The Archipathologia by Filipe Montalto is acknowledged as a reference work in the history of psychiatry. However, this monumental work, comprising 18 treatises in a total of 831 pages, constitutes an immense question mark with respect to its originality, internal coherence, way of intelligibility and clinical implications. Within a work focused on mental diseases, what is the place of the singular individual affected? Is the focus of Montalto's work strictly medical or does it point to the specificity of the psychological phenomena? Similarly, the context and the actuality of the concepts proposed in Archipathologia need a systematic approach. Therefore, the project presented here aims to articulate the contribution of different disciplinary areas - medicine, history, philosophy, humanities - in an integrative view.

Goals

To draw the epistemic framework of the Archipathologia, and its way of intelligibility, namely concerning the relationship between nature and medical art, the classification and etyology of diseases, the specificity of the connection between the somatic and the psychic level, the consideration of the general course of a disease and the individual variations.

To elucidate the core concepts of Archipathologia.

To inquire Archipathologia's impact on the European medicine and culture.

To compare Archipathologia with some European works of the same oeriod, namely Observationes (1614) by Felix Platter. 

To inquire its contribution for the constitution of the psychiatry as a scientific discipline.

To sensitive the learned public for the significance of the Archipathologia.

Start: 2013

Duration: 30 months

Principal Investigator: Adelino Cardoso (CHAM)

 

Funding

- Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Main Research Unit

- Centro de História d'Aquém e d'Além-Mar / Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas/Universidade Nova de Lisboa | Universidade dos Açores