rture
are discussed by Dr. Greenhill in the "Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Biography and Mythology." A pestilence raged in Rome at this time, but
it is unlikely that Galen would have deserted his patients for that
reason. Probably he disliked Rome, and longed for his native place. He
had been in Pergamos only a very short time when he was summoned to
attend the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and L. Verus in Venetia. The latter
died of apoplexy on his way home to Rome, and Galen followed Marcus
Aurelius to the capital. The Emperor soon thereafter set out to
prosecute the war on the Danube, and Galen was allowed to remain in
Rome, as he had stated that such was the will of AEsculapius. The
Emperor's son Commodus was placed under the care of Galen during the
father's absence, and at this time also (A.D. 170) Galen prepared the
famous medicine _theriaca_ for Marcus Aurelius, who took a small
quantity daily. The Emperor Septimius Severus employed the same
physician and the same medicine about thirty years afterwards. It is
recorded that the philosopher Eudemius was successfully treated by Galen
for a severe illness caused by an overdose of theriaca, and that the
treatment employed was the same drug in small doses.

Galen stayed several years in Rome, and wrote and practised as on his
former visit. He again returned to Pergamos, and probably was in Rome
again at the end of the second century. It is certain he was still alive
in the year 199, and probably lived in the reign of the Emperor
Caracalla.

He was not only a great physician, but a man of wide culture in every
way. In matters of religion he was a Monotheist. There was persecution
of the Christians in his day, and it is likely that he came little into
contact with the disciples of the new religion, and heard distorted
accounts of it, but in one of his lost books, quoted by his Arabian
biographers, Galen praises highly the love of virtue of the Christians.

He no doubt found the practice of medicine lucrative when he had gained
pre-eminence, and it is recorded that he received L350 for curing the
wife of Boetius, the Consul.

Galen wrote no less than five hundred treatises, large and small, mostly
on medical subjects, but also on ethics, logic, and grammar. His style
is good but rather diffuse, and he delights in quoting the ancient Greek
philosophers. Before his time, as we have seen, there were disputes
between the various medical sects. The disciples of Dogmatism and o