Apollonius of Tyana and Apuleius of Madaura were not the only celebrated men of learning in the early Roman Empire to be accused of magic; we have already alluded to the charges of magic made against Galen by the envious physicians of Rome during his first residence in that city. It is hard to escape the conviction that at that time learned men were very liable to be suspected or accused of magic. Indeed, Galen makes the general assertion that when a physician prognosticates aright concerning the future course of a malady, this seems so marvelous to most men that they would receive him with great affection, if they did not often regard him as a wizard.[750] Soon after saying this, Galen begins the story of the prognostications he made and the cure he wrought, when all the other doctors took an opposite view of the case.[751] One of them then jealously suggested that Galen’s diagnosis was due to divination.[752] When asked by what kind of divination, he gave different answers at different times and to different persons, sometimes saying by dreams, sometimes by sacrificing, again by symbols, or by astrology. Afterwards such charges against Galen kept multiplying.[753] As a result, Galen says that since then he has not gone about advertising his prognostications like a herald, lest the physicians and philosophers hate him the more and slander him as a wizard and diviner, but that he now reveals his discoveries only to his friends.[754] In another treatise he represents Hippocrates as saying that a proficient doctor should be able to prognosticate the course of diseases, but adds that contemporary physicians call such a doctor a sorcerer and wonder-worker (γόητά τε καὶ παραδοξολόγον).[755] Again in his work on medicinal simples[756] he states that he abstained from testing the supposed virtue of crocodile’s blood in sharpening the vision, and the blood of house mice in removing warts, partly because he had other reliable eye-medicines and cures for warts—such as myrmecia, a gem with wart-like lumps, partly because by employing such substances he feared to incur the reputation of a sorcerer, since jealous physicians were already slandering his medical prognostications as divination. This last passage affords a good illustration of the close connection with magic of certain natural substances supposed to possess marvelous virtues, while Galen’s wart stone also seems magical to the modern reader.
His charges of magic against others.
Galen himself sometimes calls other physicians magicians. Certain men with whom he does not agree are called by him “liars or wizards or I don’t know what to say,”[757] and another man who used mouse dung to excess he calls superstitious and a sorcerer.[758] In the same work on simples[759] he says that he will list herbs in alphabetical order as Pamphilus did, but that he will not like him descend to old wives’ tales, Egyptian sorceries and incantations, amulets and other magical devices, which not only do not belong in the medical art but are utterly false. Pamphilus never saw most of the herbs he mentioned, much less tested their virtues, but copied anything he found, piling up names, incantations, and wizardry. Galen accuses Xenocrates Aphrodisiensis also of not having eschewed sorcery, and he notes that medical writers have either said nothing about sweat or what is superstitious and bordering upon magic.[760]
Charms and wonder-workers.
Philters, love-charms, dream-draughts, and imprecations Galen regards as impossible or injurious, and intends to have nothing to do with them. He thinks it ridiculous to believe that by such spells one can bewitch one’s adversaries so that they cannot plead in court, or conceive or bear children. He considers it worse to advertise and perpetuate such false or criminal notions in writings than to practice such a crime but once.[761] In one passage,[762] however, to illustrate his theory that the gods prepare the sperms of plants and animals, and set them going as it were, and afterwards leave them to themselves, Galen compares them to the wonder-workers—who were perhaps not magicians but men similar to our sidewalk fakirs who exhibit mechanical toys—who start things moving and then go away themselves while what they have prepared moves on artificially for a time.
Animal substance inadmissible in medicine.
Galen’s own works are not entirely free from the magical devices of which he accuses others. We may begin with animal substances, since he himself has testified that the use of sweat, crocodile’s blood, and mouse’s dung is suggestive of magic. Moreover, he attributes more bizarre virtues to the parts of animals than to herbs or stones. In a passage somewhat similar to that in which Pliny[763] expressed his horror at the use of human blood, entrails, and skulls as medicines, Galen declares that he will not mention the abominable and detestable, as Xenocrates and some others have done. The Roman law has long forbidden eating human flesh, while Galen regards even the mention of certain secretions and excrements of the human body as offensive to modest ears.[764] Nevertheless, before long he offends against his own standard and describes how he administered to patients the very substance which he had before characterized as most unmentionable.[765] It may also be noted that he repeats unquestioningly such a tale as that the cubs of the bear are born unformed and licked into shape by their mother.[766]
Nastiness of ancient medicine.
Further milder illustrations of the fact that such nasty substances were then not merely recommended in books but freely employed in actual medical practice, are seen in the frequent use by one of Galen’s teachers of the dung of dogs who for two days before had eaten nothing but bones,[767] in Galen’s own wonderfully successful treatment of a tumor on a rustic’s knee with goat dung—which is, however, too sharp for the skins of children or city ladies,[768] and in his discovery by repeated experience that the dung of doves who take little exercise is less potent than that of those who take much,[769] Galen also says that he has known of doctors who have cured many persons by giving them burnt human bones in drink without their knowledge.[770]
Parts of animals.