A Treatise On Milk by Galen?
MS Bologna, University Library, 3632
In his bibliography of Galen’s writings, the German classical philologist and historian of medicine, Gerhard Fichtner (1932-2012), listed a treatise On Milk (Περὶ γάλακτος)1. Whereas he usually included numerous bibliographical references for any of the titles listed in his Corpus Galenicum, for this specific work he just provided a short list2 according to which the text is not present in such major references as the monumental edition of Galeni Opera omnia published in 20 volumes between 1821 and 1833 by Karl Gottlob Kühn (1754-1840)3; the still authoritative article “A Chronological Census of Renaissance Editions and Translations of Galen” by medico-historical bibliographer Richard Durling (1932-1999)4; and the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae created as early as 1973 by Theodore F. Brunner (1934-2007) at the University of California Irvine (UCI) and now curated and further developed by the same University. As per G. Fichtner’s notice, Galen, De lacte, is listed, instead, in the catalogue of Greek medical manuscripts compiled under the leading of Hermann Diels and published in 19055, as well as on the Website PINAKES.
The site PINAKES does list a treatise De lacte by Galen6 and references the manuscript of Bologna 3632 as in Diels’ catalogue7. The site BIBLISSIMA follows suit and lists the same text and manuscript with a reference to PINAKES8.
Diels’ catalogue, which appears to be the main source of information for this Galenic treatise in recent scholarly literature, lists two manuscripts under the title Περὶ γάλακτος De lacte: the Bologna item 3632 and a Florentine codex, which, judging from Diels’ indication, contains another text, however: De sero lactis. Leaving this Florence codex aside here, the Bologna one is reported as containing the treatise De lacte on folio 265.9
Without stressing that no information about such a treatise has been preserved—be it through the self-references by Galen, the list of his works that he himself compiled, or the lists of his treatises known in the Arabic World— and consulting the manuscript instead10, we do encounter a chapter entitled Γαληνοῦ Περϊ γάλακτος καὶ ἐκ του ρούφου11. As reading makes it clear, this text is not a specific treatise On milk but extracts from Galen’s large treatise on materia medica traditionally identified in contemporary scholarly literature as De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus12. These extracts in the Bologna manuscript are based on the treatment of milk and its derivatives in Book 10 of the treatise13. They do not reproduce Galen’s original full text ad litteram, but excerpt it freely, in addition to expanding it with heterogeneous material. The resulting text is a compilation hastily written in a sloppy calligraphy typical of manuscripts of practitioners. Indeed, the Bologna manuscript is a 15th-century codex known to have been at the so-called Hospital of the King (Ξενοδοχεῖον τοῦ Κράλη) in Constantinople and in the hands of one of its most active members at that time, Demetrios Angelos.
Unless we discover a treatise explicitly identified by a specific title referring to milk within a manuscript (whether in the original Greek language or in a translation into Syriac or Arabic) that does not reproduce extracts from other Galenic works but offers original information, we should no longer consider that Galen wrote a treatise titled On Milk. Accordingly, entry 262 in Fichtner’s Corpus Galenicum should be deleted.
Alain Touwaide
1 Gerhard Fichtner, Corpus Galenicum, Bibliographie der galenischen und pseudogalenischen Werke, revised and augmented edition 2023/12, p. 103, no. 262. The work, which was privately published and diffused by the author, was transferred to the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum edited by Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, which maintains and updates it. Its most recent edition (2023/12) is available in the form of a PDF file on the site of the Corpus: https://cmg.bbaw.de/fileadmin/Webdateien/Dateien/Galen-Bibliographie.pdf. Last accessed May 29 , 2025.
2 The list of references reads as follows: “Nicht bei Kühn Vgl. Diels 117; Durling Nr. 00; Pinakes TLG-ID: 00”.
3 Carolus Gottlob Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera omnia. Editionem curavit -, 20 vols. in 22 tomes (Medicorum graecorum opera quae exstant 1-20). Lipsiae: In officina Car. Cnoblochii, 1821-1836. The whole corpus is available online. For a list of Galen’s treatises (Latin titles) linked to their digital version available online, see https://galenus-verbatim.huma-num.fr/ and also https://scaife.perseus.org/library/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0057/. Both links were last accessed May 29, 2025.
4 The article was published in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, volume 24, number 3-4, July-December 1961, pp. 230–305.
5 Hermann Diels, Die Handschriften der antiken Ärzte. I. Teil. Hippokrates und Galenos. Im Auftrage der akademischen Kommission herausgegeben von - (Abhandlungen der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften vom Jahre 1905, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Abhandlung III). Berlin: Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1905, p. 117. A digital version of the work is available at https://cmg.bbaw.de/epubl/online/diels_02.php. Last accessed May 29, 2025. The catalogue has been reecently reedited; see Alain Touwaide, Greek Medical Manuscripts. Diels’ Catalogue (Medical Traditions 2). Berlin, and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 5 vols, 2021. For the text discussed here, see vol. 1 (Diels’ Catalogues with Indices), p. 170.
6 See https://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/notices/auteur/1130/ sub titulo. Last accessed May 29, 2025.
7 See https://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/notices/oeuvre/3014/, without a reference to Diels’ catalogue. Last accessed May 29, 2025.
8 See https://portail.biblissima.fr/fr/ark:/43093/tdatad39844b34f29fdc219045039f66a4408d2bbf2c6 with a reference to PINAKES. Last accessed May 29, 2025.
9 PINAKES (see note 7) rightly gives folio 265 recto-verso.
10 For a digital reproduction of the manuscript, see https://historica.unibo.it/entities/publication/a0166c0f-6ddf-434d-a3df-1375dae41b78/viewer/iiif?canvasId=e9454474-89df-4c42-98fe-c92aed185e0d. Last accessed May 29, 2025.
11 The folio (recto-verso) where the text appears is identified with two different numbers: 265 written by hand in the upper right corner of the folio, and 266 printed with a page-numbering device in the lower right corner.
12 The Greek text of the full treatise can be read in Kuhn’s edition referenced in note 3, in volumes 11 (1826), pp. 379-892 and 12 (1826), pp. 1-377.
13 See vol. 12 (1826), pp. 263-274, about milk, cheese and butter.