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Galen of Pergamon a Sketch of an Original Eclectic and Lntegrative Practitioner, and His System of Medicine

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Galen of Pergamon a Sketch of an Original Eclectic and Lntegrative Practitioner, and His System of Medicine Hnstory and Fhrlosophy Galen of Pergamon A Sketch of an Original Eclectic and lntegrative Practitioner, and His System of Medicine by Peter Holmes, L.Ac., M.H., A.H.G. The Greek doctor, philosopher and natural scientist believe that coming directly to grips with Galen's work Claudios Galenos (c. 129-199), also known as Galen without prejudice may hold a key that can help us inte- of Pergamon, holds a unique position in the history of grate the various current types ofherbal medicine into traditional Greek-Western medicine. An original a powerful new synthesis. thinkeq researcher, writer and practitioner of extraor- Summarizing Galen's enormous contribution to dinary caliber, his life and work is characterized by an Greek-Western medicine and scientific thought, and unbridled creative energy that has been compared to detailing his contemporary significance in a brief arti- that of Alexander the Great (Lichtenthaeler 1982). cle is challenging and humbling. challenging Galen's influence in medicine, philosophy and the nat- Equally and us having terms ural sciences was so widespread and longJasting that humbling for is to come to with the his very name was given to the Greek-Western medical very lack of transmission of our own traditional problem system that lasted nght up to the nineteenth century, holistic medical system in modern times. The under the name of "Galenic medicine." His work in the we now face is one of epistemology: given the scanti- quality area of herbal medicine was so influential that herbal ness and poor of available information on Peter Holmes medicine preparations in general came to be known as Galen and Greek medicine, especially in English, how "galenicals." And yet, because none but an extremely can we truly understand and correctly interpret any Peter Holmes is a medical small fraction has ever been information that does become available? To fi.rther of Galen's written works herbal st and Chinese translated into English, very little is still generally that understanding and promote more accurate inter- known in the English-speaking world about this pretations of Greek material, therefore, we should herbalist. He researches, human phenomenon. Most of what is generally known begin by first considering the context itself in which writes and lectures ofhis work has come down to us second-hand through we hold Greek medicine todav. extensively in the field of his successors. The Modern Resurgence both Western and Although Galen's life and work has been fairly well Since the 1960s there has been anamazitgresurgence Or ental botanlcal documented and translated by French, German and of interest in traditional and vitalistic systems of med- medicine, and is a faculty Italian historians and philologists over the centuries, icine. This includes extant classical medical systems there is no modern evaluation of his medical practice such as Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic, Tibetan and member of the Southwest and theories from a perspective free of a modern posi- Greek medicines. At the same time interest has also College of Naturopathic tivistic bias. Certainly his paramount role in the early focused on herbal medicine rather than on drug-based Medicine in Tempe, development of herbal medicine in the West has not medicine. It has included not only the herbal medicine recognized been clearly and defined. In this article we backbone ofthese four classical systems, but also the Arizona. He is author of will explore Galen's output specifically in relation to various herbal medicine traditions indigenous to the three herba medicine Greek medicine general herbal in and to medicine in West. The result can be seen in various key phenome- particular. method ideas speak textbooks, and lives in Our is to allow his to na that are currently here to stay. for themselves rather than trying to rationalize them Boulder, Colorado. from the analyic-scientific perspective. In the same First, the advancement of traditional Chinese medicine He can be reached at vein, we will also refrain from comparing them to (TCM) in the West. There is no doubt now that Chinese other related vitalistic medical concepts from Chinese acupuncture and herbal medicine have made a suc- pete rh o I m es@ estr eet. ca m or Ayurvedic medicine, for example. cessful implant on Western soil. The transmission has been successfully accomplished in terms of philoso- Our thesis is that Galen was an original Eclectic physi- phy and principles, medical terminology and clinical cian; a synthesist or integrative thinker without paral- practice-with more time essentially needed only to lel in the history of the West; and a pioneering medical "fill out the details" of the Western context, as it were. herbalist who laid the foundation for a holistic, vital- Chinese medicine now meets an important need in ism-based system Western herbal medicine. We