Susan P. Mattern

The medical history that one encounters in general reading usually mentions Galen to point out how he dominated medical thought until Vesalius, how tragic this was, and how many bone-headed things Galen believed. But why did Galen dominate medical thought for so long, if he knew no more than his contemporaries? This biography is well-written (it has many parenthetical asides, but I am in no position to criticize) and detailed and shows Galen's greatness. He was a man of his time, of course, and knowledge only accumulates over centuries (After all, how many ridiculous things do people believe today?), but he seems to have been a conscientious, observant and perspicacious physician. He wrote many books and some contain self-aggrandizing case histories in which he comes off looking like Sherlock Holmes. As a bonus, we learn a lot about second century Greece, Rome (it was filthy), Gladiatorial combat, Marcus Aurelius and more. Warning: The accounts of vivisection are very disturbing.… (altro)

In The Slow Moon Climbs, Susan Mattern argues that despite popular negative characterisations of menopause, this phase of life is actually key to our success as a species. Without having such a substantial proportion of the population able to be productive without being reproductive—to produce food surpluses and to provide care for others—human civilization as we know it would not be possible. Mattern brings together a great mass of evidence from a broad number of fields to make the convincing case for menopause as not some debilitating medical condition but instead part of a complex strategy of cooperation.

However, there were great swathes of material here that seemed extraneous to the matter at hand, and when Mattern strayed close to areas I know something about I found myself wincing a bit. (Le Roy Ladurie and Duby are certainly both important historians, but in the 2010s they’re not the people whose work I’d be looking to first to make arguments about the role of women in medieval western Europe.) This is also such ‘big history’—spanning hundreds of thousands of years and drawing a lot on quantitative anthropological and ethnographical studies—that I felt it to an extent lost sight of people. I know that it’s tedious to say “this isn’t the book that I would have written on this topic”, but I feel like Mattern’s point would have been served better by foregrounding people’s stories as much as possible rather than on theories and stats.… (altro)

Many modern historians, most notably Luttwak, have tried to explain the strategy of the Roman Empire in terms that make sense to modern strategic thinkers, citing concepts like natural frontiers and cost-benefit analyses. Mattern argues we should instead take ancient historians seriously when they tell us that Roman foreign policy was primarily based on considerations of honour, prestige, and glory, with some allowances made for military and financial practicalities.

I found it convincing - though note I haven't read the authors arguing for a more rationalistic Roman strategy.… (altro)

An excellent read about an key figure in medical thinking and experimentation. Mattern does a good job using the available literature to piece together a chronology of Galen's life, as well as delving into inferences that can be made from his texts. The book is a little bit dry and occasionally choppy to read (paragraphs do not necessarily follow from one another), but it's well sourced and goes into the social context of Roman life and how it affected Galen in his practice, which I quite enjoyed. Overall a good read.… (altro)