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In Cutting Words: Polemical Dimensions of Galen’s Anatomical Experiments, Luis Alejandro Salas offers a new account of Galen’s medical experiments in the context of the high intellectual culture of second-century Rome. The book explores how Galen’s written experiments operate alongside their live counterparts. It argues that Galen’s experimental writing reperforms the licensing functions of his live demonstrations, acting as a surrogate for their performance and in some cases an improvement upon it. Cutting Words focuses on the philosophical targets and theoretical stakes of four case studies: Galen’s experiments on voice production, the bladder, the heart, and the femoral artery. It ends over a millennium later with Vesalius, who adapted his Greek predecessor's writing in his own anatomical work, framing himself as a new Galen and so securing Galen's legacy of writing.
Price: $160.00
Pages: 330
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Studies in Ancient Medicine
Publication Date:
26 November 2020
ISBN: 9789004439184
Format: Hardcover
"This book breaks new ground and in greater detail than other recent scholarship [...] Dr Salas sets a high standard for the wider survey of Galenic anatomy in general that is still needed, and for which he is eminently qualified."
- Vivian Nutton, in: Annals of Science, published online 25-2-2021.
"L.A. Salas’ Cutting Words: Polemical Dimensions of Galen’s Anatomical Experiments presents a much-needed elucidation of Galenic anatomy and Galenic anatomical writing. By carefully contextualizing the accounts of Galenic anatomical experiments, this study shows that the Galenic anatomical texts are evocative of public dissections which were spectacles designed to establish the performer’s authority, to demonstrate his technical acumen and, oftentimes, to reduce any rivals to shame. (...) this book is a very welcome addition to the Galenic scholarship. (...) In order to appreciate the medical work presented in such an unusual style to the contemporary eye, it is necessary to have a guide for contextualizing, clarifying and elucidating the complex style of writing. This book is exactly such a guide."
- Aistė Čelkytė, Leiden University, in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2021.06.38.
"This excellent book covers a great deal of territory chronologically, epistemologically as well as in terms of cultural theory and ancient history in the best sense of the expression – a rounded understanding of ancient intellectual and social life at the time of Galen and in the preceding centuries. It is committed to an idea of deep embedment of scientific cultures and practices into context (intellectual, socio-economical, heuristic, scientific) and makes an important effort to uncover the dialogue between Galenic scientific doctrines and philosophical arguments, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the written tradition – past, present and future – qua written, into which the famous physician carefully crafts a position for himself."
- Chiara Thumiger, The Classical Review (2021) 1–3.
- Vivian Nutton, in: Annals of Science, published online 25-2-2021.
"L.A. Salas’ Cutting Words: Polemical Dimensions of Galen’s Anatomical Experiments presents a much-needed elucidation of Galenic anatomy and Galenic anatomical writing. By carefully contextualizing the accounts of Galenic anatomical experiments, this study shows that the Galenic anatomical texts are evocative of public dissections which were spectacles designed to establish the performer’s authority, to demonstrate his technical acumen and, oftentimes, to reduce any rivals to shame. (...) this book is a very welcome addition to the Galenic scholarship. (...) In order to appreciate the medical work presented in such an unusual style to the contemporary eye, it is necessary to have a guide for contextualizing, clarifying and elucidating the complex style of writing. This book is exactly such a guide."
- Aistė Čelkytė, Leiden University, in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2021.06.38.
"This excellent book covers a great deal of territory chronologically, epistemologically as well as in terms of cultural theory and ancient history in the best sense of the expression – a rounded understanding of ancient intellectual and social life at the time of Galen and in the preceding centuries. It is committed to an idea of deep embedment of scientific cultures and practices into context (intellectual, socio-economical, heuristic, scientific) and makes an important effort to uncover the dialogue between Galenic scientific doctrines and philosophical arguments, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the written tradition – past, present and future – qua written, into which the famous physician carefully crafts a position for himself."
- Chiara Thumiger, The Classical Review (2021) 1–3.
Luis Alejandro Salas, Ph.D. (2013), University of Texas at Austin, is Assistant Professor of Classics at Washington University in St. Louis. His main research interests lie in ancient Greek and Roman medicine, philosophy, and intellectual history. He has published on Galen’s theory and classification of disease, as well as his systems of anatomy and physiology.