EPIDEMICS III: THE CHARACTERS
SOME MSS., the most important being V, have
certain characters at the end of the medical histories
in Book III of the Epidemics. These characters were
known to Galen, who wrote, or contemplated writing,
a treatise about them. There is no doubt, therefore,
that they are ancient ; Galen indeed in his commentary
tells us that his predecessors had been much
exercised over them. Zeuxis, he says, had written
a history of them in which they were traced back
to Mnemon, who either added them to a manuscript
in the Library at Alexandria or else brought to the
Library a copy with the characters inserted.
These characters are of no real value for the interpretation
of the text, but they bear witness to the
interest taken in the "medical histories" from very
early times. Somebody or other invented a shorthand
script in order to summarize these histories, or
rather the main teaching of them. For some reason
they were only applied to the histories of the third
book, and Galen says that the older manuscripts
of his time had no characters inserted until the
seventh case (woman with angina).
Galen gives the following explanation of the
characters :--
Ἡγεῖται μὲν οὖν, ὡς2 ἔφην, ἁπάντων τὸ τὴν
διάμετρον
γραμμὴν ἔχον Π, σημαῖνον ἀεὶ τὸ πιθανόν. τελευταῖον
δ́
