Medicine, Method, and Metaphysics: Tradition and Innovation in Descartes' Medical Works from the Writing of L’Homme to Its Posthumous Publications

In this paper, I will address three related topics: (1) I will discuss Descartes' medical sources and aims when he was writing the long eighteenth chapter of Le Monde (The World), devoted to the study of L'Homme (Man) in the early 1630s.
(2) I will demonstrate the significant novelty introduced in the fifth part of the Discourse on Method (1637), where the link between method and medicine was rethought, as well as the relationship between medicine and metaphysics, especially in comparison to Harvey's treatise On the movement of the heart and blood (De motu cordis and sanguinis in animalibus). I will also discuss Descartes' influence in medicine especially through Henricus Regius' medical teaching in Utrecht. (3) I will highlight the primacy given to medicine in the Passions of the Soul (1649), the last book published by Descartes, after the Meditations, Objections and Replies and the Principles. I will show its links with La Description du corps humain (The Description of the Human Body). Finally, I will explore the relevance of the publication of the Treatise on Man together with La Description du corps humain in 1664 in Paris by Clerselier with Remarks by Louis de La Forge, a physician, after the Latin version of the De Homine published in 1662 in Leiden by Schuyl.