Boyle versus the Galenists: A suppressed critique of seventeenth-century medical practice and its significance

Abstract

Medicine was integral to Robert Boyle's vision for natural philosophy.He saw medicine as "being a part, or an application of natural philosophy", and the amelioration of human life was one of the criteria directing his scientific programme: indeed, in a hitherto little-known memorandum dating from his later years, he even claimed that his famous pneumatical researches were inspired by the hope that they "might direct him in many usefull things for the Regiment of our health".1Either directly or indirectly, a high proportion of Boyle's published output was concerned with medical subjects, and it is therefore appropriate that of late his medical concerns have begun to receive the attention that they deserve, after a long period in which the only available accounts of them were generalized and often rather patronizing.First, in 1980 Robert G Frank published his splendid account of Boyle in the context of the "Oxford physiologists" of the 1650s and 1660s.2More recently, in 1993, a book-length study of Boyle's medical ideas has appeared in the form of Barbara Kaplan's 'Divulging of Useful Truths in Physick': the medical agenda of Robert Boyle.3This is based on a dutiful perusal of a wide range of relevant sources and it gives a useful account of various aspects of Boyle's medical thought.Kaplan is perhaps at her best in expounding the implications for his approach to illness and medication of Boyle's corpuscularian view of

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