| Abstract | Paper -a:
Mondino de' Liuzzi, known as 'the Restorer of Anatomy', revived the practice of anatomical dissection lost for approximately 1,700 years. Since Antiquity, the female body was a site of conquest wrapped up in complex constructions of sexual scientific medical discourse and social practices based on ancient medical texts. Societal norms bound bodies; yet bodies remained susceptible to external and internal, physical, and invisible forces. Dissection played a role in breaching the physical boundaries of the body. Though anatomical dissection should have shed light on ancient medical misconceptions and inaccuracies, medieval dissection reinforced the errors put forth by ancient authors.
Paper -b:
A term 'pneuma' has long history and context of usage. In my research, I focus on medical, spiritual, and philosophical sides of this term in Byzantine culture. I have found many records of this term in magical 'Chaldean Oracles' and the theological works of Leo VI, Cosmas Tzintziloukes, and Michael Psellos, as well as in medical treatises of Nikephoros Blemmydes, Theodore Metochites, and John Actuarios. During the whole Byzantine history the intellectuals paid a lot of attention to this term. Why it was so omnipresent, what is the genesis of the term and borders of definition? In my paper I will give consideration to these questions.
Paper -c:
Constantine the African's Pantegni describes the five 'virtues of the senses' as being in the threshold between cosmic elements and the inner change that they provoke first in the sense organs and then in the front ventricles of the brain. Of all sense faculties, touch is the one that feels more pleasure or pain: it is difficult for touch to bridge the gap between itself and its sense object (it does not transform easily). Moreover, pleasure and pain follow the conversion of an extra-natural thing in a natural thing, and vice versa.
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