Page:The Harveian oration 1896.djvu/31

THE WRITINGS OF GALEN

27 history of medicine which can be found nowhere else, while nearly all that is valuable in the Hippocratic writings could be recovered from Galen. Philosophy and logic are largely discussed, though most of Galen’s works on those subjects are known to be lost. No one could better deserve to be called an encyclopaedist. But what Galen most prided him- self upon was his method. He claimed to have organized medical science and practice so that his disciples could find their way through the tangled maze of medicine, and compared himself to Trajan, who by improving the roads through Italy had made government as well as communica- tion easier. Here we have the clue to the one element in Galen which is not Greek, something of the organizing and governing faculty of Imperial Rome, which he might have derived from personal acquaintance with the rulers of the Latin world 1. His ideal was rather an empire of medicine than a group of republics. This very spirit of system, while it aided his supremacy through so many centuries, is in modern eyes his weakness. For systems are essentially temporary and doomed to decay, while the objective state- ment of original observation will always possess a certain value. It must not be supposed, however, that Galen’s works contain no original observations. There are many and of great value ; but often they have to be dug out of his theoretical expositions like fossils from a rock. The other great fault which both ancients and moderns find in his works is his immense prolixity ; Galen in a way confesses this. But he says, naively, ‘ If I do write long books it is not my fault ; it is the fault of the other people, who will write books full of so many wretched arguments.’ His obscurity often results from extreme subtlety of thought 2.

1 See De Methodo Medendi, lib. ix.

cap. 8 ; Ktihn, x. p. 633. Galen was born 131 a.d., and died probably soon after 200 a.d. He was physician to the joint emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and also to the young Commodus, afterwards emperor. He mentions

Consuls, Praetors, and other dis- tinguished persons as being among his patients, or hearers of his anato- mical lectures, and witnesses of his experiments on animals.

2 De Placitis, iv. 1 ; Kuhn, v. p.

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