Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/124

 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 ]