Codex 164

[Galen, On Medical Schools]

Read the work of Galen [1]On Medical Schools.The author, discussing the schools that have been formed in the medical profession, declares that the three chief are : the logical, which he also calls dogmatic and analogistic; the empirical, also called observant or memorial; the methodical. They differ in the method of invention and in other respects. The dogmatic physician bases his art upon the use of methods of reasoning for the discovery of remedies; the empirical relies upon experiment and observation; the methodical, while professing to employ both reasoning and experiment, makes no careful use of either, and is rightly distinguished from the other two.

The present work is divided into three sections.The first contains a description of the empiric and dogmatic schools, and sets forth the nature of each; the second introduces these two schools hotly discussing their respective claims to superiority; the third introduces the methodical school quarrelling with the other two, each of them putting forward its own claims and endeavouring to overthrow its rival. With this the third book ends.

It is evident that this work should be preferred to all other medical writings, if one would learn which is the best school to belong to. But it cannot properly be regarded as a medical work, but rather as a philosophical introduction to medicine. The diction and composition are pure and distinct; Galen everywhere pays especial attention to these qualities, although in many works he confuses and obscures the meaning of what he has written by overloading his treatises with unseasonable discourses, digressions, and spun-out periods. These seem, as it were, to chop up the context, and his tedious nonsense makes the reader indifferent. The present treatise, however, is free from these faults.