ABSTRACT
Around 1501, the Riminese physician Hieronymus Surianus, tired after his editorial labours on medical and philosophical texts, was dozing at his desk when he received an unexpected visitor. This was none other than Galen himself, wearing Greek dress and complaining that previous editors had inflicted such indignities on his writings that they were now almost unintelligible. The last service rendered by the ghost of “Father Galen” before he disappeared was to recommend as a publisher Bernardinus Benalius of Bergamo, a friend of both Surianus himself and of his own recently deceased publisher, Octavianus Scotus. Such a long-lasting reputation would have gratified the philosopher-doctor from Pergamum, who had sedulously striven throughout his life to ensure that his merits were widely known and properly appreciated. Galenism fared less well in the Latin-speaking world, where Methodist medicine continued to flourish in North Africa.
