Acknowledgements
This book has been written as part of the NWO-funded project Human Nature: Medical and Philosophical Perspectives in the Work of Galen of Pergamum, directed by prof. dr. Teun Tieleman at the Utrecht University Philosophy department. I am very grateful to the NWO for the funding and to Teun for making me a part of this project. I would like to thank Aiste Čelkyte, Albert Joosse, Chiara Cecconi, Clarine Rijpstra-van Daal and Robert Vinkesteijn for their many useful comments and insightful feedback on my research during the frequent reading group and research seminar meetings with the project-group in Utrecht. I owe many thanks to my supervisor, Teun Tieleman, for his precise, extensive and knowledgeable input and comments. Without his support, this monograph would not exist. Of the many visiting scholars of our department, I would like to thank in particular Jim Hankinson for providing many thoughtful and stimulating comments on my talks and papers in these years. I also thank my former Professors Jan Opsomer and James Wilberding, who laid the foundations of my interest in ancient philosophy and especially in Galen. Moreover, I am thankful to Albert Gootjes for improving my English in an always sensible and thoughtful way. Finally, I want to give my dearest thanks to my friends and family who have always supported me during the many years I have been working on this book.
I would also like to take the opportunity to say something about my personal motivation in writing this book. Whenever I speak about Galen with contemporary physicians or medical students, it becomes clear that they have either never heard of him at all or else only know his name. Galen’s medical achievements, such as his anatomical insights, which laid a solid foundation for anatomical studies in the Renaissance and were therefore groundbreaking for the whole of western medicine, have either been abandoned or degenerated to become imperceptible foundations of our medical understanding of human nature. The people who did have something to say about Galen had some vague knowledge about the four humours or, more precisely, about the doctrine of the four different types of character as it developed later on from the four humours. However, such a doctrine of four character-types cannot, strictly speaking, be found in Galen, and I still remained astounded by how little people today know about him. These experiences reinforced my conviction that we need to do something to revive the memory of Galen — not only as a doctor, but also as the ethical philosopher he was.