Reviewed by:

• On Gambling by Pascasius Justus Turcq
• Patrick Ball

William M. Barton’s translation of the only known work by Pascasius Justus Turcq (‘Pascasius’) inaugurates Lysa Publishers’ series ‘Neo-Latin Texts’. Lysa Publishers, a new arrival on the early modern scene, may interest Australia and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies members. The work, cited regularly in the early modern period, then forgotten, resurfaced around thirty years ago. German and French editions have since appeared; Barton’s is the first one in English. His translation accompanies the Latin original. Despite a few potentially misleading proofreading errors, the volume’s presentation is of a high standard. The translation is highly readable, something especially commendable considering the Latin’s acknowledged tortuousness. It is a measure of Barton’s introduction that it accounts for this inelegance: Pascasius imitated the style and vocabulary of Roman author Cornelius Celsus. The introduction is admirable. It covers the author’s life and book, in the context of contemporary history, early modern science and humanist studies, and subsequent research on gambling and addiction. The footnotes and bibliography are accordingly wide-ranging.

Why study Pascasius? On Gambling was—as its author himself proclaimed— the first clinical account of addiction: ‘It [pathological gambling] is a serious and long-term disease of the mind’ (p. 103). Hitherto, problem gambling had been regarded from a moral standpoint only. Till lately, addiction studies were understood to have commenced with eighteenth-century work on alcoholism; Pascasius’s re-emergence displaces its beginnings from the Enlightenment to the Renaissance. It means, further, that addiction scholarship opened with an investigation of gambling, the only formally recognised non-substance-abuse addiction. This makes the work significant. Scholars of early modern science and medicine should find it informative. Barton’s translation might profitably be read alongside the substantial survey by Marc Valleur and Louise Nadeau that precedes an (abridged) French translation of Pascasius and situates his work within the history of addiction studies (Pascasius, ou comment comprendre les addictions, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2014).

Equally, it is a resource for those who study gambling. On Gambling comprises two books. In Book 1, Pascasius mounts the case for gambling as a disease. Contrary to popular opinion, greed is not responsible: gamblers are spendthrifts; misers fear hazarding money. Rather, gamblers naively imagine they can master fortune; Pascasius believes, following Galen, that their optimism and [End Page 274] impulsiveness reflects a warm humoral temperament. Thus physiology, not vice, predisposes people to excessive gambling. In Book 2 he outlines his cure: to counter this warmth one must engineer coldness. Gamblers dismayed by their losses often vow to renounce their activities: they do so because sadness chills them, momentarily offsetting their natural heat. Once their depression lifts, though, they warm again and relapse. Pascasius offers arguments gamblers can memorise and repeat to keep cool: it is folly to think one will win at games determined randomly; besides, seeking to prosper through one’s companions’ losses offends nature.

If this parallels certain modern clinical approaches, the book remains nevertheless of its time. Its rhetorical structure imitates Melanchthon. Classical authors are cited throughout: Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, also Cicero, Terence, Ovid, and Virgil; the work’s motto is the Delphic maxim ‘Follow God’, while Aeneas is held up as a role-model—the hero who subdued his desires, directed by reason and the gods. This humoral, humanist emphasis means On Gambling has the potential to yield insights into contemporary thinking about youth, manhood, and so on.

While Pascasius’s clinical approach was unique, his outlook can be contrasted with other sixteenth-century works on gambling. One would be Gerolamo Cardano’s Liber de ludo alea, written about the same time. Cardano, Pascasius’s contemporary at the University of Pavia and, like him, a physician and inveterate gambler, outlined an early form of probability calculus that gamesters might use to help them win at games of chance. He aimed, in short, to master chance; Pascasius held that the mistaken...

