A Dictionary Of Medical Terms In Galen

Galen (2nd century A.D.), after Hippocrates the most distinguished physician of antiquity, has left us numerous medical works to which no complete Greek-English dictionary or concordance was available until now. This is a dictionary of ancient Greek medical terms as culled from Galen's voluminous works, covering all medical fields: diet, drugs and surgery. It contains approximately 3,000 Greek words and 119,000 citations. Particularly rich is the vocabulary of plant names, which sometimes defy identification. Dealing with terms from the fields of anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacy and surgery this book is essential for the study of medical Greek and will be of interest to both historians of ancient medicine and to classical philologists.

This book presents a translation of and detailed commentary on Galen's De alimentorum facultatibus - his major work on the dynamics and kinetics of various foods. It is thus primarily a physiological treatise rather than a materia medica or a work on pathology. Galen commences with a short section on the epistemology of medicine, with a discussion on the attainment, through apodeixis or demonstration, of scientific truth - a discussion which reveals the Aristotelian roots of his thinking. The text then covers a wide range of foods, both common and exotic. Some, such as cereals, legumes, dairy products and the grape, receive an emphasis that reflects their importance at the time; others are treated more cursorily. Dr Powell, an expert in gastroenterology, discusses Galen's terminology and the background to his views on physiology and pathology in his introduction, while John Wilkins' foreword concentrates on the structural and cultural aspects of the work.

This volume presents the first edition of the Arabic translation, by Hunayn ibn Ishaq, of Galen's Critical Days (De diebus decretoriis), together with the first translation of the text into a modern language. The substantial introduction contextualizes the treatise within the Greek and Arabic traditions. Galen's Critical Days was a founding text of astrological medicine. In febrile illnesses, the critical days are the days on which an especially severe pattern of symptoms, a crisis, was likely to occur. The crisis was thought to expel the disease-producing substances from the body. If its precise timing were known, the physician could prepare the patient so that the crisis would be most beneficial. After identifying the critical days based on empirical data and showing how to use them in therapy, Galen explains the critical days via the moon's influence. In the historical introduction Glen Cooper discusses the translation of the Critical Days in Arabic, and adumbrates its possible significance in the intellectual debates and political rivalries among the 9th-century Baghdad elite. It is argued that Galen originally composed the Critical Days both to confound the Skeptics of his own day and to refute a purely mathematical, rationalist approach to science. These features made the text useful in the rivalries between Baghdad scholars. Al-Kindi (d.c. 866) famously propounded a mathematical approach to science akin to the latter. The scholar-bureaucrat responsible for funding this translation, Muhammad ibn Musa (d. 873), al-Kindi's nemesis, may have found the treatise useful in refuting that approach. The commentary and notes to the facing page translation address issues of translation, as well as important concepts.

Galen's account of the brain is arguably one of the best examples of the apogee of Greek anatomical science, and is an intellectual achievement unmatched until Vesalius. This study provides a detailed and critical examination of Galen's anatomy and physiology of the brain.

The 14 papers of this book represent the first attempt to explore systematically Galen's major contribution in the complex area of ancient pharmacology.

The Alphabet of Galen is a critical edition and English translation of a text describing, in alphabetical order, nearly three hundred natural products - including metals, aromatics, animal materials, and herbs - and their medicinal uses. A Latin translation of earlier Greek writings on pharmacy that have not survived, it circulated among collections of 'authorities' on medicine, including Hippocrates, Galen of Pergamun, Soranus, and Ps. Apuleius. This work presents interesting linguistic features, including otherwise unattested Greek and Latin technical terms and unique pharmacological descriptions. Nicholas Everett provides a window onto the medieval translation of ancient science and medieval conceptions of pharmacy. With a comprehensive scholarly apparatus and a contextual introduction, The Alphabet of Galen is a major resource for understanding the richness and diversity of medical history.

Galen's treatises on the classification and causation of diseases and symptoms are an important component of his prodigious oeuvre, forming a bridge between his theoretical works and his practical, clinical writings. As such, they remained an integral component of the medical teaching curriculum well into the second millennium. This edition was originally published in 2006. In these four treatises (only one of which had been previously translated into English), Galen not only provides a framework for the exhaustive classification of diseases and their symptoms as a prelude to his analysis of their causation, but he also attempts to establish precise definitions of all the key terms involved. Unlike other of his works, these treatises are notably moderate in tone, taking into account different views on structure and causation in a relatively even-handed way. Nonetheless, they are a clear statement of the Dogmatic position on the theoretical foundations of medicine in his time.

Galen, the personal physician of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, wrote what was long regarded as the definitive guide to a healthy diet, and profoundly influenced medical thought for centuries. Based on his theory of the four humours, these works describe the effects on health of a vast range of foods including lettuce, lard, peaches and hyacinths. This book makes all his texts on food available in English for the first time, and provides many captivating insights into the ancient understanding of food and health.