# On Simple Drugs

- id: on-simple-drugs
- original title: Περὶ κράσεως καὶ δυνάμεως τῶν ἁπλῶν φαρμάκων / Peri kraseōs kai dynameōs tōn haplōn pharmakōn
- author: Galen
- language: Greek
- composed: c. 170–200, Rome
- field: pharmacology

Galen's eleven-book theory of what individual drugs do and why. It stands here for the whole Galenic corpus, whose passage through Syriac into Arabic was the largest single undertaking of the translation movement.

## The chain

- **c. 500–536** Greek -> Syriac, translation [attested]
  Sergius of Reshaina (translator)
  Part of the first sustained translation of Greek medicine into any language, made by the Alexandria-trained chief physician of Reshaina before his death in 536.
  Evidence: Hunayn ibn Ishaq 856 (Hunayn records and grades Sergius's Syriac versions); Bhayro 2017 (the surviving palimpsest witness of this translation)
  - **c. 840–873** Syriac -> Syriac, revision [attested]
    Hunayn ibn Ishaq (reviser), Baghdad
    Hunayn treated his predecessors like a strict examiner. The Risala records him grading Sergius's versions and revising or replacing them against better Greek manuscripts.
    Evidence: Hunayn ibn Ishaq 856; Lamoreaux 2016
    - **c. 845–875** Syriac -> Arabic, translation [probable]
      Hunayn ibn Ishaq (translator), Hubaysh ibn al-Hasan (translator), Baghdad
      The school's Arabic Galen was typically made from Hunayn's Syriac rather than directly from Greek, much of it by his nephew Hubaysh. The Risala records the division of hands work by work.
      Evidence: Hunayn ibn Ishaq 856; Strohmaier 1971

## Worth knowing

Sergius of Reshaina's 6th-century Syriac version, which Hunayn graded and revised three centuries later, was eventually scraped down and overwritten with hymns. The undertext came back only in the 2010s, when multispectral imaging recovered the Syriac Galen Palimpsest, letter by letter, from under the liturgy.

## Sources

- Hunayn ibn Ishaq (856). Risala on the Galen translations made by him and his school.
- Bhayro, Siam et al. (2017). The Syriac Galen Palimpsest: A Tale of Two Texts. Journal of Semitic Studies / Project MUSE.
- Lamoreaux, John C. (ed. and tr.) (2016). Hunayn ibn Ishaq on His Galen Translations. Brigham Young University Press.

Confidence grades: attested (named in the medieval record or settled in scholarship), probable (standard view with real uncertainty), disputed (scholars disagree).