Galeni Pergamensis de temperamentis et de inaequali intemperie libri tres / Thomas Linacro Anglo interprete. Opus non medicis modo, sed et philosophis oppido q[uem] necessariu[m] nunc primum prodit in lucem cum gratia & privilegio. Impressum apud praeclaram Cantabrigiam per Joannem Siberch, anno MDXXI. Reproduced in exact facsimile, with an introduction by Joseph Frank Payne and a portrait of Thomas Linacre.

  • Galen.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Galeni Pergamensis de temperamentis et de inaequali intemperie libri tres / Thomas Linacro Anglo interprete. Opus non medicis modo, sed et philosophis oppido q[uem] necessariu[m] nunc primum prodit in lucem cum gratia & privilegio. Impressum apud praeclaram Cantabrigiam per Joannem Siberch, anno MDXXI. Reproduced in exact facsimile, with an introduction by Joseph Frank Payne and a portrait of Thomas Linacre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    48/226 (page 38)
    Testamentum, and it was in this spirit too, that Linacre the pupil of Chalcondylas and the teacher of Erasmus, standing between the Hterary and the rehgious revival, conceived the two great projects of his Hfe, the pubHcation of Aristotle and Galen in a form accessible to the whole learned world. The first scheme indeed he scarcely commenced, of the latter he did but Httle, though as he says nihil magis in votis erat. To discover the genuine text of an ancient author and make it known may seem to us a useful task, though not among the greatest, but to the scholars of the Renaissance it was a matter of supreme importance. Linacre and his fehow workers doubtless expected that medicine would profit as much by the rediscovery of the Greek medical writings as letters and philosophy had gained from the masterpieces of Greek poetry and speculation; and it was with such hopes that they undertook to revive and make known the works of Galen. Galen, Hke Aristotle, had been very imperfectly known, even to those who most impHcitly acknowledged his authority. With regard to Aristotle Sir Alexander Grant has pointed out that thousands of scholars who considered themselves staunch AristoteHans, knew not a word of the master beyond the two first treatises in the Organon ; and in the same way, many who reverenced Galen as the source of ah medical knowledge, knew him only through imperfect Latin versions, the compilations of mediseval scholars, or of the Arabians, whose works were chiefly based on Galen, and who had in this case as in that of Aristotle the credit of making a Greek author in large measure known to the modern world. The works of Avicenna, Mesua and others were the chief medical text-books in Europe before, and even for a long time after, the revival of learning. The Jewish teachers, who