The Medical Collections are an anthology of earlier Greek medical writers made by Oribasius of Pergamon, physician to the emperor Julian, in the fourth century CE. In the address that opens Book I, Oribasius says that the epitomes of Galen he had made for Julian in Gaul pleased him and that Julian then ordered a collection from all the best physicians. It was planned in seventy books, running from foods to the human body, health, the recognition of illness and its cure, and it gives each excerpt under its author's name: Galen most often, with Dioscorides, Rufus, Antyllus, Archigenes, Heliodorus and others.
The books given here are I to XV, a single passage of XVI, XXIV and XXV, and XLIII to L; the rest are lost or known only from extracts. Books I to V treat foods, their preparation and drinks; VI to X exercise, evacuation, bloodletting, purgatives, air and places, fomentations and baths; XI to XIII Dioscorides on simple drugs from plants and minerals; XIV and XV Galen on the powers of simple drugs; XXIV and XXV anatomy, from Galen and Rufus; XLIII to XLV ulcers, inflammation and abscesses; XLVI to L fractures, dislocations, surgical knots and bandages, and operations on the foreskin and for hernia.
Oribasius of Pergamon Medical Collections, Books 1–16, 24–25, 43–50: summary and contents (PDF)
Oribasius of Pergamon Medical Collections, Books 1–16, 24–25, 43–50: summary and contents (Markdown)
Contents
-
Αʹ Book I
Oribasius opens by addressing the emperor Julian: the epitomes of Galen he had made for him in western Gaul pleased him, and Julian now orders a collection from all the best physicians. The plan runs from materials to the human body, health, the recognition of illness and cure, beginning with foods. Galen's accounts follow of cereals, pulses such as beans, peas, chickpeas and lupins, and fruits, ending with the citron and with wild plants.
-
Βʹ Book II
Lettuce, chicory, mallow, beet and cabbage open a survey of foods by their effect on the blood and the bowels. Fish are judged by their flesh and their waters, the grey mullet of muddy lakes against the sea bass of the open sea, and olives come last: black, pickled in vinegar, white from brine and crushed.
-
Γʹ Book III
Thinning and thickening diet heads the third book. In Galen's words the thinning regimen has ended or eased many cases of nephritis, of arthritis with chalky joints, of dyspnoia, of enlarged spleens and early epilepsy, though too much of it breeds stones in the kidneys. Lists follow of foods that make good or bad humours, that digest easily, that dry and that moisten, from the Bithynian wine of the large jars to barley gruel, melons, cucumbers and water.
-
Δʹ Book IV
How food is prepared: Galen on spelt groats, bran bread, the finest white loaves and barley meal, and then Dieuches on barley-meal drinks and broths and on cooking for the very weak. Recipes include a soothing gruel with milk and poppy head for dysentery; the last are mallow soup, young gourds boiled whole and eggs stirred in water.
-
Εʹ Book V
Water and drink fill this book. Galen judges water by taste and smell and by the Hippocratic test of how quickly it heats and cools, then sets out the preparation of hydromel and of a decoction of poppy heads. Last come recipes for spiced wines, flavoured with pepper, anise, schoenanth, storax and wormwood.
-
Ϛʹ Book VI
Antyllus on lying in bed opens the book: which posture suits each illness, raised for the head, on the side for the kidneys, on the left for those who digest slowly. Exercise and rubbing follow, hard or soft, morning or evening. Last, a physician recounts two patients unable to ejaculate, a man from Corinth and a young Milesian, and how diet, riding and castoreum restored them.
-
Ζʹ Book VII
Evacuation is the subject: Galen distinguishes fullness measured against strength from fullness measured against the vessels, and the signs of each. The book then deals with bloodletting and its alternatives, including the use of leeches, with a passage from Menemachus, and ends with advice on hellebore, cut to the size of groats or set into radishes to provoke vomiting.
-
Ηʹ Book VIII
Archigenes prescribes the preparation for a dose of hellebore: emetic dinners and vomiting after radishes, timed by the waning and waxing moon. Enemas follow, with a warning against sharp ones for children, women, eunuchs and northern peoples such as Gauls, Thracians and Italians. Purgative compounds conclude it, among them the hiera of Justus, an emetic plaster with bull's gall and a drug that purges by its smell.
-
Θʹ Book IX
Air, seasons and places open this book in Galen's words: the best air is clean, and the vapours of marshes, sewers and the chasms near Sardis and Hierapolis are harmful. Fomentations moist and dry, and their use on the abdomen in fever, follow. Simple poultices end it, radish for bruises and psyllium seed for erysipelas and swollen glands.
-
Ιʹ Book X
Warm baths of fresh water lead the tenth book: Galen sets out what such a bath does in each of its stages, from hot air to cold water. Further sections cover binding the limbs at the armpit, groin and ankle for attacks with rigor, spasms and bleeding, and wrapping them in soft wool for the chilled. Drugs that redden the skin end the book: cress seed, elecampane root and the droppings of wild pigeons, used for sciatica and headache.
-
ΙΑʹ Book XI
Dioscorides' descriptions of simple drugs, in alphabetical order from alpha to mu, fill the eleventh book. Each entry gives the plant's appearance, taste, origin and preparation: southernwood, aloeswood from India and Arabia, agaric from Galatia and Cilicia, madder cultivated among the olives of Ravenna, eryngo, wild myrtle and, last, moly.
