Galen (129-after [?] 216)
Galen's treatise on materia medica, known as De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus (referred to here as De simplicibus), is divided into 11 books. There is a growing consensus that these 11 books constitute 2 distinct works, with books 1-5 exposing Galen’s theory to understand the effects of materia medica, and books 6-11 providing on this basis the analysis of individual items of materia medica categorized into three groups (books): plants, minerals, and animals.
De simplicibus, Books 1-5
Edition of the Greek text in Carolus Gottlob Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera omnia, 20 vols (Medicorum graecorum opera quae exstant 1-20). Leipzig: Car. Cnobloch, 1821-1833, vol. 11 (1826), pp. 379-788.
Books | Content | Letter in Kühn | Kühn’s edition | |
1-5 | Theory | 1 | Α | 11.379-458 |
2 | Β | 11.459-539 | ||
3 | Γ | 11.540-618 | ||
4 | Δ | 11.619-703 | ||
5 | Ε | 11.704-788 | ||
No English translation of the full text is currently available. For a word index, see Jost Gippert, Index Galenicus. Auf der Grundlage des elektronischen Textes im Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), 2 vols. Dettelbach: J.H. Röll, 1996.