Galen

If the work of Hippocrates be taken as representing the foundation upon which the edifice of historical Greek medicine was reared, then the work of GALEN, who lived some six hundred years later, may be looked upon as the summit of the same edifice. He was born in Pergamum A.D. 129, and both there and in other academic centres of the Aegean pursued his medical studies before being appointed physicial to the Pergamene gladiators in 157. Becoming dissatisfied with this type of practice he emigrated to Rome, where he soon won acknowledgement as the foremost medical authority of his time and where, with one brief interruption, he remained until his death in 199. His writings were so numerous and his reputation so influential that he was obliged to furnish his disciples with two handbooks, still extant, On the order of my writings and On my genuine works. Though the standard edition (by C.G. Kühn, 1821-33) runs to twenty-two volumes, On the Natural Faculties is still the only medical treatise of his available in English. Galen's merit is to have crystallised or brought to focus all the best work of the Greek medical schools which had preceded his own time. It is essentially in the form of Galenism that Greek medicine was transmitted to after ages. -- JACKET.

"The reader who after having studied a Hippocratic treatise turns to Galen, Hippocrates' greatest admirer and follower, feels rather bewildered. He misses the clarity and simplicity of the Hippocratic writer, his straightforward way of putting things, and finds Galen verbose, quibbling, hairsplitting at times. However, he should not let himself be discouraged, should keep reading and he will soon discover that Galen was a very great physician who has a great deal to say. Times had changed since the days of Hippocrates; almost six centuries had elapsed, generations of sophists had systematized knowledge and taught the art of disputation, and gone were the days of the democratic city states of ancient Greece. Galen wrote most of his books in imperial Rome, in the whirl of a metropolis that was the capital of the entire Western world. Galen's Hygiene is a real mine of information. It shows how highly developed and sophisticated personal hygiene had become since the days of Hippocrates and Diocles. It was not a hygiene for the masses, for the common people but was addressed to a small upper class, was written "for Greeks and for those who, though born barbarians by nature, yet emulate the culture of the Greeks." The Romans of noble birth in the second century A.D. were no longer the Romans of early republican days who were not afraid to handle the plough and take the sword in hand. They were landowners, politicians, administrators who lived in close connection with the imperial court. They were deeply imbued with Greek culture and had the leisure to devote much attention to their physical wellbeing. They had the time and the means to follow the precepts of Galen's hygiene"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

"Galen's impact on Islamic civilization, mainly on medicine but also on physics and philosophy, was enormous. His most important books were mediated through "summaries" which not only shortened, but in some cases also revised Galenic teachings. Several versions of these summaries exist, and their appreciation is critical for a proper understanding of the development of medieval science. This book presents the first editions, translations, and studies of the remaining summaries to On Critical Days. In Galenic theory, fevers develop towards a crisis which will determine the fate of a patient. The cycle of crisis is known through observation, but the search for the cause leads Galen and his later interpreters into the fields of astrology, arithmology, and more."--

xiii, 143 p. ; 25 cm

Book digitized by Google from the library of Oxford University and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

"This book presents a translation of and detailed commentary on Galen's De alimentorum facultatibus, his major work on the dynamics and kinetics of various foods. It is thus primarily a physiological treatise rather than a materia medica or a work on pathology. Galen commences with short section on the epistemology of medicine, with a discussion on the attainment, through apodeixis, or demonstration, of scientific truth - a discussion which reveals the Aristotelian roots of his thinking. The text then covers a wide range of foods, both common and exotic. Some, such as cereals, legumes, diary products and the grape, receive an emphasis that reflects their importance at the time; others are treated more cursorily. Dr. Powell, a retired physician, discusses Galen's terminology and the background to his views on physiology and pathology in his introduction, while John Wilkins's foreword concentrates on the structural and cultural aspects of the work."--BOOK JACKET.

Galen was probably the greatest medical writer of antiquity and certainly the most prolific. His Anatomical Procedures (c. 200 CE) embodies the results of a lifetime of practical research; it is largely based on verbatim notes of lectures delivered during actual demonstrations of dissection. The work comprises fifteen books, of which only the first eight-and-a-half have survived in the original Greek. An Arabic translation of the complete work has survived, however, and this has made possible the translation of the final six-and-a-half books (parts of book 9 and books 10-15). --Provided by publisher.

"In this forgotten treatise, preserved largely in medieval translations into Arabic and Latin, the greatest medical scientist of antiquity investigates the relationship between conscious and unconscious movements. He looks at the structure of the tongue and the oesophagus, and asks why mental perceptions can have physical effects on the body. Some of his questions still trouble modern scientists, although they would not accept most of his answers. The extensive Introduction and Commentary explain the medical background for non-medical specialists, and discuss the place of this treatise and of anatomy in medieval medicine down to Leonardo da Vinci. As well as being the first English translation of this important work, this is also the first comparative study of medieval translations of the same ancient text, and is based on new editions and collations of all three. The Commentary pays special attention to the linguistic elements involved in making these translations"--Provided by publisher.