Mixtures is of central importance for Galen's views on the human body. It presents his influential typology of the human organism according to nine mixtures (or 'temperaments') of hot, cold, dry and wet. It also develops Galen's ideal of the 'well-tempered' person, whose perfect balance ensures excellent performance both physically and psychologically. Mixtures teaches the aspiring doctor how to assess the patient's mixture by training one's sense of touch and by a sophisticated use of diagnostic indicators. It presents a therapeutic regime based on the interaction between foods, drinks, drugs and the body's mixture. Mixtures is a work of natural philosophy as well as medicine. It acknowledges Aristotle's profound influence whilst engaging with Hippocratic ideas on health and nutrition, and with Stoic, Pneumatist and Peripatetic physics. It appears here in a new translation, with generous annotation, introduction and glossaries elucidating the argument and setting the work in its intellectual context.

Mixtures is of central importance for Galen's views on the human body. It presents his influential typology of the human organism according to nine mixtures (or 'temperaments') of hot, cold, dry and wet. It also develops Galen's ideal of the 'well-tempered' person, whose perfect balance ensures excellent performance both physically and psychologically. Mixtures teaches the aspiring doctor how to assess the patient's mixture by training one's sense of touch and by a sophisticated use of diagnostic indicators. It presents a therapeutic regime based on the interaction between foods, drinks, drugs and the body's mixture. Mixtures is a work of natural philosophy as well as medicine. It acknowledges Aristotle's profound influence whilst engaging with Hippocratic ideas on health and nutrition, and with Stoic, Pneumatist and Peripatetic physics. It appears here in a new translation, with generous annotation, introduction and glossaries elucidating the argument and setting the work in its intellectual context.

1. Mixtures (De Temperamentis)

Galen (AD 129-99), researcher and scholar, surgeon and philosopher, logician, herbalist and personal physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, was the most influential and multi-faceted medical author of antiquity. This is the first major selection in English of Galen's work, functioning as an essential introduction to his "medical philosophy" and including the first-ever translations of several major works. A detailed Introduction presents a vivid insight into medical practice as well as intellectual and everyday life in ancient Rome.

In Galen’s Theory of Black Bile: Hippocratic Tradition, Manipulation, Innovation Keith Stewart analyses Galen’s characterisation of black bile to understand the different ways it is used in his arguments that cannot always be reconciled with the content of his sources.

Thinking, Knowing, Acting: Epistemology and Ethics in Plato and Ancient Platonism aims to offer a fresh perspective on the correlation between epistemology and ethics in Plato and the Platonic tradition from Aristotle to Plotinus, by investigating the social, juridical and theoretical premises of their philosophy.

Philosophers and doctors from the period immediately after Aristotle down to the second century CE were particularly focussed on the close relationships of soul and body; such relationships are particularly intimate when the soul is understood to be a material entity, as it was by Epicureans and Stoics; but even Aristotelians and Platonists shared the conviction that body and soul interact in ways that affect the well-being of the living human being. These philosophers were interested in the nature of the soul, its structure, and its powers. They were also interested in the place of the soul within a general account of the world. This leads to important questions about the proper methods by which we should investigate the nature of the soul and the appropriate relationships among natural philosophy, medicine, and psychology. This volume, part of the Symposium Hellenisticum series, features ten scholars addressing different aspects of this topic.