GALEN’S THERAPEUTIC METHOD

BOOK IV

Ed. Chart. X. [4.] Ed. Bas. IV. (35. 36.)

...choose. original: "cem eligas." This is the conclusion of the sentence from the previous page where Galen suggests Thessalus pick a judge from among the famous philosophers. None of these men, you most audacious Thessalus, condemned Hippocrates’s doctrines on the nature of man. In my view, you have never even read those teachings. Or, if you did read them, you did not understand them. Even if you had understood them, it was certainly impossible for you to judge them, since you were brought up in the women’s quarters gynaeceo original: "γυναικωνίτιδι" (gynaikonitidi). The segregated women's area of a Greek home. Galen uses this to imply Thessalus lacked a proper public, "manly" education. under a father who lived a wretched life carding wool.

Do not think that your "distinguished" family or your "famous" education is hidden from me. Do not think you can insult Hippocrates and the other ancients as if you were in a deaf theater original: "κωφῷ θεάτρῳ" (kōphō theatrō). This refers to an audience that cannot hear or an empty space where his insults carry no weight with the learned.. Instead, first show us who you are and where you come from. From what lineage were you born? What was your upbringing? What discipline have you mastered? Demonstrate these things first, and only then speak.

Learn this first, you most insolent man: in no well governed city is it permitted for just anyone to speak in public. Rather, the laws only allow a man to address the assembly if he is distinguished, and if he can show a lineage, an upbringing, and an education worthy of public speaking.

But you, most noble fellow Galen is speaking sarcastically here., have none of these credentials to show. Yet you still dare to accuse Hippocrates. In your nonsensical books, you appoint the Greeks as your judges, but you do not even wait for their decision. You deliver the verdict yourself and crown yourself with the winner's wreath, sometimes over all the ancients at once...