Explores the Timaeus' impact on pre-modern Greek and Arabic conceptualizations of medicine and will appeal to classicists, medievalists, and historians of philosophy, science, and the Middle East. Its five case studies examine how thinkers such as Galen and Avicenna used Plato's dialogue to define their expertise and professional identities.
The Essay, Quod Optimus Medicus
The present volume offers an edition, updated English translation of, introduction to, and seven multi-authored contributions on Galen's small tract That the Best Doctor is also a Philosopher . The volume seeks to put Galen's text into conversation with recent interrogations of medicine's self-sufficiency - or disciplinary autonomy - in the Medical Humanities. As the title of the ancient work conveys and the essays in this volume unpack, Galen argues for a reenvisioning of medicine by making philosophy constitutive of his profession on the grounds that the latter's methods of reasoning, explanations of the natural world, and ethical directives enable the doctor to understand and treat the body in disease. In so doing, Galen expands medical knowledge at the expanse of instrumentalizing the philosophical.