Galen on Anatomical Procedures: The Later Books

Galen was probably the greatest medical writer of antiquity and certainly the most prolific. His Anatomical Procedures (c. 200 CE) embodies the results of a lifetime of practical research; it is largely based on verbatim notes of lectures delivered during actual demonstrations of dissection. The work comprises fifteen books, of which only the first eight-and-a-half have survived in the original Greek. An Arabic translation of the complete work has survived, however, and this has made possible the translation of the final six-and-a-half books (parts of book 9 and books 10-15). Duckworth’s translation was originally made from a German translation of 1906, but for this 1962 edition it was revised by Lyons, working directly from the Arabic text, with the co-operation of Towers. Modern names for the parts of the body are inserted in brackets, and an anatomical index is supplied.