Empirical remedies.
In the treatise on easily procurable remedies ascribed to Galen,[734] in which we have already seen evidence of later interpolation or authorship, some recipes are concluded by such expressions as, “This has been experienced; it works unceasingly,”[735] or “Another remedy tested by us in many cases.”[736] This became a custom in many subsequent medical works, including those of the middle ages. One recipe is introduced by the caution, “But don’t cure anybody unless you have been paid first, for this has been tested in many cases.”[737] But we are left in some doubt whether we should infer that remedies tested by experience are so superior that they call for cash payment rather than credit, or so uncertain that it is advisable that the physician secure his fee before the outcome is known. In the middle ages the word experimentum was used a great deal as a synonym for any medical treatment, recipe, or prescription. Galen approaches this usage, which we have already noticed in Pliny’s Natural History, when he describes “a very important experiment” in bleeding performed by certain doctors at Rome.[738]
Galen’s influence upon medieval experiment.
Indeed Galen appears to have exerted a great influence in the middle ages by his passages concerning experience in particular as well as by his medicine in general. Medieval writers cite him as an authority for the recognition of experience and reason as criteria of truth.[739] Gilbert of England cites “experiences from the book of experiments experienced by Galen,”[740] and we shall find more than one such apocryphal work ascribed to Galen in the middle ages. John of St. Amand seems to have developed seven rules[741] which he gives for discovering experimentally the properties of medicinal simples from what we have heard Galen say on the subject, and in another work, the Concordances, John collects a number of passages about experience from the works of Galen.[742] Peter of Spain, who died as Pope John XXI in 1277, cites Galen in his discussion of “the way of experience” and “the way of reason” in his Commentaries on Isaac on Diets.[743] We have already suggested Galen’s possible influence upon Albertus Magnus, and we might add Roger Bacon who wrote some treatises on medicine. But it is hardly possible to tell whether such ideas were in the air, or were due to Galen individually either in their origin or their transmission. But he made a rather close approach to the medieval attitude in his equal regard for logic and for experimentation.
His more general medieval influence.
The more general influence of Galen upon all sides of the medicine of the following fifteen centuries has often been stated in sweeping terms, but is difficult to exaggerate. His general theories, his particular cures, his occasional marvelous stories, were often repeated or paraphrased. Oribasius has been called “the ape of Galen,” and we shall see that the epithet might with equal reason be applied to Aëtius of Amida. Indeed, as in the case of Pliny, we shall find plenty of instances of Galen’s influence in our later chapters. Perhaps as good a single instance of medieval study of Galen as could be given is from the Concordances of John of St. Amand already mentioned, which bear the alternative title, “Recalled to Mind” (Revocativum memoriae), since they were written to “relieve from toil and worry scholars who often spend sleepless nights in searching for points in the books of Galen.”[744] Or we may note how the associates of the twelfth century translator from the Arabic, Gerard of Cremona, added a list of his works at the close of his translation of Galen’s Tegni, “imitating Galen in the commemoration of his books at the end of the same treatise,” as they themselves state.[745]
Not that medieval men did not make additions of their own to Galen. For instance, the noted Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, in adding his collection of medical Aphorisms to the many previous compilations of this sort by Hippocrates, Rasis (Muhammad ibn Zakariya), Mesuë (Yuhanna ibn Masawaih), and others, states that he has drawn them mainly from the works of Galen, but that he supplements these with some in his own name and some by other “moderns.”[746] Not that Galen was not sometimes criticized or questioned. A later Greek writer, Symeon Seth, ventured to devote a special treatise to a refutation of some of Galen’s physiological views. In it, addressing himself to those “persons who regard you, O Galen, as a god,” he endeavored to make them realize that no human being is infallible.[747] Among the medical treatises of Gentile da Foligno, who was papal physician and performed a public dissection at Padua in 1341,[748] is found a brief argument against Galen’s fifth aphorism.[749] But such criticism or opposition only shows how generally Galen was accepted as an authority.
III. His Attitude Towards Magic
From Galen’s habits of critical estimation rather than blind acceptation of authority, of scientific observation, careful measurement, and personal experiment, from his brilliant demonstrations by dissection, and his medical prognostication and therapeutics, sane and shrewd for his time,—from these we have now to turn to the other side of the picture, and examine what information his works afford us concerning the magic and astrology in ancient medicine, concerning the belief in occult virtues, suspensions, characters, incantations, and the like. We may first consider what he has to say concerning magic and divination as he understands those words, and then take up his attitude to those other matters which we look upon as almost equally deserving classification under those heads.
Accusations of magic against Galen.