1. British Library, MS Sloane 1393, fol. 37. On Henry Power see C. Webster, “Henry Power’s experimental Philosophy”, Ambix, 14 (1967), pp. 150–78.
2. Harvey’s views of spirits are contained in W. Harvey, Exercitationes duae Anatomicae de Circulatione Sanguinis ad Joannem Riolanum filium... (Rotterdam, 1648), pp. 66-67. Harvey’s position is discussed in D.P. Walker, “The Astral Body in Renaissance Medicine”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21 (1958), pp. 130–33, by W. Pagel, William Harvey’s Biological Ideas. Selected aspects and Historical Background (Basle and New York, 1966), pp. 252-53; by J.J. Bono, “The Language of Life: Jean Fernel (1497-1558) and Spiritus in Pre-Harveyan Bio-Medical Thought”, Ph.D. diss, Harvard University, 1981, pp. 267-81 and id. “Reform and the Languages of Renaissance Theoretical Medicine: Harvey versus Fernel”, Journal of the History of Medicine, 23 (1990), pp. 341-87.
3. The threefold division of medical spirits into natural (governed by the liver), vital (by the earth) and animal (by the brain) is not in Galen. It was introduced by the Isagoge of Johannitius (Hunayn ibn Ishaq). On Galen’s notion of pneuma, see O. Temkin, “On Galen’s pneumatology”, Gesnerus, 8 (1951), pp. 180–88. On the Isagoge see
4. D. Jacquart, “A l’aube de la renaissance médicale des XIe-XIIe siècles: I’ Isagoge Johannitii et son traducteur”, Bibliothè;que de l’Ecole des Chartres, 144 (1986), pp. 209–40.
5. J. Fernel, De Abditis Rerum Causis (Paris, 1548), pp. 75-79; 175-77. Cf. D. P. Walker, “The Astral Body”, pp. 121-26. Illuminating insights in Fernel’s pneumatology are in M. L. Bianchi, “Occulto e manifesto nella Medicina del Rinascimento: Jean Fernel e Pietro Severino”, Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere, La Colombaria, vol. 48 Nuova serie: 33 (1982), pp. 183–248, J.J. Bono, “The Languages of Life (n. 4), pp. 217-32; L. A. Deer,” Academic Theories of Generation: The contemporaries and successors of Jean Fernel (1497-1558)”, Ph.D. thesis, University of London, The Warburg Institute, 1980, pp. 387-404. Jean Riolan the Elder, a prominent member of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, strenuously defended Galenic medicine against the iatrochemists. Although Argenterio rejected the current tripartition of spirits and aimed at reforming Galenic medicine, he did not accept Fernel’s doctrine of Spiritus insitus as celestial substance. On Argenterio see