George. Sarton - Galen of Pergamon.

Logan Clendening Lectures on the History and

Philosophy of Medicine

Third Series

Galen of Pergamon

by

George Sarton

[ pages reflowed from fuzzy . djvu copy which is sometimes better detailed]

[needs more careful proofing especially the Latin, French and German ]

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PRESS, LAWRENCE, KANSAS... 1954

Copyright, 1954, by the University of Kansas Press

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number:

54-8112

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

BY THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PRESS

LAWRENCE, KANSAS

To be invited to deliver the Clendening Lectures in the University of Kansas was a great privilege, and I would like to begin mine with a tribute to the memory of Dr. Logan Clendening. We were born in the same year, I in Ghent, Belgium, and he in Kansas City, but this was my first visit to his native town, and I never had the honor and pleasure of meeting him in the flesh. Yet, I can see him because of his own words which often revealed his generous nature and because of the words of his friends, in particular, Dr. Ralph H. Major.1 His was an astounding personality, and we owe gratitude to him not only for what he did himself but also for the encouragement he gave to others. He was primarily a physician, but he was a physician who loved old books and old learning, and loved them more and more as he grew older. I need not speak of his collections, which are now the main treasure of the University of Kansas Medical Center. He had travelled widely to obtain them and to visit as a pilgrim the main medical shrines; he was a humanist as well as a physician, a teacher of the humanities, and he influenced many students and colleagues in the same way that Welch, Osier, and Cushing influenced them. The medical profession and indeed all the scientific professions need such men deeply. Kansas City and the University of Kansas were very fortunate to have him in their midst, and they have him forever.

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1. Ralph H. Major: Logan Clendening (Bulletin of the history of medicine 18, 199-206, 1945) with portrait and bibliography.

Galen of Pergamon

As I am writing these lines, the sad news of Dr. Skinner's death reaches me and I would like to evoke his memory also. Though he was primarily a physician and radiologist, under the influence of Dr. Clendening and of Dr. Ralph Major, he became more and more interested in the history of medicine, was appointed a special lecturer in the subject and helped to enrich the Clendening Library. He died in Kansas City on January 11, 1953, at the age of 72 years.2

I delivered two lectures, the first at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, May 1, 1952, the second, the following day at the Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas. The first lecture dealt with the Alexandrian Renaissance, the second with Galen, two subjects separated by an interlude of more than three centuries.

This book reproduces the second lecture as faithfully as possible, but not the first. This requires an explanation, which I am delighted to give, because I feel that there is a great need of it.

My Kansas lectures were spoken lectures, delivered in a living way with a minimum of notes. There is an immense difference between a spoken lecture and a.written paper, and it is a great pity that so few scholars appreciate it and that so many insist on reading aloud learned papers which are meant to be read silently and individually by each reader at his own speed. The difference between a spoken lecture and a written paper is of the same kind as that between a fresco to be seen by a large audience from a distance, and a miniature which should be examined very closely.

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2. For more information, see Medical Center Bulletin, Kansas City, February 1953.

As the speaker must avoid details which the listener could not catch on the wing, it is possible for him to cover a much wider field. For example, in my first lecture, I gave a survey or panorama of the astounding Renaissance which took place in Alexandria in the third century before Christ. I dealt with an apparently endless series of topics, and my written account of them will cover hundreds of pages of the second volume of my History of science . The second lecture was easier to indite, because it dealt mainly with a single personality,it is true, one of the greatest in the whole history of science. Even so, reading it aloud would take almost three hours. In my opinion, the reading aloud of a written paper is a cardinal sin, as deplorable as meretricious writing; it is a wicked procedure, utterly contemptuous of the audience and unfair to it.

As mechanical progress discourages the printing of Greek type, it has become necessary to transcribe the Greek words in our alphabet as exactly as possible. The diphthongs are written as in Greek, with the same vowels (e.g., at, not ae; ei, not i; oi, not oe), except ou, which is written u to conform with English pronunciation (by the way, the Greek ou is not a real diphthong but a single vowel sound). The omicron is always replaced by an o, and hence Greek names are not Latinized but preserve their Greek look and sound. There is really no reason for giving a Latin ending to a Greek name when one is writing not in Latin but in English. Hence, we write "Epicuros," not "Epicurus" (the two u's of the Latin word represent different Greek vowels). We indicate the differences between the short vowels epsilon and omicron and the long ones eta and omega, as we have just done in their names. Hence, we shall write Heron, Philon, but some names have become so familiar to English readers that we must write them in the English way. We cannot help writing "Plato" instead of "Platon" and "Aristotle" instead of "Aristoteles," etc. For more details, see my History of science , p. xvii. 28

February 1953George Sarton

Preface v

1. The Roman World in the Second Century 3
2. Pergamon 6
3. Galen's Life 15
4. Galen's Writings 25
5. The Medical Sects in Galen's Time 30
6. The Anatomist and Physiologist 39
7. The Physician, Surgeon, and Pharmacist 61
8. The Philosopher, Historian, and Philologist 70
9. Character and Style 78
10. Galen's Influence 88

Appendix I. Chronological Summary:

1. Galen 94

2. Roman Emperors 94

3. Galen's Contemporaries Mentioned in the Text 95

Appendix II. Galenic Treatises

Translated from the Arabic 99

Appendix III. Galenic Texts

Available in English Translation 101

Index 109

Illustrations

Map of the Country around Pergamon 7

Plan of the Asclepieion 11

Abbreviations

Indications such as "(HI-2 B.C.)" or "(II-l)" after a name mean two things: (1) the man flourished in the second half of the third century before Christ or in the first half of the second century; (2) he is dealt with in my Introduction.

CMG . Corpus Medicorum Graecorum ediderunt Academiae Berolinensis Havniensis Lipsiensis. Berolini in aedibus Academiae Litterarum , 1927 ff. (Isis 42, 348, also 150).

History of science. Sarton's book of that title, vol. 1, published by the Harvard University Press, 1952. It deals with ancient science down to the end of the fourth century B.C.

Horus. Sarton: A guide to the history of science (xviii +316 p.; Waltham, Mass.: Chronica Botanica, 1952).

Introd. Sarton: Introduction to the history of science (3 vols, in 5; Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1927-48).

Isis . International review devoted to the history of science and civilization (45 vols., 1913-54). Now published by the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.