III. His Attitude Towards Magic

From Galen's habits of critical estimation rather than blind acceptation of authority, of scientific observation, care- ful measurement, and personal experiment, from his bril- liant demonstrations by dissection, and his medical prognos- tication and therapeutics, sane and shrewd for his time, — from these we have now to turn to the other side of the pic- ture, and examine what information his works afford us concerning the magic and astrology in ancient medicine, con- cerning the belief in occult virtues, suspensions, characters, incantations, and the like. We may first consider what he has to say concerning magic and divination as he under- stands those words, and then take up his attitude to those other matters which we look upon as almost equally deserv- ing classification under those heads.
Apollonius of Tyana and Apuleius of Madaura were Accusa- not the only celebrated men of learning in the early Roman ^°"^ic° Empire to be accused of magic ; we have already alluded to against the charges of magic made against Galen by the envious physicians of Rome during his first residence in that city. It is hard to escape the conviction that at that time learned men were very liable to be suspected or accused of magic. Indeed, Galen makes the general assertion that when a phy- sician prognosticates aright concerning the future course of a malady, this seems so marvelous to most men that they would receive him with great affection, if they did not often regard him as a wizard.^ Soon after saying this, Galen begins the story of the prognostications he made and the cure he wrought, when all the other doctors took an oppo- site view of the case.- One of them then jealously sug- gested that Galen's diagnosis was due to divination.^ When asked by what kind of divination, he gave different answers
*XIV, 6oi. »XIV, 605. «XIV, 615.
i66 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
at different times and to different persons, sometimes say- ing by dreams, sometimes by sacrificing, again by symbols, or by astrology. Afterwards such charges against Galen kept multiplying.^ As a result, Galen says that since then he has not gone about advertising his prognostications like a herald, lest the physicians and philosophers hate him the more and slander him as a wizard and diviner, but that he now reveals his discoveries only to his friends.^ In another treatise he represents Hippocrates as saying that a proficient doctor should be able to prognosticate the course of diseases, but adds that contemporary physicians call such a doctor a sorcerer and wonder-worker (7077x0 re /cat ■Kapa.ho^dKoyov') .^ Again in his work on medicinal simples ^ he states that he abstained from testing the supposed virtue of crocodile's blood in sharpening the vision, and the blood of house mice in removing warts, partly because he had other reliable eye- medicines and cures for warts — such as myrmecia, a gem with wart-like lumps, partly because by employing such sub- stances he feared to incur the reputation of a sorcerer, since jealous physicians were already slandering his medical prog- nostications as divination. This last passage affords a good illustration of the close connection with magic of certain natural substances supposed to possess marvelous virtues, while Galen's wart stone also seems magical to the modern reader.
Galen himself sometimes calls other physicians magicians. Certain men with whom he does not agree are called by him "liars or wizards or I don't know what to say," ^ and an- other man who used mouse dung to excess he calls super- stitious and a sorcerer.^ In the same work on simples '^ he says that he will list herbs in alphabetical order as Pamphilus did, but that he will not like him descend to old wives' tales, Egyptian sorceries and incantations, amulets and other mag- ical devices, which not only do not belong in the medical art
'XIV, 625. «XII, 306.
'XIV, 655. .XII ,07
'1, 54-55. ' ^ ^•
'•XII, 263. 'XI, 792-93
IV GALEN 167
but are utterly false. Pamphilus never saw most of the herbs he mentioned, much less tested their virtues, but copied anything he found, piling up names, incantations, and wizardry. Galen accuses Xenocrates Aphrodisiensis also of not having eschewed sorcery, and he notes that medical writers have either said nothing about sweat or what is superstitious and bordering upon magic.-^
Philters, love-charms, dream-draughts, and imprecations Charms Galen regards as impossible or injurious, and intends to ^"^ , have nothing to do with them. He thinks it ridiculous to workers. believe that by such spells one can bewitch one's adversaries so that they cannot plead in court, or conceive or bear chil- dren. He considers it worse to advertise and perpetuate such false or criminal notions in writings than to practice such a crime but once.- In one passage,^ however, to illus- trate his theory that the gods prepare the sperms of plants and animals, and set them going as it were, and afterwards leave them to themselves, Galen compares them to the won- der-workers— who were perhaps not magicians but men similar to our sidewalk fakirs who exhibit mechanical toys— who start things moving and then go away themselves while what they have prepared moves on artificially for a time.
