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Darrera modificació: 2025-09-12
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Wilkins, John, "Galen's Approach to Drugs in Simple Medicines", dins: Oberhelman. Steven M. (ed.), Tome 3: Remedies. Pharmacy, Drugs, Archaeology, Tradition, Berlín, De Gruyter (Medical Traditions, 6-3), 2025, pp. 61-74.
- Resum
- In 1997, Alain Touwaide published a chapter in the seminal volumen, Galen on Pharmacology, edited by Armelle Debru, in which he distinguished the “medical botany” of Dioscorides from the “therapeutic pharmacology” of Galen's important work Simple Medicines.1 The purpose of this article is to endorse that view and to develop exactly what Galen was trying to achieve in his numerous works on drugs. I will do this principally by concentrating on the first five books of Simple Medicines in which Galen sets out his theoretical position on how drugs work. Where Dioscorides dismissed some drug theories as unfounded speculation, Galen insisted on starting from first principles and only moved on to descriptions of specific drugs after considering how drugs act on the body. Accordingly, in his fundamental work Simple Medicines, Galen takes the first five books to explain drug action before moving in Book 6 to a catalog of drugs divided into plants, minerals, and animal products. In the introduction to Galen's catalog, Dioscorides takes pride of place among authorities on plant identification, some of whom Galen dismisses as illinformed. Pamphilus in particular is rejected as a credulous source with no firsthand knowledge of the plants themselves. In the first five books of Simple Medicines, conversely, Galen's main authorities are Aristotle and Theophrastus, sources from the main philosophical tradition of the study of the natural world.
- Matèries
- Medicina - Farmacologia
Fonts
Galè
- URL
- https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110780062-004
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