CHAPTER IVGALEN
I.The Man and His Times
Recent ignorance of Galen—His voluminous works—The manuscript tradition of his works—His vivid personality—Birth and parentage—Education in philosophy and medicine—First visit to Rome—Relations with the emperors; later life—His unfavorable picture of the learned world—Corruption of the medical profession—Lack of real search for truth—Poor doctors and medical students—Medical discovery in his time—The drug trade—The imperial stores—Galen’s private supply of drugs—Mediterranean commerce—Frauds of dealers in wild beasts—Galen’s ideal of anonymity—The ancient book trade—Falsification and mistakes in manuscripts—Galen as a historical source—Ancient slavery—Social life; food and wine—Allusions to Judaism and Christianity—Galen’s monotheism—Christian readers of Galen.
II.His Medicine and Experimental Science
Four elements and four qualities—His criticism of atomism—Application of the theory of four qualities in medicine—His therapeutics obsolete—Some of his medical notions—Two of his cases—His power of rapid observation and inference—His happy guesses—Tendency toward scientific measurement—Psychological tests with the pulse—Galen’s anatomy and physiology—Experiments in dissection—Did he ever dissect human bodies?—Dissection of animals—Surgical operations—Galen’s argument from design—Queries concerning the soul—No supernatural force in medicine—Galen’s experimental instinct—His attitude toward authorities—Adverse criticism of past writers—His estimate of Dioscorides—Galen’s dogmatism; logic and experience—His account of the Empirics—How the Empirics might have criticized Galen—Galen’s standard of reason and experience—Simples knowable only through experience—Experience and food science—Experience and compounds—Suggestions of experimental method—Difficulty of medical experiment—Empirical remedies—Galen’s influence upon medieval experiment—His more general medieval influence.
III.His Attitude Toward Magic
Accusations of magic against Galen—His charges of magic against others—Charms and wonder-workers—Animal substances inadmissiblein medicine—Nastiness of ancient medicine—Parts of animals—Some scepticism—Doctrine of occult virtue—Virtue of the flesh of vipers—Theriac—Magical compounds—Amulets—Incantations and characters—Belief in magic dies hard—On Easily Procurable Remedies—Specimens of its superstitious contents—External signs of the temperaments of internal organs—Marvelous statements repeated by Maimonides—Dreams—Absence of astrology in most of Galen’s medicine—The Prognostication of Disease by Astrology—Critical days—On the History of Philosophy—Divination and demons—Celestial bodies.
ἀλλ’ εἴ τις καταγνῷ μου τόδε, ὁμολογῶ τὸ πάθος τοὐμὸν ὃ παρ’ ὅλον ἐμαυτοῦ τὸν βίον ἔπαθον, οὐδενὶ πιστεύσας τῶν διηγουμένων τὰ τοιαῦτα, πρὶν πειραθῆναι καὶ αὐτὸς ὧν δυνατὸν ἦν εἰς πεῖραν ἐλθεῖν με.
Kühn, IV, 513.
διὸ κᾂν μετ’ ἐμέ τις ὁμοίως ἐμοὶ φιλόπονός τε καὶ ξηλωτικὸς ἀληθείας γένηται, μὴ προπετῶς ἐκ δυοῖν ἢ τριῶν χρήσεων ἀποφαινέσθω. πολλάκις γὰρ αὐτῷ φανεῖται διὰ τῆς μακρᾶς πείρας ὥσπερ ἐφάνη κᾀμοὶ ...
Kühn, XIII, 96-1.
