On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Vol. I

to lead them away from practice and experience, and instead to direct them toward the rational discipline they themselves professed and toward the thorns of dialectic to be learnedHaeser, in the cited work § 298, 3, quotes this statement by Petrarch: 'Once, indeed, the sick were not cured by syllogisms, and they were not being revived in the way you now falsely boast. Now, what a change: those who could have lived without you are perishing while you syllogize.'. For nearly two centuries, the fourteenth and fifteenth, the Arabs wielded supreme power in the name of Aristotle and GalenDaremberg, in the cited work, p. 313: 'Galen in disguise and Aristotle disfigured share the world.' Note: original: "Galien travesti et Aristote défiguré se partagent le monde."; but their era coincided with a time when a great upheaval of affairs began to occur. The Renaissance of the study of ancient literature, among other things—which it is irrelevant to discuss here—also had this salutary effect: those who were imbued with it no longer wished to follow streams covered in silt, but to draw liberal learning and erudition from the pure and clear fountains themselves. At first, access was opened to the ancient poets, historians, orators, and philosophers, and later to the Greek physicians. Then, indeed, a certain admirable zeal for Hippocrates and Galen, like that for other writers, flared up. Their Greek codices were dragged from darkness into light; they were transported from the Byzantines to Italy, purchased, transcribed by scribes, translated into Latin by men most skilled in both languages, and finally published in Greek. And after some books of Galen were published individually, there appeared the original: "editio princeps quinque partes continens Venetiis in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Asulani Soceri Mense Aprili a. 1525" first edition containing five parts, published in Venice in the house of Aldus and Andrea Asulanus, father-in-law, in the month of April, 1525In the 'Literary History of Claudius Galen, written by Ackermann,' which is prefixed to the first volume of the Kuehn edition, we read on p. CCXVI that the Aldine edition appeared 'without mention of the year, which nevertheless would have been at the end of the privilege of Clement VII, which was given at Rome on Jan. 27, 1525.' But in the leaf following the privilege, I found clearly marked the year and month in which the first part was printed., which was soon succeeded by the original: "editio Basileensis" Basel edition of 1538. It is hard to say how much influence these editions had on the scholars who were involved in medicine. And first, indeed, many arose who translated Galen's books either much more elegantly than had been done before, or, if any had not yet been translated, then for the first time into Latin.