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Drug Absorption and Food Digestion in Late Renaissance Medicine: The Galenic Interpretation of Jean Fernel (1567)

par Moreau, Elisabeth
Editeur scientifique Wilkins, John;Bigotti, Fabrizio
Référence Galen's Remedies in the Early Modern Period, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, page (213-243)
Publication Publié, 2026

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Résumé :

In early medicine, Galenic physicians considered digestion to be central to health and therapy. It was essential not only for keeping the body in balance but also for absorbing internal drugs effectively. While food digestion aimed to assimilate nutriment into the body, drug absorption aimed to alter the body’s constitution to restore it to a balanced state. Both processes revealed the transformation of substances in the digestive tract, their material composition in elements and particles, as well as their relationship with blood and humours. In the Renaissance, physicians expanded on food digestion and drug absorption according to Galen’s medical treatises, whose printed editions were available in Greek and Latin. In this chapter, I examine the account of the French physician Jean Fernel (1497–1558) in the Universa medicina (1567), through dedicated books to physiology and therapy. These works provided a didactic account of digestion, where Fernel explained the processing of food and drugs in the stomach, liver, and veins, as well as the sensory properties and active powers related to their matter and substance. In so doing, he shed light on ancient and medieval pre-conceptions of food and drug metabolism, as well as their reception in the late Renaissance.