Poisons of the past: molds, epidemics, and history

Abstract

Reviews to be at variance with Galenic vascular anatomy (chapters 6, 8, and 9); and a modern medical justification of Galen's use of venesection as an evacuant (chapter 10).My second reservation about the volume focuses on the texts translated.In the cases of the first and third texts, Brain translates from C. G. Kuhn's 1821-33 edition of the opera that is based on sixteenth-and seventeenth-century printed editions.In the cases of textual difficulties, Brain consulted some manuscripts (but not all those regarded as significant) for clarifications that are reflected in his translations, but the text upon which his translation is based can in no sense be regarded as reliable.The second translation, 'Galen's Book on Venesection against the Erasistrateans in Rome', is based on the 1970 dissertation edition of R. F. Kotrc with an exhaustive collation of an additional manuscript.This translation appears to be based on a critically defensible text, but the reader must be aware that the appearance of new editions of the early work against Erasistratus and the late work summarizing Galen's views on venesection-both desiderata-may render Brain's translations nugatory in part.These two reservations are, I believe, significant ones, but I do not think that they can be taken as justification for ignoring this book.Galen on bloodletting deserves to be recommended by every teacher of the history of medicine as a sensitive and thought-provoking treatment of the theories of illness and therapy espoused by the most influential of ancient physicians.