I. Mueller, G. Helmreich, 1884-

1893 ; De victu, ed. Helmreich, 1898; Dc iemperjmentis, ed.
Helmreich, 1904; De usu partium, ed. Helmreich, 1907, 1909.
In Corpus Medicorum Grae- corum, V, 9, 1-2, 1914-1915, The Hippocratic Commentaries, ed. Mewaldt, Helmreich, Westen- berger, Diels, Hieg.
* Carolus Gottlob Kiihn, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, Leipzig, 1821-1833, 21 vols. My citations will be to this edition, unless otherwise specified. An older edition which is often cited is that of Renatus Charterius, Paris, 1679, 13 vols.
° The article on Galen in PW regards some of the treatises as printed in Kiihn as almost un- readable.
120 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
misunderstanding of Galen is probably that there is so much by him to be read. His volu- Athenaeus stated that Galen wrote more treatises than
works.^ any other Greek, and although many are now lost, more particularly of his logical and philosophical writings, his collected extant works in Greek text and Latin translation fill some twenty volumes averaging a thousand pages each. When we add that often there are no chapter headings or other brief clues to the contents,^ which must be ploughed through slowly and thoroughly, since some of the most valuable bits of information come in quite incidentally or by way of unlooked-for digression; that errors in the printed text, and the technical vocabulary with numerous words not found in most classical dictionaries increase the reader's difficulties; ^ and that little if any of the text possesses any present medical value, while much of it is dreary enough reading even for one animated by historical interest, espe- cially if one has no technical knowledge of medicine and surgery : — when we consider all these deterrents, we are not surprised that Galen is little known. "Few physicians or even scholars in the present day," continues the English historian of medicine quoted above, "can claim to have read through this vast collection ; I certainly least of all. I can only pretend to have touched the fringe, especially of the anatomical and physiological works." ^
* Although Kiihn's Index fills a amined long stretches of text
volume, it is far from dependable. from which I have got nothing.
^Liddell and Scott often fail to For the most part, I thought it
allude to germane passages in better not to take time to read the
Galen's works, even when they Hippocratic commentaries. At
include, with citation of some first I was inclined to depend
other author, the word he uses. upon others for Galen's treatises
^ Perhaps at this point a simi- on anatomy and physiology, but larly candid confession by the finally I read most of them in present writer is in order. I have order to learn at first hand of his tried to do a little more than Dr. argument from design and his Payne in his modesty seems ready attitude towards dissection. Fur- to admit of himself, and to look ther than this the reader can prob- over carefully enough not to miss ably judge for himself from my anything of importance those citations as to the extent and works which seemed at all likely depth of my reading. My first to bear upon my particular inter- draft was completed before I dis- est, the history of science and covered that Puschmann had made magic. In consequence I have ex- considerable use of Galen for
IV
GALEN
121
works.
Although the works of Galen are so voluminous, they The have reached us for the most part in comparatively late ^adition^^ manuscripts/ and to some extent perhaps only in their me- of Galen's dieval form. The extant manuscripts of the Greek text are mostly of the fifteenth century and represent the en- thusiasm of humanists who hoped by reviving the study of Galen in the original to get something new and better out of him than the schoolmen had. In this expectation they seem to have been for the most part disappointed ; the mid- dle ages had already absorbed Galen too thoroughly. If it be true, as Dr. Payne contends,^ that the chief original con- tributions to medical science of the Renaissance period were the work of men trained in Greek scholarship, this was be- cause, when they failed to get any new ideas from the Greek texts, they turned to the more promising path of experimen- tal research which both Galen and the middle ages had al- ready advocated. The bulky medieval Latin translations ^ of Galen are older than most of the extant Greek texts ; there are also versions in Arabic and Syriac* For the last five books of the Anatomical Exercises the only extant text is an Arabic manuscript not yet published.^
medical conditions in the Roman Empire in his History of Medi- cal Education, English transla- tion, London, 1891, pp. 93-ii3- For the sake of a complete and well-rounded survey I have thought it best to retain those pas- sages where I cover about the same ground. I have been unable to procure T. Meyer-Steineg, Ein Tag ini Leben des Galen, Jena, 1913, 63 pp.
^ For an account of the MSS see H. Diels, Berl. Akad. Abh. (1905), SSff. Some fragments of Galen's work on medicinal simples exist in a fifth century MS of Dioscorides at Constantinople and have been reproduced by M. Well- mann in Hermes, XXXVIII (1903), 292fif. The first two books of his Trepi TUiv iv ralj Tpo4>als Svva- fieuv were discovered in a Wolf- enbiittel palimpsest of the fifth or sixth century by K. Koch;
see Berl. Akad. Sitzb. (1907), I03ff. 'Lancet (1896), p. II3S- ^ For these see V. Rose, Ana- lecta Graeca et Latina, Berlin, 1864. As a specimen of these medieval Latin translations may be mentioned a collection of some twenty-six treatises in one huge volume which I have seen in the library of Balliol College, Oxford: Balliol 231, a large folio, early 14th century (a note of owner- ship was added in 1334 at Canter- bury) fols. 437, double columned pages. For the titles and incipits of the individual treatises see Coxe (1852).
