that was missing in the world,” the work proposes a new ambitious medical theory challenging the humoral view of disease and the main tenets of Galenic physiology.
This annotated translation allows the reader to locate the Dialogue on the True Medicine in the context of early modern medical and philosophical culture, identifying Sabuco’s ancient and modern sources. The editor’s introduction reviews the contested issue of authorship, offers new documentation for the history of the reception of Sabuco’s ideas in the seventeenth century, and relates Sabuco’s work to the Querelle des femmes, the protofeminist debate which had remarkable echoes in early modern medicine.
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction
A Book that was Missing in the World 1
The Precarious Fame of Doña Oliva: The Issue of Authorship 8
Moon Milk: The Medical Heresy of Nueva Filosofia 30
Echoes of the Querelle des Femmes in Early Modern Medicine 53
Aftermath: Sabucus Hispanus in England and Beyond 64
Note on the Translation 85
Translation, The True Medicine 91
Letter from Doña Oliva Sabuco to Sir Don Francisco Zapata 92
Dialogue on the True Medicine 95
Of the Two Natures: one that gives birth, one that gives growth 126
Of critical, or otherwise said, decretory days 148
Question of the shape of the brain’s marrow, membranes, skull, scalp, and crown of the head 152
Of the chyle, or juice, and its varieties 159
New and old medicine compared and contrasted: the old medicine refuted 166
Comparison and refutation: on poisons 167
Comparison and refutation: on purgative remedies 168
Comparison and refutation: on hemorrhoids 171
Comparison: on aliments 173
Comparison: on supervening diseases 173
Comparison: on the way the aliment enters the body 178
Comparison: on crudities 182
Comparison: on drink and food 184
Comparison: on anger 186
Comparison: on sweat 189
Comparison: on idiopathy, sympathy, and consent 191
Comparison: on apoplexy and epilepsy 197
Comparison: on diverting disease to another place 200
Comparison: on temperaments and actions 203
Comparison: on the four moistures discovered by Avicenna 206
Comparison: on semen 209
Comparison: on the causes of diseases 210
Comparison: on fevers 211
All that has been said is proved with evident reasons 214
Bibliography 231
Index 255