Galen's own works are not entirely free from the magi- Animal cal devices of which he accuses others. We may begin with fnadmiV^^ animal substances, since he himself has testified that the sible in use of sweat, crocodile's blood, and mouse's dung is sug- gestive of magic. Moreover, he attributes more bizarre virtues to the parts of animals than to herbs or stones. In a passage somewhat similar to that in which Pliny * ex- pressed his horror at the use of human blood, entrails, and skulls as medicines, Galen declares that he will not men- tion the abominable and detestable, as Xenocrates and some others have done. The Roman law has long forbidden eat- ing human flesh, while Galen regards even the mention of certain secretions and excrements of the human body as
'XII, 283. "IV, 688.
"XII, 251-53. '^Natural Historv. XXVIII. 2.
i68
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Nastiness of ancient medicine.
Parts of animals.
offensive to modest ears.^ Nevertheless, before long he of- fends against his own standard and describes how he ad- ministered to patients the very substance which he had be- fore characterized as most unmentionable.^ It may also be noted that he repeats unquestioningly such a tale as that the cubs of the bear are born unformed and licked into shape by their mother,^
Further milder illustrations of the fact that such nasty substances were then not merely recommended in books but freely employed in actual medical practice, are seen in the frequent use by one of Galen's teachers of the dung of dogs who for two days before had eaten nothing but bones,* in Galen's own wonderfully successful treatment of a tumor on a rustic's knee with goat dung — which is, however, too sharp for the skins of children or city ladies,^ and in his dis- covery by repeated experience that the dung of doves who take little exercise is less potent than that of those who take much,^ Galen also says that he has known of doctors who have cured many persons by giving them burnt human bones in drink without their knowledge.'''
Galen's medicinal simples include the bile of bulls, hye- nas, cocks, partridges, and other animals.^ A digestive oil can be manufactured by cooking foxes and hyenas, some alive and some dead, whole in oil.^ Galen discusses with perfect seriousness the relative strength of various animal fats, those of the goose, hen, hyena, goat, pig, and so forth.^^ He decides that lion's fat is by far the most potent, with that of the pard next. Among his simples are also found the slough of a snake, a sheepskin, the lichens of horses, a spider's web,^^ and burnt young swallows, for whose intro- duction into medicine he gives Asclepiades credit.^^ Of
'XII, 248, 284-85, 290.
'XII, 293.
* XIV, 255. (To Piso on theriac.)
*XII, 291-92.
"XII, 298.
' XII, 304.
' XII, 342.
"XII, 276-77.
"XII, 367-69.
"XIII, 949-50, 954-55.
"XII, 343. These form the titles of four successive chapters, De simplic, XI, i, caps. 19-22.
" XII, 359. 942-43, 977.
IV GALEN 169
Archigenes' prescriptions for toothache he repeats that which recommended holding for some time in the mouth a frog boiled in water and vinegar, or a dog's tooth, burnt, pul- verized, and boiled in vinegar.^ Cavities may be filled with toasted earth-worms or spiders' eggs diluted with unguent of nard. Teething infants are benefited, if their gums are moistened with dog's milk or anointed with hare's brains.^ For colic he recommends dried cicadas with three, five, or seven grains of pepper.^
Galen is less confident as to the efficacy for earache of Some the multipedes which roll themselves up into a ball, and ^"^^^ icism. which, cooked in oil, are employed especially by rural doctors.^ He is still more sceptical whether the liver of a mad dog will cure its bite.^ Many say so, and he knows of some who have tried it and survived, but they took other remedies too.^ Galen has heard that some who trusted to it alone died. In one treatise "^ Galen discusses the strange virtues of the basilisk in much the usual way, but in his work on simples ^ he remarks drily that it is obviously impossible to employ it in pharmacy, since, if the tales about it be true, men cannot see it and live or even approach it without dan- ger. He therefore will not include it or elephants or Nile horses (hippopotamuses?) or any other animals of which he has had no personal experience.
