Galen on anatomical procedures : de Anatomicis administrationibus / translation of the surviving books with introduction and notes by Charles Singer.

  • Galen
Date:
1956
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Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Galen on anatomical procedures : de Anatomicis administrationibus / translation of the surviving books with introduction and notes by Charles Singer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    33/326 (page 1)
    [On Dissection in General and on Muscles and Ligaments of Upper Limb in Particular] Chapter i [Galen s Reasons for writing] Anatomical procedure was the subject of a previous work 215 written on my coming to Rome [a.d. 162] not long since. That was at the beginning of the reign of our present Emperor, Antoninus^ [reigned 161-80]. I have now resolved to write again on the subject, for two reasons. Firstly because Flavins Boethus, the Roman Consul,^ as keen an anatomist as ever lived, on leaving Rome for his native Ptolemais [a.d. 165], urged me to record these 'procedures'. I gave him, among 216 other works, my De anatomicis administrationihus lihri duo.^ These were of notes [only] for, while he was with us [162-5], he had made many observations in a short time and had asked me for some such records as memoranda. But since he is now dead^ and I have no copies (for those I had in Rome were destroyed by fire), at the urging of friends I decided to write others to give them. I was the more inclined thereto because the work would be much better composed, for meanwhile I have made many new observations. For clarity it is enlarged into a more detailed and accurate account. While Boethus was still in Rome, I wrote De Hippocratis et Erasistrati anatomice,^ and also De vivorum dissectione^ with De 21J mortuoYum dissectione'^ and added De causis respirationis^ and De voce,^ When he left I was engaged on a long work, De usu partium lihri XVII.^^ This finished, I sent it to Boethus, then still alive. De thoracis et pulmonis motu lihri tres^^ I wrote long ago, as a youth. It was for a fellow^student, returning to his own country after a long absence. He wished to display his talents B. 2353 B