Galen, one of the most remarkable physicians in antiquity, was a prolific writer of medical treatises who exerted a profound influence on the development of Western medical thought. He was born in September A.D. 129, in the city of Pergamon (Turkish Bergama), a thriving commercial, intellectual, and cultural center in Roman Asia. The only son of Nicon, a highly placed engineer-architect, Galen spent his childhood, youth, and years of study with several teachers of philosophy, and the period of his work in medicine and allied intellectual pursuits in Greek-speaking Roman Asia Minor, mainland Greece, and Egypt (mainly in Alexandria and its environs). As a child he received his primary education from private tutors (either specially trained household slaves or teachers hired by his wealthy father).

In his autobiographical On the Order of His Own Books (circa A.D. 190), which he wrote in his sixties, Galen recalled how his...