*A. Merx, "Proben der syri- schen Uebersetzung von Galenus' Schrift iiber die einfachen Heil- mittel," Zeitsch. d. Deutsch. Mor^ gendl. Gcsell. XXXIX (1885).
237-305. * Payne, Lancet (1896), p. 1130.
122
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Galen's vivid per- sonality.
Birth and parentage.
If SO comparatively little is generally known about Galen, it is not because he had an unattractive personality. Nor is it difficult to make out the main events of his hfe. His works supply an unusual amount of personal information, and throughout his writings, unless he is merely transcrib- ing past prescriptions, he talks like a living man, detailing incidents of daily life and making upon the reader a vivid and unaffected impression of reality. Daremberg asserts ^ that the exuberance of his imagination and his vanity fre- quently make us smile. It is true that his pharmacology and therapeutics often strike us as ridiculous, but he did not imagine them, they were the medicine of his age. It is true that he mentions cases which he has cured and those in which other physicians have been at fault, but official war des- patches do the same with their own victories and the enemy's defeats. Vae victis! In Galen's case, at least, posterity long confirmed his own verdict. And dull or obsolete as his medicine now is, his scholarly and intellectual ideals and love of hard work at his art are still a living force, while the reader of his pages often feels himself carried back to the Roman world of the second century. Thus "the magic of literature," to quote a fine sentence by Payne, "brings together thinkers widely separated in space and time." ^
Galen — he does not seem to have been called Claudius until the time of the Renaissance — was born about 129 A.D.* at Pergamum in Asia Minor. His father, Nikon, was an architect and mathematician, trained in arithmetic, geome- try, and astronomy. Much of this education he transmitted to his son, but even more valuable, in Galen's opinion, were his precepts to follow no one sect or party but to hear and judge them all, to despise honor and glory, and to magnify truth alone. To this teaching Galen attributes his own peaceful and painless passage through life. He has never
* Ch. V. Daremberg, Exposition des connaissances de Galien sur I'anatomie, la physiologie, et la pathologic du systcme nerveux, Paris, 1841.
^Lancet (1896), p. 1140.
* Brock (1916), p. xvi, says in 131 A.D. Clinton, Fasti Romani, placed it in 130.
IV GALEN 122,
grieved over losses of property but managed to get along somehow. He has not minded much when some have vitu- perated him, thinking instead of those who praise him. In later life Galen looked back with great affection upon his father and spoke of his own great good fortune in having as a parent that gentlest, justest, most honest and humane of men. On the other hand, the chief thing that he learned from his mother was to avoid her failings of a sharp tem- per and tongue, with which she made life miserable for their household slaves and scolded his father worse than Xan- thippe ever did Socrates.^
In one of his works Galen speaks of the passionate love Education and enthusiasm for truth which has possessed him since boy- o"h'^*'and hood, so that he has not stopped either by day or by night medicine, from quest of it.^ He realized that to become a true scholar required both high natural qualifications and a superior type of education from the start. After his fourteenth year he heard the lectures of various philosophers, Platonist and Peripatetic, Stoic and Epicurean ; but when about seventeen, warned by a dream of his father,^ he turned to the study of medicine. This incident of the dream shows that neither Galen nor his father, despite their education and in- tellectual standards, were free from the current belief in occult influences, of which we shall find many more instances in Galen's works. Galen first studied medicine for four years under Satyrus in his native city of Pergamum, then under Pelops at Smyrna, later under Numisianus at Corinth and Alexandria.^ This was about the time that the great mathematician and astronomer, Ptolemy, was completing his observations ^ in the neighborhood of Alexandria, but Galen does not mention him, despite his own belief that a first-rate physician should also know such subjects as
^ These details are from the De XIX, 59.
cognoscendis curandisque animi * De anatom. administ., Kiihn,
morbis, cap. 8, Kiihn, V, 40-44- II, 217, 224-25, 660. See also XV,
^De naturalihus facultatibus, 136; XIX, 57.
^^' ^9' Kiihn, II, 179. = His recorded astronomical ob-
' Kiihn, X, 609 (De methodo servations extend from 127 to 151
medendi); also XVI, 223; and A.D.
124
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
First visit to Rome.
Relations with the emperors : later life.
geometry and astronomy, music and rhetoric.^ Galen's in- terest in philosophy continued, however, and he wrote many logical and philosophical treatises, most of which are lost.^ His father died when he was twenty, and it was after this that he went to other cities to study.
Galen returned to Pergamum to practice and was, when but twenty-nine, made the doctor for the gladiators by five successive pontiffs.^ During his thirties came his first resi- dence at Rome.* The article on Galen in Pauly-Wissowa states that he was driven away from Rome by the plague, and in De libris pi'opriis he does say that, "when the great plague broke out there, I hurriedly departed from the city for my native land." ^ But in De prognosticatione ad Epi- genem his explanation is that he became disgusted with the malice of the envious physicians of the capital, and deter- mined to return home as soon as the sedition there was over.^ Meanwhile he stayed on and gained great fame by his cures but their jealousy and opposition multiplied, so that pres- ently, when he learned that the sedition was over, he went back to Pergamum.