Galen tries to find some satisfactory explanation of the Doctrine strange properties which he believes exist in so many things, virtue The attractive power of the magnet and of drugs suggests to him that nature in us is divine, as Homer says, and leads like to like and thus shows its divine virtues.^ Galen re- jects Epicurus's explanation of the magnet's attractive power.^° It was that the atoms flowing off from both the magnet and iron fit one another so closely that the two sub-
^ XII, 856. hydrophobia, only tends to make
' XII, 860. their recovery seem the more
' XII, 360. marvelous.
*XII, 366-67. 'XIV, 233.
'XII, 335. " XII, 250-51.
• A fact which — one cannot help ® XIV, 224-25.
remarking — considering the char- "II, 45-48. acter of most ancient remedies for
170
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
stances are drawn together. Galen objects that this does not explain how a whole series of rings can be suspended in a row from a magnet. Galen's teacher Pelops, who claimed to be able to tell the cause of everything, explained why- ashes of river crabs are used for the bite of a mad dog as follows.^ The crab is efficacious against hydrophobia be- cause it is an aquatic animal. River crabs are better for this purpose than salt water crabs because salt dries up moisture. He also thought the ashes of crabs very potent in absorbing the venom. But this type of reasoning is unsat- isfactory to Galen, who finds the best explanation of all such action in the peculiar property, or occult virtue, of the substance as a whole. Upon this subject ^ he proposes to write a separate treatise, and in the fragment De substantia facultatum naturalium ( irepl ovalas rdv ^vclkuiv dvvannav ) he again discusses the matter.^
Among parts of animals Galen regarded the flesh of vipers as especially medicinal, particularly as an antidote to poisons. Of the following cures wrought by vipers' flesh which Galen narrates '^ two were repeated without giving him credit by Aetius of Amida in the sixth, and Bartholomew of England in the thirteenth century, and doubtless by other writers. When Galen was a youth in Asia, some reapers found a dead viper in their jug of wine and so were afraid to drink any of it. Instead they gave it to a man near by who suffered from the terrible skin disease elephantiasis and whom they thought it would be a mercy to put quietly out of his misery. He drank the wine but instead of dying re- covered from his disease. A similarily unexpected cure was effected when a slave wife in Mysia tried to kill her hus-
^XII, 358-59. Concerning the virtue of river crabs we may also quote from a story told in Nias Island, west of Sumatra: "for bad he only eaten river crabs, men would have cast their skin like crabs, and so, renewing their youth perpetually, would never have died." — From J. G. Frazer (1918), I, 67. The belief that the
serpent annually changes its skin and renews its youth may account for the virtues ascribed to the flesh of vipers and to theriac in the following paragraphs,
' TTtpi Toip idioTTjTL TJjj oXijs oialas evepyovvTCJV.
' IV, 760-61, ivepyelv rds oialas kot' 15 lav iKacrT-qv 4>vaLV.
«XII, 311-15.
IV GALEN 171
band by offering him a like drink. A third case was that of a patient whom Galen told of these two previous cures. After resorting- to augTiry to learn if he too should try it and receiving a favorable response, the patient drank wine infected by venom with the result that his elephantiasis changed into leprosy, which Galen cured a little later with the usual drugs. A fourth man, while hunting vipers, was stung by one. Galen bled him, extracted black bile with a drug, and then made him eat the vipers which he had caught and which were prepared in oil like eels. A fifth man, warned by a dream, came from Thrace to Pergamum. An- other dream instructed him both to drink, and to anoint him- self with, a concoction of vipers. This changed his disease into leprosy which in its turn was cured by drugs which the god prescribed.
