Medical Writing in the Greek Intellectual Tradition: Galen and the Hippocratic Corpus

3 units

This class will offer an introduction to the writings of the Hippocratic Corpus as well as their reception in the philosophico-medical work of Galen of Pergamum (2nd century CE), which is primarily responsible for the picture of Hippocrates and Hippocratic medicine that survives to the present. We will situate the texts of the Hippocratic Corpus in the intellectual context of the Classical period and examine how their proper interpretation became a contested site for intellectual authority in Hellenistic and Imperial discourse about texual authenticity, climate, the body, empiricism, and the role of theory in scientific endeavors.