His fame, however, had come to the imperial ears and he was soon summoned to Aquileia to meet the emperors on their way north against the invading Germans. An out- break of the plague there prevented their proceeding with the campaign immediately,"^ and Galen states that the em- perors fled for Rome with a few troops, leaving the rest to suffer from the plague and cold winter. On the way Lucius Verus died, and when Marcus Aurelius finally returned to the front, he allowed Galen to go back to Rome as court
^Kiihn, X, i6.
^Fragments du commcntaire de G alien siir le Timce de Plat on, were published for the first time, both in Greek and a French trans- lation, together with an Essai sur Galien considcrc comme philo- sophe, by Ch. Daremberg, Paris, 1848.
" Kiihn, XIII, 599-6oo.
* Clinton, Fasti Romani, I, 151
and 155, speaks of a first visit of Galen to Rome in 162 and a second in 164, but he has misinterpreted Galen's statements. When Galen speaks of his second visit to Rome, he means his return after the plague.
° Kiihn, XIX, IS.
"Kiihn, XIV, 622, 625, 648; sec also I, 54-57, and XII, 263.
' Kiihn, XIV, 649-50.
IV GALEN 125
physician to Commodus.^ The prevalence of the plague at this time is illustrated by a third encounter which Galen had with it in Asia, when he claims to have saved himself and others by thorough venesection.^ The war lasted much longer than had been anticipated and meanwhile Galen was occupied chiefly in literary labors, completing a number of works. In 192 some of his writings and other treasures were lost in a fire which destroyed the Temple of Peace on the Sacred Way. Of some of the works which thus per- ished he had no other copy himself. In one of his works on compound medicines he explains that some persons may possess the first two books which had already been pub- lished, but that these had perished with others in a shop on the Sacra Via when the whole shrine of peace and the great libraries on the Palatine hill were consumed, and that his friends, none of whom possessed copies, had besought him to begin the work all over again. ^ Galen was still alive and writing during the early years of the dynasty of the Severi, and probably died about 200.
Although the envy of other physicians at Rome and His unfa-
their accusing him of resort to magic arts and divination vorable , . ? . . picture of
m his marvelous prognostications and cures were perhaps the learned neither the sole nor the true reason for Galen's temporary ^°^ withdrawal from the capital, there probably is a great deal of truth in the picture he paints of the medical profession and learned world of his day. There are too many other ancient witnesses, from the encyclopedist Pliny and the satirist Juvenal to the fourth century lawyer and astrologer, Firmicus, who substantiate his charges to permit us to ex- plain them away as the product of personal bitterness or
* R. M. Briau, L'Archiafrie Ro- Merton 219, early 14th century,
maine, Paris, 1877, however, held fol. 2^ — "Incipit liber Galieni
that Galen never received the offi- archistratos medicorum de ma-
cial title, archiater; see p. 24, "il est litia complexionis diversae."
difficile de comprendre pourquoi ^ De venae sectione, Kiihn, XIX,
le medecin de Pergame qui don- 524.
nait des soins a I'empereur Marc ^ Kiihn, XIII, 2^2-62, ; for an-
Aurele, ne fut jamais honore de other allusion to this fire see XIV,
ce titre." But he is given the title 66. Also II, 216; XIX, 19 and 41. in at least one medieval MS —
126
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Corrup- tion of the medical profession.
pessimism. We feel that these men lived in an intellectual society where faction and villainy, superstition and petty- mindedness and personal enmity, were more manifest than in the quieter and, let us hope, more tolerant learned world of our time. Selfishness and pretense, personal likes and dislikes, undoubtedly still play their part, but there is not passionate animosity and open war to the knife on every hand. The stattis belli may still be characteristic of politics and the business world, but scholars seem able to live in substantial peace. Perhaps it is because there is less prospect of worldly gain for members of the learned professions than in Galen's day. Perhaps it is due to the growth of the impartial scientific spirit, of unwritten codes of courtesy and ethics within the leading learned professions, and of state laws concerning such matters as patents, copyright, profes- sional degrees, pure food, and pure drugs. Perhaps, in the unsatisfactory relations between those who should have been the best educated and most enlightened men of that time we may see an important symptom of the intellectual and ethical decline of the ancient world.
