Mechanica Medicina Sacra: Biblical Vegetarianism in Philippe Hecquet’s Theological Medicine (2021)
Julia Reed (Author)
Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
Volume: 26
Issue: 5-6
Pages: 539-560
Publication date: 2021
Language: English
In the early eighteenth century, the French Jansenist physician Philippe Hecquet began publishing prolifically on the benefits of what he called “meatless medicine,” calling for a “Catholic cook” to guide France’s physical, moral, and spiritual health. This paper analyzes Hecquet’s defense of vegetarianism as an early modern example of a distinct kind of Biblical medicine – what Hecquet termed “theological medicine” – in the context of his understanding of bodily mechanism, natural history, and Biblical literalism, in his Traité des dispenses du carême (1709) and La medecine théologique, ou la medecine créée (1733). I argue that vegetarianism was the first principle of Hecquet’s Biblical medicine, which he considered both a natural and revealed truth to be grasped and applied by the pious physician.
...MoreArticle Aslıhan Gürbüzel; Faith Wallis (2021) “Angelical Conjunctions”: An Introduction. Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 419-438).
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