The Poetics of Medicine

Abstract

In his commentaries on Hippocrates, Galen claims a distinct status for the genre of the scholarly didactic treatise. He could act freely, for previous literary criticism had excluded medical literature from consideration. To differentiate Hippocrates' work from historiographical works, the only rival genre, Galen claims people read works of history only for pleasure, whereas Hippocrates combines amusement and instruction. Such a denial of any truth-value to historical writing goes against the grain of traditional literary criticism, but may have been justified by contemporary historiographical practice'