Galen states that many tire of the long struggle with crafty and wicked men which they have tried to carry on, relying upon their erudition and honest toil alone, and withdraw disgusted from the madding crowd to save them- selves in dignified retirement. He especially marvels at the evil-mindedness of physicians of reputation at Rome. Though they live in the city, they are a band of robbers as truly as the brigands of the mountains. He is inclined to account for the roguery of Roman physicians compared to those of a smaller city by the facts that elsewhere men are not so tempted by the magnitude of possible gain and that in a smaller town everyone is known by everyone else and questionable practices cannot escape general notice. The rich men of Rome fall easy prey to these unscrupulous prac- titioners who are ready to flatter them and play up to their weaknesses. These rich men can see the use of arithmetic and geometry, which enable them to keep their books
tv GALEN 127
straight and to build houses for their domestic comfort, and of divination and astrology, from which they seek to learn whose heirs they will be, but they have no appreciation of pure philosophy apart from rhetorical sophistry.-^
Galen more than once complains that there are no real Lack of seekers after truth in his time, but that all are intent upon for truth, money, political power, or pleasure. You know very well, he says to one of his friends in the De methodo medendi, that not five men of all those whom we have met prefer to be rather than to seem wise.^ Many make a great outward display and pretense in medicine and other arts who have no real knowledge.^ Galen several times expresses his scorn for those who spend their mornings in going about saluting their friends, and their evenings in drinking bouts or in dining with the rich and powerful. Yet even his friends have reproached him for studying too much and not going out more. But while they have wasted their hours thus, he has spent his, first in learning all that the ancients have discovered that is of value, then in testing and prac- ticing the same.* Moreover, now-a-days many are trying to teach others what they have never accomplished them- selves.' Thessalus not only toadied to the rich but secured many pupils by offering to teach them medicine in six months.^ Hence it is that tailors and dyers and smiths are abandoning their arts to become physicians. Thessalus himself, Galen ungenerously taunts, was educated by a father who plucked wool badly in the women's apartments.''^ Indeed, Galen himself, by the violence of his invective and the occasional passionateness of his animosity in his con- troversies with other individuals or schools of medicine, illustrates that state of war in the intellectual world of his age to which we have adverted.
^■For the statements of this *Kuhn, X, i, y6.
paragraph see Kiihn, XIV, 603-5, • Kiihn X 600 620-23. ' ' ^'
" Kiihn, X, 114. 'Kiihn, X, 4-5.
•Kiihn, XIV, 599-600. 'Kiihn, X, 10.
128
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Poor doc- tors and medical students.
Medical discovery in Galen's time.
The drug trade.
We suggested the possibility that learning compared to other occupations was more remunerative in Galen's day than in our own, but there were poor physicians and medi- cal students then, as well as those greedy for gain or who associated with the rich. Many doctors could not afford to use the rarer or stronger simples and limited themselves to easily procured, inexpensive, and homely medicaments.^ Many of his fellow-students regarded as a counsel of per- fection unattainable by them Galen's plan of hearing all the different medical sects and comparing their merits and test- ing their validity.^ They said tearfully that this course was all very well for him with his acute genius and his wealthy father behind him, but that they lacked the money to pursue an advanced education, perhaps had already lost valuable time under unsatisfactory teachers, or felt that they did not possess the discrimination to select for themselves what was profitable from several conflicting schools.
Galen was, it has already been made apparent, an intel- lectual aristocrat, and possessed little patience with those stupid men who never learn anything for themselves, though they see a myriad cures worked before their eyes. But that, apart from his own work, the medical profession was not entirely stagnant in his time, he admits when he asserts that many things are known to-day which had not been discov- ered before, and when he mentions some curative methods recently invented at Rome.^
Galen supplies considerable information concerning the drug trade in Rome itself and throughout the empire. He often complains of adulteration and fraud. The physician must know the medicinal simples and their properties him- self and be able to detect adulterated medicines, or the mer- chants, perfumers, and herbarii will deceive him.* Galen refuses to reveal the methods employed in adulterating opobalsam, which he had investigated personally, lest the
* Kiihn, XII, 909, 916, and in vol. XIV the entire treatise De reme- diis parabilibus.
* Kiihn, X, 560. "Kiihn, X, loio-ii.
* Kiihn, XIII, 571-72.
IV GALEN 129
evil practice spread further.^ At Rome at least there were dealers in unguents who corresponded roughly to our drug- gists. Galen says there is not an unguent-dealer in Rome who is unacquainted with herbs from Crete, but he asserts that there are equally good medicinal plants growing in the very suburbs of Rome of which they are totally ignorant, and he taxes even those who prepare drugs for the em- perors with the same oversight. He tells how the herbs from Crete come wrapped in cartons with the name of the herb written on the outside and sometimes the further state- ment that it is canipestris.^ These Roman drug stores seem not to have kept open at night, for Galen in describing a case speaks of the impossibility of procuring the medicines needed at once because "the lamps were already lighted." ^
The emperors kept a special store of drugs of their own The and had botanists in Sicily, Crete, and Africa who supplied stcu-es!^ not only them with medicinal herbs, but also the city of Rome as well, Galen says. However, the emperors appear to have reserved a large supply of the finest and rarest sim- ples for their own use. Galen mentions a large amount of Hymettus honey in the imperial stores — kv rals avroKparo- pLKals airodrjKaLs,^ whence our word "apothecary." ^ He proves that cinnamon ^ loses its potency with time by his own ex-
* Kijhn, XIV, 62, and see Pusch- dicitur is qui species aromaticas mann, History of Medical Educa- et res quacunque arti medicine et tion (1891), p. 108. cirurgie necessarias habet penes
^ Kiilin, XIV, 10, 30, 79; and see se et venales exponit," fol. 3.
