The question of how therapy should be regulated and when a given quantity becomes excessive for the organism was taken seriously in the late middle ages. Whilst physicians drew from Galen’s theory of drugs, they soon recognised that their source was both imprecise and inconsistent and were ultimately forced to elaborate their own theories as to why and how drugs work on the body. Al-Kindi provided the foundations needed to quantify drugs into four degrees of proportional intensity measured from the temperate state (degree 0), and his work was then introduced into the Latin West via Arnaldus de Villanova (1240-1311) and his work Aphorismi de gradibus. Al-Kindi’s and Arnaldus’ innovations built on a new interpretation of concepts such as “potential” (potentia, virtus) and “intensity of drugs” (intensio, vis). These concepts ushered in early forms of quantification that accounted for the strength of medicinals, their effect on the body and the bodily reaction to them, as well as the time needed for a drug to be absorbed (i.e. "digested") by the organism.
In this talk, I will show the way in which these topics were debated in the Italian Trecento and how they developed later on. By taking into account the works of Pietro D’Abano (c. 1257-1316) on poisons (De venenis) and Gentile da Foligno (Fulginas, 1280-1348) on the degrees of drugs and intensity of diseases (De proportionibus medicinarum, De maioritate morbi, De resistentiis) I will argue that scholastic physicians conceptualised the difference between drugs and poisons not only in terms of their qualitative make-up but also in terms of their weight and intensity.
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