Tradition orientale versus tradition directe

Medical texts of the Greek antiquity were very well known and highly esteemed in the East. Particularly Galen’s work was translated in Syrian since the sixth century and in Arabic since the ninth century from the Greek manuscripts available at that time but lost nowadays. These translations as an indirect tradition of Greek texts are valuable because they often provide us with better lessons than those provided by the Greek manuscripts. In this article, we propose a presentation of specific cases of Galen’s treaties in which the Eastern literary tradition is superior to the direct Greek tradition, thus putting the editor in the dilemma of choice between the two