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The Concept of Whole Substance in Galen’s "Simple Medicines"

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Wilkins J.

Studia Ceranea

2021

tom 11

479-491

Galen’s great treatise on drugs, Simple Medicines, begins with 5 theoretical books which explain the mechanisms of drug actions in the following catalogues. The key agent of change is the mixture of the qualities hot, cold, wet and dry. But drugs also have substance, the leaf, root or fruit of plants, the material of animals and minerals. How does substance act on the human body? This is one of the key questions for the theory of drugs, since mixtures had already been explored by Galen in Mixtures. Galen’s exploration of substance brings him to the composition of a drug – in thick or fine particles – and to the notion of substances in the plural and the notion of whole substance in the cases of foods and poisons, all of which Galen places in the class of drugs. Whole substance is the core of the paper. Galen’s understanding of substance as of qualities depends heavily, as often, on Aristotle. The paper presents an argument based on the key passages in Simples I–V, which I have recently translated for the Cambridge Galen series, as too on related passages in Mixtures and On the Capacities of Foods.

Food for Life: Galen’s "On Health" ("De sanitate tuenda")

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Wilkins J.

Studia Ceranea

2022

tom 13

153-164

In Galen’s view, health was a natural state and disease unnatural. If a body became unwell, balance was best restored by adjustments to daily life, in particular to the environment, food and drink, exercise, sleep, physiological balance and mental health. If none of these worked, only then should drugs or more drastic treatments be considered. Galen sets out in On Health how the natural state is best preserved, starting from birth, through childhood, to adulthood and old age. There are several features to be noted, not least the relentlessly male focus (with childbirth the major area of consideration for women specifically) and the use of the idealised young man as the canon against which to measure all bodies. This latter feature has led commentators to suppose that Galen only has the leisured rich class in mind, wrongly I believe. Two recent translations in the Loeb series (Johnston) and in the CUP Galen series (Singer forthcoming) have made the text readily available to all, and further discussion is timely. In my paper I will focus on Galen’s use of diet and massage to keep the body healthy. I shall also consider the unhealthy body which takes up the last three of the six books, as the life span nears later age and greater fragility. Even here, Galen prefers food and gentle remedies to bloodletting and drugs (which are in effect often stronger versions of food plants). Galen claims that this regime has kept him healthy for 50 years, despite his less than perfect constitution and lifestyle. He is thus a doctor who experiments on himself to promote a lifestyle which, he claims, should, after an initial assessment, maintain the patient without need of a doctor for life.