As in the case of the Hippocratic corpus, so in the case of the Galenic corpus we are dealing to some extent with material from various sources. In the case of Galen, however, we have a good standard of genuineness, for he has left us a list of his books which can be checked off against those which we actually possess. The general standpoint of the Galenic is not unlike that of the Hippocratic writings, but the noble vision of the lofty-minded, pure-souled physician has utterly passed away. In his place we have an acute, honest, very contentious fellow, bristling with energy and of prodigious industry, not unkindly, but loving strife, a thoroughly ‘aggressive’ character. He loves truth, but he loves argument quite as much. The value of his philosophical writings, of which some have survived, cannot be discussed here, but it is evident that he is frequently satisfied with purely verbal explanations. An ingenious physiologist, a born experimenter, an excellent anatomist and eager to improve, possessing a good knowledge of the human skeleton and an accurate acquaintance with the internal parts so far as this can be derived from a most industrious devotion to dissection of animals, equipped with all the learning of the schools of Pergamon, Smyrna, and Alexandria, and rich with the experience of a vast practice at Rome, Galen is essentially an ‘efficient’ man. He has the grace to acknowledge constantly and repeatedly his indebtedness to the Hippocratic writings. Such was the man whose remains, along with the Hippocratic collection, formed the main medical legacy of Greece to the Western world. Some of Galen’s works are mere drug lists, little superior to those of Dioscorides;[137] with the depression of the intelligence that corresponded with the break up of the Roman Empire, it was these that were chiefly seized on and distributed in the West. Attractive too to the debased intellect of the late Roman world were certain spurious, superstitious, and astrological works that circulated in the name of Galen and Hippocrates.[138] The Greek medical writers after Galen were but his imitators and abstractors, but through some of them Galen’s works reached the West at a very early period in the Middle Ages. Such abstractors who were early translated into Latin were Oribasius (325-403), Paul of Aegina (625-690), and Alexander of Tralles (525-605). Of the best and most scientific of Galen’s works the Middle Ages knew little or nothing. [137] e. g. περὶ κράσεως καὶ δυνάμεως τῶν ἁπάντων φαρμάκων and the φάρμακα. [138] e. g. _De dynamidiis Galeni_, _Secreta Hippocratis_ and many astrological tracts.