Sabrina Grimaudo’s book is a study of Galen’s Precepts of Health Care, a treatise in six books that gives advice on how individuals should live in order to stay in good health. As the author shows in her introduction, the text’s target audience includes both professional doctors and the more general, educated public. The book is divided into eight chapters, each discussing a particular aspect of the work. The first chapter draws a parallel between contemporary attention for the physical, mental, and social aspects of health on the one hand, and the ancient battle for authority in matters of healthcare between doctors and philosophers on the other. The second chapter discusses Galen’s double definition of health, accommodating both the Hippocratic/pre-Socratic theory of the four humours/elements and the Alexandrian emphasis on organs based on new anatomical–physiological discoveries. In addition, Galen is innovative in his adoption of a functional, inclusive concept of health as a (temporary) state in which an individual can carry out his usual activities unimpeded.
Following on from this, the next chapter shows that Galen, as opposed to other doctors such as Asclepiades and Erasistratus, believes in various degrees of health and in a continuum ranging from complete disease over temporary and imperfect health to perfect and continuous well-being. The fourth chapter sets out how Galen measures health by individual rather than general standards. Although medicine must therefore be dependent upon relative perception rather than absolute knowledge, the doctor will acquire an almost perfect knowledge of his patients by observing them over time. Chapter 5 sketches the evolution from Hippocrates’ focus on illness to Galen’s emphasis that health comes chronologically first, largely driven by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle on the one hand, and Hellenistic medicine’s interest in anatomy and physiology on the other. In the next chapter, Galen’s Precepts of Health Care causes Grimaudo to question Foucault’s concept of the care of the self: Galen is not talking so much about self-care as about the control over the whole of the patient’s existence by a professional specialised in regimen. Chapter 7 points out the contradiction that exists between Galen’s inclusive concept of health as set out in Chapter 2 and the overarching focus on men not only of perfect constitution but also spending all their time at the care of their health. The most important reason for this focus, according to Grimaudo, is Galen’s will to claim the field of healthcare for medicine which, as a science, tends to study health independently of individual circumstances. The final chapter shows Galen’s dialogues with medical predecessors and polemics with gymnastic and medical competitors, and thereby, in passing, gives the reader a survey of previous works on the topic.
Taken together, these chapters, which are followed by a bibliography and various indices, present a fine study of one of Galen’s most important works. Grimaudo’s book is clearly intended for specialists: no introduction to Galen or ancient views on healthcare is offered, the focus is on the text rather than on context, and footnotes regularly occupy half a page or more. Grimaudo therefore does not give one a survey of how Galen’s text works or of all the topics included in it, but she certainly offers a well-researched analysis of various key aspects, underwritten by a good understanding of the history and evolutions of ancient medicine; as such, her book will be a must-read for anybody studying Galen’s Precepts of Health Care.
