Moving on the Latitude of Health and Disease. Some Remarks on the Galenic Concept of Neutrum from the 16th to the 18th Centuries

This article examines how Italian physicians between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries developed a logic of ‘intermediate states’ between health and disease. Moving from late Scholastic Galenism to early mechanistic medicine, it shows how a dynamic view of the body allowed physicians to describe overlapping configurations of healthy and morbid states. Particular attention is given to the concept of neutrum, which helps to frame processes such as falling ill and convalescence. In both qualitative and mechanistic paradigms, medical art emerges as primarily concerned with processes and transitions rather than fixed conditions: health appears as a contingent, time-bound relation (ut nunc), modulated by age, constitution, environment, and the biographical history of alternating episodes of illness and recovery.