(From Hippocrates (469-399 BC) to the Controversy Between
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Central Annals of Reproductive Medicine and Treatment Bringing Excellence in Open Access Research Article *Corresponding author Sergio Musitelli, Department of Andrology A Brief Historical Survey and Sexology, University of Pavia, Italy, Email: Submitted: 27 May 2016 of Generation (From Accepted: 03 July 2016 Published: 06 July 2016 Copyright Hippocrates (469-399 B.C.) © 2016 Musitelli et al. to the Controversy between OPEN ACCESS Keywords • Spermatists “Spermatists” and “Ooists”) • Ooists Sergio Musitelli1* and Ilaria Bossi2 1Department of Andrology and Sexology, University of Pavia, Italy 2Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Milan, Italy Abstract The authors take into consideration the knowledge and the ideas about the male and female generation organs in mammals from Hippocrates (c. 469-c. 399) and Galen (129-c. 199 A.D.) to the discovery of both spermatozoa and oocytes and the consequent controversies between the so-called “spermatists” and the so-called “ooists” about the genesis and the formation of the foetus. They have recourse to a critical review of the passages dealing with these topics in Hippocrates’, Aristotle’s (384-322 B.C.), Celsus’ (1st century B.C.-1st century A.D.), Galen’s, Leeuwenhoek’s (1632-1723), Malpighi’s (1628-1694), De Graaf’s (1641-1683) and von Baer’s (1792-1876) works. MATERIALS AND METHOD A critical review of the pertinent passages in Hippocrates’, Aristotle’s (384-322 B.C.), Galen’s, Leeuwenhoek’s (1632-1723), Malpighi’s (1628-1694), De Graaf’s (1641-1683) and von Baer’s (1792-1876) works dealing with both the anatomophysiology of the male and female generation organs in mammals and the formation of the foetus. According to Aristotle1 Polybos (Hippocrate’s son in low2 maintained that the veins’ system3 consisted of 4 “zeúgē” (yokes, i.e. “pairs”), the second of which – whose veins were called by him “sphagítides” (jugular veins) – started from behind the ears and reached the testicles (Figure 1). 1 Cf. Historia animalium (Description of animals), 3, 3, 512b 12 ff. From now on we will use the abbreviation H.A. 2 This means that Hippocrates had at least one daughter! 3 In none of the treatises of the so-called Corpus Hippocraticum may be found even the faintest idea about the difference between veins and arteries, which was discovered by Praxagoras of Cos, who flourished in the 2nd half of the 4th century B.C. However he though that the arteries (the pulse of which he pointed out clearly) contained air, an idea that was also advocated by his disciple Heròphilus (1st half of 3rd century) and demolished by Galen (c. 129-199 A.D.) in his as brief as marvellous treatise An in arteriis sanguis contineatur (If the arteries contain blood) (cf. K, IV, 703-736). However this exceptional discovery was a real tragedy for Galen, who could not realize where the breathed in air could go and forced him to imagine that it was used by the heart auricles that acted as a sort of fan to limit the too exaggerated heat of the heart, whose task was to “cook”, or better to “concoct” the foods into the stomach, which, in its turn, was nothing else than a sort of cooking pot. Cf. note n. 46. Cite this article: Musitelli S, Bossi I (2016) A Brief Historical Survey of Generation (From Hippocrates (469-399 B.C.) to the Controversy between “Sperma- tists” and “Ooists”). Ann Reprod Med Treat 1(1): 1002. Musitelli et al. (2016) Email: Central Bringing Excellence in Open Access Figure 1: The blood vascular system and its “4 “zeúgē” according to Polybos (after H. Aubert & Fr. Wimmer, Aristoteles, Thierkunde, Leipzig, 1868). In fact the same statement may be found in the 22nd chapter of the Hippocratic treatise Perì aérōn, hydátōn kaì tópōn (On the airs, the waters and the places). It reads as follows4: “The great majority among the Scythians become impotent, do women’s work, live like women and converse accordingly. Such men they call “Anaries” (impotent persons)…The habit of riding causes swelling at the joints, because they are always astride their horses; in severe cases follow lameness and sores on the hips. They cure themselves in the following way. At the beginning of the disease they cut the vein behind each ear. When the blood has ceased to flow faintness comes over them and they sleep. Afterwards they get up, some cured and some not. Now, in my opinion, by this treatment the seed is destroyed. For by the side of the ears are veins, to cut which causes impotence, and I believe that these are the veins, which they cut”. This exceptionally interesting passage poses a problem: as Aristotle maintains that