χρὴ γὰρ τὸν μέλλοντα γνώσεσθαί τι τῶν πολλῶν ἄμεινον εὐθὺς μὲν καὶ τῇ φύσει καὶ τῇ πρώτῃ διδασκαλίᾳ πολὺ τῶν ἄλλων διενεγκεῖν ἐπειδὰν δὲ γένηται μειράκιον ἀληθείας τινὸς ἔχειν ἐρωτικὴν μανίαν ὥσπερ ἐνθουσιῶντα, καὶ μήθ’ ἡμέρας μήτε νυκτὸς διαλείπειν σπεύδοντά τε καὶ συντεταμένον ἐκμαθεῖν, ὅσα τοῖς ἐνδοξοτάτοις εἴρηται τῶν παλαιῶν· ἐπειδὰν δ’ ἐκμάθη, κρίνειν αὐτὰ καὶ βασανίζειν χρόνῳ παμπόλλῳ καὶ σκοπεῖν πόσα μὲν ὁμολογεῖ τοῖς ἐναργῶς φαινομένοις πόσα δὲ διαφέρεται καὶ οὕτως τὰ μὲν αἱρεῖσθαι τὰ δ’ ἀποστρέφεσθαι.
Κϋhν, II , 179.
“But if anyone charges me therewith, I confess my disease from which I have suffered all my life long, to trust none of those who make such statements until I have tested them for myself in so far as it has been possible for me to put them to the test.”
“So if anyone after me becomes like me fond of work and zealous for truth, let him not conclude hastily from two or three cases. For often he will be enlightened through long experience, just as I have been.” (It is remarkable that Ptolemy spoke similarly of his predecessor, Hipparchus, as a “lover of toil and truth”—φιλόπονον καὶ φιλαλήθεα, quoted by Orr (1913), 122.)
“For one who is to understand any matter better than most men do must straightway differ much from other persons in his nature and earliest education. And when he becomes a lad he must be madly in love with the truth and carried away by enthusiasm for it, and not let up by day or by night but press on and stretch every nerve to learn whatever the ancients of most repute have said. But having learned it, he must judge the same and put it to the test for a long, long time and observe what agrees with visible phenomena and what disagrees, and so accept the one and reject the other.”
Recent ignorance of Galen.
At the close of the nineteenth century one English student of the history of medicine said, “Galen is so inaccessible to English readers that it is difficult to learn about him at first hand.”[517]Another wrote, “There is, perhaps, no other instance of a man of equal intellectual rank who has been so persistently misunderstood and even misinterpreted.”[518]A third obstacle to the ready comprehension of Galen has been that while more critical editions of some single works have been published by Helmreich and others in recent times,[519]no complete edition of his works has appeared since that of Kühn a century ago,[520]which is now regarded as very faulty.[521]A fourth reason for neglect ormisunderstanding of Galen is probably that there is so much by him to be read.
His voluminous works.
Athenaeus stated that Galen wrote more treatises than 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,[522]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;[523]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, especially 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.”[524]
The manuscript tradition of Galen’s works.
Although the works of Galen are so voluminous, they have reached us for the most part in comparatively late manuscripts,[525]and to some extent perhaps only in their medieval form. The extant manuscripts of the Greek text are mostly of the fifteenth century and represent the enthusiasm 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 middle ages had already absorbed Galen too thoroughly. If it be true, as Dr. Payne contends,[526]that the chief original contributions to medical science of the Renaissance period were the work of men trained in Greek scholarship, this was because, when they failed to get any new ideas from the Greek texts, they turned to the more promising path of experimental research which both Galen and the middle ages had already advocated. The bulky medieval Latin translations[527]of Galen are older than most of the extant Greek texts; there are also versions in Arabic and Syriac.[528]For the last five books of theAnatomical Exercisesthe only extant text is an Arabic manuscript not yet published.[529]
Galen’s vivid personality.
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 life. His works supply an unusual amount of personal information, and throughout his writings, unless he is merely transcribing 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[530]that the exuberance of his imagination and his vanity frequently 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 despatches 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.”[531]
Birth and parentage.
Galen—he does not seem to have been called Claudius until the time of the Renaissance—was born about 129 A.D.[532]at Pergamum in Asia Minor. His father, Nikon, was an architect and mathematician, trained in arithmetic, geometry, 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 nevergrieved over losses of property but managed to get along somehow. He has not minded much when some have vituperated 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 temper and tongue, with which she made life miserable for their household slaves and scolded his father worse than Xanthippe ever did Socrates.[533]
Education in philosophy and medicine.
