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534 GREEK LITERATURE.
deduce from experience and observation; and we have abundant proofs of his diligence in collecting experience, and his accuracy in making observations ; but still, in a certain sense at least, he regards individual facts and the detail of experience as of little value, unconnected with the principles which he laid down as the basis of all medical reasoning. In this fundamental point, therefore, the method pursued by Galen appears to have been directly the reverse of that which is now considered the correct method of scientific investigation ; and yet such is the force of natural genius, that in most instances he attained the ultimate object in view, although by an indirect path.1
No one has ever set before the medical profession a higher standard of perfection than Galen, and few, if any, have more nearly approached it in their own person. He evidently appears from his works to have been a most accomplished and learned man, and one of his short essays is written to inculcate the necessity of a physician being acquainted with other branches of knowledge besides merely medicine. Of his numerous philosophical writings the greater part are lost; but his celebrity in logic and metaphysics appears to have been great among the ancients, as he is mentioned in company with Plato and Aristotle by his contemporary Alexander Aphrodisiensis. He was most attached to the Peripatetic school, to which he often accommodated the maxims of the Old Academy.2
Some account of the edition of Galen's works, in conjunction with those of Hippocrates, by Chartier, has already been given on page 357 of this volume. The latest and most commodious edition of Galen is that by Kuhn, Leipzig, 1821-1833, 20 vols. 8vo. Its real critical merits, however, are very small. For the correction of the Greek text little or nothing has been done by Kuhn, except in the case of a few particular treatises, and all Charter's notes, and various readings, are omitted. Kuhn has likewise left out many of the spurious works contained in Chartier's edition, as also the fragments, and those books which are extant only in Latin; but, on the other hand, he has published for the first time the Greek text of the treatise De Musculorum Dissectione, the Synopsis Libro-rum de Pulsibus, and the commentary on Hippocrates De Humoribus. Upon the whole, the writings of Galen are still in a very corrupt and unsatisfactory state, and it is universally acknowledged that a new and critical edition is much wanted.
VIII. Two treatises have come down to us, which have been ascribed to Alexander Aphrodisiensis, of Aphrodisias, in Caria, and the most celebrated of the commentators on Aristotle. The first is entitled 'larpiKa 'ATrofx/jjuaTcc Kal $vcriKa XIpo/SA^/xara, or Qu&stiones Medica et Problemata Physica; the second is riepl UvperS)^ or De Febribus. There are very strong reasons, however, for believing both to be the productions of some later writer. By some they are ascribed to Alexander Trallianus, who flourished in the sixth century after Christ.
The Greek text of the first of these treatises is to be found in the Aldine edition of Aristotle's works, Venice, 1495, fol., and in that by Sylburgius, Frankfort, 1585, 8vo. It is also inserted in the first volume of Ideler's Physici et Medici Gr&ci Minores, Berlin, 1841, 8vo. The Greek text of the second treatise first appeared in the Cambridge Museum Criticum, vol. ii., p. 359, seqq., transcribed by Demetrius Schinas, from a manuscript at Florence. It was published, together with Valla's translation, by Passow, Breslau, 1822, 4to, and also in Eassow's Opuscula Academica, Leipzig, 1835, 8vo. The Greek text alone is contained in the first volume of Ideler's work, already mentioned.
IX. One other physician alone remains to be mentioned here, although i Greenhill, I. c. 2 Id. ib.
