The second-century physician and philosopher Galen is not known for brevity. Although his writings on medicine are famously verbose and numerous, for centuries they constituted much of the standard syllabi for medical students. About fourteen hundred years ago, one or possibly several professors put together a series of epitomes of Galen s work. In contrast to Galen s rambling and argumentative style, these epitomes present the material dryly but clearly, offering systematic categorizations of concepts, symptoms, diseases, and organs. Originally written in Greek, The Alexandrian Epitomes...