Galen

Abstract

After remaining for a long time in Hippocrates’ shadow, the Galenic corpus has attracted considerable scholarly attention since the 1970s. Born in Pergamum, Roman Asia Minor, in 129 ce, Galen was the most influential physician in antiquity after Hippocrates of Cos (flourished c. 425 bce) and considered himself to be the latter’s legitimate heir. His tremendous impact on the medical world and the wide circulation of his works until the modern era contrast with the way he then faded into a relative obscurity. Galen spent his career mainly in Rome during the reigns of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and Septimius Severus and described himself as both a physician and a philosopher. He was the author of nearly 150 treatises (one-eighth of the entire preserved Greek literature) covering all fields of medicine (anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and therapeutics) without neglecting hygiene, gymnastics, or cosmetics, and other treatises on philosophy, logic, ethics, and the vocabulary of comedy. An important part of his work consisted of commentaries on the main Hippocratic treatises. After the Galenic corpus became a standard in medical education in late Byzantine Alexandria, interest in Galen’s works slowly ebbed, so that by the French Revolution in 1789 Galen had taken a lesser place in medical education than Hippocrates, although some medical schools still taught Galen in translation, most often in Latin. Thus it was not until the 1970s that a full resurgence took hold among medical historians, students of Greek and Roman history, and classical philologists: numerous studies are now available on Galen and Galenic medicine, and this renewed interest has led to fresh discoveries of basically unknown tracts in manuscript holdings. Since the 1980s, thanks to philologists’ constant curiosity about his works, numerous studies were produced and they led to important discoveries as well as to significant renewal of our knowledge of the Galenic corpus. Although a large part of this huge corpus still remains to be translated into a modern language, Galen’s work is finally beginning to receive the attention it deserves from medical doctors, philosophers, historians of medicine, and archeologists.