124 Greek Medicine 



acknowledge constantly and repeatedly his indebtedness to the 

 Hippocratic writings. Such was the man whose remains, along 

 with the Hippocratic collection, formed the main medical 

 legacy of Greece to the Western world. 



Some of Galen's works are mere drug lists, little superior to 

 those of Dioscorides ; l with the depression of the intelligence 

 that corresponded with the break up of the Roman Empire, it 

 was these that were chiefly seized on and distributed in the West. 

 Attractive too to the debased intellect of the late Roman world 

 were certain spurious, superstitious, and astrological works 

 that circulated in the name of Galen and Hippocrates. 2 The 

 Greek medical writers after Galen were but his imitators and 

 abstractors, but through some of them Galen's works reached 

 the West at a very early period in the Middle Ages. Such 

 abstractors who were early translated into Latin were Oribasius 

 (325-403), Paul of Aegina (625-690), and Alexander of Tralles 

 (525-605). Of the best and most scientific of Galen's works the 

 Middle Ages knew little or nothing. 



Later Galen and Hippocrates became a little more accessible, 

 not by translation from the Greek, but by translation from the 

 Arabic of a Syriac version. The first work to be so rendered 

 was a version of Aphorisms of Hippocrates which, however, as 

 we have seen, were already available in Latin dress, together 

 with the Hippocratic Regimen in acute diseases, and certain 

 works of Galen as corruptly interpreted by Isaac Judaeus. 

 These were rendered from Arabic into Latin by Constantine, 

 an African adventurer who became a monk at Monte Cassino 

 and died there in 1087. Constantine was a wretched craftsman 

 with an imperfect knowledge of both Arabic and Latin. More 

 effective was the great twelfth-century translator from the 



L e. g. TTfpi KpafTfco? Km Siiya/zecos 1 TMV anavTUtv ff)app.aKa>v and the 



2 e. g. De dynamidiis Galeni, Secreta Hippocratis and many astrological 

 tracts. 



