Zeno (physician)

For other people with the same name, see Zeno.

Zeno (or Zenon, Koinē Greek: Ζήνων; 3rd and 2nd centuries BC) was a Greek physician.

He was one of the most eminent of the followers of Herophilus,[1] whom Galen calls "no ordinary man,"[2] and who is said by Diogenes Laërtius[3] to have been better able to think than to write. He lived probably at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 2nd centuries BC, as he was a contemporary of Apollonius Empiricus, with whom he carried on a controversy concerning the meaning of certain marks (Koinē Greek: χαρακτῆρες) that are found at the end of some of the chapters of the third book of the Epidemics of Hippocrates.[4] He gave particular attention to the materia medica,[5] and is perhaps the physician whose medical formulae are quoted by Galen,[6] in which case he must have been a native of Laodicea. He is mentioned in several other passages by Galen, and also by Erotianus;[7] perhaps also by Pliny,[8] Caelius Aurelianus,[9] Alexander of Aphrodisias,[10] and Rufus of Ephesus,[11] but this is uncertain.

  1. ^ Galen, De Differ. Puls., iv. 8, col. vii.
  2. ^ Galen, Comment. in Hippocr. Epid. III., ii. 4, vol. xvii. pt. i.
  3. ^ Diogenes Laërtius, vii. 1. 35
  4. ^ Galen, Comment. in Hippocr. Epid. III., ii. 5, vol. xvii. pt. i.
  5. ^ Celsus. De Medic. v. praef.
  6. ^ Galen, De Antid. ii. 10, 11, vol. xiv.
  7. ^ Erotianus, Gloss. Hippocr.
  8. ^ Pliny, H. N., xxii. 44
  9. ^ Caelius Aurelianus, De Morb. Chron. iv. 7
  10. ^ Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Febr. c. 2
  11. ^ Rufus of Ephesus, De Appell. Part. Corp. Hum., i. 36