A strange imaginotheca by Louis de Caseneuve.

ABSTRACT

Our purpose was to analyse the treatment of one of Galen's major contributions, his systematization of the doctrine of the four temperaments he inherited from his predecessors (Aristotle, Alcmaeon of Crotone, Empedocles, Philolaus), in Lodovico Casanova's Hieroglyphicorum et medicorum emblematum dodekakrounous (Lugduni, Sumptibus Pauli Frellon, 1626). We concentrated on the four temperaments to study how in medical emblems, allegory and symbols are used to represent medical knowledge through the device of visual loci destined to be decoded and memorized.