The medicine of the soul. The origin and development of thought on the soul, diseases of the soul and their treatment, in Medieval and Renaissance medicine.
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Soul on ice; soul on fire. Abandonment, impingement, and the space between.
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Adult↗
[Sleep and function of the soul; thinking of the soul during sleep].
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Humans↗
[The concept of soul in the course of history. Thoughts on psyche, mind and awareness].
This paper seeks to convey an insight into the interrelationships between body, soul and mind and to show how the concept of "soul" has evolved through the course of history. In German the word "soul" has a confusing array of meanings today. For most of us it comprises all of man's emotions, his awareness, constructive thought, drive, state of mind and spirit. The soul thus represents the essence of a person and his relationships to those closest to him. For many people the soul was and still is the principle of life, the breath of life and the force of life. The immortal soul escapes, leaves the body, is weighed and judged. At all times in history man has doggedly pursued the mysteries of self-awareness, the ultimate truth and the soul. What he found varied, depending on the age and the place. What the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament express in deep-seated metaphors, the Greek philosophers put into clear-cut words: their concept of soul was then largely integrated into Christian thought. Meister Eckhart describes the soul in mystically transfigured passion. C.G. Jung writes of the "animus and anima." Sigmund Freud uses the term "psyche." Radical materialism denies the existence and independence of the soul's processes. The questions where we come from and where we are going, why and what for, no longer find a common answer. Psychiatry, however, takes up the intellectual call of the time and replies to the challenges of the day. Thus, the search for the "soul", a search that occupies so many people, also always involves the search for the whole person.
Awareness↗
SOUL in mouse eyes is a new hexameric heme-binding protein with characteristic optical absorption, resonance Raman spectral, and heme-binding properties.
SOUL is specifically expressed in the retina and pineal gland and displays more than 40% sequence homology with p22HBP, a heme protein ubiquitously expressed in numerous tissues. SOUL was purified as a dimer in the absence of heme from the Escherichia coli expression system but displayed a hexameric structure upon heme binding. Heme-bound SOUL displayed optical absorption and resonance Raman spectra typical of 6-coordinate low-spin heme protein, with one heme per monomeric unit for both the Fe(III) and Fe(II) complexes. Spectral data additionally suggest that one of the axial ligands of the Fe(III) heme complex is His. Mutation of His42 (the only His of SOUL) to Ala resulted in loss of heme binding, confirming that this residue is an axial ligand of SOUL. The K(d) value of heme for SOUL was estimated as 4.8 x 10(-9) M from the association and dissociation rate constants, suggesting high binding affinity. On the other hand, p22HBP was obtained as a monomer containing one heme per subunit, with a K(d) value of 2.1 x 10(-11) M. Spectra of heme-bound p22HBP were different from those of SOUL but similar to those of heme-bound bovine serum albumin in which heme bound to a hydrophobic cavity with no specific axial ligand coordination. Therefore, the heme-binding properties and coordination structure of SOUL are distinct from those of p22HBP, despite high sequence homology. The physiological role of the new heme-binding protein, SOUL, is further discussed in this report.
Amino Acid Sequence↗
Baby, souls, name and health: traditional customs for a newborn infant among the Hmong in Melbourne.
In this paper, I discuss childrearing beliefs and practices in Hmong culture. In particular I focus on issues related to souls and ceremonies for a newborn infant in Hmong society. The Hmong believe that each living body has three souls. For a newborn infant, the first soul enters his or her body when he or she is conceived in the mother's womb. The second soul enters when the baby has just emerged from the mother's body and taken its first breath. The third soul, however, will have to be called on the third morning after birth, as will be discussed in this paper. If all three souls are secured in the infant's body, he or she will be healthy and hence thrive well. On the contrary, the infant may become ill and eventually die if all three souls do not reside in his or her body. This, therefore, makes a soul calling ceremony on the third morning after birth essential in Hmong culture. I will show that for Hmong society to survive, the Hmong strongly adhere to their cultural beliefs and practices related to a newborn infant. These beliefs and practices tie the Hmong with not only their family and their society at large, but also the supernatural world.
Adult↗
Leonardo da Vinci: the search for the soul.