The flesh of vipers was an important ingredient in the Theriac. famous antidote and remedy called theriac, concerning which Galen wrote two special treatises ^ besides discussing it in his works on simples and antidotes. Mithridates, like King Attains in Galen's native land, had tested the effects of vari- ous drugs upon condemned criminals, and had thus dis- covered antidotes against spiders, scorpions, sea-hares, aco- nite, and other poisons. He then combined the results of his research into one grand compound which should be an antidote against any and every poison. But he did not in- clude the flesh of the viper, which was added with some other changes by Andromachus, chief physician to Nero.^ The divine Marcus Aurelius used to take a dose of theriac daily and it had since come into general use.^ Galen gives a long list of ills which it will cure, including the plague and hydrophobia,'^ and adds that it is beneficial in keeping a man in good health.^ He advises its use when traveling or in wintry weather, and tells Piso that it will prolong his life.^ He explains more than once''^ how to prepare the
^ Ad Pisonem de theriaca; De ^ XIV, 271-80.
theriaca ad Pamphilianum. ° XIV, 283.
' XIV, 2-3. " XIV, 294.
"XIV, 217. 'XII, 317-18; XIV, 45-46, 238.
iy2
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Magical com- pounds.
viper's flesh, why the head and tail must be cut off, how it is cleaned and boiled until the flesh falls from the backbone, how it is mixed with pounded bread into pills, how the flesh of the viper is best in early summer. Galen also accepts the legend,^ quoting six lines of verse from Nicander to that effect, that the viper conceives in the mouth and then bites off the male's head, and that the young viper avenges its father's death by gnawing its way out of its mother's vitals. The Mar si at Rome denied the existence of the dips as or snake whose bite causes one to die of thirst, but Galen is not quite sure whether to agree with them.
Already we have had occasion to refer to Galen's two works on compound medicines which occupy the better part of two bulky volumes in Kiihn's edition and contain a vast number of prescriptions. It is not uncommon for one of these to contain as many as twenty-five ingredients. It seems unlikely that such elaborate concoctions would have been discovered by chance, as the Empirics held, but the modem reader is ready to agree that it was chance, if any- one was ever cured of anything by one of them. Yet Galen, as we have seen, believes that reasons can be given for the ingredients and would not for a moment admit that they are no better than the messes of witches' cauldrons. He argues that, if all diseases could be cured by simples, no one would use compounds, but that they are essential for some diseases, especially such as require the simultaneous application of contrary virtues.- Also where a simple is too strong or weak, it can be toned up or down to just the right strength in a compound. Plasters and poultices seem al- ways to be compounds. Of panaceas Galen is somewhat more chary, except in the case of theriac ; he opines that a medicine which is good for a number of ills cannot be very good for any one of them.'
Procedure as well as substances suggestive of magic is found to some extent in Galen's works. He instructs, for
*XIV, 238-39.
' XIII, 371, 374.
"XIII, 134.
IV GALEN 173
example, to pluck an herb with the left hand before sunrise.^ He also recommends the suspension of a peony to cure epi- lepsy.- He saw a boy who wore this root remain free from that disease for eight months, when the root happened to drop off and the boy soon fell in a fit. When another peony root was hung- about his neck, he remained in good health until Galen for the sake of experiment removed it a second time, whereupon another epileptic fit ensued as before. In this case Galen suggests that perhaps some particles from the root were drawn in by the patient's breathing or altered the surrounding air. In another passage he holds that there is no medical reason to account for the virtues of amulets, but that those who have tested them by experience say that they act by some marvelous antipathy unknown to man.^ A ligature recommended by Galen is to bind about the neck of the patient a viper which has been suffocated by tying sev- eral strings, preferably of marine purple, about its neck.* Galen marvels that sterciis lupimim, even when simply sus- pended from the neck, "sometimes evidently is beneficial." ^ It should not have touched the ground but should have been taken from trees or bushes. It also works better, as Galen has found in his own practice, if suspended by the wool of a sheep who has been torn by a wolf.
