Galen on Medicine as a Science and as an Art
Keywords:
history of medicine, Galen, medicine as a science, medicine as an art, Plato, AristotleAbstract
This article discusses the notion of the art of medicine in the work of Galen of Pergamon (129 ‒ ca. 213). On the one hand, Galen promotes an exalted role and status for medicine as a genuine science, grounded in unshakable theoretical foundations and standing equal to philosophy. On the other hand, he operates with a "lower" notion of medicine, recognizing it as based on experience but also as conjectural and fallible.
It is argued that Galen's concept of medicine can be seen as more coherent than previously supposed, though not without certain inherent tensions, when considered in light of methodological passages from both Aristotle and Plato. Among these, Plato’s *Phaedrus* 270c‒d appears to have been of particular importance to Galen. This passage includes a description and commentary on Hippocrates’ method, thus linking Galen's two great masters of the classical past, Plato and Hippocrates, as representatives of philosophy and medicine, respectively.
Moreover, this passage outlines an ideal of scientific procedure in which reason and experience, logic and practical utility, are combined in a way that suited—and helped shape—some of Galen’s most deeply held convictions about the nature and purpose of his art. The element of uncertainty and fallibility involved in the practice of medicine, particularly in patient treatment, is attributed to the inherent constraints of physical reality; it does not diminish the status of medicine itself.
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