GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE 



gamus, he set out to extend his knowledge at 

 the chief seats of medical learning — at 

 Smyrna, at Corinth, and above all at Alex- 

 andria. After nine years he returned a 

 finished physician, already noted for his skill 

 and his authorship of anatomical and physiolog- 

 ical treatises. Again he left his native town, 

 this time for Rome, where he won fame and 

 enmity alike, and the patronage of the great. 

 Perhaps his enemies drove him thence, or the 

 plague may have hastened his departure for 

 the east: not an heroic soul was this extraor- 

 dinary Galen. Emperors called him back, 

 Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius; he came, 

 yet would not accompany the latter on his 

 campaign against the Marcomanni, but under- 

 took the care of the young Commodus, at 

 Rome, — not an absorbing business. The last 

 thirty years of his life were devoted to medical 

 research and authorship; — authorship in- 

 deed! he had composed some four hundred 

 treatises when he died. 



Galen was no condenser! His universal 

 learning, his ready memory, the quick ranging 

 of his mind, his exhaustless powers of argu- 

 ment, his facile rhetoric, conceit of himself, 

 love of belittling others, all piled up the monu- 



[102 ] 



