[Matteo Borsa (1751-1798) and his 'Hippocratic' reform of medicine].

The article examines an essay on philosophy of medicine that is, in the same time, a manifest for the reform of medicine. The author is Matteo Borsa (1751-1798) who was for a long period Segretario perpetuo of the Academia Reale di Mantova. The essay, originally entitled The physiologist, was published in 1781 and reveals a deeply skeptical vision of the cognitive power of medicine.

[Medical education for laity: Plutarch's contribution].

In his treatise De tuenda sanitate praecepta (Ygieina paraggelmata: Prescriptions for Health), the Greek philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea (b. about 45 A.D.

[Medical popularization and moral therapy in Plutarch's Treatise de tuenda sanitate praecepta (Ygieina paraggelmata)].

In his treatise De tuenda sanitate praecepta (Ygieina paraggelmata: Prescriptions for Health), the Greek philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea (b. about 45 A.D.

[Aristotle on the function of blood in the processes of life].

This contribution explains some aspects of the Aristotelian conception of blood. According to Aristotle, blood is an homogeneous part of the body. It is producted in the heart of the warmest animals through the "cooking" of the nourishment, and then it is distributed all over the body, where it has non only the function to nourish the different organs and to induce their growth, but it also passes on the sense-data.