cover image The Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire

The Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire

Susan P. Mattern. Oxford Univ., $29.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-199-76767-0

In this meticulous and engaging biography, University of Georgia history professor Mattern (Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing) writes that Galen, a Greek aristocrat of great ambition and dazzling intelligence, was already a superstar physician when he arrived in Rome in 162 C.E. Educated in medicine and philosophy, Galen left his provincial medical practice at the age of 32 to come to the center of the world’s largest empire, where he treated the prominent—including Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a feverish philosopher named Eudemus, and gladiators—and the common populace, in a city regularly assaulted by malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, syphilis, and (in 168 C.E.) a devastating plague. “Visits to patients were a normal part of his daily life,” Mattern writes. The book covers Galen’s upbringing by an adored father and a despised mother, as well as his medical and philosophical training, and his astounding repertoire of medical work—including anatomy, surgery, and voluminous writings. Mattern’s rigorous scholarship also unveils the rich, vivid layers of Galen’s life and times, and Galen’s own words paint a portrait of an astounding physician whose motivation was “not fame or wealth” but “the love of mankind.” 18 b&w illus. & 3 maps. (July 2)