“Right Timing” in Sickness and in Health

Abstract

AbstractChapter 7 explores more deeply how Galen’s interest in hourly timekeeping relates to his understanding of “right timing” (Gr. kairos). The primary case study for this discussion is Galen’s On Hygiene, a treatise in which he expounds upon the nature of health and strategies for maintaining it. This chapter demonstrate how, for Galen, hours can be used both to calculate and to articulate individual kairoi, and that the window of kairotic or “timely” action varies in aperture depending on whether a patient is sick, healthy, or simply aged. Ultimately, we see that here, too, Galen’s use of hours is motivated by his desire to practice good scientific method and to build upon the theories of his Classical and Hellenistic predecessors. However, it also establishes important connections between Galen’s approach to hourly timekeeping and his personal theories of health and disease.