Galen on qualified experience 297
!) (*C ), if applicable, would refernotjust to a few
exceptional cases in which something has gone wrong, but to quite a con-
siderable number of different types of situation in which the power of a
substance is not realised or the process is turned in another direction. For
as Galen’s list of
indicates, there may be quite a lot of possibly
interfering or even impeding factors changing the course of the process,
and as a consequence it may be difficult to distinguish between effects
brought about ‘by the substance itself ’ ( ’H!) and effects produced
‘accidentally’ (1 < <#!).
Although Galen was apparently aware of this difficulty, the possibility
that a dietetic or pharmacological power may be prevented from being
actualised by interfering factors is apparentlynottaken into account by
him when it comes to refuting generalising statements about the power of
a foodstuff or drug. Galen’s refutation of such statements usually follows
the pattern of deducing the power (or the absence of it) from the effect.^78
Thus ‘A has the power to bring about X’ is refuted by pointing out that in a
certain case A does not bring about X but Y; but to conclude from this that
A does not possess thepowerto bring about X ignores the possibility that A
mayhave this power but does not realise it in this particular case, and may
therefore be false. Thus Galen fails to apply the concept of
)
#
consistently to his own critical scrutiny of other pharmacologists’
statements.
5 consequences for the question of
experiment in galen’s pharmacology
To sum up: what does the concept of qualified experience have to say on
the question of pharmacological ‘experiment’ in Galen’s works? As is well
known and has already been alluded to above, there has been a long-standing
dispute as to whether we are actually justified in speaking of experiment
in ancient science (and, as a consequence, of ancientscienceat all). It has
often been argued that this word is too evocative of modern connotations
of a deliberate and systematical examination of what happens when, in a
determined set of circumstances, a definite change is brought about;^79 and it
(^78) See Harig ( 1974 ) 104 : ‘die Feststellung der potentiellen Wirkung eines Pharmakons... erst retro-
spektiv aus der eingetretenen aktuellen Wirkung erkannt werden kann’. For an example of Galen
falsifying statements by means of counter-examples seeDe simpl. med. fac. 1. 34 ( 11. 440 ff. K.).
(^79) For a definition of experiment see von Staden ( 1975 ) 180. See also the discussions by Grmek and
Gourevitch ( 1985 ) 3 – 4 ; Debru ( 1994 ) 1718 – 21 ; Tieleman ( 1995 ) 32 (all with abundant references to
secondary literature) and Lloyd ( 1964 ) 50 – 72.