Galen and Galenism

Through this paper, we want to analyze the evolution of Ancient Hippocratic philosophy regarding the humoral theory (the medical concept humorism or humoralism) synthesized by Galen and spread through space and time because of his writings. Starting from Galen's work, De Subtiliante Diaeta, we will try to see how the diet, especially one rich in liquids, modifies the ratio between the four constituent elements of the organism and therefore influences the individual`s relationship with their water and food supply needed for proper bodily functions.
In drawing up this analysis we will pursue both a historiographical approach, regarding Galen's theory, as well as a systematic approach to the primary source. The relationship a man has with the water he drinks or extracts from the consumed food is approached by all written cultures, from the beginning of history to the present day, water being the main necessary element of survival. As many of the Ancient, Medieval and Pre-Modern conceptions have their root in the humoral theories of Hippocrates and Galen, the issue becomes even more relevant as drinking water was not easily accessible (compared to the Contemporary period in developed countries), and water-rich foods provided a great supply of liquids.

Discusses 1) Kalām and the Syro-Arabic transmission of Galen's medico-philosophical writings, in particular On the usefulness of the Bodily Parts, and Nemesius of Emesa's On the Nature of Man; 2) the reception of Abū Bakr al-Rāzī in 10th and 11th century Muʿtazilī thought; includes an edition and translation of two chapters of Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Mazdak's commentary on Ibn Mattawayh's K. al-Tadhkirah fī aḥkām al-jawāhir wa-’l-aʿrāḍ.

Ideas about soul and body – about thinking or remembering, mind and life, brain and self – remain both diverse and controversial in our neurocentric age. The history of these ideas is significant both in its own right and to aid our understanding of the complex sources and nature of our concepts of mind, cognition, and psychology, which are all terms with puzzling, difficult histories. These topics are not the domain of specialists alone, and studies of emotion, perception, or reasoning have never been isolated theoretical endeavours. As Francis Bacon described human philosophy or ‘the knowledge of our selves’, within which he located the study of body, soul, and mind, it ‘deserveth the more accurate handling, by how much it toucheth us more nearly’ (1605/ 2000: 93). The history of ideas in these domains is
particularly challenging given the practical dimensions and implications of theories of mind. Because theories of human nature and debates about body and mind do ‘touch us’ so ‘nearly’,
they attract and can thus reveal, in specific historical contexts, interconnected discourses or associations which may be quite unlike our own. This chapter retains a focus, however, on the history of theories of mind: we address an array of distinctive positi
ons inmetaphysics and psychology which emerged in wider British debate, each with potential religious, moral, and political implications. We proceed by selectively surveying the conceptual inheritance and challenges for British philosophers in the early seventeenth century with regard to both the soul and the humoral temperament of body and mind. We look at some of the eclectic systems developed by British philosophers of the soul in the mid-century period, and at different ways new ideas in both medicine and metaphysics were integrated.

With the rise of Northern and Central European Protestant thought, Portugal and Spain, under the constant heavy influence of the Catholic Church, found themselves under a long intellectual blockade on new knowledge arising from outside their own borders. This situation, in time, signified that Iberian knowledge became trapped in a kind of self reference loop of classical scholasticism. Particularly in the area of medical knowledge, this situation in term meant that there was a gradual approach and blurring of academic knowledge and magical/traditional healing, generating a complex landscape of health professionals both sanctioned and unsanctioned.
Eventually, by the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th, with the growing Enlightenment movement in Europe, a number of physicians, by acquiring positions of relevance as familiares of the inquisition so as to aid in the persecution and conviction of non-academic magical healer, began to have access to European medical literature, leading them to gradually implement and assimilate new medical knowledge into their traditional Galenic formation. As this new stream of knowledge collided with traditional Portuguese Galenic medicine, several physicians can be observed to attempt to negotiate their personal position along a spectrum of traditionalism vs. progress, a gradual movement which would eventually lead to the violent reformation of the Jesuit run University of Coimbra and the banishment of that particular religious order from the country by the Marquis of Pombal in 1759.
This thesis hopes to expose this particular transitional moment in Portuguese medical and chymical knowledge. In particular, given the position of several physicians as familiares of the inquisition, how these articulated and defined concepts such as magic, sorcery and witchcraft into their own transitional practices; from where do these concepts arise (from adherence to traditional Catholic doctrine or more modern concepts of Natural Magic), what powers they attributed to these and how these could be medically treated and remedied.
For this end a number of physicians will be analyzed who can be observed to place themselves on various positions along the traditionalism vs. progress spectrum: João Curvo Semedo, a famous and influential physician, chymist and segredista, by far the most innovative of the analyzed group; Francisco da Fonseca Henriques, personal physician of King John V and harmonizer of tradition and progress; and finally Bernardo Pereira, a strict catholic traditionalist attempting to salvage what he sees as the collapse of traditional knowledge.