In one of his works Galen speaks of the passionate love and enthusiasm for truth which has possessed him since boyhood, so that he has not stopped either by day or by night from quest of it.[534]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,[535]he turned to the study of medicine. This incident of the dream shows that neither Galen nor his father, despite their education and intellectual 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.[536]This was about the time that the great mathematician and astronomer, Ptolemy, was completing his observations[537]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 asgeometry and astronomy, music and rhetoric.[538]Galen’s interest in philosophy continued, however, and he wrote many logical and philosophical treatises, most of which are lost.[539]His father died when he was twenty, and it was after this that he went to other cities to study.
First visit to Rome.
Galen returned to Pergamum to practice and was, when but twenty-nine, made the doctor for the gladiators by five successive pontiffs.[540]During his thirties came his first residence at Rome.[541]The article on Galen in Pauly-Wissowa states that he was driven away from Rome by the plague, and inDe libris propriishe does say that, “when the great plague broke out there, I hurriedly departed from the city for my native land.”[542]But inDe prognosticatione ad Epigenemhis explanation is that he became disgusted with the malice of the envious physicians of the capital, and determined to return home as soon as the sedition there was over.[543]Meanwhile he stayed on and gained great fame by his cures but their jealousy and opposition multiplied, so that presently, when he learned that the sedition was over, he went back to Pergamum.
Relations with the emperors: later life.
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 outbreak of the plague there prevented their proceeding with the campaign immediately,[544]and Galen states that the emperors 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 courtphysician to Commodus.[545]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.[546]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 perished 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 published, 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.[547]Galen was still alive and writing during the early years of the dynasty of the Severi, and probably died about 200.
His unfavorable picture of the learned world.
Although the envy of other physicians at Rome and their accusing him of resort to magic arts and divination in his marvelous prognostications and cures were perhaps 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 explain them away as the product of personal bitterness orpessimism. 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. Thestatus bellimay 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, professional 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.
Corruption of the medical profession.
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 themselves 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 practitioners 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 booksstraight 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.[548]
Lack of real search for truth.
Galen more than once complains that there are no real seekers after truth in his time, but that all are intent upon money, political power, or pleasure. You know very well, he says to one of his friends in theDe methodo medendi, that not five men of all those whom we have met prefer to be rather than to seem wise.[549]Many make a great outward display and pretense in medicine and other arts who have no real knowledge.[550]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 practicing the same.[551]Moreover, now-a-days many are trying to teach others what they have never accomplished themselves.[552]Thessalus not only toadied to the rich but secured many pupils by offering to teach them medicine in six months.[553]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.[554]Indeed, Galen himself, by the violence of his invective and the occasional passionateness of his animosity in his controversies with other individuals or schools of medicine, illustrates that state of war in the intellectual world of his age to which we have adverted.
Poor doctors and medical students.
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 medical 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.[555]Many of his fellow-students regarded as a counsel of perfection unattainable by them Galen’s plan of hearing all the different medical sects and comparing their merits and testing their validity.[556]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.
Medical discovery in Galen’s time.
Galen was, it has already been made apparent, an intellectual 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 discovered before, and when he mentions some curative methods recently invented at Rome.[557]
The drug trade.
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 himself and be able to detect adulterated medicines, or the merchants, perfumers, andherbariiwill deceive him.[558]Galen refuses to reveal the methods employed in adulterating opobalsam, which he had investigated personally, lest theevil practice spread further.[559]At Rome at least there were dealers in unguents who corresponded roughly to our druggists. 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 emperors 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 statement that it iscampestris.[560]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.”[561]
The imperial stores.