While Galen thus employs ligatures and suspensions and Incanta- sanctions magic logic, he draws the line at use of images, characters characters, and incantations. In the passage just cited he goes on to say that he has found other suspended sub- stances efficacious, but not the barbarous names such as wizards use. Some say that the gem jasper comforts the stomach if bound about the abdomen,^ and some wear it in a ring engraved with a dragon and rays,"^ as King Nechepso directs in his fourteenth book. Galen has employed it sus- pended about the neck without any engraving upon it and
^XIII, 242, 'XII, 207.
XI, 859. ' A representation of the
° XII, 573 ; see also XIII, 256. Agathodaemon ; see C. W. King,
XI, 860. The Gnostics and their Remains,
*XII, 295-96. London, 1887, p. 220.
174
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Belief _ in magic dies hard.
On easily i)rocurable remedies.
found it equally beneficial. In illustrating the virtue of human saliva, especially that of a fasting man, Galen tells of a man who promised him to kill a scorpion by means of an incantation which he repeated thrice. But at each repe- tition he spat on the scorpion and Galen afterwards killed one by the same procedure without any incantation, and more quickly with the spittle of a fasting than of a full man.^
The preceding paragraph gives a good illustration of the slow progress of human thought away from magic and towards science. Men are discovering that marvels can be worked as well without characters and incantations. Simi- lar passages may be found in Arabic and Latin medieval writers. But while Galen questions images and incantations, he still clings to the notions of marvelous virtue in a fast- ing man's spittle or in a gem suspended about the neck. And these and other passages in which he clung to old super- stitions were unfortunately equally influential upon suc- ceeding writers, who sometimes, we fear, took them as an excuse for further indulgence in magic. Indeed, we shall find Alexander of Tralles in the sixth century arguing that Galen finally became a believer in the efficacy of incanta- tions. Thus the old notions and practices die hard.
In the treatise on easily procurable remedies, where pop- ular and rustic remedies enter rather more largely than in Galen's other writings, superstitious recipes are also met with more frequently, and, if that be possible, the doses become even more calculated to make one's gorge rise, it being felt that the unfastidious tastes and crude constitu- tions of peasants and the poorer classes can stand more than daintier city patients. Another reason for separate consid- eration of the contents of this treatise is the possibility, al- ready mentioned, that it is interpolated and misarranged, and the fact that it is in part of much later date than Galen.
*XII, 288-89. At II, 163, Galen again accepts the notion that human saliva is fatal to scorpions.
IV GALEN 175
We must limit ourselves to a hasty survey of a few sped- Specimens mens of its prescriptions. Following Archigenes, ligatures pgrstitfous and crowns are employed for headaches.^ In contrast to contents. Galen's previous scepticism concerning depilatories for eye- brows we now find a number mentioned, including the blood of a bed-bug.^ To cure lumbago,^ if the pain is in the right foot, reduce to powder with your right hand the wings of a swallow. Then make an incision in the swallow's leg and draw off all its blood. Skin it and roast it and eat it en- tire. Then anoint yourself all over with the oil for three days and you will marvel at the result. "This has been often proved by experience." To prevent hair from falling out take many bees and burn them and mix with oil and use as an ointment.* For a sty in the eye catch flies, cut off their heads, and rub the sty with the rest of their bodies.'^ A cooked black chameleon performs the double duty of cur- ing toothache and killing mice.^ To extract a tooth in the upper jaw surround it with the worms found in the tops of cabbages; for a lower tooth use the worms on the lower parts of the leaves.'^ Pain in the intestines will vanish, if the patient drinks water in which his feet have been washed.^ A net transferred from a woman's hair to the patient's head acts as a laxative, especially if the net is first heated.^ Vari- ous superstitious devices are suggested to insure the birth of a child of the sex desired.^" Bituminous trefoil, ^^ boiled and applied hot, cures snake or spider bite, but let no one use it who is not so afflicted or it will make him feel as if he was.^^ For cataract is recommended a mixture of equal parts of mouse's blood, cock's gall, and woman's milk,
* XIV, 321. ^ "The Psoranthea bituniinosa oi ' XIV, 349. Linnaeus. It is found on declivi-
* XIV, 386-87. ties near the sea-coast in the south
* XIV, 343. of Europe," says a note in Bostock ' XIV, 413. and Riley's The Natural History -XIV, 427. of Pliny (Bohn Library), IV, 'XIV, 430. 330. Pliny, too (XXI, 88), states *XIV, 471. that trefoil is poisonous itself and "XIV, 472. to be used only as a counter- ^"XIV, 476. And others, "Ut ne poison.
