And to end on a poetic note: Galen's authorial strategies in the pharmacological books.

This paper examines the authorial strategies deployed by Galen in his two main pharmacological treatises devoted to compound remedies: Composition of Medicines according to Types and Composition of Medicines according to Places. Some of Galen's methods of self assertion (use of the first person; writing of prefaces) are conventional. Others have not received much attention from scholars. Thus, here, I examine Galen's borrowing of his sources' 'I'; his use of the phrase 'in these words'; and his recourse to Damocrates' verse to conclude pharmacological books. I argue that Galen's authorial persona is very different from that of the modern author as defined by Roland Barthes. Galen imitates and impersonates his pharmacological sources. This re-enactment becomes a way to gain experience (peira) of remedies and guarantees their efficacy.

Teaching the Hippocratic gynaecological recipes?

This paper investigates whether the recipes preserved in the main gynaecological treatises--Diseases of Women 1 and 2, Barrenness and Nature of Women--may have been used as a teaching device. I ask two questions: first whether the recipes could have been included in oral lectures before being written down; and second whether the written recipes could have served as a basis for teaching.

Sex and vegetables in the Hippocratic gynaecological treatises.

The compilers of the Hippocratic gynaecological treatises often recommend sexual intercourse as part of treatments for women's diseases. In addition, they often prescribe the use of ingredients that are obvious phallic symbols. This paper argues that the use of sexual therapy in the Hippocratic gynaecological treatises was more extended than previously considered. The Hippocratic sexual therapies involve a series of vegetable ingredients that were sexually connoted in antiquity, but have since lost their sexual connotations. In order to understand the sexual signification of products such as myrtle and barley, one must turn to other ancient texts, and most particularly to Attic comedies. These comedies serve here as a semiotic guide in decoding the Hippocratic gynaecological recipes. However, the sexual connotations attached to animal and vegetable ingredients in these two genres have deeper cultural and religious roots; both genres exploited the cultural material at their disposal.