Puschmann (1891), 109-11, where "According to Hugutius an
there is bibliography of the sub- apothecary is one who collects
ject. samples of various commodities in
^ Kiihn, X, 792. his stores. An apothecary is called
* Kiihn, XIV, 26. one who has at hand and exposes " The meaning of the word for sale aromatic species and all
"apothecary" is explained as fol- sorts of things needful in medi- lows in a fourteenth century cine and surgery." manuscript at Chartres which is "The nest of the fabled cinna- a miscellany of religious treatises mon bird was supposed to contain with a bestiary and lapidary and supplies of the spice, which He- bears the title, "Apothecarius rodotus (III, iii) tells us the moralis monasterii S. Petri Car- Arabian merchants procured by notensis." leaving heavy pieces of flesh for "Apothecarius est, secundum the birds to carry to their nests, Hugucium, qui nonnullas diver- which then broke down under the sarum rerum species in apothecis excessive weight. In Aristotle's suis aggregat. . . . Apothecarius History of Animals (IX, 13) the
130
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE cukvT
Galen's private supply of drugs : terra sigillata.
perience as imperial physician. An assignment of the spice sent to Marcus AureHus from the land of the barbarians (kKTTJs ^ap^apov) was superior to what had stood stored in wooden jars from the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, and An- toninus Pius. Commodus exhausted all the recent supply, and when Galen was forced to turn to what had been on hand in preparing an antidote for Severus, he found it much weaker than before, although not thirty years had elapsed. That cinnamon was a commodity little known to the popu- lace is indicated by Galen's mentioning his loss in the fire of 192 of a few precious bits of bark he had stored away in a chest with other treasures.^ He praises the Severi, however, for permitting others to use theriac, a noted medi- cine and antidote of which we shall have more to say pres- ently. Thus, he says, not only have they as emperors re- ceived power from the gods, but in sharing their goods freely they are like the gods, who rejoice the more, the more people they save."
Galen himself, and apparently other physicians, were not content to rely for medicines either upon the unguent-sellers or the bounty of the imperial stores. Galen stored away oil and fat and left them to age until he had enough to last for a hundred years, including some from his father's lifetime. He used some forty years old in one prescription.^ He also traveled to many parts of the Roman Empire and procured rare drugs in the places where they were produced. Very interesting is his account of going out of his way in jour- neying back and forth between Rome and Pergamum in order to stop at Lemnos and procure a supply of the famous terra sigillata, a reddish clay stamped into pellets with the sacred seal of Diana.* On the way to Rome, instead of journeying on foot through Thrace and Macedonia, he took ship from the Troad to Thessalonica ; but the vessel stopped
nests are shot down with arrows * Kiihn, XIV, 64-66.
tipped with lead. For other allu- ^^./j Pisoncm dc theriaca, Kiihn,
sions to the cinnamon bird in XIV, 217.
classical literature see D'Arcy W. j ' ... vttt
Thompson, A Glossary of Greek ^"""' -^^^^' 704-
5iVrfj, Oxford, 1895, p. 82. "Kuhn, XII, 168-78.
IV GALEN 131
in Lemnos at Myrine on the wrong side of the island, which Galen had not realized possessed more than one port, and the captain would not delay the voyage long enough to en- able him to cross the island to the spot where the terra sigillata was to be found. Upon his return from Rome through Macedonia, however, he took pains to visit the right port, and for the benefit of future travelers gives careful instructions concerning the route to follow and the distances between stated points. He describes the solemn procedure by which the priestess from the neighboring city gathered the red earth from the hill where it was found, sacrificing no animals, but wheat and barley to the earth. He brought away with him some twenty thousand of the little discs or seals which were supposed to cure even lethal poisons and the bite of mad dogs. The inhabitants laughed, however, at the assertion which Galen had read in Dioscorides that the seals were made by mixing the blood of a goat with the earth. Berthelot, the historian of chemistry, believed that this earth was "an oxide of iron more or less hydrated and impure."^ In another passage Galen advises his readers,
* M. Berthelot, "Sur les voyages had replaced the priestess of
de Galien et de Zosime dans I'Ar- Diana. Pierre Belon witnessed it
chipel et en Asie, et sur la matiere on August 6th, 1533. By that time
medicale dans I'antiquite," in there were many varieties of the
Journal dcs Savants (1895), PP- tablets, "because each lord of
382-7. The article is chiefly de- Lemnos had a distinct seal."
voted to showing that an alchem- When Tozer visited Lemnos in
istic treatise attributed to Zosimus 1890 the ceremony was still per-
copies Galen's account of his trips formed annually on August sixth
to Lemnos and Cyprus. Of such and must be completed before
future copying of Galen we shall sunrise or the earth would lose its
encounter many more instances. efficacy. Mohammedan khodjas
As for the terra sigillata, C. J. now shared in the religious cere- S. Thompson, in a paper on mony, sacrificing a lamb. But "Terra Sigillata, a famous medi- in the twentieth century the en- cament of ancient times," pub- tire ceremony was abandoned, lished in the Proceedings of the Through the early modern cen- Seventeenth International Con- turies the terra sigillata continued gress of Medical Sciences. Lon- to be held in high esteem in don, 1913, Section XXIII, pp. western Europe also, and was in- 433-44, tells of various medieval eluded in pharmacopeias as late as substitutes for the Lemnian earth 1833 and 1848. Thompson gives a from other places, and of the in- chemical analysis of a sixteenth teresting_ religious ceremony, per- century tablet of the Lemnian formed in the presence of the earth and finds no evidence there- Turkish officials on only one day in of its possessing any medicinal in the year by Greek monks who property.
