Les figures de la guérison (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles): une histoire sociale et culturelle des professions médicales au pays de Liège

GALEN, On the therapeutic method, books I and II, transl. with an introduction and commentary by R. J. Hankinson, Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991, pp. xxxix, 269, £37.50 (0-19-824494-0). Hankinson's English translation of the first two books of On the therapeutic method presents for the first time in a modern language Galen's own introduction to his most complete treatise on diseases, their therapy and the theoretical problems involved. This work was very famous and widely read in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance until the seventeenth century, as is shown by the many Greek, Latin and Arabic manuscripts and editions. The studies of this large tradition are only beginning (see Galen's method of healing, Proceedings of the 1982 Galen Symposium, edited by F. Kudlien and R. J. Durling, Leiden, 1991) and a modern critical edition is not available. Therefore, Hankinson uses for his translation the unreliable edition of Kuhn (1825). This depends on the editio Aldina (1525), which, in turn, probably depends on the editio princeps of 1500. Hankinson also provides a useful collation of two late Greek manuscripts: Par.gr.2 161 of 1473 and the slightly later Par.gr.2171 (see Appendix I). He suggests a number of textual corrections, especially on the basis of the manuscripts and the Latin translation printed in Kuhn's edition, which is largely that of Thomas Linacre (1519), see R. J. Durling, Linacre and medical humanism, in Thomas Linacre. Essays on the life and work of Thomas Linacre, c.1460-1524, edited by F. Maddison, M. Pelling and C. Webster, Oxford, 1977, pp. 87-88. Some of the proposed corrections are indeed necessary, while others are debatable. For example, X, 64, 11 Kuhn (I, 8.3, Appendix I, p. 237, Commentary, p. 152) has &lac0icrs, while Hankinson reads i&0ouq (not iaOoi)s which is a misprint), probably on the basis of the Latin translation (his exposition is not clear). Nevertheless Sia0pcoq is in the manuscripts in Kuhn's Greek text and Latin translation (affectus), and in my opinion it is the right reading (see especially MM X, 86, 9 ff. Kuhn), important for the Galenic theory of symptoms. But Hankinson's interest in Galen's treatise is not philological, but philosophical, and this is why he has chosen the first two books, widely concerned with theoretical and methodological questions. In his valuable commentary he unravels Galen's arguments about scientific terminology and taxonomy, demonstration and axiomatization in science, and semantic issues related to his theory of therapeutic. Galen's logic and epistemology are reconstructed, in a way which clearly reveals their richness and complexity, in relation to ancient philosophy, Aristotle and the Stoics in particular, and with references to debates in our own day. Hankinson submits Galen's views to a close logical scrutiny, as a result of which their strengths and weaknesses are highlighted. This painstaking work will surely stimulate further discussion.