Output details

Galien, Sur les facultés des aliments

Sur les facultés des aliments was written for one of the two international series in Galen texts over an 18-year period (1995-2013), mainly because of the length of the text and the consequently vast task of collating manuscripts in Paris, Rome, Cesena and Wolfenbüttel. Training was required in the reading and transmission of Galen manuscripts, both Greek and Latin, and for the decipherment of a long palimpsest. Training was also required in the technical field of ancient botany and, for the translation of the edited text, in French botanical terminology as well as medical French.

'Galien' is a new text and edition of Galen’s large treatise on nutrition, which emphasises problems in identifying plants and animals in the human diet. The text is the first since 1923 and challenges some of Helmreich’s assumptions about the recentiores. There is a French translation which is more accurate than recent English translations, and notes on problems of identification, botanical and otherwise. An Introduction traces the history of Greek dietetic texts, the place of the treatise in the enormous output of Galen, and the history of the text through the Latin West, Byzantium and Syriac and Arabic translations.