132
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Mediter- ranean commerce.
if they are ever in Pamphylia, to lay in a good supply of the drug carpesiiim.^ In the ninth book of his work on medicinal simples he tells of three strata of sory, chalcite, and misy, which he had seen in a mine in Cyprus thirty years before and from which he had brought away a sup- ply, and of the surprising chemical change which the misy underwent in the course of these years. ^
Galen speaks of receiving other drugs from Great Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Cappadocia, Pontus, Macedonia, Gaul, Spain, and Mauretania, from the Celts, and even from In- dia.^ He names other places in Greece and Asia Minor than Mount Hymettus where good honey may be had, and states that much so-called Attic honey is really from the Cyclades, although it is brought to Athens and there sold or reshipped. Similarly, genuine Falernian wine is produced only in a small part of Italy, but other wines like it are prepared by those who are skilled in such knavery. As the best iris is that of Illyricum and the best asphalt is from Judea, so the best petroselinon is that of Macedonia, and merchants export it to almost the entire world just as they do Attic honey and Falernian wine. But the petroselinon crop of Epirus is sent to Thessalonica and there passed off for Macedonian. The best turpentine is that of Chios but a good variety may be obtained from Libya or Pontus. The manufacture of drugs has spread recently as well as the commerce in them. The
Agricola in the sixteenth cen- tury wrote in his work on mining {De re metal., ed. Hoover, 1912, II, 31), "It is, however, very little to be wondered at that the hill in the Island of Lemnos was exca- vated, for the whole is of a reddish-yellow color which fur- nishes for the inhabitants that valuable clay so especially bene- ficial to mankind."
'Kiihn, XIV, 72.
'Kiihn, XII, 226-9. See the article of Berthelot just cited in a preceding note for an explana- tion of the three names and of Galen's experience. Mr. Hoover,
in his translation of Agricola's work on metallurgy (1912), pp. 573-4, says, "It is desirable here to enquire into the nature of the substances given by all of the old mineralogists under the Latinized Greek terms, chalcitis, misy, sory, and melanteria." He cites Dios- corides (V, 75-77) and Pliny (NH, XXXIV, 29-31) on the sub- ject, but not Galen. Yule (1903) I, 126, notes that Marco Polo's account of Tutia and Spodium "reads almost like a condensed translation of Galen's account of Fompliolyx and Spodos."
'Kiihn. XIV, 7-8; XIII, 41 1-2; XII, 215-6.
IV GALEN 133
best form of unguent was formerly made only in Laodicea, but now it is similarly compounded in many other cities of Asia Minor.^
We are reminded that parts of animals as well as herbs Frauds of and minerals were important constituents in ancient phar- j,^^^^^^ macy by Galen's invective against the frauds of hunters beasts, and dealers in wild beasts as well as of unguent-sellers. They do not hunt them at the proper season for securing their medicinal virtues, but when they are no longer in their prime or just after their long period of hibernation, when they are emaciated. Then they fatten them upon improper food, feed them barley cakes to stuff up and dull their teeth, or force them to bite frequently so that virus will run out of their mouths.^
Besides the ancient drug trade, Galen gives us some in- Galen's teresting glimpses of the publishing trade, if we may so _
term it, of his time. Writing in old age in the De methodo ity. medendi,^ he says that he has never attached his name to one of his works, never written for the popular ear or for fame, but fired by zeal for science and truth, or at the urgent re- quest of friends, or as a useful exercise for himself, or, as now, in order to forget his old age. Popular fame is only an impediment to those who desire to live tranquilly and enjoy the fruits of philosophy. He asks Eugenianus, whom he addresses in this passage, not to praise him immoderately before men, as he has been wont to do, and not to inscribe his name in his works. His friends nevertheless prevailed upon him to write two treatises Hsting his works,'* and he also is free enough in many of his books in mentioning others which are essential to read before perusing the pres- ent volume.^ Perhaps he felt differently at different times on the question of fame and anonymity. He also objected
*Kuhn, XIV, 22-23, 77-78; * irepi T03V iSluv Pi^\luv,Ku\\n, XIX,
XIII, 119. Sff. ; and irtpi rns Tdfecjs rcof iSiojy
' Kuhn, XIV, 255-56. The beasts /3i)3Xico;^, XIX,_49 ff.
of course were also in demand for ° See, for instance, in the De
the arena. methodo medcndi itself, X, 895-96
' Kiihn, X, 456-57, opening pas- and 955. sage of the seventh book.