The human race has always contemplated the question of the anatomical location of the soul. During the Renaissance the controversy crystallized into those individuals who supported the heart ("cardiocentric soul") and others who supported the brain ("cephalocentric soul") as the abode for this elusive entity. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) joined a long list of other explorers in the "search for the soul." The method he used to resolve this anatomical problem involved the accumulation of information from ancient and contemporary sources, careful notetaking, discussions with acknowledged experts, and his own personal search for the truth. Leonardo used a myriad of innovative methods acquired from his knowledge of painting, sculpture, and architecture to define more clearly the site of the "senso comune"--the soul. In this review the author examines the sources of this ancient question, the knowledge base tapped by Leonardo for his personal search for the soul, and the views of key individuals who followed him.
Anatomy↗
[Plato's conceptions of disorders of the soul (Ta peri psuchên nosêmata). Timaeus as the beginning of a dynamic and ethic psychopathology].
This contribution to the study of the evolution of fundamental concepts in psychiatry, and in particular of the interpretative models of mental disease, focuses on Plato's conceptions concerning the "disorders of the soul". Plato's "psychopathological" work suggests the decline of an hereditary conglomeration of interpretative arrangements of the irrational phenomena related to mental disease which, corresponding to the social needs of that time, had been united by the belief in myth and its therapeutic value. These archaic religious conceptions have most certainly been reversed by Plato, especially in his Timaeus, one of the three most influential of his dialogues. In a notable passage in this cosmological dialogue (86b ff.) Plato treats of those diseases of the soul which are caused by things physical, whether this be a "defective bodily constitution" or "faulty education". The diseases of the soul are thus no longer considered having a divine origin. Mental diseases to which man is unwittingly subject by defects in birth or education concern himself and his inner life and they cannot be dismissed with simplistic allegories. According to Plato they originate from a conflict, supported by a secret, hidden, irrational "self" that has its roots in the sôma, the rational "self" being only able to recuperate its total integrity if it manages, through self-discipline and knowledge, to check the somatic impulses, the folly of the body. Also, Plato offers a series of remedies to correct the undue influence of body on soul and soul on body, with a view to instituting a right balance and proportion between them. This, together with a stress on "care of the soul", particularly of the divine and immortal element, implicitly assumes that it is in man's power to apply the necessary remedies to himself and effect some sort of readjustment.
Ethics, Medical↗
Preserving the soul of medicine and physicians: a talk with David Whyte. Interview by Richard L. Reece.
Richard L. Reece, MD, interviewed David Whyte, a poet, consultant, and author of The Heart Aroused, on December 15, 1999, to discuss preserving the soul of physicians in corporate America. David describes the soul as "a measure of our belonging in the world. When there is little sense of belonging, there is very little sense of soul." In the workplace, he thinks about whether "people have a sense of belonging to the particular work or the organization." He talks about life in the upper world of the workplace and life in the dark subterranean caves where the soul lives. The soul is where people's true creativity and imagination resides ... and by inviting it into the workplace, organizations and employees can become more successful, innovative, and adaptable. In corporate settings, he uses poetry to bring an understanding of the process of change, helping clients to understand individual and organizational creativity to transform the workplace. The poetry can teach and touch those places that the corporate language cannot speak to.
Consultants↗
[Importance of the brain in body-soul discussion from the history of medicine perspective].
Since the earliest time medicine has considered our intellectual-psychic abilities in relationship to organs and substrata. Originally blood and its presumptive production resp. depot organs liver and heart acted as soul carriers. Gradually the brain obtained superiority in the body-soul-discussion and during the course of development nearly any structure of the brain was taken into consideration as seat of the soul and the sensorium commune. In the meantime the unity of body and soul never has been controversial among the former medical authors. Since the central nervous system took place of the blood vascular system already at an early time it follows that the brain equally in past and present passed for the material form of our intellectual-psychic abilities. It is true, today we renounce to speak in the body-soul-discussion of single structures of the brain--this has been done intensively and extensively for us by the searchers in former times--, but we still follow the old localisation concept perceiving in the brain and its estimated hundred milliards of nerve cells the unimaginable complex organ that offers the substratum for our intellectual-psychic abilities. Much is not yet realized. But: The genetic material was up to the present a "black box". Today light is fallen in. The efforts concerning this light incidence into the "black box" of the brain must be continued in favour of a successful restorative neurotransplantation.
Brain Tissue Transplantation↗
Parapsychotic grief, theory of mind and the concept of the soul.