cui penis arrigi possit," and "Ad " XIV, 491 ; a good example of
arrectionem pudendi." the power of suggestion.
176
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
External signs of the tem- peraments of internal organs.
Marvelous statements repeated by Mai- monides.
dried. ^ For pain on one side of the head or face smear with fifteen earthworms and fifteen grains of pepper powdered in vinegar.- To stop a cough wear the tongue of an eagle as an amulet.^ Wearing a root of rhododendron makes one fearless of dogs and would cure a mad dog itself, if it could be tied on the animal."^ A "confection" covering three pages is said to prolong life, to have been used by the emperors, and to have enabled Pythagoras, its inventor, who began to make use of it at the age of fifty, to live to be one hundred and seventeen without disease. "And he was a philosopher and unable to lie about it." ^
It remains to note what there is in Galen's works in the way of divination and astrology. We. are not entirely sur- prised that contemporary doctors confused his medical prognostic with divination, when we read what he has to say concerning the outward signs of hot or cold internal organs. In the treatise, entitled Th'e Healing Art (jexyrj laTpiKT)),^ which Mewaldt says was the most studied of Galen's works and spread in a vast number of medieval Latin manuscript translations,'^ he devotes a number of chapters to such subjects as signs of a hot and dry heart, signs of a hot liver, and signs of a cold lung. Among the signs of a cold brain are excessive excrements from the head, stiff straight red hair, a late birth, mal-nutrition, sus- ceptibility to injury from cold causes and to catarrh, and somnolence.^
In his commentary on the Aphoristns of Hippocrates Galen adds other signs by which it may be foretold whether the child will be a boy or girl to those signs already men- tioned by Hippocrates.^ Some of these seem superstitious enough to us. And it was a case of the evil that men do living after them, for Moses Maimonides, the noted Jewish physician of Cordova in the twelfth century, in his collection
*XIV, 498. *XIV, 502. •XIV. 505. *XIV, S17. •XIV, 567ff.
•I, 305-412.
'GaUn in PW.
'I, 325-6.
•XVII B, 212 and 834.
IV GALEN 177
of Aphorisms, drawn chiefly from the works of Galen, re- peats the following method of prognostication : Puerum cum primo spermatizat perscrutare, quern si invenis habere testiculum dextriim maiorem sinistro, you will know that his first child will be a male, otherwise female. The same may be determined in the case of a girl by a comparison of the size of her breasts. Maimonides also repeats, from Galen's work to Caesar on theriac,^ the story of the ugly man who secured a beautiful son by having a beautiful boy painted on the wall and making his wife keep her eyes fixed upon it. Maimonides also repeats from Galen - the story of the bear's licking its unformed cubs into shape. ^
In another treatise on Diagnosis from Dreams Galen Dreams, makes a closer approach to the arts of divination.* He states that dreams are affected by our daily life and thought, and describes a few corresponding to bodily states or caused by them. He thinks that if you dream you see fire, you are troubled by yellow bile, and if you dream of vapor or dark- ness, by black bile. In diagnosing dreams one should note when they occurred and what had been eaten. But Galen also believes that to some extent the future can be predicted from dreams, as has been testified, he says, by experience.^ We have already mentioned the effect of his father's dream upon Galen's career. In the Hippocratic commentaries ^ he says that some scorn dreams and omens and signs, but that he has often learned from dreams how to prognosticate or cure diseases. Once a dream instructed him to let blood between the index and great fingers of the right hand until the flow of blood stopped of its own accord. "It is neces- sary," he concludes, "to observe dreams accurately both as to what is seen and what is done in sleep in order that you
^ Partic. 6, Kuhn, XIV, 253. edition of the Aphorisms dated
'Kijhn, XIV, 255. 1489 and numbered IA.28878 in
'These passages all come from the British Museum. The same
the 24th Particula of Maimonides' section contains still other marvels
Aphorisms, which is devoted es- from the works of Galen.
