…So I was getting a bacteriology degree at the same time as I was doing my classics PhD in order to understand what Galen was talking about. It's very, you know, the technical language of ancient Greek is so profoundly off the charts people think all…

…the practice of the ancient mysteries. And that's the real connection to the drug use and the junction of drugs and medicine. Galen can tell you at the same time, look, hey, we've got Nero's physician. And, you know, Galen's writing in like 180s, 190s,…

…be more intelligent and you don't have those problems like melancholia, that depression thing, you know, that's curable, right? This is Galen. This is Galen, who's the most scientific SOB in the ancient world. This is good stuff. People need to pay…

…and you don't have those problems like melancholia, that depression thing, you know, that's curable, right? This is Galen. This is Galen, who's the most scientific SOB in the ancient world. This is good stuff. People need to pay attention to this. But…

…the Pulaskians, the ancestors of the Greeks who settled in Thessaly, you know, horse cultures, these were arrow using horse cultures. And Galen is from Pergamum, so he's a little bit, he's aware of the culture of the arrow poison. This stuff will open…

…that people started using in the Bronze Age, these extreme, you know, even toads, they use these extreme toxins and experimented. And Galen tries to help fill in the history and talks about who could experiment and who couldn't. and where the push for the…

…Actually, you've already got it in that wonderful dissertation from Exeter from 2013 that I sent you. Kudos for such good work on Galen. It's a work on Galen and the Theriac that he wrote to Piso. who is a bigwig aristocrat. You know what I mean?…

…got it in that wonderful dissertation from Exeter from 2013 that I sent you. Kudos for such good work on Galen. It's a work on Galen and the Theriac that he wrote to Piso. who is a bigwig aristocrat. You know what I mean? He's part of the group. So…

…right? They're all doing the same thing. They're following. And supposedly their whole imperial household is. At least that's what Galen says. And Galen's getting worried because Marcus Aurelius' dosage of opium doesn't seem to be doing what it's supposed to…

…Christ, you know why. It puts him in the central position of harvesting that galene, right? And where can you get it? Thanks to Galen, we know that you can get the galene from a barn. pre-pubertal boy or a pre-pubertal girl. The boy is through his And…

…is writing what he's writing? Right. Is there a reason that all of a sudden he seems to be doing so well mentally? And Galen tells us, hey, this this thing will make you live many more years than you would normally. Oh, and by the way, it's also…

…scholars, no thank you, have managed to ignore what is the most important, probably the most important aspect of the ancient world. Galen says, by the way, the use of these drugs... The use of these drugs and the damaging potential they possess is the…

…silphium that I'm sure you've heard of, and it was such a popular drug. It was processed in Libya, North Africa, and Galen went down at one point in his career and bought 20,000 tablets of it. Right? Just an inordinate amount. Just ridiculous. But…

…Turkey. The species was Ferula drudiana. Fantastic. Well, there's one down, right? There's something they call Limni and Earth, too. And Galen is big on limnion earth, especially he uses it in a breast cancer treatment. He actually opens the breast and puts…

…Theriac, you have to actually let it sit for years, right? It has to be sit for 12 years before it's fully potent. And Galen says you can use it up to about 60 years. Okay. So that alone. And to answer the first party question, Galen specifically…

…And Galen says you can use it up to about 60 years. Okay. So that alone. And to answer the first party question, Galen specifically addresses this. He says, look, these are complex formula. And if you don't do it exactly in this way, or he says,…

…ultimately extracting. This is this is what their active principles are. I would love that. But the process of producing it, Galen says over and over again, these compound formulae, you cannot make them unless you follow very precise instructions. And it's…

…derived from venomous creatures well this right everything the only the good stuff It makes you wonder from the level of complexity that Galen is saying that it gets. And you can see that. He talks about that partially in that work that I sent you. I…

…in that work that I sent you. I want you to also know, Hamilton, that there's a ton of other works just by Galen. For example, he wrote a work called The Antidotes, and that's never been translated. Nobody has delved into that, and it's a huge…

…side. And before that thing came out, he wrote to me and he said, are you sure that we can say X, Y, and Z about Galen, et cetera, et cetera? Yep, yep. I said, don't worry, all the sources are there. And then it came out and I, you know, I think…

…you see the sal ammoniacum all the time, right? And that sal is just like a salt. It's just their word for salt. And Galen, for example, talks about the salts of the viper, which, by the way, you're not supposed to huff because they'll kill you unless…