the pair of veins starting from behind the ears were not hypothesized by Hippocrates, but by his son in low Polybos, we must conclude that either Aristotle made a fundamental mistake – that is literally impossible because he surely knew both Polybo’s and Hippocrates’ works much better than we do – or the author of the treatise Perì aérōn, hydátōn kaì tópōn (On the airs, the waters and the places) is not Hippocrates but Polybos himself or, nd chapter aboutfinally theand four most “pairs” probably, of veins that in Hippocrates the 11th chapter is the of real the author treatise of “Nature the treatise, of man” in writing of the Corpus which hippocraticum– or at least in5 writingthat reads the as 22 follows: quoted above – he adhered to his son in law’s theories. However it is exceptionally worth observing that one can find the same theory “The thickest of the veins have the following nature. There are four pairs in the body. One pair extends from behind the head through the neck, and on either side of the spine externally reaches to the loins and legs, and then stretches through the shanks to the outside of the ankles and to the feet. So bleeding for pains in the back and loins should be made on the outside, behind the knee or at the ankle. The other pair of veins extends from the head by the ears through the neck, and the veins are called “jugular veins”. They stretch right and left by the side of the spine internally along the loins to the testicles and the thighs, then on the inside through the hollow of the knee, and finally through the shanks to the ankles on the inside and to the feet.”. The rest of the passage deals with the other two pairs of veins and with the “very many veins of all sorts” that “extend from the belly over the body…by which nourishment comes to the body”. As the 6, and as Aristitole’s disciple Meno maintains in his Iatriké sunagogé (Medical collection)7 ifentire the author passage of is the quoted treatise verbatim Perì aérōn, by Aristotle, hydátōn whokaì tópōn affirms (On that the it airs, is by the Polybos waters and the places) is Hippocrates, he adhered to his that the author of the treatise “Nature of man” is just Polybos, this confirms our opinion that, only by the statement of the impotence caused by bleeding these veins, but also by quoting Polybos’ theory of the 4 pairs of veins in chapterson in law’s 11th theoriesof the treatise about Naturethe second of man “pair”. As theof veins female that womb starts was from thought behind – theas we ears shall and emphasize reaches the later testicles when anddealing confirmed with Galen it not – to be “horned” and the female genital organs were considered as the turned out inside male ones8, those we know to be the “ovaries” were mistaken for “female testicles”. By consequence the female orgasmic emission was supposed to be the “female semen” and the menstrual blood – it too regularly emitted monthly unless the female is pregnant – as the necessary “matter” to give origin to the formation of a foetus9. On the basis of the theory of the “four qualities” (hot, cold, moist and dry) that characterized all the phenomena and that the formation and growth of a foetus was caused by the joining of both the male and the female semen, and that every right part (the right male and female “testicle” included) is hot and dry and the left one is always cold and moist, the anonymous author of chapters 26th-29th Regime10 maintains that the development of the embryo derives from the fact, the joining of ofthe the two first “semens” book of gavethe Hippocratic origin to the treatise generation of offspring that are male or female according to the predominance ofmale the semen male or (inclining the female to fire,element. i.e. to By hot consequence and dry) and the the idea female of the one anonymous (inclining to author water, may i.e. tobe cold summarized and moist). as follows:This being the supposed 1) Male from man and male from woman > brilliant man; 2) Male from man mastering female from woman > brave man; 3) Male from woman mastering female from man > androgyne; 4) Female from both man and woman > lovely woman; 5) Female from woman mastering male from man > bold but modest woman; 4 Cf. Hippocrates with an English translation by W. H. S. Jones, London, William Heinemann LTD – Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1957, I, p. 126 ff. 5 Cf. Hippocrates with an English translation, etc, IV, p. 30 ff. 6 Cf. note n. 3. 7 Cf. Anonimi Londiniensis Iatrica, (edited by H. Diels in 1893), XIX, p. 33ff. 8 We shall discuss at length this rather erroneous idea when dealing with Galen 9 We shall clarify the concepts of “matter” and “form” when dealing with Aristotle 10 Cf.