The emperors kept a special store of drugs of their own and had botanists in Sicily, Crete, and Africa who supplied 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 simples for their own use. Galen mentions a large amount of Hymettus honey in the imperial stores—ἐν ταῖς αὐτοκρατορικαῖς ἀποθήκαις,[562]whence our word “apothecary.”[563]He proves that cinnamon[564]loses its potency with time by his own experience as imperial physician. An assignment of the spice sent to Marcus Aurelius from the land of the barbarians (ἐκ τῆς βαρβάρου) was superior to what had stood stored in wooden jars from the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus 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 populace 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.[565]He praises the Severi, however, for permitting others to use theriac, a noted medicine and antidote of which we shall have more to say presently. Thus, he says, not only have they as emperors received power from the gods, but in sharing their goods freely they are like the gods, who rejoice the more, the more people they save.[566]
Galen’s private supply of drugs:terra sigillata.
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.[567]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 journeying back and forth between Rome and Pergamum in order to stop at Lemnos and procure a supply of the famousterra sigillata, a reddish clay stamped into pellets with the sacred seal of Diana.[568]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 stoppedin 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 enable him to cross the island to the spot where theterra sigillatawas 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.”[569]In another passage Galen advises his readers,if they are ever in Pamphylia, to lay in a good supply of the drugcarpesium.[570]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 supply, and of the surprising chemical change which the misy underwent in the course of these years.[571]
Mediterranean commerce.
Galen speaks of receiving other drugs from Great Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Cappadocia, Pontus, Macedonia, Gaul, Spain, and Mauretania, from the Celts, and even from India.[572]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 bestpetroselinonis that of Macedonia, and merchants export it to almost the entire world just as they do Attic honey and Falernian wine. But thepetroselinoncrop 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. Thebest form of unguent was formerly made only in Laodicea, but now it is similarly compounded in many other cities of Asia Minor.[573]
Frauds of dealers in wild beasts.
We are reminded that parts of animals as well as herbs and minerals were important constituents in ancient pharmacy by Galen’s invective against the frauds of hunters 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.[574]
Galen’s ideal of anonymity.
Besides the ancient drug trade, Galen gives us some interesting glimpses of the publishing trade, if we may so term it, of his time. Writing in old age in theDe methodo medendi,[575]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 request 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 listing his works,[576]and he also is free enough in many of his books in mentioning others which are essential to read before perusing the present volume.[577]Perhaps he felt differently at different times on the question of fame and anonymity. He also objectedto those who read his works, not to learn anything from them, but only in order to calumniate them.[578]
The ancient book trade.
It was in a shop on the Sacra Via that most of the copies of some of Galen’s works were stored when they, together 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 bookstores in Rome are located.[579]There he saw some men disputing whether a certain treatise was his. It was duly inscribedGalenus medicusand 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, declared 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.[580]Galen also complains that notes of his lectures which he has not intended for publication have got abroad,[581]that his servants have stolen and published some of his manuscripts, and that others have been altered, corrupted, and mutilated by those into whose possession they have come, or have been passed off by them in other lands as their own productions.[582]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.[583]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 demonstration by dissection concerning respiration and the voice, Boëthus asked him for commentaries on the subject andsent for stenographers.[584]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.[585]
Falsification and mistakes in manuscripts.
Galen dates the falsification of title pages and contents of books back to the time when kings Ptolemy of Egypt and Attalus of Pergamum were bidding against each other for volumes for their respective libraries.[586]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.[587]A single stroke of the pen or slight erasure will completely change the meaning of a medical prescription. He thinks that such alterations are sometimes malicious and not mere mistakes. So common were they that Menecrates composed a medical work written out entirely in complete words and entitledAutocrator Hologrammatosbecause 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 as a historical source.
Galen’s works contain occasional historical information concerning many other matters than books and drugs. Clinton in hisFasti Romanimade 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 relations are valuable bits of source-material. Trajan was, of course, before his time, but he testifies to the great improvement of the roads in Italy which that emperor had effected.[588]Galen sheds a little light on the vexed questionof 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.[589]
Ancient slavery.
Galen illustrates for us the evils of ancient slavery in an incident which he relates to show the inadvisability of giving way to one’s passions, especially anger.[590]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[591]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 farther and kick their slaves or gouge their eyes out. The emperor 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 compensate him for the loss of an eye. In another passage Galen discusses how many slaves and “clothes” one really needs.[592]