William Harvey

as part of the moral order on the one hand and as pathological phenomena on the other. Dr. Riese writes interestingly of his seventeenth century theorists, and the reader will find much of what he has to say rewarding, especially with respect to the work of medical men so little known as de la Forge and de la Chambre. Rather than praise the obvious merits of Dr. Riese's monograph, however, I shall make a few critical remarks regarding two of his theses. Certainly Descartes did, as Dr. Riese writes (p. 2, 3) leave a permanent imprint on the structure of neurology and psychiatry, but it is open to question whether the distinction and separation of these two branches of contemporary medicine is as wholly Cartesian in origin as he believes. An equally fundamental and much older antithesis than the philosophical one of res cogitans versus res extensa is medical and therapeutic in character: the treatment of the ill person with words (and other operative elements of human meaning) versus treatment with diet, drugs and surgery. It is also true that the separate tasks of the philosopher and physician, or of the divine and the physician, were well established long before Descartes. Further, in discussing the topic of the uses of the passions as set forth by Descartes (p. 11) and de la Chambre (p. 25), Dr. Riese ascribes rather too much originality to their views-he goes so far as to say that 'de la Chambre soutient pour la premiere fois sa these de l'usage des passions en disant que le bon ou le mauvais usage fait tout le bonheur ou le malheur de la vie. En effet, si elles sont bon reglees, elles lorment les vertus et conservent la santg; mais si elles vont dans l'exces, ces sont les sources d'ou les desordres de l'ame et du corps prennent leur origine.' This passage contains nothing more than part of the standard medical doctrine of the six non-naturals (the sixth being the passiones animi), causative factors in health and disease which were regarded as beneficial if properly used but harmful if abused. Dr. Riese is of course aware that the thesis of the usage of the passions goes back to Galen, but he seems to have momentarily lost sight of the medical tradition in Western Europe insofar as he makes de la Chambre both anticipate Descartes and recall Galen and Plutarch, …