And to end on a poetic note: Galen’s authorial strategies in the pharmacological books

Abstract

This paper examines the authorial strategies deployed by Galen in his two main pharmacological treatises devoted to compound remedies: Composition of Medicines according to Types and Composition of Medicines according to Places. Some of Galen’s methods of self assertion (use of the first person; writing of prefaces) are conventional. Others have not received much attention from scholars. Thus, here, I examine Galen’s borrowing of his sources’ ‘I’; his use of the phrase ‘in these words’; and his recourse to Damocrates’ verse to conclude pharmacological books. I argue that Galen’s authorial persona is very different from that of the modern author as defined by Roland Barthes. Galen imitates and impersonates his pharmacological sources. This re-enactment becomes a way to gain experience (peira) of remedies and guarantees their efficacy.

Issues pertaining to posology in ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine medical texts

“…When cites remedies of Damocrates, he praises his verseform recipes, because they "are more useful than prose recipes, not only for the sake of memory, but also for the precision in the proportions of the various ingredients" 37,38 . He repeats the same when he mentions the recipes of Andromachus for thēriakē 39 and mithridatium 40 , but he prefers the version written by Damocrates, as more precise 41 . On two occasions, Galen gives a recipe of a golden remedy taken from Asclepiades, and cast in the first person plural: "Straight after [the previous recipe], Asclepiades wrote another thus.…”

The “Galenic Question”: A solution Based on Historical Sources and Mathematical Analysis of Texts

“…Several other studies on Galen, even if they do not contradict the current dating are nevertheless quite critical and capture the complexity of the contents of his writings, compared to the intellectual life of his (presumed) epoch [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. There are many texts attributed to him which, for their style and arguments, scholars consider surely written by other authors -namely a Pseudo Galen (PG) -after Galen of Pergamum's death [1].…”

O Estudo de Claudio Galeno como Fonte de Conhecimento da Anatomia Humana

“…Engajado em manifestações púbicas e debates, interessava-se por todos os ramos do conhecimento com habilidade e entusiasmo e, ao sustentar suas conclusões usando sua capacidade lógica e retórica, despertava animosidade entre alguns colegas32 .Para Galeno, o médico deveria dominar a lógica (arte de pensar), a física (ciência da natureza), a ética (norma de conduta), a filosofia -situada no âmago das ciências -, e a confiança do paciente, fato imprescindível para a cura, e não ser um simples prático de doenças baseado no empirismo 33 . Ele criticou os médicos que dispensavam quaisquer métodos antes de remediarem seus pacientes e ratificava o ensinamento hipocrático de que se deve ajudar o paciente e nunca lhe causar danos34 . Entre as doenças descritas por Galeno estão a malária, a peste e a tuberculose35 .Ele não se preocupou somente com estados anormais de funcionamento do corpo, mas em desenvolver teorias sobre o organismo saudável, os quais são adjacentes à filosofia e fundamentadas nos pensamentos de Aristóteles e de Platão, em harmonia com Hipócrates, quem ele considerava de alta sapiência médica36 .…”