{"id":20104,"date":"2020-11-05T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T16:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=20104"},"modified":"2021-05-07T09:15:06","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T13:15:06","slug":"revealing-data-ars-de-statica-medicina-1614","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2020\/11\/05\/revealing-data-ars-de-statica-medicina-1614\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealing Data: Ars de Statica Medicina, 1614"},"content":{"rendered":"

Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Caterina Agostini, who discusses a recent acquisition at the NLM <\/em>History of Medicine Division\u2019s collection: the <\/em>Ars de statica medicina by Santorio Santorio, a text on dietetics dating back to 1614. Caterina Agostini is a Ph.D. candidate and digital humanities research specialist at Rutgers University. She is currently a Eugene Garfield fellow at the American Philosophical Society\u2019s Library & Museum. Her research on Santorio will be presented at the <\/em>Medical Heritage Library<\/em><\/a> 2020 Conference. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Title<\/a>
Frontispiece to Ars de Statica Medicina<\/em>, 1614 by Santorio Santorio (Sanctorius).\u00a0 This edition shows a misprint\u2014a spelling mistake in the word Ahporismorum [Aphorismorum].
National Library of Medicine<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>The National Library of Medicine has recently acquired a copy of the Ars de Statica<\/em> Medicina<\/em> (\u201cArt of Static Medicine\u201d) by physician Santorio Santorio. The book was published in Venice, Italy in 1614. It was very popular in the medical community and beyond, given the high number of reprints, new editions, and translations for more than a century after its publication. The author discussed diet, weight, and health in seven books, in particular he examined the so-called \u2018imperceptible perspiration\u2019 (Book I), air and waters (Book II), eating and drinking (Book III), sleeping and being awake (Book IV), exercise and rest (Book V), sexual intercourse (Book VI), and emotions (Book VII). Traditionally, Santorio wrote his medical book in Latin<\/a>, the learned language for international scientific communication, signing his work as \u2018Sanctorius.\u2019<\/p>\n

All of Santorio\u2019s medical observations on diet, digestion, and weight are presented in a collection of concise statements that are clear and easy to memorize, for a total of five hundred and fifty-two sub-sections that he called \u2018aphorisms.\u2019 In the preface, Santorio argued that short, memorable sentences are better than analytical expositions, so that aphorisms seemed to be the best form to convey his medical considerations. Aphorisms were an authoritative genre in medical literature dating back to Hippocrates who was highly regarded as the father of medicine.<\/p>\n

\"Plain <\/a>
Binding of Ars de statica medica by Santorio (1614). <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Page <\/a>
Santorio dedicated his book to Nicol\u00f2 Contarini, a Venetian patrician and senator who was also a committee member for Padua University, as a government member of the Council of Ten in the Venetian Republic. Padua, situated in the Venetian mainland, was part of the Venetian Republic. Its ancient university, founded in 1222, became the official university of the Venetian Republic. Contarini would become a doge, the highest political position in the Venetian Republic, in 1630. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Page <\/a>
This page shows a sample of the typographical structure in the book De Ars Statica Medicina by Santorio. First, there is the title of book I, \u201dDe ponderatione insensibilis perspirationis\u201d (\u201cthe weight of imperceptible perspiration\u201d). Then, the section number follows (\u201csectio prima,\u201d \u201cfirst section\u201d). Next, the number of the aphorism is given (\u201caphorismus I.\u201d \u201cfirst aphorism\u201d). The initial of the first aphorism in each book is larger than the rest of the text and can be decorated, as this case shows. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Printed <\/a>
The title of the first section of Ars de Statica Medica by Santorio reads \u201cDe ponderatione insensibilis perspirationis\u201d which translates \u201cthe weight of imperceptible perspiration.\u201d Imperceptible perspiration is one of the medical variables that Santorio was a pioneer to measure. Knowing a patient\u2019s weight allows a physician to understand when fasting is a healthy choice (aphorism 31). Conversely, there is a connection between weight loss and diminished strength (aphorism 32). <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Santorio was born in 1561 in Capodistria, which was then part of the Republic of Venice. He was a medical graduate of the University of Padua (1582), one of the leading scientific schools in Europe where he taught theoretical medicine and practiced as a physician in between 1611 and 1624. Santorio innovated medical practice with instruments that he invented: the \u2018pulsilogium\u2019 for measuring pulse rate, an instrument to remove bladder stones, and a trocar to remove fluid from body cavities. He also devised several other scientific instruments including a thermoscope, a wind gauge, and a water current meter or hygrometer.<\/p>\n