134 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
to those who read his works, not to learn anything from them, but only in order to calumniate them.^ The It was in a shop on the Sacra Via that most of the copies
book"* of some of Galen's works were stored when they, together trade. with the great libraries upon the Palatine, were consumed
in the fire of 192. But in another passage Galen states that the street of the Sandal-makers is where most of the book- stores in Rome are located.^ There he saw some men dis- puting whether a certain treatise was his. It was duly in- scribed Galenus mediais and one man, because the title was unfamiliar to him, bought it as a new work by Galen. But another man who was something of a philologer asked to see the introduction, and, after reading a few lines, de- clared that the book was not one of Galen's works. When Galen was still young, he wrote three commentaries on the throat and lungs for a fellow student who wished to have something to pass off as his own work upon his return home. This friend died, however, and the books got into circulation.^ Galen also complains that notes of his lec- tures which he has not intended for publication have got abroad,* that his servants have stolen and published some of his manuscripts, and that others have been altered, cor- rupted, and mutilated by those into whose possession they have come, or have been passed off by them in other lands as their own productions.^ On the other hand, some of his pupils keep his teachings to themselves and are unwilling to give others the benefit of them, so that if they should die suddenly, his doctrines would be lost.^ But his own ideal has always been to share his knowledge freely with those who sought it, and if possible with all mankind. At least one of Galen's works was taken down from his dictation by short-hand writers, when, after his convincing demonstra- tion by dissection concerning respiration and the voice, Boethus asked him for commentaries on the subject and
'Kiihn, XIV, 651: henceforth '11,217.
this text will generally be cited *XIX, 9.
without name. "XIX, 41.
'XIX, 8. "11,283.
IV
GALEN
135
sent for stenographers.^ Although Galen in his travels often purchased and carried home with him large quantities of drugs, when he made his first trip to Rome he left all his books in Asia.^
Galen dates the falsification of title pages and contents of books back to the time when kings Ptolemy of Egypt and Attains of Pergamum were bidding against each other for volumes for their respective libraries.^ Works were often interpolated then in order to make them larger and so bring a better price. Galen speaks more than once of the deplorable ease with which numbers, signs, and other abbreviations are altered in manuscripts.* A single stroke of the pen or slight erasure will completely change the mean- ing of a medical prescription. He thinks that such altera- tions are sometimes malicious and not mere mistakes. So common were they that Menecrates composed a medical work written out entirely in complete words and entitled Autocrat or H ologrammatos because it was also dedicated to the emperor. Another writer, Damocrates, from whom Galen often quotes long passages, composed his book of medicaments in metrical form so that there might be no mistake made even in complete words.
Galen's works contain occasional historical information concerning many other matters than books and drugs. Clin- ton in his Fasti Roniani made much use of Galen for the chronology of the period in which he lived. His allusions to several of the emperors with whom he had personal re- lations are valuable bits of source-material. Trajan was, of course, before his time, but he testifies to the great im- provement of the roads in Italy which that emperor had effected.^ Galen sheds a little light on the vexed question
Falsifica- tion and mistakes in manu- scripts.
Galen as a
historical
source.
' XIV, 630.
' XIX, 34.
"XV, 109.
*XIII, 995-96; XIV, 31-32.
'X, 633. Duruy refers to the passage in his History of Rome (ed._ J. P. Mahafify, Boston, 1886, V, i, 273), but says, "Extensive sanitary works were undertaken
throughout all Italy, and the cele- brated Galen, who was almost a contemporary, extols their happy effects upon the public health." But Galen does not have sanitary considerations especially in mind, since he mentions Trajan's road- building only by way of illustra- tion, comparing his own systematic
136 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
of the population of the empire, if Pergamum is the place
he refers to in his estimate of forty thousand citizens or one
hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, including women
and slaves but perhaps not children.^
Ancient Galen illustrates for us the evils of ancient slavery in
slavery. . . . ....
an incident which he relates to show the inadvisability of
giving way to one's passions, especially anger.^ Returning from Rome, Galen fell in with a traveler from Gortyna in Crete. When they reached Corinth, the Cretan sent his baggage and slaves from Cenchrea^ to Athens by boat, but himself with a hired vehicle and two slaves went by land with Galen through Megara, Eleusis, and Thriasa. On the way the Cretan became so angry at the two slaves that he hit them with his sheathed sword so hard that the sheath broke and they were badly wounded. Fearing that they would die, he then made off to escape the consequences of his act, leaving Galen to look after the wounded. But later he rejoined Galen in penitent mood and insisted that Galen administer a beating to him for his cruelty. Galen adds that he himself, like his father, had never struck a slave with his own hand and had reproved friends who had broken their slaves' teeth with blows of their fists. Others go far- ther and kick their slaves or gouge their eyes out. The em- peror Hadrian in a moment of anger is said to have blinded a slave with a stylus which he had in his hand. He, too, was sorry afterwards and offered the slave money, but the latter refused it, telling the emperor that nothing could compen- sate him for the loss of an eye. In another passage Galen discusses how many slaves and "clothes" one really needs.*
treatment of medicine to the em- now deserted and beset by wild
peror's great work in repairing beasts so that they would pass
and improving the roads, straight- through populous towns and more
ening them by cut-offs that saved frequented areas. The passage
distance, but sometimes abandon- thus bears witness to a shifting
ing an old road that went straight of population,
over hills for an easier route that ^V, 49.
avoided them, filling in wet and ^ V, 17-19.
marshy spots with stone or cross- ^ Mentioned in Acts, xviii, 18,
ing them by causeways, bridging ". . . having shorn his head in
impassable rivers, and altering Cenchrea : for he had a vow."
routes that led through places *V, 46-47.
