Description

Galen's Critical Days has been one of the most influential texts of empirical medicine. In it, Galen presents the first theoretical exposition and explanation of the critical days, and lays the foundation of a long tradition of employing insights from astrological considerations in medical practice. The Hippocratic critical days, which were approximately a series of half and full weeks, revealed turning points or significant clues about the course of a disease. In the Critical Days, Galen uses empirical data to arrive at a canonical series of critical days, and shows how an astrological birth chart for the disease can assist in the prognosis of the course of the disease, allowing the physician to adjust treatment as needed. In the process, Galen employs sophisticated methods of data analysis and rudimentary perturbation theory, to eliminate some outlier data on the one hand, and to explain other anomalies through assuming an ideal course of an illness along the ideal series of critical days, which can be perturbed through patient or physician errors. This volume provides fresh lexical material in the fields of medicine, astrology, and general science, and will enable a more complete understanding of Galenic medicine.