This volume offers a comprehensive biography of the Roman physician
Galen, and explores his activities and ideas as a doctor and
intellectual, as well as his reception in later centuries.
Nutton's wide-ranging study surveys Galen's early life and medical
education, as well as his later career in Rome and his role as court
physician for over forty years. It examines Galen's philosophical
approach to medicine and the body, his practices of prognosis and
dissection, and his ideas about preventative medicine and drugs. A final
chapter explores the continuing impact of Galen's work in the centuries
after his death, from his pre-eminence in Islamic medicine to his
resurgence in Western medicine in the Renaissance, and his continuing
impact through to the nineteenth century even after the discoveries of
Vesalius and Harvey.
Galen is the definitive biography this fascinating figure, written by
the preeminent Galen scholar, and offers an invaluable resource for
anyone interested in Galen and his work, and the history of medicine
more broadly.