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Galien. Oeuvres, III. Le médecin; Introduction.

The amount of data collected towards the completion of this book is extensive: forty Greek manuscripts, several Latin translations (one Late antique, one medieval, two Renaissance ones), mainly in the form of manuscripts and early printed books. The majority of those manuscripts and printed sources were at the time scattered all over European libraries (one from Mount Athos) and difficult to access, to read and understand. The lack of scholarship, the absence of any previous edition or translation other than Latin, the number of historical and philological issues raised by the text made it a long, difficult work.

This is the first critical edition, with substantive introduction, French translation (the first in a modern language), and notes, of a Greek medical handbook ascribed to Galen. Scholars commonly use the Latin title Introductio sive Medicus. All manuscripts attribute it to Galen. The edition is based on the full collation of the 40 extant Greek manuscripts, and several Latin translations. The pseudo-Galenic Introduction has been a constant point of reference for medical writers and historians of medicine since late Antiquity: indeed, it covers every aspect of Hellenistic and Roman medicine, from doxographical and epistemological issues to female circumcision and surgery.