Ibid. Galeni "tria Somnia".--- "Tertium magis dignum miraculo, cum bis
per somnium admonitus, ut arteriam secaret, quae inter pollicem &
indicem est, idque agens liberatus sit a diuturno dolore, quo
infestabatur ea in parte, qua septo transverso jecur jungitur, idque
in libri de sectione venae fine testatus est. Magno certe exemplo, quod
tantus vir in medicina eam adhibuerit somnio fidem, ut in seipso
periculum vitae subierit, in arte propria. Deinde probitatem admiror,
ut quo potuerit solertia ingenii sibi inventum ascribere, Deo cui
debebatur, rediderit. Dignus vel hoc solo vir immortalitate nominis, &
librorum suorum."
Galen's three dreams. The third more worthy of being called a miracle,
was, when being twice admonished in his sleep, to cut the artery that
lies between the fore finger and the thumb, and doing it accordingly,
he was freed from a continual daily pain with which he was afflicted
in that part where the liver is joined to the midriff; and this he has
testified at the end of his book of Venesection. 'Tis certainly a very
great example, when a man so great as he was in the medicinal art, put
so much confidence in a dream as to try experiments upon himself;
where he was to run the risque of his life, in his own very art. I
cannot help but admire his probity in the next place, that where he
might have arrogated the merit of the invention to himself, and placed
it wholly to the account of the subtility and penetration of his own
genius, he attributed it to God, to whom it was due. In this alone did
the man well deserve to purchase an immortality to his name and his
writings.
In his fourth book, chap. 4. "De Exemplis propriis", he owns the
solution of some difficult problems in Algebra to his dreams.
Plinii, Nat. Hist. lib. 22, chap. 17. "Verna carus Pericli
Atheniensium Principi, cum is in arce templum aedificaret,
repsissetque super altitudinem fastigii, & inde cecidisset, hac herba
(Parthenio) dicitur sanatus, monstrata Pericli somnio a Minerva. Quare
Parthenium vocari coepta est, assignaturque ei Deae."
Pliny's Natural History, book 22, chap. 17. "A little Home-bred Slave,
that was a darling favourite to Pericles, Prince of the Athenians, and
who, while a temple was building in the Prince's palace, had climbed
up to the very top of the pinnacle, and tumbled down from that
prodigious height; is said to have been cured of his fall by the herb
Parthenium, or mug-wort, which was shown to Pericles in a dream, by
Minerva. From hence it originally took the name of Parthenium, and is
attributed to that Goddess.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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