Introduction

To write a study of Galen, his medicine and his influence is almost to write the history of medicine in miniature. Not only did his conception of Hippocrates and Hippocratic medicine determine until recently the approaches of both doctors and historians to their pre-modern past, but his authority also ensured that alternatives to Galenic medicine were quickly forgotten or disappeared entirely for centuries. Galen’s later influence was arguably even greater than his immediate achievements. Not only did his ideas constitute the basis of learned medicine in Western Europe from the eleventh until the mid-seventeenth century but his therapeutics remained in use for a further 200 years. Galen is continually updating his writings, and although one can establish a rough chronology, and at times identify later cross-references and small additions, the full extent of his alterations cannot be known for certain.