title: ["Spirits" and "Movements of the Soul" in the medical work of Moses Maimonides].
abstract: Maimonides describes his psychic concept of health as movements of soul. It has two poles, a positive and a negative one. Soul of man is in a direct connection with environment and vice versa. Already in his time air and water were polluted resp. contaminated. The great physician was convinced that this increasing strain of nature not only damaged the body, but also the soul of man. He shows that nature and body form and influence human thinking via the four spirits: Body-, natural, vital, and especially psychic spirit. The latter is settled in brain-chambers, it is what we today regard as soul. Bad environment and negative emotions have negative effects on body and soul. If not minded, these effects confuse physical and psychic balance. It's a consequence of such a disequilibrium that diseases can't be avoided. This balance of body and soul is not static, but dynamic. In most persons it is subject to fluctuations. These are moving permanently between the two extremes of the Nicomachic ethics of Aristotle. Since Maimonides experienced this strong mutuality between body, soul and environment, he is regarded by several researchers as the founder of psychosomatics. Maimonides was a religious man and in many cases he also built in perceptions and findings from Jewish Talmud and even from Old Testament. But as an early illuminated philosopher he often dared to deviate from the rules of Talmud. For him human ratio was a reflection of divine ratio resp. Hebrew ruach. Thus from the sight of Maimonides religious Jewish tradition and human ratio don't exclude one another.
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Kaltenstadler
mesh_terms: D049691:History, Medieval; D007585:Jews / Q000266:history*; D007599:Judaism / Q000266:history*; D008877:Middle East; D010686:Philosophy, Medical / Q000266:history*; D010820:Physicians / Q000266:history*; D012068:Religion and Medicine