The ability to deceive is regarded as the best evidence of the cognitive ability separating humans from other primates. An alternative would be to look at the concept of the soul, which has an archetypal significance, emerging in various geographically remote cultures over the course of history. The soul will be an elusive but not an impossible concept to study with neuroimaging. In parapsychotic grief the decreased may appear to the bereaved person without these hallucinations being considered as indicative of mental illness. If this is the sort of normal human experience which has led to the emergence of the belief in the immortality of the soul it may be a useful starting point for defining the neuroanatomical basis of souls which do not necessarily seek to deceive. As the human prefrontal cortex expanded and developed and strove to understand mental activity derived from subcortical structures the human attained an awareness of his own mind which has been construed as a separable insubstantial but indestructible entity. This idea would be bizarre if it were not archetypal and therefore must be closely linked to the development of the human central nervous system.
Grief↗
Can you take your soul to work?
David White in The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Soul in Corporate America explores ways for professionals to take their souls to work, instead of checking them at the door. "We simply spend too much time and have too much psychic and emotional energy invested in the workplace for us to declare it a spiritual desert bereft of life-giving water." Several ideas are presented to help physician executives preserve their souls in an increasingly corporatized U.S. health care system: (1) Figure out what you are meant to do as your life's calling; (2) know what you think and want; (3) share some of what you think at work, while being careful to not lose your job unless you choose to; (4) be a trustworthy listener and find one; (5) get yourself outside; (6) pay attention to your physical space; and (7) develop some new hobbies or refresh old ones. "One of the disciplines of building a rich soul life seems to be the simple act, on a daily basis, of remembering what is most important to us."
Communication↗
Particles of the soul. The medical and Lutheran context of Daniel Sennert's atomism.
Daniel Sennert was a well-known and influential representative of early 17th-century atomism. He used Aristolelian hylomorphic terminology to put forward medical new ideas on the relationship between matter and soul. His belief in a mere multiplication of preexistent forms/souls since the Creation and in a coexistence of dominant and subordinate forms in natural things led him to the notion of atoms of the soul which via seman could transfer the human soul form one generation to the next. Focussing on the professional and cultural context of Sennert's theory rather than on its retrospective importance in the history of chemistry, this paper argues that it was a largely medical framework from which Sennert developed these ideas, and it stresses Sennert's strong Lutheran allegiances as a major driving force, especially behind his atomist traducianism, i.e. his claim that the human soul was propagated per traducem in tiny particles of matter rather than merely being infused days or weeks after conception, as Catholics and Calvinists alike asserted.
History, 17th Century↗
Hungry earth and vengeful stars: soul loss and identity in the Peruvian Andes.
This article contributes to the cross-cultural literature on fright sickness and soul loss with an analysis of cases among Quechua indians (runa) in a rural community in the southern Peruvian Andes. One of the aims of this article is to incorporate an emic understanding of the intersection of the cosmological and social landscapes into discussions of Quechua conceptions of health and illness. It outlines Quechua constructions of body, self, and cosmos that are relevant to explaining the concepts of soul/spirit, interior/exterior, and runa/nonruna that are related to soul loss. The illness suffered by victims of fright sickness embodies the Quechua construction of self and is linked not only to broader sociopolitical realities of Peru but also to cosmological beliefs. The diagnosis of spirit loss and fright in this cultural context reveals a crisis of identity: sufferers represent nonruna, or nonhumans. They succumb to fright or soul loss because of an emic concept of vulnerability that transcends the characteristics of gender and age usually associated with soul loss cross-culturally. Treatments, therefore, involve a reaffirmation of ethnic identity and a reintegration of patients into their families in terms of a culturally specific understanding of identity, community, and cosmos. rights reserved
Anthropology, Cultural↗
Descartes' Passions of the soul--seeds of psychiatry?
Rene Descartes (1596-1650), often called the 'father of modern philosophy', aimed at rooting all knowledge in certainty so that our understanding of the world could progress without error. To achieve this, he needed at least one sure thing on which to build. Starting with the most basic knowledge, the fact of his own existence--cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am), he systematically proceeded to explain the world. Such systematic understanding would be accessible to anyone who applied the Cartesian method, and in turn would lead to a good life. Descartes' Passions of the Soul was written according to his method of certainty and fits in with a meticulously refined worldview. It is one of the first systematic treatises to explain a wide array of emotions, both normal and abnormal. Based on the Cartesian dualistic model of mind and body, the work helps ground a long medical tradition of separating 'rational' consciousness from emotions. For Descartes, emotions arose from two sources, the intellect and the body (Passions of the Soul and Passions of the Body). The more subtle 'Passions of the Soul' were viewed as superior to coarser and often-troublesome emotions taking root in the body. It is interesting to note the absence of clarity, however, in Descartes' division of intellectual emotions from bodily emotions, perhaps revealing an enduring weakness in the dualistic model itself. The work grapples with the multi-causal nature of psychopathology and brings out complex interactions between temperament and life experience. While modern neuroscience makes ever-tighter associations between physiology and experience, many of the basic scientific challenges we face today are outlined in this 350-year-old book.
