ABSTRACT
The Arabic reception of Galen's On the Usefulness of the Parts would be a case in which a medical text came to be read as and thus finally transformed into a philosophical-theological treatise in the perception of its non-medical audience. One of the first Arabic treatises which clearly uses Galenic arguments from design probably belongs to this second, indirect transmission. This chapter suggests that the acceptance and reception of Galen's teleological arguments were furthered and facilitated by a peculiarity of the Arabic version of On the Usefulness of the Parts. Medical knowledge concerning, for example, the foetus and its development, the reproductive organs, the process of nourishment, vision, the production of voice, teeth, hair and even the four incorporeal powers or faculties of the body. In that way medical knowledge was transformed into philosophical and theological knowledge, and its audience was enlarged, being directed now not only to physicians, but also to scholars, theologians and philosophers.
