Critical Approaches to the History of Western Herbal Medicine by Stobart Anne; Francia Susan; & Anne Stobart

Author:Stobart, Anne; Francia, Susan; & Anne Stobart [Francia, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1656522
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Understanding the context of Galen

The time has come for medical historians to reassess Galen’s pharmacology, and for those practitioners who use holistic approaches to be able to reassess Galen’s theories and categories.

One challenge to this reassessment is the recent work of the medical historian David Wootton in Bad Medicine.26 Wootton’s attack on the Galenic system is narrowly focused on the development of the microscope and the use of blood-letting, but it rests on the central assumption that in Galen’s time there was no experimentation, no consideration of the individual patient, and blind acceptance of tradition at the expense of experiment and proof. This may be an accurate description of some practice in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but it is far from the principles of Galen for whom extensive research, experimentation and logical deduction are the keys to accurate understanding. Wootton also concentrates on therapy, which for Galen in his discussion of preventive medicine constitutes only half of the medical art. The other half of Galenic medicine is preventive, in which the doctor monitors a person’s health but need not intervene as long as the patient remains healthy. This will best be achieved if the person follows the six ‘necessary activities’ (later known as Galen’s ‘non-naturals’), which are discussed below. Galen’s treatise on preventive medicine (De sanitate tuenda/On Maintaining Good Health) has been translated into English (albeit imperfectly),27 as has Galen’s treatise on nutrition (De alimentorum facultatibus/On the Powers of Foods/On the Properties of Foodstuffs).28 It is thus possible to study Galen’s approach to preventive medicine, prior to the need for therapy. As regards therapy, the theory on which Simples is based, that is On the Elements according to Hippocrates, On the Natural Faculties and On Mixtures, have all been edited and translated, as has On the Therapeutic Method.29

Modern readers are thus able to study Galen’s theory of drugs (the content of the first five books of Simples) without difficulty, and the properties of drugs themselves can be partly studied in the translations of the treatise on nutrition. Galen explains in that treatise and in On the Natural Faculties that he understands a drug as an agent producing change in the body, in distinction from a food, which sustains the body but does not alter it. He has adopted a basic Hippocratic tenet.

It is most desirable to read Galen’s pharmacology as a coherent system of thought, based on observation, experiment and long experience and research. Even if a reader disagrees with it, he or she will be able to reflect on current assumptions and preoccupations in a self-critical way. We, as much as Galen, need help with basic questions about the relationship between human beings and the natural world, the relationship between food and medicine, and the status and nature of knowledge in medicine – not to mention the dialogue between medical science and the past.

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