Consciousness↗
Effect of semaglutide on kidney outcomes in the SELECT, FLOW, and SOUL trials: a prespecified pooled analysis.
BACKGROUND: The GLP-1 receptor agonist semaglutide reduces clinically important kidney outcomes in people with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease (CKD). We aimed to assess the pooled effects of semaglutide on kidney outcomes in prespecified analyses of participant-level data from the diverse populations of the SELECT, FLOW, and SOUL randomised placebo-controlled trials. METHODS: Participants with CKD (FLOW) or atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (SELECT and SOUL) were randomly assigned semaglutide (once-weekly subcutaneous 1·0 mg [FLOW], once-weekly subcutaneous 2·4 mg [SELECT], or once-daily oral 14 mg [SOUL]) or matching placebo, added to standard of care. The primary outcome in this pooled analysis was time to first occurrence of a kidney composite, defined as onset of persistent 50% or greater reduction in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), kidney failure (persistent eGFR <15 mL/min per 1·73 m2, or initiation of kidney replacement therapy), kidney-related death, or cardiovascular-related death. Safety was also assessed. FINDINGS: The pooled participants from the trials (N=30 787) had a mean follow-up of 39·5-47·5 months. Among participants assigned to semaglutide, 973 first events of the primary kidney composite occurred compared with 1134 first events for placebo (hazard ratio [HR] 0·84 [95% CI 0·77-0·91]). First events of a narrower secondary kidney composite (excluding cardiovascular-related death from the primary outcome) were also reduced with semaglutide versus placebo (347 and 416, respectively; 0·80 [0·69-0·92]). Safety outcomes were overall similar between groups, and in line with other GLP-1 receptor agonist trials. Serious adverse events were numberically lower with semaglutide than with placebo. INTERPRETATION: Data pooled from three large phase 3 trials suggest that semaglutide reduces the risk of major kidney outcomes in a broad population with cardio-kidney-metabolic disease while having a favourable risk-benefit profile. In people with cardio-kidney-metabolic disease, with and without diabetes, semaglutide (oral or injected) prevents kidney-related and cardiovascular complications and induces adverse events in line with GLP-1 receptor agonist studies, regardless of baseline characteristics within the cardio-kidney-metabolic spectrum. This was a participant-level analysis conducted in a large database of three randomised controlled trials of similar design and examining the same treatment, but there were some differences in participants' baseline characteristics, and in the dose and route of administration of treatment. This pooled analysis adds evidence for the benefit of GLP-1 receptor agonists in general, and semaglutide in particular, in a broad population of people with cardio-kidney-metabolic disease, suggesting that the benefit of semaglutide might not be explained only by its glycaemic effects, weight-management effects, or both. FUNDING: Novo Nordisk.
Humans↗
Neurology and the soul: from the origins until 1500.
The mind-brain dichotomy recalls the soul-body duality and the tendency to individualize in the nervous system a location for the soul. In this paper, the author analyses some of the principal theories which attribute the soul to a cerebral location, from the origins until the year 1500.
Brain↗
Embodied soul. The focus for nursing praxis.
This article explores the nature of embodied soul as a phenomenon of concern to nursing. Examples of the body/soul debate from early Greek philosophers to the present day are examined. Early writings on the subject echo in medieval writings and in present-day knowledge of neuroscience and physics, as well as in the writings of Merleau-Ponty. The author proposes that nursing embrace the concept as it relates to Berry's patterns of differentiation, subjectivity, and communion in the universe. These patterns exist from the cellular to the cosmic level. It is through the embodied soul that one engages in this process. The works of selected nurse theorists are examined as they relate to the topic. Both the subject of the client and of the nurse as embodied souls are addressed.
History, 17th Century↗