pecially to marvels : — "Incipit par- * Kiihn, VI, 832-5.
ticula xxiiii continens aphorismos *VI, 833.
dependentes a miraculis repertis * XVI, 222-23.
in libris medicorum," from an
178
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Lack of
astrology in most of Galen's medicine.
The Prog- nostication of Disease by Astrol- ogy.
may prognosticate and heal satisfactorily." Perhaps he had a dim idea along Freudian lines.
In the ordinary run of Galen's pharmacy and therapeutics there is very little mention or observance of astrological conditions, although Hippocrates is cited as having said that a study of geometry and astronomy — which may v^ell mean astrology — is essential in medicine.^ In the De methodo medendi he often urges the importance of the time of year, the region, and the state of the sky.^ But this expression seems to refer to the weather rather than to the position of the constellations. The dog-star is also occasionally men- tioned,^ and one passage ^ tells how "Aeschrion the Empiric, ... an old man most experienced in drugs and our fellow citizen and teacher," burned live river crabs on a plate of red bronze after the rise of the dog-star when the sun entered Leo and on the eighteenth day of the moon. We are also informed that many Romans are in the habit of taking theriac on the first or fourth day of the moon.^ But Galen ridicules Pamphilus for his thirty-six sacred herbs of the horoscope — or decans, taken from an Egyptian Hermes book.^ On the other hand, one of his objections to the atom- ists is that "they despise augury, dreams, portents, and all astrology," as well as that they deny a divine artificer of the world and an innate moral law to the soul.'^ Thus athe- ism and disbelief in astrology are put on much the same plane.
Whereas there is so little to suggest a belief in astrology in most of Galen's works, we find among them two devoted especially to astrological medicine, namely, a treatise on critical days in which the influence of the moon upon dis- ease is assumed, and the Prognostication of Disease by Astrology. In the latter he states that the Stoics favored astrology, that Diodes Carystius represented the ancients
*I, S3. 'X, 688; XIII, 544; XIV, 285.
*Coeli status, or 1^ KaT&araai^. ■* XII, 356.
X, 593-96, 625, 634, 645, 647-48, ■'XIV, 298.
658, 662, 68s, 737. 759-60, 778, 829, " XI, 798.
etc. 'II, 26-28.
IV GALEN 179
as employing the course of the moon In prognostications, and that, if Hippocrates said that physicians should know physiognomy, they ought much more to learn astrology, of which physiognomy is but a part.^ There follows a state- ment of the influence of the moon in each sign of the zodiac and in its relations to the other planets.^ On this basis is foretold what diseases a man will have, what medical treat- ment to apply, whether the patient will die or not, and if so in how many days. This treatise is the same as that as- cribed in many medieval manuscripts to Hippocrates and translated into Latin by both William of Moerbeke and Peter of Abano.
