Ancient medical practitioners discussed and debated whether previously unknown kinds of disease had been discovered and whether new diseases could come into existence. The debate over new diseases was of fundamental importance in defining the medical sects which came to dominate elite medicine from the Hellenistic period. This paper offers an overview of the most significant Greek and Roman sources for the debate over new diseases and an account of the origins and significance of this debate.

Galen is criticized for combining Plato’s tripartition-cum-trilocation of the soul, in which each part constitutes its own source of motivation, with the demand that the faculty of voluntary motion is limited to the rational part, being the only one located in the brain and having access to the relevant nerves. While scholars have concentrated on small nerves as connective organs, this paper focuses on thepneuma, blood and innate heat. When the latter is increased, the irrational parts can affect the brain’s (...) function to such an extent that the rational part’s volitions are reduced to their own desires. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 62, Issue 1, pp 69 - 89 Galen’s physiology—his theory of elements, mixtures and the emergence of natural capacities—compels him to conceive of each part of the soul as a peculiar mixture of elementary qualities in the material substance of the organ in which it is located. The reason why Galen, nevertheless, refrains from making a dogmatic assertion about the substance of the soul, or of human nature in general, is the acknowledged failure to account for two (...) goal-directed activities—the formation of bodily organs and human intelligence—in terms of elementary qualities and their mixtures. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 61, Issue 1, pp 82 - 109 Galen talks about tension, _tonos_, in a physiological sense, which seems to be related to either the innate heat of the living being, the good mixture of its humors, or the body’s _pneuma_. This paper shows that Galen, with some important distinctions concerning the substance of the soul, derives this use of _tonos_ from the Stoics. But beyond that, it shows that Galen uses _tonos_ in a strict psychological sense derived (...) from Plato as well, and integrates it in his characterization of the operations of the spirited part of the soul. (shrink)

Galen’s elemental mixture of fire, air, water and earth (and of the corresponding primary qualities, hot, cold, dry and wet) is primarily a physical process, in which primary elements mix and give rise to all compounded physical bodies, inanimate and animate. As such, the concrete, physical process of mixture is an essential basis for a thorough understanding of Galen’s physical system. In this article I pursued a twofold aim. First, I showed Galen’s syncretic approach while expounding his theory of mixture (...) (insofar as he attributes that theory equally to ‘Hippocrates’, Aristotle and the Stoics) and illustrated the reasons behind this approach. Second, and more importantly, I addressed Galen’s epistemological position concerning mixture’s constituents and answered the question of whether, according to Galen, are the qualities alone, conceived more Aristotelico as conceptually distinct from the body itself, to mix or if Galen viewed mixture, as the Stoics did, as a coextension of bodies. As we argue, Galen assigns the epistemological status of πιθανόν to the Aristotelian and Peripatetic doctrines. This indicates that, to a certain extent, he joins this historical debate and is more closely aligned with Aristotle and the Peripatetics than with the Stoics. By resorting to what is πιθανόν Galen obtains two results: (1) does not expose himself to accusations of dogmatism but, at the same time and in his method, enters the ongoing controversy about qualities and bodies without taking a definitive position, and (2) he preserves his syncretic theoretical structure which finds its linchpin in the defence of a medical-cum-philosophical continuism. (shrink)

This paper deals with the two notions of aition or aitia and prophasis in the Greek medical texts and asks the question of whether these words are synonymous or not. Therefore, it explores their different meanings in different contexts both in the Hippocratic and in the Galenic corpus. It also investigates how Galen understands these two notions when he reads them in the Hippocratic treatises and how he explains them in his commentaries to Hippocrates, and in particular, if he gives (...) the same meaning to these words in his own treatises or if he uses them in a different way. (shrink)