Where does pneuma collide?

In Stoic physics, first developed by Chrysippus in the third century BCE, pneuma is the active breath, a blend of fire and air, that pervades all matter and holds each thing together, giving it its cohesion and its particular qualities through an inner tension the Stoics called tonos. Long and Sedley's 1987 The Hellenistic Philosophers collects and translates the surviving fragments that set out this doctrine, in which pneuma is a physical substance stretched through the whole cosmos rather than an immaterial soul. Here the referent is a material organizing principle of the entire world, and it is not the bodily breath of the physicians nor the divine Spirit of the theologians, even though all three go by the one Greek word.[1]

Unit

A pervasive material breath filling the cosmos and each body within it

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Reconstructed from surviving Stoic fragments and later reports, since no complete Stoic physics text survives

In Galenic physiology, systematized by Galen in the second century CE, pneuma is a refined vapor drawn in with the air and carried in the body as three spirits: the natural spirit tied to the liver and nutrition, the vital spirit tied to the heart and the arteries, and the psychic spirit tied to the brain and the nerves. Julius Rocca's 2003 Galen on the Brain and Vivian Nutton's Ancient Medicine trace how this scheme organized ancient accounts of how the body lives, moves, and perceives, building on earlier physicians such as Praxagoras and Erasistratus. The referent is a physical substance moving inside a living body, which is neither the cosmic breath of Stoic physics nor the divine Spirit of the New Testament.[2][3]

Unit

A refined vapor present as three bodily spirits, one for each major organ system

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Inferred in ancient practice from breathing, pulse, and nerve function, and reconstructed today from Galen's texts