Greek Medicine 123 



as well as clinical medicine and surgery. In style they are 

 verbose and heavy and very frequently polemical. They are 

 saturated with a teleology which, at times, becomes excessively 

 tedious. In the anatomical works, masses of teleological 

 explanation dilute the account of often imperfectly described 

 structures. Yet to this element we owe the preservation of 

 the mass of Galen's works, for his intensely teleological point 

 of view appealed to the theological bias both of Western 

 Christianity and of Eastern Islam. Intolerable as literature, 

 his works are a valuable treasure house of medical knowledge and 

 experience, custom, tradition, and history. 



As in the case of the Hippocratic corpus, so in the case of the 

 Galenic corpus we are dealing to some extent with material 

 from various sources. In the case of Galen, however, we have 

 a good standard of genuineness, for he has left us a list of his 

 books which can be checked off against those which we actually 

 possess. The general standpoint of the Galenic is not unlike 

 that of the Hippocratic writings, but the noble vision of the 

 lofty-minded, pure-souled physician has utterly passed aw r ay. 

 In his place we have an acute, honest, very contentious fellow, 

 bristling with energy and of prodigious industry, not unkindly, 

 but loving strife, a thoroughly ' aggressive ' character. He 

 loves truth, but he loves argument quite as much. The value 

 of his philosophical writings, of which some have survived, 

 cannot be discussed here, but it is evident that he is frequently 

 satisfied with purely verbal explanations. An ingenious 

 physiologist, a born experimenter, an excellent anatomist and 

 eager to improve, possessing a good knowledge of the human 

 skeleton and an accurate acquaintance with the internal 

 parts so far as this can be derived from a most industrious 

 devotion to dissection of animals, equipped with all the 

 learning of the schools of Pergamon, Smyrna, and Alexandria, 

 and rich with the experience of a vast practice at Rome, 

 Galen is essentially an ' efficient ' man. He has the grace to 



