Machines and the Body between Anatomy and Pathology

The second half of the XVII century was the golden age of mechanistic anatomy: an increasing number of anatomists sought to explain the operations of the body in terms of machines of varying nature and complexity. These machines responded to shifting criteria of intelligibility at the time: whereas Aristotelian or Galenic faculties of the soul or of nature were deemed not only acceptable but necessary modes of explanation up to the middle of the XVII century, after that time an increasing number of anatomists sought new ways of understanding how human and animal bodies work by looking at their structure and microstructure. Canonical texts such as Galen’s On the Natural Faculties drew a sharp distinction between nature’s operations and artificial machines with regard to generation, growth, and nutrition, for example. Whereas this tradition was the norm up to the Renaissance, in the course of the XVII century it became the exception. Of course, analogies between specific operations of the body and machines date from Antiquity and, more generally, even those anatomists, who can in no way be classed as mechanists, did adopt explanations inspired by mechanics in this or that domain, such as the motion of animals, for example. However, what distinguishes the second half of the XVII century from previous times is the growing emphasis on a systematic program for explaining not