Conceptualized as a relationship between the patient, his illness, its resolution, the celestial bodies, and the doctor, and expressed through metaphors, such as divine judgment, or effects of the stars, crises and critical days were important elements of Galenic therapy. While the early Arabic physicians maintained Galenic imagery, Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037ce) and his followers introduced new imagery that omitted supernatural influences, and emphasized physical agents. The crisis was now described as a separation instead of a verdict, and the critical days were caused by the lunar phases alone. The " body politic " metaphor was introduced to describe medical crises. By closely examining the writings of Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288 ce) on the Canon of Ibn Sīnā and the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, these shifts in imagery are analysed in detail, and their implications for our understanding of a period that has been dismissed as " post-decline " and devoid of innovation.

El filonio romano (Philonium Romanum) es un ejemplo de poesía farmacológica. Esta opiata fue concebida por Filón de Tarso, activo durante el primer siglo de nuestra era. El médico de Tarso compuso su antídoto en dísticos elegíacos. Debemos a Galeno la conservación de estos dísticos, pues los reprodujo en el noveno libro de Sobre la composición de los medicamentos según los lugares. La mayor parte de este tratado galénico no se ha traducido al español. A partir de una versión francesa de fin de siglo vertimos por primera vez esta receta a nuestro idioma. Ofrecemos posteriormente una exégesis del poema de Filón.

A reconstruction of the medical instruction of the iatrosophists in
Alexandria (5th–7th century) faces serious problems, because the sources provide us with no information on either their organisation or the biographies of their teachers. Nonetheless, some key points can be established that were characteristic of the teaching of the iatrosophists. These include the medical curriculum, the textbooks used, the type of lectures, the practical training, and the teaching units on philosophical themes. Further, it seems that Gessius initiated this type of teaching, and in the process made numerous borrowings especially from his philosophy teacher Ammonius. Ultimately, the rise in the teaching of the iatrosophists can be explained by different innovations in educational politics that can also be detected in other parts of the Roman Empire at the same time.

The ideal of balance and its association with what is ordered, just, and healthful remained unchanged throughout the medieval period.  The central place allotted to balance in the workings of nature and society also remained unchanged.  What changed within the culture of scholasticism, between approximately 1280 and 1360, was the emergence of a greatly expanded sense of what balance is and can be.  This new "sense" of balance became the basis of a new model of equilibrium, shaped and shared by the most acute and innovative thinkers of the period.  The new equilibrium in turn opened up striking new vistas of imaginative and speculative possibility, making possible a profound rethinking of the world and its workings.

It is well known that Ibn Hindū used many ancient sources for his Miftāḥ al-ṭibb. This article deals with the second, third, fifth and sixth chapters of his work. Their content displays remarkable similarities with what the Alexandrian medical teachers, i.e. the so-called iatrosophists (5th-7th centuries ad), taught in their medical classrooms. A closer comparison with the preserved witnesses of their teaching shows that greater parts of the Miftāḥ al-ṭibb are based on a (lost) Arabic translation of a lecture on Galen's De sectis which was held in Alexandria in late antique times.

By the second quarter of the fourteenth century, in the writings of leading university intellectuals, there is ample evidence for the existence of a strongly relativized world view, one sufficiently powerful to make possible a profound re-imagining of society, nature, and the cosmos.  Considering that before the later thirteenth century this relativized view of the world had but a tangential and inconsistent presence in medieval intellectual culture, this paper attempts to isolate the factors, both social and textual, whose interface might explain its robust emergence at this time.  The paper has three main parts. 
The first part outlines the phenomenon I call “the new relativism” and then provides concrete examples of its presence in two remarkable speculations on nature and the cosmos by Nicole Oresme.  In the second part of the paper, I use the writings of Jean Buridan (Oresme’s near contemporary at the University of Paris in the 1340’s and 50’s), to illustrate the ways in which the marketplace of the fourteenth century was experienced and clearly perceived as a site of relativized order -- one that I argue was sufficiently strong and pervasive to instruct university scholars in the principles of relativized seeing and thinking.  The third section turns to the writings of Galen of Pergamon (c.129-216 CE), which occupied the center of medical learning in the medieval period.  It explores the many layers of relativization that underlie his profound conception of the working human body, and, once again, it speculates on the capacity of Galenic writings, both in themselves and in the context of the expanding marketplace of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in which they were read, to literally teach medieval scholars to see and think in relativized terms.

RESUMO: Tradução de Galeno, De Sectis 1.69.5-1.76.10. Com introdução e notas, seguida de texto grego. Trata-se das seções em que o médico de Pérgamo (129-216 d.C.) apresenta a seita dos Racionalistas ou Dogmáticos, detalhando e explicando seus principais conceitos, abordagem e método, exemplificados por meio de casos práticos. Após, Galeno explora as características divergentes e convergentes entre os Empiristas e os Racionalistas.

ABSTRACT: Greek to Portuguese translation of Galen's De Sectis 1.69.5-1.76.10, with introduction and footnotes, followed by the Greek text. In these sections, the Physician of Pergamon (129-216 AD) displays the sect of the Rationalists or Dogmatists, offering details on their main concepts, approach and method and explaining them through practical examples. After that, Galen shows the divergences and agreements between the Empiricist doctors and the Rationalists ones.