IV GALEN 137
Galen also depicts the easy-going, sociable, and pleasure- Social loving society of his time. Not only physicians but men gen- ^nd wine erally begin the day with salutations and calls, then separate again, some to the market-place and lavvr courts, others to v^atch the dancers or charioteers.^ Others play at dice or pursue love affairs, or pass the hours at the baths or in eat- ing and drinking or some other bodily pleasure. In the evening they all come together again at symposia w^hich bear no resemblance to the intellectual feasts of Socrates and Plato but are mere drinking bouts. Galen had no objection, however, to the use of wine in moderation and mentions the varieties from different parts of the Mediterranean world which were especially noted for their medicinal properties.^ He believed that drinking wine discreetly relieved the mind from all worry and melancholy and refreshed it. *'For we use it every day." ^ He affirmed that taken in moderation wine aided digestion and the blood. ^ He classed wine with such boons to humanity as medicines, "a sober and decent mode of life," and "the study of literature and liberal dis- ciplines." ^ Galen's treatise in three books on food values {De aliment oriim faculfatibus) supplies information con- cerning the ancient table and dietary science.
Galen's allusions to Judaism and Christianity are of con- Allusions siderable interest. He scarcely seems to have distinguished and ChriT- between them. In two passages in his treatise on differences tianity. in the pulse he makes incidental allusion to the followers of Moses and Christ, in both cases speaking of them rather lightly, not to say contemptuously. In criticizing Archi- genes for using vague and unintelligible language and not giving a sufficient explanation of the point in question, Galen says that it is "as if one had come to a school of
^X, 3-4. Tralles, "He has in most dis-
*X, 831-36; XIII, 513; XIV, 27- tempers a separate article concern-
29, and 14-19 on the heating and ing wine and I much doubt
storage of wine. whether there be in all nature a
3 jv ^^.7 .rr, "lO""^ excellent medicine than this
iv, 77/-/y. in the hands of a skillful and
* Similarly Milward (1733), p. judicious practitioner." 102, wrote of Alexander of "IV, 821.
138 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Moses and Christ and had heard undemonstrated laws."^ And in criticizing opposing sects for their obstinacy he re- marks that it would be easier to win over the followers of Moses and Christ.^ Later we shall speak more fully of a third passage in De iisu partium^ where Galen criticizes the Mosaic view of the relation of God to nature, representing it as the opposite extreme to the Epicurean doctrine of a purely mechanistic and materialistic universe. This sug- gests that Galen had read some of the Old Testament, but he might have learned from other sources of the Dead Sea and of salts of Sodom, of which he speaks in yet another context.^ According to a thirteenth century Arabian biog- rapher of Galen, he spoke more favorably of Christians in a lost commentary upon Plato's Republic, admiring their morals and admitting their miracles.^ This last, as we shall see, is unlikely, since Galen believed in a supreme Being who worked only through natural law. "A confection ol loachos, the martyr or metropolitan," and "A remedy for headache of the monk Barlama" occur in the third book of the De remediis parabilihus ascribed to Galen, but this third book is greatly interpolated or entirely spurious, citing Galen himself as well as Alexander of Tralles, the sixth century writer, and mentioning the Saracens. Wellmann regards it as composed between the seventh and eleventh centuries of our era.''
Like most thoughtful men of his time, Galen tended to believe in one supreme deity, but he appears to have derived
* Ktihn, VIII, 579, ws eij Mwi)o-ou above passages. Particula 24
Kal Xpiarov diarpitiriv &
ivawoSeiKTOiP aKouri. aere augmentati non sunt pre-
' Ibid., p. 6s7,0aTTovyap &PTISTOVS parati ad disciplinam sicut parati
inrdMuvaovKalXpLarou ixtTa5i56.^€i(v..' fuerunt ad disciplinam moysis et
I have been unable to find a pas- christi socii predictorum. decimo-
sage in which, according to Moses tercio megapulsus."
Maimonides of the twelfth cen- » Kiihn, III, 905-7.
tmy in h\s Aphorisms iroiTi Galen, ,^^^ ^j ^ XII, 372-5.
Galen said that the wealthy phy- 5 t- 1 ro A o
sicians and philosophers of his ^^ F.nlayson (1895) ; PP- 8-9;
time were not prepared for disci- Uarmck Medtcimsches aus der
pline as were the followers of altcstav Kirchengeschichte, Leip-
Moses and Christ. Perhaps it is ^ig, 1892.
a mistranslation of one of the ® Wellmann (1914), P- 16 note.
IV
GALEN 139
this conception from Greek rather than Hebraic sources. It was to philosophy and the Greek mysteries that he turned for revelation of the deity, as we shall see. Hopeless crim- inals were for him those whom neither the Muses nor Soc- rates could reform.^ It is Plato, not Christ, whom in an- other treatise he cites as describing the first and greatest God as ungenerated and good. "And we all naturally love Him, being such as He is from eternity." ^
But while Galen's monotheism cannot be regarded as of Galen's Christian or Jewish origin, it is possible that his argument readers^" from design and supporting theology by anatomy made him more acceptable to both Mohammedan and Christian read- ers. At any rate he had Christian readers at Rome at the opening of the third century, when a hostile controversialist complains that some of them even worship Galen.^ These early Christian enthusiasts for natural science, who also de- voted much time to Aristotle and Euclid, were finally ex- communicated; but Aristotle, Euclid, and Galen were to return in triumph in medieval learning.