His most famous invention was a special scale on which a table and a chair were propped, the so-called \u201cweighing chair\u201d or \u201cSanctorian chair.\u201d Santorio considered it so important to check diet and weight, that he himself used the weighing chair daily for thirty years: before and after meals, before and after going to the bathroom, and before and after rest, exercise, and sexual intercourse. He also collected ten thousand weight records of patients and friends, including Galileo Galilei. Galileo had taught mathematics at Padua from 1592 to 1610, advocating the use of mathematics and scientific instruments. At that time, in the Venetian area, scholars were devoting more and more attention to numbers and scientific instruments. On February 9, 1615, Santorio sent a letter and a copy of his newly published book to Galileo, whose opinion he valued:<\/p>\n

This book is a collection of aphorisms deriving from two most certain principles. The first one is the definition of medicine as Hippocrates wrote in his book Of Flatus<\/em>: \u201cmedicine means to add and to subtract, that means to add things that were missing before and to subtract things that were in excess.\u201d The second principle of this art is experience which then becomes the proof for everything else. It is clear that this art, invented by me, is indeed very important because it can measure precisely the perspiration that we cannot see. Hippocrates and Galen considered perspiration, when altered or hindered, to be the cause of almost every illness… Imperceptible perspiration alone is greater than all the perceptible excretions of our body together, as I argued in the fourth aphorism in the first book of this work. \u2014Translated from Italian by Caterina Agostini<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Illustration<\/a>
An illustration by unknown artist of the weighing chair in Medicina statica: being the Aphorisms of Sanctorious <\/em>printed for W. Newton in London, 1718.
Courtesy Wellcome Collection<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After tracking daily differences in weight (recorded in Book I, section 16), Santorio realized that imperceptible perspiration (\u2018perspiratio insensibilis\u2019) corresponds to the losses that are not included in bodily waste or sweat. He asserted it was possible to measure that perspiration by comparing the patient\u2019s weight to the weight of meals and bodily fluids and excretions. He studied digestion, a fundamental process in which food impacts both the digestive system and the brain, and he examined meals and lifestyles as well. He believed that there was a correspondence (\u2018sympathia\u2019) between stomach and brain, and he concluded that the best time to eat is \u201cwhen the body comes to some healthful standard, as it enjoyed the day before, when empty: but that Apollo himself [one of the gods traditionally associated with medicine] cannot find out, without the balance\u201d (Book III, section 77, English translation by John Quincy<\/a>). Santorio\u2019s medical method included both measurements to give precise quantities of medical facts, and classical textual comments on medicine to justify new medical practices both captured in his text Ars de Statica<\/em> Medicina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The National Library of Medicine is the home of many\u00a0manuscripts<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0books dating back to the early modern period (16th\u201318th century)<\/a>, including more recent copies of the\u00a0book by Santorio<\/a>\u00a0(Sanctorius), also under his\u00a0Italian name<\/a>\u00a0of Santorio, as well as one\u00a0English translation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

For more information about this book and other collections, you can contact the History of Medicine Division at NLM Customer Support<\/a> or (301) 402-8878.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>Caterina Agostini is a Ph.D. candidate and digital humanities research specialist at Rutgers University. She is currently a Eugene Garfield fellow at the American Philosophical Society\u2019s Library & Museum.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Caterina Agostini, who discusses a recent acquisition at the NLM History of Medicine Division\u2019s collection:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19605840,"featured_media":20115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Ars de Statica Medicina, 1614 by Santorio is a recent acquisition at NLM. Caterina Agostini will present research on Santorio at the @MedicalHeritage 2020 Conference","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12763,51014,347145303,76943049,2347],"tags":[275516,22379,678875838,2971278],"class_list":["post-20104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collections","category-guests","category-rare-books-journals","category-revealing-data","category-series","tag-1600s","tag-data","tag-diet","tag-recent-acquisitions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Santorio-Perspirationis_featured.jpg?fit=900%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xcDk-5eg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19605840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20104"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20131,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20104\/revisions\/20131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}