Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity

The first systematic exploration of the multifaceted relationship between human bodies and machines in classical antiquity.

Maria Gerolemou (Edited by), George Kazantzidis (Edited by)

9781316514665, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 July 2023

348 pages, 8 b/w illus. 14 colour illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.4 cm, 0.63 kg

This innovative and wide-ranging volume is the first systematic exploration of the multifaceted relationship between human bodies and machines in classical antiquity. It examines the conception of the body and bodily processes in mechanical terms in ancient medical writings, and looks into how artificial bodies and automata were equally configured in human terms; it also investigates how this knowledge applied to the treatment of the disabled and the diseased in the ancient world. The volume examines the pre-history of what develops, at a later stage, and more specifically during the early modern period, into the full science of iatromechanics in the context of which the human body was treated as a machine and medical treatments were devised accordingly. The volume facilitates future dialogue between scholars working on different areas, from classics, history and archaeology to history of science, philosophy and technology.

Part I. Blended Bodies: 1. More than a thing: figuring hybridity in archaic poetry and art Deborah Steiner
2. Automata, cyborgs, and hybrids: bodies and machines in Antiquity Jane Draycott
3. Not yet the android: the limits of wonder in ancient automata Isabel A. Ruffell
Part II. The Technological Body: 4. Technical physicians and medical machines in the Hippocratic Corpus Maria Gerolemou
5. The empirical, art, and science in Hippocrates' On Joints Jean De Groot
6. Hippocrates' Diseases 4 and the technological body Colin Webster
Part III. Towards the Mechanization of the Human Body: 7. Aristotle on the lung and the bellows-lungs analogy Giuli Korobili
8. The ill effect of south winds on the joints in the human body: Theophrastus, De ventis 56 and pseudo-Aristotle, Problemata 1.24 Robert Mayhew
9. The Beauty that lies within
Anatomy, mechanics and thauma in Hellenistic Medicine George Kazantzidis
10. The mechanics of the heart in Antiquity Matteo Valleriani
11. The mechanics of Galen's Theory of Nutrition Orly Lewis
12. Iatromechanism and Antiquarianism in Morgagni's Studies on Celsus, 1720–1761 Marquis Berrey.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1]