Galen Singer P. N. - Galen: Works on Human Nature, Volume 1 - Mixtures (Cambridge Galen Translations)

Galen: Works on Human Nature

Volume I

Mixtures (De Temperamentis)

Mixtures is of central importance for Galens views on the human body. It presents his influential typology of the human organism according to nine mixtures (or temperaments) of hot, cold, dry and wet. It also develops Galens ideal of the well-tempered person, whose perfect balance ensures excellent performance both physically and psychologically. Mixtures teaches the aspiring doctor how to assess the patients mixture by training ones sense of touch and by a sophisticated use of diagnostic indicators. It presents a therapeutic regime based on the interaction between foods, drinks, drugs and the bodys mixture. Mixtures is a work of natural philosophy as well as medicine. It acknowledges Aristotles profound influence while engaging with Hippocratic ideas on health and nutrition, and with Stoic, Pneumatist and Peripatetic physics. It appears here in a new translation, with generous annotation, introduction and glossaries elucidating the argument and setting the work in its intellectual context.

P. N. Singer is a Wellcome Research Fellow in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. His research centres on Graeco-Roman medicine, especially Galen; on the interface of philosophical and medical ideas; and especially on the history of conceptions of the mind, psychology and ethics. He published the first major collection of texts by Galen in English translation ( Galen: Selected Works , 1997) and edited the first volume of Cambridge Galen Translations ( Galen: Psychological Writings , Cambridge, 2013). He is also co-editor of a major study of conceptions of mental illness in the Graeco-Roman world ( Mental Illness in Ancient Medicine: From Celsus to Paul of Aegina , with Chiara Thumiger, 2018), and author of a range of articles on ancient concepts of psychology, the emotions, health, disease classification, pharmacology and physiology, as well as on aspects of ancient drama and performance culture.

Philip J. Van Der Eijk is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Classics and History of Science at the Humboldt University Berlin. He has published on ancient medicine, philosophy and science, comparative literature and patristics. His main research interests are in Graeco-Roman ideas about mental and physical health and the mindbody relationship, in the history of knowledge transfer and in the forms and rhetorical features of scientific and philosophical writing. His books include Aristoteles. De insomniis & De divinatione per somnum (1994), Ancient Medicine in its Socio-Cultural Context (1995, edited with H. F. J. Horstmanshoff and P. H. Schrijvers), Ancient Histories of Medicine (1999, edited), Diocles of Carystus (20002001), Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 2005), Philoponus on Aristotle on the Soul I (20052006), Hippocrates in Context (2005, edited), Nemesius on the Nature of Man (2008, with R. W. Sharples) and Knowledge, Text and Practice in Ancient Technical Writing (Cambridge, 2017, edited with M. Formisano). He is General Editor of the Cambridge Galen Translations .

Piero Tassinari was Lecturer in Classics at Cardiff University until 2017 and Research Associate for the Wellcome-funded project Towards a Galen in English at Newcastle University until 2015. His research focused on ancient medicine, especially theories of fevers and diagnostics in late antiquity. His publications include Pseudo-Alessandro dAfrodisia. Trattato sulla febbre (1994) and Galeno. Gli Elementi secondo la dottrina di Ippocrate. I Temperamenti (1997).

General editor: Philip J. van der Eijk

Galens works represent one of the most impressive monuments of Classical medicine. They dominated medical theory, teaching and practice in the medieval European and Islamic worlds and remained a key source of medical wisdom down to the twentieth century. But his works also concern themselves with all the philosophical issues involved in understanding the human body, soul and health, and in diagnosing and treating illness, and Plato and Aristotle were key influences on his thought. Furthermore, as the court physician of several Roman emperors, Galen is an important source of information about social and cultural life in the early Empire.

Cambridge Galen Translations provides a co-ordinated series of scholarly English translations of works of Galen in a unified format with substantial introduction and annotation, glossaries and indices. Many of the translations have been newly commissioned, while others are revised versions of good translations which have for some time been out of print. Editors and translators are drawn from the worlds leading scholars of Galen and of ancient medicine. The series is intended both to contribute to international Galenic scholarship and to make Galens work more easily accessible for a wider, non-specialist readership including historians and philosophers of science and readers with a medical background.

Galen: Works on Human Nature

Volume I

Mixtures (De Temperamentis )

Translated with Introduction and Notes by

P. N. Singer and Philip J. van der Eijk

with the assistance of

Piero Tassinari

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DOI: 10.1017/9781139149969

Cambridge University Press 2018

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First published 2018

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Galen, author. | Singer, P. N. (Peter N.), 1962 translator, writer of added commentary. | Eijk, P. J. van der (Philip J.), translator, writer of added commentary. | Tassinari, Piero, translator, writer of added commentary. | Contains (expression): Galen. De temperamentis. English. | Galen. Works. English (Cambridge Galen translations)