Galen, despite his vast surviving writings (about one-tenth of all extant Greek literature) and huge influence on European and Arabic medicine, has been relatively neglected by Classical scholarship until fairly recently. However, there is now intense research and publication on all aspects of his work; this new book makes a distinctive and valuable contribution to this process. M. is a Roman historian who has already written on Galen (Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing [2008]); this book is a biography of Galen, which places each phase or aspect of his life in a broader social, material and historical context. M.'s contextualisation of Galen's life is its most striking feature; and she offers arresting and illuminating pictures of the world in which Galen's long life (a.d. 129–c. 216) was played out. But M. also offers her own interpretative view of Galen as a doctor, which complements other recent accounts. Very readable, but also independently researched and fully documented, this book offers an excellent point of access to Galen's life and medical practice for a wide range of readers.
The book is mostly organised chronologically: M. examines each stage of Galen's life, and locates this in the relevant social framework, ranging from his birthplace Pergamum to Rome where he spent much of his adult life. Is a biography of Galen a feasible enterprise? Yes – although (as with Cicero) this means the biography is, to a large extent, an autobiography, as most of the key facts and comments are supplied in passing, in Galen's medical or philosophical writings. Inevitably, there are some gaps or obscurities: the reasons for his ‘flight’ from Italy to Pergamum in a.d. 166 remain unclear (pp. 187–8) and it is difficult to track his later years and date of death (pp. 224–5). Galen is also reticent regarding his personal life and relationships, apart from his (often stated) admiration for his father. However, he is wholly explicit about what matters most to him (what is, in a sense, the core of his ‘selfhood’): namely his overwhelming desire, from age sixteen onwards, to master every aspect of medicine, especially anatomy, and his wholehearted commitment to deploying this mastery in unceasing treatment of patients and in medical teaching and writing. M. does not overlook the corollary of this commitment: an intense, even obsessive, competitiveness (philotimia) towards other doctors or would-be medical experts, and his passionate enthusiasm for public display (epideixis) of his anatomical skill, especially in his first period in Rome (a.d. 162–6). However, as M. underlines, these features also reflect the aggressively competitive intellectual milieu of this period (that of the ‘Second Sophistic’) as well as the highly contested nature of medical expertise at this time (as, indeed, throughout antiquity). M. also brings out, more vividly than any other account I know, Galen's unqualified readiness to treat patients, whatever their social background or illness, and to do so at great personal risk (even in the ‘great plague’ of a.d. 168–9, p. 204). She has a whole chapter (Chapter 7) based on Galen's reports of individual cases, as well as drawing selectively on these reports throughout the book.
How far does M.'s picture of Galen as a doctor match or complement other accounts? M. does not accentuate (though not ignoring) Galen's ambition to systematise virtually all aspects of ancient medicine up until his time and the philosophical dimension of his medical project, topics which have been explored fully in other recent studies. She focuses very much on Galen as medical practitioner, and on the other people involved as patients or fellow-doctors, both known and anonymous. Galen emerges in her account (which is closely based on his own self-description) as a rather intuitive practitioner, intensely observant and attentive, and sometimes also cautious and reticent. As she underlines, perhaps surprisingly (given his authoritative stance), Galen listened carefully to his patients (p. 230), as well as taking full account of all observable symptoms. In reading M.'s account, we need to bear in mind distinctive features of Galenic medicine brought out more fully by other scholars, notably his systematic approach to diagnosis and prognosis, based on locating the individual case in a broader spectrum and specifying causal factors precisely. Otherwise, it is hard to see how he achieved the success he did, or at least claimed to do, especially in his prediction of the course taken by patients' diseases. None the less, M. gives an exceptionally vivid and particularised account of Galen as a medical practitioner.
The most outstanding feature of this book is the depiction of the wider context of Galenic medicine and life. This includes a brief, but informative, history of Pergamum, its relationship with Rome and its buildings (Chapter 1) and a reconstruction of the living conditions of the gladiators whose injuries Galen treated in Pergamum during a.d. 157–161 (Chapter 3). M. also provides a detailed description of the people Galen studied with in his years of travel and education throughout the Eastern Mediterranean (a.d. 150–7), underlining his special interest in finding out all he could about anatomy (Chapter 2). She is equally informative about the members of the Graeco-Roman elite who helped Galen to become the most famous doctor in Rome in his day, especially Flavius Boethus (Chapter 5). She clarifies Galen's relations with the imperial household, especially Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, highlighting the relatively limited scope of Galen's contact with them (Chapter 6). However, the most striking passages in her book are the lurid and unforgettable vignettes of the physical and social context of Galenic medicine. These include the stinking, un-drained bath-houses of Pergamum and Rome and the over-crowded, disease-ridden tenements, streets and squares of the capital city (pp. 20, 114–25). This picture of Rome as a seething mass of infection and illness brilliantly complements M.'s view of Galen as engaged in an unceasing project of treatment (Chapter 7). It also provides an illuminating backdrop for Galen's life-long attempt to grapple with disease by ever greater systematisation of medical knowledge. Another memorable image (reconstructed but plausible) is that of Galen prowling the streets of Rome, especially in the period a.d. 162–6, with a group of students, slaves, a herd of animals and a good stock of silver coin, ready at any moment to give a demonstration of his anatomical skill, backed up by extravagant bets with rivals if needed (p. 160). More generally, M. shows how far Galen's life, like that of most members of the wealthy elite, took place in a continual crowd of attendants, students and friends, and how this also formed the background for many medical consultations, in which a variety of people (and not just doctors) offered their opinion about what to do next.
In the two final chapters of the book, M. draws on the recently discovered ethical essay Avoiding Distress, which presents Galen's ‘stoical’ response to the loss of many of his possessions, books and medical resources in the Great Fire of a.d. 192 (Chapter 8). She concludes with a brief report of two of Galen's many influential later readers, Hunain (ninth-century Baghdad) and Vesalius (sixteenth-century Brussels), the latter of whom emulated Galen's anatomical expertise (Chapter 9). Her book is presented in an elegant format, with several useful maps and photographs. Overall, it is a highly attractive and accessible book which also makes a substantive contribution to Galenic studies.
