Method of Medicine, Volume I

Abstract

The basic aim of the practicing doctor most simply stated is to preserve the health of those who are healthy ('kata phusin' - "in accord with nature," in Galenic terms) and to restore to health those who have departed from it by suffering injury or succumbing to disease ('para phusin' - "contrary to nature"). Thus medicine has both prophylactic and therapeutic components, a point which Galen himself emphasizes in his 'Method of Medicine' ('Methodus medendi'). And it is this 'Method of Medicine' (MM), comprising fourteen separate books and occupying one whole Kuhn volume, that is his systematic and comprehensive account of the therapeutic component. In it he details the principles of treatment of injury and disease following his own classification, illustrated by case reports and punctuated by various theoretical and polemical digressions and social comment. This great work is supplemented by the much shorter 'Method of Medicine for Glaucon' (MMG), while the prophylactic limb is dealt with primarily in his 'On the Preservation of Health'. The MM sits atop the theoretical edifice established by a number of Galen's other works, to which he refers repeatedly throughout his therapeutic magnum opus.