a diagnostician; and certainly some of the accounts which he gives, in his clinical and scientific treatises, of his own experiences, seem to bear out this accusation. One hesitates to expose the weak spots in the character of one of the really great men of antiquity lest such exposure may convey a wrong impression; at the same time it would be an error to represent him as a man entirely free from the foibles common to humanity,—even to the best and wisest of men. I therefore repeat here Galen's own account of a professional visit which he made to a brother physician whose malady presented to himself and to his friends many obscure features.
Upon the occasion of my first visit to Rome I completely won the
admiration of the philosopher Glaucon by the diagnosis which I
made in the case of one of his friends. Meeting me one day in the
street he shook hands with me and said: "I have just come from
the house of a sick man, and I wish that you would visit him with
me. He is a Sicilian physician, the same person with whom I was
walking when you met me the other day." "What is the matter
with him?" I asked. Then coming nearer to me he said, in the
frankest manner possible: "Gorgias and Apelas told me yesterday
that you had made some diagnoses and prognoses which looked to
them more like acts of divination than products of the medical art
pure and simple. I would therefore like very much to see some
proof, not of your knowledge but of this extraordinary art which
you are said to possess." At this very moment we reached the
entrance of the patient's house, and so, to my regret, I was prevented
from having any further conversation with him on the
subject and from explaining to him how the element of good luck
often renders it possible for a physician to give, as it were off-hand,
diagnoses and prognoses of this exceptional character. Just
as we were approaching the first door, after entering the house,
we met a servant who had in his hand a basin which he had
brought from the sick room and which he was on his way to empty
upon the dung heap. As we passed him I appeared not to pay
any attention to the contents of the basin, but at a mere glance I
perceived that they consisted of a thin sanio-sanguinolent fluid,
in which floated excrementitious masses that resembled shreds of
flesh—an unmistakable evidence of disease of the liver. Glaucon
and I, not a word having been spoken by either of us, passed on
into the patient's room. When I put out my hand to feel of the