-
ΙΒʹ Book XII
The second half of Dioscorides' alphabet, from nu to omega, follows here. It begins with nard, Indian and Syrian, the kind named from the Ganges and the tricks of those who adulterate it with antimony, and passes through squill baked in clay, scolymus, scordium and garlic. The last entries describe chrysocome, psyllium and a small Cretan shrub resembling bunium.
-
ΙΓʹ Book XIII
Mineral remedies, again from Dioscorides: salts and how to burn them, the flower of salt carried by the Nile, the salt crust found in Galatia, five kinds of alkyonion, dense or light, sponge-like or worm-shaped, jet from the Lycian river Gages, the magnet and the milkstone. The book ends with white lead, best from Rhodes, Corinth or Sparta, roasted into a red pigment, and with Attic ochre.
-
ΙΔʹ Book XIV
Leaving the description of the simples to Dioscorides, this book sets out only the general powers of simple drugs. Galen explains how a body is called hot, cold, dry or moist, in itself or because something has made it so, actually or potentially, and then ranks drugs that soften hardened tissue, from goat and bull fat to deer marrow. A final group gathers foods and drugs that check or prevent semen, with the same reasoning for milk and the menses.
-
ΙΕʹ Book XV
Simple drugs, one by one in alphabetical order, are placed in Galen's excerpts by their degree of heating, cooling, drying or moistening: southernwood in the third order, chaste-tree, oxyacanth, Cyrenaic juice as the hottest of all, origanum, bitter vetch and the orchids. The book ends with a plaster of litharge, white lead, whelks and frankincense, and with whelks in honey for swellings beside the ear.
-
ΙϚʹ Book XVI
This book is represented by a single short passage. It explains why compound drugs are needed at all: no simple may supply exactly the degree of heat required, so strong and mild must be mixed, and few conditions need only repelling or only dispersing drugs, so that the most useful remedies combine opposite powers.
-
ΚΔʹ Book XXIV
Anatomy, chiefly from Galen, begins at the brain: the folds of the thick membrane, the veins that run within it, and the meeting point that Herophilus called the winepress. The lung is set between heart and throat as a store of pneuma, and the coats of arteries and veins are compared. The book ends with the female parts and bladder and with Lycus on the reach of the male member.
-
ΚΕʹ Book XXV
Rufus' treatise on the names of the parts of the human body opens this book, naming the regions of the head, face, nose, lips and eyes as a student must learn them. Further anatomy follows on the muscles of the hyoid bone and of the tongue, and the book ends with the nerves that leave the lumbar spine for the legs.
-
ΜΓʹ Book XLIII
Malignant ulcers occupy this book. Galen names the cancerous, the Chironian, the Telephian and the spreading kinds, and separates the ulcer kept open by an inflow of humours from the one whose flesh is itself out of temper. He advises how to judge a dressing and how often to change it, and a list of simple remedies for foul and putrid sores ends it.
-
ΜΔʹ Book XLIV
Inflammation opens the book, with its causes and the order of its treatment in Galen's words: remove the cause, then use cooling and astringent remedies before dispersing ones. Eruptions follow: the terminthos, as Praxagoras and his pupil Xenophon described it, and the staphyle and epinyctis, from Diocles and Rufus. Apollonius' remedies for boils come last.
-
ΜΕʹ Book XLV
Abscesses that form without inflammation are the opening subject: Galen describes the three common kinds, named after the porridge, suet and honeycomb they resemble, and the mud, stones, hair and nails sometimes found inside. Antyllus distinguishes aneurysms of dilation from aneurysms of rupture and advises when to operate. Last comes advice on which deposits a physician should welcome and which prevent.
-
ΜϚʹ Book XLVI
The setting of broken bones begins with Galen's four steps: extension, setting, bandaging and placing the limb. Injuries of the skull follow: laying a fracture bare, treating fissures, trepanning when fluid gathers under the membrane, and positioning the patient by the site of the wound. A final remedy claims that the burnt skin of a land crocodile numbs those about to be cut.
-
ΜΖʹ Book XLVII
Dislocations are treated from their causes, a sudden violent movement, slack and slippery joints, a broken rim or a shallow socket, to Galen's rule of extension before the bone is pushed home. Reductions of the shoulder and elbow follow, with the separation of the radius from the ulna. The book ends on how to remove a ring from a swollen finger, with thread or by cutting it.
-
ΜΗʹ Book XLVIII
Surgical knots and bandages are the matter of this book, beginning with Heraclas on how to tie the noose called ertos and what it is for: traction on a limb, holding it during reduction, and positioning the patient for operations on the anus. Bandages for the head and jaw and a split bandage for the eyes follow, and a treatise on bandages ends with where a knot must never sit.
-
ΜΘʹ Book XLIX
Heliodorus distinguishes three ways of reducing a dislocation: by the hands as in the wrestling school, with ordinary household tools, and with machines, and he classes the instruments used. He then sets out the reduction of the thigh, which slips out in four directions, using a ladder or bench, a padded cord at the perineum and an axle. The knee and ankle follow.
-
Νʹ Book L
Galen and Antyllus open this book on restoring a deficient foreskin, by stretching it with a papyrus strip and gum or by surgery. Hernia into the scrotum follows, distinguishing a peritoneum stretched from one torn, and how to tell when the gut has grown fast to it. Aftercare of the incision ends it: fomentations, poultices and the sitting bath.