An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

DESCARTES, René

3 entries
  • 4965

Des passions de l’âme.

Amsterdam, 1649.

Descartes believed the soul to be a definite entity, giving rise to thoughts, feelings, and acts of volition. He was one of the first to regard the brain as an organ integrating the functions of mind and body. English translation, London, 1650.



Subjects: PSYCHOLOGY
  • 574

De homine figuris et latinitate donatus a Florentio Schuyl.

Leiden: apud F. Moyardum & P. Leffen, 1662.

Descartes considered the human body a material machine, directed by a rational soul located in the pineal body. This book was the first attempt to cover the whole field of “animal physiology”. The work is really a physiological appendix to his Discourse on method, 1637. The first edition was translated from the French. The French text first appeared in 1664. It was translated, with commentary by T. S. Hall, and published in Cambridge, Mass., in 1972 as Treatise of man. See G.A. Lindeboom, Descartes and medicine, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1979.



Subjects: NEUROSCIENCE › Neurophysiology, PHYSIOLOGY
  • 12692

Le vie de monsieur Descartes. [par Adrien Baillet].

Paris: Daniel Horthemels, 1691.

An early separately published biography of a contributor to the history of the life sciences. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.



Subjects: BIOGRAPHY (Reference Works) › Biographies of Individuals, PHYSIOLOGY › History of Physiology