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Timaeus 69a6-92c9 is a causal theory of the nature of man. Demigods, created heavenly bodies, take over soul and four elements, structured by a divine, good craftsman, who uses mathematical processes on things of two unlike origins. Imitating their creator, the demigods build man and leave him to run his life. What each individual man ‘takes over’ varies as does his individual and society’s handling of it, resulting in human lives ranging from the god-like to the murkiest low-life. This, through cycles of reincarnation, diversifies fauna bringing life, and extending the influence of reason into every elemental region; in a word it brings the heavens down to earth. Presented as anatomy, physiology, nosology and care of man, this is ancient Greek medical theory in the widest sense, including the use of hypothesis and claims about the soul. It mentions but stops short of addressing social and political levels. As cosmogony it is concerned with a micro-cosmos, but as cosmology with the running of this micro-cosmos within the macro-cosmos and as a part serving its overall being and purpose, as an organ serves and is served by the whole body of which it is an inner part. As a medical theory it brims with debated issues. Has Plato successfully answered the objections against using hypotheses, raised in On Ancient Medicine (Ch. III)? Is Aristotle’s objection to the theory of breathing a challenge to Plato’s analogy of macro- and micro cosmology? Why did Plato, unlike Galen later, chose to include soul in medicine, and to emphasise the elements, rather than the humours? Does movement as a cause of change and the different kinds of movements available for man’s self-care (Ch. V), mirror the intellectual and motivational division of human soul? Is the shaking receptacle a paradigm for vital human self-reflection? Chapter I discusses how introductions to English translations of the Timaeus reflect the old debate on keeping either to the heavens or to earth, to theology or to physics. Chapter II contains an introductory discussion on the Timaeus as a whole, with emphasis on its structure. In chapters III on anatomy, IV on physiology and in V on diseases and care of man, I focus on the structure of the causal account with regard to man as a mixed being. Using other texts purely for contrast and comparison I keep, to the extent possible, to the Timaeus, and mostly to 68e1-92c9. I argue that the transition between demiurgic and lesser gods’ causation at the junction of our main text and the previous lines, later carries over from the demigods to man’s self-care, individually and collectively, and that it mirrors the division of labour between Timaeus, Critias and Hermocrates, as natural philosophers, whereas Socrates, the fourth participant is a philosopher of a different kind along the line of division drawn at 29b. This thesis offers an outline of an argument for re-evaluating the Timaeus on the nature of man, particularly with regard to its formal logical side and its relation to rational persuasion.

During the nineteenth century, as today, nausea and vomiting were common signs and symptoms of illness, the interpretation of which contributed to doctors' diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic choices. At the core of this thesis lies the research question: how did medical understandings and management of nausea and vomiting change in the period 1800-1900? In addition to being signs of bodily disorder, nausea and vomiting constituted an individual, typically non-medicalised experience of sickness. As such, a secondary thesis question is: how were nausea and vomiting experienced, interpreted and responded to by sufferers? These questions are pursued through four key themes: physiology, vomit analysis, morning sickness and sea-sickness. Medical textbooks, journals, hospital case reports, newspapers, letters and diaries are the principal source base. Throughout the nineteenth century physiological explanations for nausea and vomiting followed a generally reductionist path. In the 1830s Marshall Hall's reflex theory encouraged new perceptions of the nervous mechanisms involved in nausea and vomiting, and helped stimulate their redefinition into local, central and peripheral causes. Changing physiological explanations for nausea and vomiting were also contemporaneous to the growth of microscopy. This thesis draws attention to the interest nineteenth-century practitioners showed in using vomited matters as pathological fluids. This is explored primarily through a case study of sarcina ventriculi, a vegetable microorganism discovered in fermenting vomit. Responses to this discovery showed that laboratory techniques were largely inapplicable to everyday occurrences of nausea and vomiting. Consequently, neither the increasing localisation of the causes of vomiting, nor interest in vomited matters as pathological fluids, contributed to specificity in diagnoses or treatments. This research thereby demonstrates the cumulative and overlapping nature of nineteenth-century medical cosmologies - 'bedside', 'hospital' and 'laboratory' - and the continuation of the 'clinical art'. The histories of morning sickness and sea-sickness contextualise medical understandings of nausea and vomiting in relation to these transient conditions. They bring to the fore perceptions of health and sickness and show that medical theory was often secondary to cultural beliefs and practices. Specifically, this thesis questions the medicalisation of pregnancy during the nineteenth century and uses experiences of sea-sickness to reveal new features of Victorian understandings of the mind-body relationship. This thesis shows that 'feeling sick' (nausea) was arguably as significant to contemporaries as actually 'being sick' (vomiting). It also confirms the complexity and fluidity of taken-for-granted terms such as: 'patient', 'sufferer', 'disease', 'illness' 'sign' and 'symptom', and, of course, 'sick'. Furthermore, it demonstrates the importance to historians of studying everyday, self-limiting illnesses and morbidity.

Alors qu’il n’existe pas de définition consensuelle du concept de maladie génétique, ce concept s’est progressivement élargi pour désigner des maladies communes, non héréditaires, non mendéliennes et polygéniques, aboutissant à une généticisation des maladies. Pour résoudre ce paradoxe de la génétique médicale contemporaine, les philosophes réfutent généralement cette généticisation comme une extension génocentriste abusive du concept de maladie génétique et cherchent à redéfinir un concept plus strict de maladie génétique. Nous montrons que cette stratégie échoue et proposons au contraire d’abandonner le concept de maladie génétique et de supposer que la généticisation révèle l’élaboration d’une explication du rôle commun des gènes dans toutes les maladies, que nous appelons une « théorie génétique de la maladie ». Nous définissons les conditions de possibilité et les critères nécessaires d’une théorie génétique a minima et aboutissons à un spectre des théories génétiques possibles. Nous proposons alors de tester si la généticisation des maladies révèle plutôt une théorie génétique des maladies, c’est-à-dire un ensemble de théories génétiques spécifiques à chaque classe de maladie, ou une théorie génétique de la maladie, reposant sur une définition générale de la maladie qui unifie le rôle commun des gènes dans toutes les maladies. Pour ce faire, nous analysons deux exemples de théories génétiques contemporaines : la théorie génétique des maladies infectieuses et la théorie génétique de la médecine des réseaux. Nous concluons à la coexistence nécessaire de plusieurs formes de théories génétiques dans la littérature biomédicale contemporaine. / While there is no consensual definition of the concept of genetic disease, this concept has gradually extended to designate common, non-hereditary, non-Mendelian, polygenic diseases, leading to the geneticization of diseases. In order to solve this paradox of the contemporary medical genetics, philosophers usually discard geneticization as an inappropriate genocentrist extension of the concept of genetic disease and attempt to define a stricter concept of genetic disease. We demonstrate the failure of this strategy and argue on the contrary that we should give up the concept of genetic disease and understand geneticization as the elaboration of an explanation of the common role of genes in diseases, what we call “a genetic theory of disease”. We define the conditions of possibility and the necessary criteria for a genetic theory a minima and end up with describing the spectrum of potential genetic theories. We then suggest to test whether geneticization of diseases reveals rather a genetic theory of diseases, that is, a set of genetic theories specific to each class of disease, or a genetic theory of disease, that is, a general definition of disease unifying the common role of genes in disease explanations. In order to do so, we analyse two examples of contemporary genetic theories: the genetic theory of infectious diseases and the genetic theory of network medicine. We conclude that several forms of genetic theories coexist in the contemporary biomedical literature and that this coexistence is necessary.