The treatise on critical days discusses them not by rea- Critical
days. son or dogma, lest sophists befog the plain facts, but solely,
we are told, upon the basis of clear experience.^ Having premised that "we receive the force of all the stars above," "^ the author presents indications of the especially great influ- ence of sun and moon. The latter he regards not as superior to the other planets in power, but as especially governing the earth because of its nearness.^ He then discusses the moon's phases, holding that it causes great changes in the air, rules conceptions and birth, and "all beginnings of ac- tions," ^ Its relations to the other planets and to the signs of the zodiac are also considered and much astrological'tech- nical detail is introduced.'^ But the Pythagorean theory that the numbers of the critical days are themselves the cause of their significance in medicine is ridiculed, as is the doctrine that odd numbers are masculine and even numbers feminine.^ Later the author also ridicules those who talk of seven Pleiades and seven stars in either Bear and the seven gates of Thebes or seven mouths of the Nile.^ Thus he will not accept the doctrine of perfect or magic numbers along with his astrological theory. Much of this rather
»XIX, 529-30. 'IX, 908-10.
^XIX, 534-73. ^IX, 913.
' IX, 794. * IX, 922.
;iX, 901-2. "IX, 935. " IX, 904.
i8o
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
On the
history of philos- ophy.
Divination
and
demons.
long treatise is devoted to a discussion of the duration of a moon, and it is shown that one of the moon's quarters is not exactly seven days in length and that the fractions affect the incidence of the critical days.
A treatise on the history of philosophy, which is marked "spurious" in Kiihn's edition, I have also discovered among the essays of Plutarch where, too, it is classed as spurious.-^ In some ways it is suggestive of the middle ages. After an account of the history of Greek philosophy somewhat in the style of the brief reviews of the same to be found in the church fathers, it adds a sketch of the universe and natural phenomena not dissimilar to some medieval treatises of like scope. There are chapters on the universe, God, the sky, the stars, the sun, the moon, the viagmis annus, the earth, the sea, the Nile, the senses, vision and mirrors, hear- ing, smell and taste, the voice, the soul, breathing, the proc- esses of generation, and so on.
In discussing divination ^ the treatise states that Plato and the Stoics attributed it to God and to divinity of the spirit in ecstasy, or to interpretation of dreams or astrol- ogy or augury. Xenophanes and Epicurus denied it en- tirely. Pythagoras admitted only divination by hariispices or by sacrifice. Aristotle and Dicaearchus admit only div- ination by enthusiasm and by dreams. For although they deny that the human soul is immortal, they think that there is something divine about it. Herophilus said that dreams sent by God must come true. Other dreams are natural, when the mind forms images of things useful to it or about to happen to it. Still others are fortuitous or mere reflec- tions of our desires. The treatise also takes up the subject of heroes and demons.^ Epicurus denied the existence of
*Kuhn, XIX, 22-345. Plutarch, Opera, ed. Didot, De placitis philosophorum, pp. 1065-1114; in Plutarch's Miscellanies and Es- says, English translation, 1889, III, 104-92. The wording of the two versions differs somewhat and in Galen's works it is divided
simply into 2>7 chapters, whereas in Plutarch's works it is divided into five books and many more chapters.
' XIX, 320-21 ; De plac. philos., V, 1-2.
*XIX, 253; De plac. philos., 1,8.
bodies.
IV GALEN i8i
either, but Thales, Plato, Pythagoras, and the Stoics agree that demons are natural substances, while heroes are souls separate from bodies, and are good or bad according to the lives of the men who lived in those bodies.
The treatise also gives the opinions of various Greek Celestial philosophers on the question whether the universe or its component spheres are either animals or animated. Fate is defined on the authority of Heracleitus as "the heavenly body, the seed of the genesis of all things." ^ The question is asked why babies born after seven months live, while those born after eight months die.^ On the other hand, a very brief discussion of how the stars prognosticate does not go into particulars beyond their indication of seasons and weather, and even this Anaximenes ascribed to the effect of the sun alone. ^ Philolaus the Pythagorean is quoted con- cerning some lunar water about the stars^ which reminds one of the waters above the firmament in the first chapter of Genesis.
*Kuhn, XIX, 261-62; De placitis 'XIX, 274; De plac. philos., II,
philosophorum, I, 28 ; " ij 6i et^uap- 19. nkvTj e
T03V ■jr&UTwv ytveaeus." * XIX, 265 ; De plac. philos.,
'XIX, 333. 11,5.
The sources.