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Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Advance Access originally published online on April 10, 2006
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 2006 61(3):249-287; doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrj047
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Jodocus Lommius’s Little Golden Book and the History of Diagnostic Semeiology

Jacalyn Duffin*

* Jacalyn Duffin, Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario K7 L3N6 Canada. Email: duffinj{at}post.queensu.ca.

This paper traces the nature and fortunes of Lommius’ Medicinal Observations of 1560, its relationship to ancient authors, its two-and-a-half centuries of fame, and its fall. Originating as an accessible manual of diagnosis for municipal authorities, it emphasized the observable aspects of illness and downplayed the role of humors and hidden causes. As a result, it both heralded and served the trend to symptom-based nosology. Eventually, as disease concepts shifted from symptoms to organs, Lommius was eclipsed by the next epistemic fashion: positivistic organicism. The multiple editions of this work invite us to reconsider the sustained influence of ancient writers, including Celsus, in medical pedagogy and semeiology, as well as the timing and location of the development of nosological concepts of disease. Class considerations and the proclivities of twentieth-century scholarship contributed to the obscurity of this book in our time.

Key Words: diagnosis • disease concepts • history of medicine • Lommius • nosology • physical examination • semeiology


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