II. His Medicine and Experimental Science

Galen held as his fundamental theory of nature the view Four which was to prevail through the middle ages, that all nat- and four ural objects upon this globe are composed of four elements, qualities, earth, air, fire, and water,^ and the cognate view, which he says Hippocrates first introduced and Aristotle later dem- onstrated, that all natural objects are characterized by four qualities, hot, cold, dry, and moist. From the combinations of these four are produced various secondary quaHties.^ Neither hypothesis was as yet universally accepted, however, and Galen felt it incumbent upon him to argue against those
^Kiihn, IV, 816. *Kuhn, X, 16-17. J. Leminne,
' Kiihn, IV, 815. Les quatre elements, in Memoires
'Quoted by Eusebius, V, 28, couronnes par I Academie de
and reproduced by Harnack, Bclgique, vol. 65, Brussels, 1903,
Medicinisches aus der dltestcn traces the influence of the theory
Kirchengeschichte, 1892, p. 41, and in medieval thought.
by Finlayson (1895), pp. 9-10. * Kuhn, XIII, 763-4.
140
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Criticism of atom- ism.
Applica- tion of the theory of four quali- ties in medicine.
who contended that the human body and world of nature were made from but one element.^ There were others who ridiculed the four quality hypothesis, saying that hot and cold were words for bath-keepers, not for physicians to deal with. 2 Galen explains that philosophers do not regard any particular variety of earth or any other mineral sub- stance as representing the pure element earth, which in the philosophical sense is an extremely cold and dry substance to which adamant and rocks make perhaps the closest ap- proach. But the earths that we see are all compound bodies.^
Galen rejected the atomism of Democritus and Epicurus, in which the atoms were indivisible particles dififering in shape and size, but not differing in quality as chemical atoms are supposed to do. He credits Democritus with the view that such qualities as color and taste are sensed by us from the concourse of atoms, but do not reside in the atoms them- selves.* Galen also makes the criticism that the mere re- grouping of "impassive and immutable" atoms is not enough to account for the new properties of the compound, which are often very different from those of the constituents, as when "we alter the qualities of medicines in artificial mix- tures." ^ Thus he virtually says that the purely physical atomism of Democritus will not account for what today we call chemical change. He also, as we shall see, rejected Epi- curus' theory of a world of nature ruled by blind chance.
Galen of course thought that a dry medicine was good for a moist disease, and that in a compound medicine, by mixing a very cold with a slightly cold drug in varying pro- portions a medicine of any desired degree of coldness might be obtained.*^ In general he regarded solids like stones and metals as dry and cold, while he thought that hot and moist objects tended to evaporate rapidly into air.'^ So he de- clared that dryness of solid bodies was incurable, while he believed that children's bodies were more easily dissolved
*Kiihn, I, 428. "XIV, 250-53.
*Kiihn, X, iii. «yttt o^q "Kuhn, XII, 166. ^"^' ^^•
*I, 417. 'X, 657.
IV GALEN 141
than adults' because moister and warmer.^ The Stoics and many physicians believed that heat prolonged life, but As- clepiades pointed out that the Ethiopians are old at thirty because the hot sun dries up their bodies so, while the in- habitants of Britain sometimes live to be one hundred and twenty years old. This last, however, was regarded as prob- ably due to the fact that their thicker skins conserved their innate heat longer.^
As an offset to the evidence which will be presented later Galen's of the traces of occult virtues, magic, and astrology in tics'^obso- Galen's therapeutics I should like to be able to indicate the lete. good points in it. But his entire system, like the four qual- ity theory upon which it is largely based, seems now obso- lete, and what evidenced his superiority to other physicians in his own day would probably strike the modern reader only as a token of his distinct inferiority to present practice. Eighty odd years of modern medical progress since have added further emphasis to Daremberg's declaration that we have had to throw overboard "much of his physiology, nearly all of his pathology and general therapeutics." ^
Nevertheless, we may note a few specimens which per- Some of haps represent his ordinary theory and practice as dis- cal no- tinguished from passages in which the influence of magic ^'°"^" enters. He holds that bleeding and cold drink are the two chief remedies for fever.* He notes that children occasion- ally resemble their grandparents rather than their parents.^ He disputes the assertion of Epicurus — one by which some of his followers failed to be guided — that there is no benefit to health in Aphrodite, and contends that at certain intervals and in certain individuals and circumstances sexual inter- course is beneficial.*^ His discussion of anodynes and stu- por or sleep-producing medicines shows that the ancients had anaesthetics of a sort.'^ He recognized the importance
X, 872. dcs Klandios Galcnos, 1894, 204
'XIX, 344-45- pp.
More recently Galen's Materia * X, 624.
medico has been treated of in a " XIV, 253-54.
German doctoral dissertation by ° V, 911.