审阅者：

• 帕斯卡修斯·贾斯特斯·图尔克 (Pascasius Justus Turcq)论赌博
• 帕特里克·鲍尔

威廉·M·巴顿 (William M. Barton) 翻译了帕斯卡修斯·贾斯特斯·图尔克 (Pascasius Justus Turcq) 唯一已知的作品（“帕斯卡修斯”），开启了 Lysa Publishers 的“新拉丁文本”系列。Lysa Publishers 是早期现代领域的新成员，可能会引起澳大利亚和新西兰中世纪和早期现代研究协会成员的兴趣。这部作品在现代早期经常被引用，然后被遗忘，大约三十年前重新出现。此后出现了德语和法语版本；巴顿是第一本英文版。他的译本附有拉丁文原文。尽管存在一些潜在的误导性校对错误，但这本书的演示仍然具有高标准。该译文具有很强的可读性，考虑到拉丁文公认的曲折性，这一点尤其值得称赞。巴顿的引言解释了这种不优雅的情况：帕斯卡修斯模仿了罗马作家科尼利厄斯·塞尔苏斯的风格和词汇。简介很让人佩服。它涵盖了作者的生活和书籍，以当代历史、早期现代科学和人文主义研究以及随后对赌博和成瘾的研究为背景。因此，脚注和参考书目范围广泛。

为什么要研究帕卡修斯？关于赌博正如其作者本人所宣称的那样，这是对成瘾的第一个临床描述：“它（病态赌博）是一种严重且长期的精神疾病”（第 103 页）。迄今为止，人们仅从道德角度看待问题赌博。直到最近，成瘾研究被认为是从 18 世纪关于酗酒的研究开始的。帕斯卡修斯的重新出现取代了它从启蒙运动到文艺复兴的开端。此外，这意味着成瘾奖学金是从对赌博的调查开始的，赌博是唯一正式承认的非药物滥用成瘾行为。这使得这项工作意义重大。研究早期现代科学和医学的学者应该会发现它内容丰富。帕斯卡修斯（Pascasius），《关于成瘾的评论》，蒙特利尔大学出版社，2014 年）。

同样，它也是研究赌博的人的资源。《论赌博》包括两本书。在第一本书中，帕斯卡修斯将赌博视为一种疾病。与流行的观点相反，贪婪是没有责任的：赌徒是挥霍无度的；守财奴害怕拿钱去冒险。相反，赌徒天真地认为他们可以掌握财富；帕斯卡修斯相信，继盖伦之后，他们的乐观态度和[结束第 274 页]冲动体现了一种温暖幽默的气质。因此，导致人们过度赌博的是生理因素，而不是恶习。在第二本书中，他概述了他的治疗方法：为了对抗这种温暖，我们必须设计寒冷。因输钱而沮丧的赌徒常常发誓放弃他们的活动：他们这样做是因为悲伤使他们感到寒冷，暂时抵消了他们的自然热量。然而，一旦抑郁症消失，他们就会再次发热并旧病复发。帕斯卡修斯提供了​​赌徒可以记住并重复以保持冷静的论点：认为一个人会在随机决定的游戏中获胜是愚蠢的；此外，通过同伴的损失来谋取繁荣是冒犯自然的。

如果这与某些现代临床方法相似，那么这本书仍然属于它的时代。其修辞结构模仿梅兰希顿。全文引用了古典作家：亚里士多德、盖伦和希波克拉底，还有西塞罗、特伦斯、奥维德和维吉尔；该作品的座右铭是德尔斐格言“追随上帝”，而埃涅阿斯则被视为榜样——在理性和众神指导下抑制欲望的英雄。这种幽默、人文主义的强调意味着《论赌博》有可能深入了解当代对青年、男子气概等的思考。

虽然帕斯卡修斯的临床方法很独特，但他的观点可以与其他十六世纪的赌博著作形成鲜明对比。其中之一是杰罗拉莫·卡尔达诺 (Gerolamo Cardano) 的《Liber de ludo alea》，大约在同一时间写成。卡尔达诺是帕斯卡修斯在帕维亚大学的同辈人，和他一样，都是一名医生和顽固的赌徒，他概述了一种早期形式的概率演算，赌徒可以用它来帮助他们在机会游戏中获胜。简而言之，他的目标是掌握机会。帕斯卡修斯认为，错误的...