ABSTRACT
Of Poets and Physicians:
Medical and Scientific Thought from the Sicilian School to Dante, 1230-1300
Matteo Pace

In my dissertation, I argue that the medical milieu of the 13th century contributed to shape vernacular secular culture. I demonstrate how the historical and scientific contexts of the Italian peninsula, from the Sicilian school of Frederick II and Manfred to the communal realities of Bologna and Florence, testify to the active reception of the works of Aristotle, Galen, and their Arabic and Western commentators in poetic circles. I show how the Italian 13th century was informed by a high degree of intellectual and scientific knowledge, and how the far-reaching penetration of medical sources connects an emerging vernacular culture to the intricacy of urban networks.
Of Poets and Physicians addresses the following questions: what is the contribution of medical literature to Italian poetry of the 13th century? How can the reception of Aristotelian and Galenic physiological theories help us illuminate the way Medieval literature produced its tropes? Why should we consider these cultural and intellectual environments as productive frames of thought for poetical writings? My dissertation addresses these questions in three macro-chapters.
In the first chapter, On Fluid Memory, I argue that under the patronage and influence of Frederick II and Manfred, the reception of Aristotle’s physiology of the soul informed the tropes of the memory image of the lady engraved into the heart, used by Giacomo da Lentini and the other vernacular poets at court.
In the second chapter, Minding the Brain, I study the influence of Galen and Arabic Galenism on the intellectual circles of the second half of the 13th century. I argue that the influence of the Bolognese Galenism of Taddeo Alderotti informed a great part of Guinizzelli’s poetry, not only with respect to the phenomenology of love, but also in his views on nobility and natural determinism.
In the third chapter, All Things Natural, I combine the Aristotelian discourse on ethics and the Galenic question of temperamental determinism. I analyze how the scientific background on the relationship between bodily balance and the functions of the soul is discussed in Taddeo Alderotti’s translation of an epitome of Aristotelian ethics, and how these debates are reframed in the poetry of Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, and Cino da Pistoia, by virtue of the relationship between love and reason.
While contextualizing the uses of medical thought in the poetical production of philosophical and poetic authors, I demonstrate how the active reception of scientific theories testifies to the high degree and pervasiveness of medical education in the intellectual circles of the 13th century.

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Galen presents a comprehensive account of the afterlife of the corpus of the second-century AD Greek physician Galen of Pergamum. In 31 chapters, written by a range of experts in the field, it shows how Galen was adopted, adapted, admired, contested, and criticised across diverse intellectual environments and geographical regions, from Late Antiquity to the present day, and from Europe to North Africa, the Middle and the Far East.
The volume offers both introductory material and new analysis on the transmission and dissemination of Galen’s works and ideas through translations into Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew and other languages, the impact of Galenic thought on medical practice, as well as his influence in non-medical contexts, including philosophy and alchemy.

El volumen 17 de la colección Brill’s Companions to Classical Reception se ocupa de la recepción de la obra de la prolífica obra  de Galeno desde la antigüedad hasta la era moderna, tanto en el mundo occidental, como en el oriental. El libro, de casi 700 páginas, compila de esta forma toda una serie de trabajos de los mejores especialistas a nivel mundial dedicados al estudio de la circulación de conocimientos y prácticas médicas. Los 31 trabajos que lo conforman abordan la influencia y la interpretación del médico romano en ámbitos tan distantes en tiempo y espacio como la Escuela de Alejandría en época tardo antigua y el mundo chino en época moderna o las traducciones siríacas y el Renacimiento europeo.
Como afirman los editores en la introducción, la recepción de las teorías de Galeno -excepto el gran libro de Owsei Temkin publicado en el año 1973 - no han sido hasta el momento el objeto de un trabajo integral. Por lo tanto, Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Galen reúne un gran número de expertos en los estudios galénicos “(…) in order to provide an introduction and guide to Galen’s long-lasting influence extending across various periods, cultures and intellectual centres” (p.2).  A este primer objetivo se suman otros dos. A saber, el impacto de Galeno en la teoría y la práctica médica, cuya producción ya para el siglo VII dominaba en toda aproximación “racional” a la medicina, así como la recepción del médico romano en ámbitos ajenos a la medicina, como la filosofía, la teología e incluso el arte eclesiástico.

In 1539 Thomas Elyot, humanist and diplomat at the court of Henry VIII, published The Castel of Helth, the first regimen sanitatis writ- ten ex novo in English. Not a simple repeat of medical common- places drawn by Galenic tradition, this work was also aimed to non- physicians and people who could not read Latin. Its prescriptions acted on moral habits and pointed to educate the reader toward rea- soning and virtue. By appealing to the national pride of the English language, Elyot hoped to minder the vocation to excess in the ruling class, which was at that time so pernicious to the public weal.