Galen and Hellenistic Medicine

Abstract This chapter will consider Galen’s engagement with the most significant Hellenistic doctors and sects in turn (Herophileans, Erasistrateans, Asclepiadeans, Pneumatists, and Empiricists), showing how the continuing influence of Hellenistic medicine, especially through contemporary disputes, shaped various aspects of his thought and self-presentation. In certain crucial respects, the Hellenistic period saw developments that established the general framework within which Galen’s medical system operated. Galen’s anatomy, physiology, pathology, epistemology, and psychology were all firmly grounded in discoveries and debates that occurred during the early Hellenistic period. Perhaps even more fundamentally, the image of Hippocrates that Galen inherited and further elaborated was essentially a Hellenistic construct. On the other hand, Galen was responding first and foremost to the state of theoretical medicine as it was in his own day, and similarly this was profoundly shaped by the continuing influence of the major Hellenistic doctors through their later adherents.