qui - maria vita romeo

e other Mandeville: the origins of a scandalous thought. Mechanism, ecc. 59
indigestion for an alteration of the ferment of stomach. 27 He states a correspondence
between the gastric functions and ‘mental’ diseases; diseases
that today are called ‘psychological.’ e treatment of hypochondria is not
yet an object of study or of a clear therapy; so, in the Treatise, Philopirio
talking with Misomedon about his thesis discussed in Leiden—i.e. the Disputatio
de Chylosi Vitiata—says: “I have often thought it very remarkable,
that I always had a particular Eye upon, and have been led, as it were, by
Instinct to what afterwards to me appear’d to be the Cause of the Hysterick
and Hypochondriack Passions, even at a time, when I had no thought
of singling out these Distempers for my more particular Study, and was
only design’d for general Practice, as other Physicians are.” 28 e enquiry
and the treatment of hypochondria and hysteria, diseases connected to digestion,
are indeed the starting point for a physiological description of human
nature. e fact that Mandeville, in the Disputatio de Chylosi Vitiata,
considers digestion as consequence of a “juice” composed by “chyle” and
“animal spirits” coming from brain, displays both his debt and his distance
from Descartes. 29 On the one hand, he must postulate the existence of the
27 Cf. Disputatio de Chylosi Vitiata, pp. A3-A4, § VI e § XV; and also Cf. Treatise 1711, pp. 73-
78; Treatise 1730, pp. 83-90.
28 Cf. Treatise 1711, p. 121; Treatise 1730, p. 132. Philopirio and Misomedon together with the
wife of the latter, Polytheca, are the characters of the dialogues of the Treatise. e passage just
quoted shows quite clearly that Philopirio is the Mandeville’s spokesman, but in the preface of the
first edition there is: “In these Dialogues, I have done the same as Seneca did in his Octavia, and
brought my self upon the Stage; with this difference, that he kept his own Name, and I changed
mine for that of Philopirio, a Lover of Experience, which I shall always profess to be: Wherefore I
desire my Reader to take whatever is spoke by the Person I named last, as said by my self.” Treatise
1711, p. xi (emphasis in the text). Why this passage disappears in the 1730 edition is still discussed
(cf. F. McKee, Honeyed Words: Bernard Mandeville and Medical Discourse, in R. Porter (ed), Medicine
in the Enlightenment, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1995, pp. 223-254). Perhaps it was omitted in order
to restore an identity of views with some criticism of Misomedon (probably the controversy with
apothecaries) or for not influencing too much the reader about the author’s point of view. For this
reason, although Philopirio can be considered as the main Mandeville’s spokesman, it is a good
thing to not identify the character with the author, having the possibility that Mandeville, sometimes,
can take Misomedon’s positions. ese expedients, moreover, are ‘croce e delizia’ (‘torture
and delight’) for those who want to interpret the dialogues as philosophical and literary works.
29 See how Descartes describes the digestive process in L’homme and with it the functions of
the blood circulation referring to the theory elaborated by William Harvey in the Exercitatio
anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (Francofurti, 1628). Cf. R. Descartes, Le monde
ou traité de la lumiere et l’homme, cit., pp. 120-124, where digestion is explained through the concept