De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum: On the Epistemological Status of Taste Perception in Galen’s Specific Pharmacology

Abstract

This article examines the role of taste perception in Galen’s research on simple drugs in relation to the acquisition of knowledge. To this end, 1.) I make it plausible through an examination of sources that the sometimes increased, more detailed and divergent indications of taste compared to his predecessors, especially Dioscorides and Sextius Niger, are based on Galen’s own research, 2.) reconstruct Galen’s research practice and 3.) examine the presentation of his results in linguistic and logical terms and explain the differences to traditional pharmacology. I argue that a) gustatory perception has a special significance in Galen’s work that goes far beyond its traditional descriptive function and b) that, starting from the realisation that taste and drug action are interrelated, he assigns to taste qualities an indicator function for a much more fundamental principle that causes drug action and thus c) has prepared the ground for a pharmacognosy that also classifies according to taste principles, which was to reach its climax much later. With a view to a practice of gustatory testing of herbal drugs that is still practised today in pharmacy, which, like any other natural science discipline, has otherwise largely lost the sensory reference to its subject matter, the article would therefore like to provide an encouragement to study the “history of pharmaceutical-medical tasting”.