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Lewis Orly., Praxagoras of Cos on Arteries, Pulse and Pneuma: Fragments and Interpretation (Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2017), pp. 375, (‘Studies in Ancient Medicine’, 48), ISBN: 978-90-04-33742-8 / 978-90-04-33743-5.
Here is a long needed and excellent work on Praxagoras of Cos, even if it is not a new ‘complete’ edition of his fragments. The book is the mature outcome of a doctoral fellowship in the Classics Department at Humboldt University in Berlin, as part of a research group funded by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, directed by Philip van der Eijk and entitled Medicine of the Mind, Philosophy of the Body: Discourses of Health and Well-Being in the Ancient World. The book focuses on a particular but fundamental part of Praxagoras’ doctrines, i.e. his ideas on the arteries, the pulse and the pneuma.
After F. Steckerl’s edition (The Fragments of Praxagoras and his School, Leiden, 1958), which offers no commentary on the context and significance of the fragments, no thorough study of Praxagoras’ doctrines has been produced. This is in a way surprising, because Praxagoras has always been considered a turning point in the history of medical and philosophical thought of the fourth century BC.
The study is divided into two parts: in part 1, after a methodological introduction on collecting and editing fragments, the text and translation of the fragments are given, followed by a commentary on all the fragments and by a list of verbatim citations (pp. 1–212); part 2 is devoted to the interpretation and reconstruction of Praxagoras’ anatomy and physiology of the arteries, which he identified as a distinct vascular system, together with Praxagoras’ definition and physiology of the pulse and his doctrines on pneuma, its transmission and function in the body (pp. 215–309). The two parts are complementary: first the sources and a ‘fragmented’ analysis of their context,...