The Prince of Medicine
Galen in the Roman Empire
Susan P. Mattern
Reviews and Awards
Honorable Mention, 2013 Prose Awards, Classics & Ancient History Category
"In The Prince of Medicine, [Mattern] situates Galen in his broader intellectual and social milieu, tracing the education and career of a physician who was remarkable not only as a prolific author and observant practitioner, but also as a supremely confident performer and harsh critic of his rivals. ... Her narrative of Galen's life draws frequently on On Prognosis and On Anatomical Procedures, two rich and fascinating treatises, while framing them in a way that gives the non-specialist reader insight into the wider social world of the Roman elite. ... As she notes, in one particular genre, the case history, Galen was able to create 'a complex and subtly sympathetic portrait' (229) of his patients. In this biography, Mattern has done the same for Galen." --New England Classical Journal
"This scholarly yet vivid new biography portrays a complex man, at once 'a tireless interrogator of nature, an attentive inquisitor of patients and reader of diagnostic clues' and a man who 'might be diagnosed with a personality disorder, once megalomania, today narcissism.'" -- Boston Globe
"Excellent... [N]ow the liveliest introduction to Galen in English." --Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"Confident and frequently fascinating... [A] fine biography." --The Spectator
"[M]eticulous and engaging biography... Mattern's rigorous scholarship also unveils the rich, vivid layers of Galen's life and times, and Galen's own words paint a portrait of an astounding physician whose motivation was 'not fame or wealth' but 'the love of mankind.'" --Publishers Weekly
"An engaging biography." --Library Journal
"A well-written, well-documented biography of the single physician who dominated Western medicine for 1,300 years... A valuable resource for classics and history of medicine collections. Summing up: Recommended. All academic, general, and professional readers." --Choice
"After centuries of traditional academic studies of the works of this most influential physician of all time, we are here gifted with this full-blooded and much-needed biography of Galen the man. In every way as scholarly as previous attempts to bring his paradoxical genius to life, Prof. Mattern's enormous contribution is set within her meticulous understanding of 2nd century Rome, its medical sects, and its socio-political atmosphere. All hail to her!" --Sherwin B. Nuland, author of Doctors: The Biography of Medicine and How We Die, winner of the National Book Award
"A fascinating and lively biography of an ancient Greek doctor who settled in Rome as an imperial physician. Using much newly discovered information, Dr. Mattern sets Galen's career against the background of the Roman Empire at the height of its prosperity." --Vivian Nutton, Emeritus Professor of the History of Medicine, University College London
"A pathologically quarrelsome physician, Galen was, in a sense, the Dr. House of Antiquity, and through his eyes Susan Mattern gives us the whole Roman world, from hovel to palace, as he treats ruptured rustics, gutted gladiators, and neurasthenic noblemen. Galen's tale is told with style and panache and due help to the reader unfamiliar with Rome--and even better than that, with plenty of enjoyably disgusting medical details." --J. E. Lendon, author of Soldiers & Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity
"It has been a while since I have read a scholarly book from cover to cover in almost one shot. Yet, Susan Mattern's The Prince of Medicine engulfed me with its subject -- which for a name like Galen's is a given -- and its enviable merits. Mattern's talent weaves a historical biography of one of the most reputed and controversial intellectual minds of antiquity into a grabbing full-life story of the real Galen, uncensored and demystified." --CJ-Online
