Skip to main content

During the second century CE, the Greek physician and polymath Galen of Pergamon practiced medicine in Rome and, instrumental to his success, composed expansive diagnostic, surgical, and anatomical texts that set the medical precedent up until the Renaissance. Many of his texts also narrate clinical encounters between this notable physician and specific patients whom he treated. As Galen’s texts represent a significant portion not just of Post-Hippocratic medical texts, but even of the entire corpus of Ancient Greek literature, his works provide an important lens on the relationship between the complex and intersecting systems of social hierarchy in the High Empire. In this paper, we argue that, by carefully analyzing the narration of specific clinical encounters described in Galen’s texts, it is possible to gain a better of understanding of how Galen the person may have viewed the all-important doctor-patient relationship in his practice of medicine.

Because Galen was a Greek physician active in the Roman capital, he had to negotiate the entanglements of his sociological environment, in order to best practice his profession and keep within his social bounds. Important scholarship has previously discussed the thematic and social elements of Galen’s clinical narrative (Mattern 2008), as well as the value of the social performance and spectacle in Galen’s anatomical practice (Gleason 2009). Our approach proceeds from current developments in narrative medicine (Charon and Rudnytsky 2008) and narratology (de Jong 2014) to explore how Galen’s narration of clinical encounters communicates specific approaches to the physician-patient relationship.

While Galen did write upon his treatments of very important figures in Rome—even treating Emperor Marcus Aurelius—Galen also wrote detailed accounts of his treatment of slaves, women, and servants. Due to this wide array of patients, there is interest in how the patient-physician relationship is represented in Galen’s clinical narratives across varying classes, genders, and ethnicities. In this specific argument we will elucidate the dynamic nature of Galen’s patient-physician relationship through close analysis of certain written patient interactions within Galen’s On Prognosis (De Praecognitione, Nutton 1979; CMG V 8, 1) and The Affections and Errors of the Soul (De Affectuum Dignotione, de Boer 1937; CMG V 4, 1.1). Specifically, we discuss Galen’s interactions with a slave master (De Affectuum Dignotione 4.18-37), a Greek philosopher (De Praecognitione 2-4), and a love-sick woman (De Praecognitione 6). In these interactions our focus is on Galen’s narrative technique: the pregnant silences, significant uses of linguistic forms, and the registers of voice occurring in the different accounts of diagnosis and treatment. We show how differences in use of voice can be assigned to different patients, elucidating the relationships between them and this celebrated physician.