As they entered the sanctuary, the head physician, Galen of Pergamum, and his attendant greeted Theodora with gestures of compassion. With tearful pauses, Theodora told of an aching in her right breast. She had gone from plump to gaunt over the course of a year, nausea having filled her belly, and her limbs had grown tired and weak, transforming her from a beauty in the bloom of life to an old woman bent with age. “Release me from my anguish!” she begged. “Restore my spirit or send it flying – in this condition, I cannot live,” she said, releasing a moan of pure misery.
Sorrow furrowed Galen’s brows. He encased her hands in his and said, “Let us first understand the human composition. Within us thrive four main bodily fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. And excess or lack of any of these four – an imbalance in our natural composition – leads to physical and mental problems that can only be remedied by restoring the balance. Let us now search for what ails you. I shall find your imbalance and together we shall correct it,” he said with a reassuring nod.
Galen pulled Theodora’s hand toward a large wooden table at the room’s center. He ordered her to lie down upon it, tucking a wool blanket beneath her head, careful to fill the gap under her neck. “Open your mouth wide,” Galen whispered in her ear, sprinkling the pulp of the poppy plant on Theodora’s tongue. “Let the poppies bring peace to your body. Sink into a hazy slumber and welcome the nocturnal oblivion that shall overcome you. It is there that Asclepius will greet you,” he said, glancing up toward the back wall, dominated by a looming statue of Asclepius, god of healing, who held a serpent-entwined staff in his left hand, a cornucopia of poppies resting at his feet.
Theodora’s eyelids fluttered spastically before falling softly closed. Her body went visibly limp, her mouth falling open and dragging with the pull of gravity, her shoulders relaxing against the back of the table, and her feet falling open to form a V-shape.
“Soak the sponges,” Galen said to his young attendant who placed the remnants of the strained poppy plant in a rectangular silver dish with a cup full of water into which the medicine would leech. Galen began methodically massaging Theodora’s right breast, detecting a sizeable lump and, with the slightest of pressure, exposing its contours through her flesh. “Soak this area,” he said. The attendant quickly grabbed a sponge of medicinal water and began numbing Theodora’s skin. He then washed the area with vinegar.
Galen turned to his medicine chest, a large, bronze box comprised of six compartments neatly organized with surgical tools, ointments and drugs. He pulled out a long steel scalpel and touched its coolness to Theodora’s breast, pressing down on the freshly sharpened blade until drops of blood sprung forth. The attendant quickly pulled out a linen towel and soaked up the blood as Galen dragged the blade through Theodora’s skin.
“Very good,” Galen said. “Now hand me two dull hooks.” The attendant picked out two identical bronze hooks that Galen used to pry open the incision, exposing Theodora’s ailment. “I had an inkling,” Galen whispered. “This is a cancer,” he told his attendant whose face fell into confusion, for “cancer” was the Latin word for “crab.”
“Look here,” Galen said as he washed clean the lump, thickly coated with black bile. “See here this mass, a body, with inflamed veins stretching out on all sides like legs. It gives the perfect picture of a crab,” he explained.
“Are we to cut it out?” the attendant asked.
“No,” he said emphatically. “Such would be the course of the great Hippocrates, to whom doctors and patients alike shall be forever indebted, but we have advanced his theories on the body, deciding that he was too quick to cut into his patients, using surgery when, in fact, surgery was not needed, as in this case. Theodora will not undergo surgery because this lump does not require removal,” he said.
“Then what are we to do?” the attendant asked.
“It is clear that our patient has an imbalance of black bile, the fluid that dictates our mood, and those with excess feel unusually depressed, which I can plainly see in Theodora’s temperament,” Galen said. “To cure her, we must look at her symptoms. She complains of weakness and a lack of hunger. To combat her weakness, she must perform hard physical exercise, and to combat her nausea, she must feast on food as if she were nobility. In this way, she will restore her body’s balance and this cancer shall, on its own accord, dissolve.”
The attendant simply nodded, having learned of the purgative remedies that would be favored by doctors for centuries to come.
“Now let us stich the skin,” Galen said, satisfied with his diagnosis.
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