K. 454 Theoretical argument … From this opening paragraph Galen clearly has in mind the epistemological debate about the nature of medical knowledge. On the one hand there was the view that it could be revealed by a theoretical approach, one which we might now call deductive but which at that time was termed Rational or Dogmatic (the Greek dogma meaning, among other things, doctrine). The holders of this view, a rather diverse group, stressed the importance of a knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and of understanding the obscure as well as the evident causation of disease. One the other hand there was another view that all therapeutic (and more generally, medical) knowledge was the outcome of experience alone, an approach which we might term inductive, but which then, as indeed now, was referred to as Empirical (from the Greek empeiria, meaning experience). And so there were those practitioners who were called Rationalists and those termed Empiricists. A third group of Methodists held quite different views. They did not deny that elements of both the Rationalist and Empiricist positions were of interest, but they did deny that treatment should be based upon them. Instead they postulated three body states, the constricted, the lax and the mixed, which determine the nature of therapy. They also held the view that all of medicine could be learnt in a few months, and required no prior education in philosophy, mathematics and the like.