of Western health-care for the treatment of chronic disor- believe that an exploration philosophy, patholo- ofhis ders in particular, and generally by providing a pre- gy and herbal medicine theories is vital for under- ventive medicine context and a holistic life-enhancing standing the numerous medical practitioners who suc- human philosophy in a holistically-deprived West. ceeded him during the next sixteen centuries-many of whom are much better known to us today than is Second, a renewed interest in traditional Western med- Galen. They are all children of Galen. More: we ical theories, such as the "four-humour " theory the Journal of the American Herbalists Guild 7 o= € C - .t E o- l ! c 6 I- ! jo o c o 6 .9 E both still possess their entire med- "doctrine of signatures" theory, the "specific sympto- Chinese medicine in both their original language and in their matology" theory the "elimination treatment" theory, ical canons language' The canonic works of the Hippokratic "four-element constitutions," the modern-day medicine exist in original Greek "remedy potentisation" theory, and so on. These theo- Greek/Western (mainly the Hippokratic corpus and the works of later ries derive from various periods during the last 2'000 and Alexandrian doctors); in original Arabic years, often propagated by certain individuals with Greek (mainly the key texts of Ibn Sina, Ar-Razi); in Hebrew whom they have now become tightly associated' Most (e.g. the works of Moses ben Maimom)' Further of these theories are incongruent among each other, important texts were written in medieval Latin (e'g' while at the same time they are often held to be a fun- Boerhaave); in ancient/Renaissance German, French, damental truth or principle by its adherents, to the and Italian; and latterly in modern English, detriment of all other theories. The diversity of theo- English and German if we allow the inclusion of eigh- ries is usually accompanied by an exclusive monistic French teenth and nineteenth-century texts (which would belief in a particular theorY. include Thomsonian, Eclectic and Physiomedical texts "energy Thir{ the development of various forms of of the nineteenth and twentieth century.) Unless a per- cata- healing" modalities, now truly too numerous to son is fluent in all these languages, it will be impossi- polar- logue, such as Reiki healing, chakra-balancing, ble for them to understand the GreeldWestern medical ity therapy, magnet therapies, color therapies, music tradition in its entiretY. and sonic therapies, and so on. The main reason we do not possess this Western body However, what seems to be missing from this larger of medical knowledge in its entirety today is because picture of renewed interest in non-modern medical of the recurring interruptions that occurred during its approaches is nothing less that the presence of tradi- transmission from one Western culture to another tional Greek medicine itself (see below for a definition (Diegpen 1925). Using anthropological methodology, of this classical system)' Because of the relatively we assume that for any medical system to develop recent (from the historical perspective) interruption of coherently and thereby increase its overall average suc- the Western Greek medicine tradition, we seem unable cess rate, it will need to effectively transmit its knowl- here to engage a true historical perspective' We are edge and wisdom-base from one generation to anoth- probably too close to our own tradition (both spatially er, while at the same time being able to grow and and temporally) to be able to view it from the impartial change, on the basis of this tradition, in response to and complete perspective of a critical historical ever-changing health-care needs. This is exactly the observer. For instance, it is still too early yet to say case with Chinese medicine, for example, which con- definitively whether Western-Greek medicine was cut tinues to be a viable medical system today-many mil- off for good by the nineteenth-century modern science lennia after its original conception. It is a historical takeover, or whether the tradition was only temporari- fact that the enotmous cultural and social class diver- ly interrupted by it (with complementary medicine sity in the West-unlike the greater homogeneity in now once again picking up that tradition)' We believe China-worked consistently against an accurate and that the jury of history is still out on that issue' effective transmission of Greek medicine' The biggest example of this is how the transmission of the canonic The Transmission of Greek- Hippokatic medical theory to Central Europe was Western Medicine extremely corrupted and only poorly-existent until the What is needed at this point is for the Western tradition Renaissance era (approximately the 16th century)' itself to be fully transmitted to us. Whether we believe Very few translations of those Greek canonic texts poorly that the Western tradition was entirely cut off or sim- were available; those that were available were ply temporarily eclipsed by modem science, the fact is translated into medieval Latin, full of inaccuracies and discussion thut *.
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