Galen on the Pulses

Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean is devoted to all aspects of medicine in the Mediterranean World during the Middle Ages and later. Though with a clear focus on Greek (Byzantine) medicine, it also includes contributions of other groups in this region during the period. It publishes the results of cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary research, so providing a wide range of scholarly and scientific fields with new data for further explorations.

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The arterial pulse was a major aspect of all three major medical traditions - Western, Chinese and Indian. Galen's extant works are the only significant account of Western views surviving from ancient times. Not only does he set out his own views in great detail but he also gives a large amount of information on the views of others whose writings are lost. In the translated treatises in the present work, Galen deals with basic anatomy and physiology, classification of the types of pulses, diagnosis of and from the pulses, causal factors of clinical relevance and the very important matter of the prognostic value of the pulses. This is the first translation into a modern Western language of Galen's very substantial body of work on this subject.