Philotimus

Philotimus, (Greek: Φιλότιμος), (4th and 3rd centuries BC), an eminent Greek physician, a pupil of Praxagoras,[1] and a fellow pupil of Herophilus.[2] He was also a contemporary of Erasistratus,[3] and is quoted by Heraclides of Tarentum,[4] and therefore must have lived in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Celsus mentions him as one of the eminent physicians of antiquity;[5] and he is quoted by several of the ancient medical writers, viz. Caelius Aurelianus,[6] Oribasius,[7] Aëtius,[8] and very frequently by Galen.

He belonged to the Logical or Dogmatic school,[9] and wrote several medical works, of which only a few fragments remain. Athenaeus quotes a work on Cookery,[10] and another on Food, consisting of at least thirteen books;[11] this later work is several times quoted by Galen.[12] In an anatomical treatise which he wrote he pronounced the brain and the heart to be useless organs,[13] and the former to be merely an excessive development and offshoot of the spinal marrow.[14] Philotimus is quoted in various other parts of Galen's writings, and Plutarch relates an anecdote of him.[15] He is also quoted by the scholiast on Homer.[16]

Notes

  1. ^ Galen, De Aliment. Facult., i. 12, vol. vi
  2. ^ Galen, De Meth. Med., i. 3, vol. x
  3. ^ Galen, Comment in Hippocr. Aphor., vi. 1, vol. xviii. pt. i
  4. ^ ap. Galen, Comment in Hippocr. De Artic., iv. 40, vol. xviii. pt. i
  5. ^ Celsus, De Medic., viii. 20
  6. ^ Caelius Aurelianus, De Morb. Acut., ii. 16; De Morb. Chron., i. 4
  7. ^ Oribasius, Med. Coll., ii. 69, iv. 10, v. 32
  8. ^ Aëtius, iii. 3, 12
  9. ^ Galen, De Ven. Sect. adv. Erasistr., cc. 5, 6, vol. xi.
  10. ^ Athenaeus, vii. 81, p. 308
  11. ^ Athenaeus, iii. 20, 24, pp. 81, 82
  12. ^ Galen, De Aliment. Facult., i. 11, iii. 30, 31, vol. vi
  13. ^ Galen, De Usu Part., viii. 3, vol. iii.
  14. ^ Galen, De Usu Part., c. 12
  15. ^ Plutarch, De Recta Rat. Aud. c. 10; De Adulat. et Amico, c. 35
  16. ^ Λ 424