Introduction: Medicine for the Sick Soul

Abstract

In the dedication to his praise of an ass, Laus asini, Dutch humanist Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655) censured social evils and the world’s sick condition in medical terms. His dedication was addressed to Ewald Schrevel, a professor of medicine at Leiden, whose expert opinion of the current age Heinsius sought: “Touch it and feel its pulse, will you? I’ll bet that you’ll agree with Democritus, saying that ‘this is no longer mere error, this is disease’.” (1629b, p. 2.)¹ As signs of the morbid condition of the contemporary world, Heinsius mentioned inverted values. Contempt was shown towards the virtuous and the learned, and everything that was noble or worthy of eternal fame was treated with disgust. Geniuses and salutary authors of the ilk of Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle, Plutarch and Cicero were abhorred and treated as if they were mere waste products. In Heinsius’s view, in his day everybody was merely chasing the shadow of an ass.²