Aëtius merely reproduces the superstition of Galen.
Indeed, it was from Galen himself and not from the east that Aëtius at least derived his most strikingly superstitious passages. This was accidentally and convincingly proven by my own experience. It so happened that I wrote an account of the passages in the Tetrabiblos of Aëtius before I had read extensively in Galen’s works. When I came to do so, I found that almost every passage that I had selected to illustrate the superstitious side of Aëtius was contained in Galen: for example, the use as an amulet of a green jasper suspended from the neck by a thread so as to touch the abdomen;[2339] the story of the reapers who found the dead viper in their wine and cured instead of killing the sufferer from elephantiasis to whom they gave the wine to drink;[2340] the tale of his preceptor who roasted river crabs to an ash in a red copper dish in August during dog-days on the eighteenth day of the moon, and administered the powder daily for forty days to persons bitten by mad dogs.[2341] Such passages are usually repeated by Aëtius in such a way as to lead the reader to think them his own experiences, a fact which warns us not to accept the assertions of ancient and medieval authors that they have experienced this or that at their face value, and which makes us wonder if Friend and Milward were not too generous in regarding Aëtius at least as more than a compiler. He also repeats some of Galen’s general observations anent experience as that the virtues of simples are best discovered thus, and that he will not discuss all plants but only those “of which we have information by experience.”[2342] He further reproduces Galen’s attitude of mingled credulity and scepticism concerning the basilisk, combining the two passages into one;[2343] also Galen’s questioning the efficacy of incantations and telling of having seen a scorpion killed by the mere spittle of a fasting man without any incantation.[2344] Like Galen again, he omits all injurious medicaments and expresses the opinion that men who spread the knowledge of such drugs do more harm than actual poisoners who perhaps cause but a single death.[2345] Like Galen he announces his intention to omit all “abominable and detestable recipes and those which are prohibited by law,” mentioning as instances the eating of human flesh and drinking urine or menses muliebres.[2346] But also like Galen, he devotes several chapters to the virtues of human and animal excrement, especially recommending that of dogs after they have been fed on bones for two days.[2347] Somewhat similar to Galen’s recommendation to fill cavities in the teeth with roasted earthworms is the recipe of Aëtius for painless extraction of teeth “without iron.” The tooth must first be thoroughly scraped or the gum cut loose about it, and then sprinkled with the ashes of earthworms. “Therefore use this remedy with confidence, for it has already often been celebrated as a mystery.”[2348] Such use of earthworms continued a feature of medieval dentistry.
Occult science mixed with some scepticism.
Of my original selections from Aëtius very few are now left, and it is not unlikely that they too might be found somewhere in Galen’s works if one looked long enough. Aëtius asserts that drinking bitumen or asphalt in water will prevent hydrophobia from developing,[2349] and recommends for wounds inflicted by sea serpents an application of lead with a slice of the serpent itself.[2350] He takes the following prescription from Oribasius. To cure impotency anoint the big toe of the right foot with oil in which the pulverized ashes of a lizard have been mixed. To check the operation of this powerful stimulant one has merely to wash off the ointment from the toe.[2351] On the other hand, an instance of a sceptical tendency is the citation of the view of Posidonius that the so-called incubus is not a demon but a disease akin to epilepsy and insanity and marked by suffocation, loss of voice, heaviness, and immobility.[2352] It may also be noted that in discussing the medicinal virtues of the beaver’s testicles Aëtius does not include the story of its biting them off in order to escape its hunters.[2353] He does, however, cite several authorities, Piso, Menelbus, Simonides, Aristodemus, and Pherecydes for instances of the remarkable powers of certain animals in discovering the presence of poisons and preserving themselves and their owners from this danger: a partridge who made a great noise and fuss whenever any medicament or poison was being prepared in the house; a pet eagle who would attack anyone in the house who even plotted such a thing; a peacock who would go to the place where the dose had been prepared and raise a clamor, or upset the receptacle containing the potion, or dig up a charm, if it had been buried underground; and a pet ichneumon and parrot who were endowed with very similar gifts.[2354] Aëtius shows a slight tendency in the direction of astrological medicine, giving a list of “times ordained by God” for the risings and settings of various stars, since these affect the air and winds, and since “the bodies of persons in good health, and much more so those of the sick, are altered according to the state of the air.”[2355] But on the whole, of our three authors, Aëtius seems to contain the smallest proportional amount of superstitious medicine and occult science.
Alexander of Tralles.
Alexander of Tralles was the son of a physician and, according to the Byzantine historian, Agathias,[2356] the youngest of a group of five distinguished brothers, including Anthemius of Tralles, architect of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and Metrodorus the grammarian, whom Justinian summoned also to his court. Alexander had visited Italy, Gaul, and Spain as well as all parts of Greece[2357] before settling down in old age, when he could no longer engage in active medical practice,[2358] to the composition of his magnum opus in twelve books beginning with the head, eyes, and ears, and ending with gout and fever. Aside from his citation of Aëtius in the book on fevers, the latest writer named by Alexander is Jacobus Psychrestus, physician to Leo the Great about 474.[2359] It seems rather strange that Alexander says nothing of the pestilence of 542.[2360]
Originality of his work.
Alexander embodied the results of his own practice to a much greater extent than Oribasius and Aëtius. His book is more a record of his own medical observations and experiences than a compilation from past writings, a fact recognized in the first edition which entitled it Practica, and “though he pays a due deference to the ancients, yet he is so far from putting an implicit faith in what they have advanced that he very often dissents from their doctrines.”[2361] Puschmann regarded him as the first doctor for a long time who had done any original thinking,[2362] and esteemed his pathology as highly as his therapeutics had been esteemed by his sixteenth century translator, Guinther of Andernach.[2363] Friend wrote of him in the early eighteenth century, “His method is extremely rational and just and after all our discoveries and improvements in physick scarce anything can be added to it.”[2364] Alexander seems to have been a practitioner of much resource and ingenuity, stopping hemorrhage of the nose by blowing down or fuzz up the nostrils through a hollow reed, and directing patients, a thousand years before the discovery of the Eustachian tube, to sneeze with mouth and nose stopped up in order to dislodge a foreign object from the ear.[2365] According to Milward, Alexander was the first Greek medical writer to mention rhubarb and tape-worms, and the first practitioner to open the jugular veins.[2366] Indeed, Alexander advises blood-letting a great deal, but Milward, whose age still approved of that practice, notes that he was “no ways addicted to those superstitious rules of opening this or that vein in particular cases which several of the ancients and some even among the moderns have been so very fond of.”[2367] Finally, Alexander’s concise and orderly method of presentation compares favorably with that of the classical medical writers.
His medieval influence.
Alexander’s book traveled west, as its author had done, and was current in a free and abbreviated Latin translation from an early date.[2368] In fact, it was from the Latin version that the work was translated into Hebrew and Syriac.[2369] Not only are Latin manuscripts of Alexander’s work as a whole or of extracts from it[2370] found from the ninth century on, while printed editions in Latin were numerous through the sixteenth century, but it was much used and cited by medieval writers such as Constantinus Africanus, Gariopontus,[2371] and Gilbert of England.[2372] It is not, however, always safe to assume that citations of Alexander medicus, encountered in thirteenth century writers on the nature of things like Thomas of Cantimpré and Bartholomew of England, have reference to Alexander of Tralles, since a treatise on fevers is also ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias,[2373] while a work on the pulse and urine in fevers is thought to be by some medieval Alexander.[2374] And medical treatises are sometimes ascribed even to Alexander the Great of Macedon in the medieval manuscripts.[2375]