or Galenic, in medicine, is that manner of considering and treating diseases, founded on the principles of Galen, or introduced by Galen. This author, collecting and digesting what the physicians before him had done, and explaining everything according to the strictest doctrine of the Peripatetics, set physic on a new footing: he introduced the doctrine of the four elements; the cardinal qualities and their degrees; and the four humours or temperaments. Galenic is more frequently used as contradistinguished from chemical.

The distinction of galenic and chemical was occasioned by a division of the practitioners of medicine into two sects, which happened on the introduction of chemistry into medicine. Then the chemists, arrogating to themselves every kind of merit and ability, flung up an opposition to their pretensions, founded on the invariable adherence of the other party to the ancient practice. And though this division into the two sects of galenists and chemists has long ceased, yet the distinction of medicines which resulted from it is still retained.

Galenical medicines are those which are formed by the earlier preparations of herbs, roots, &c. by infusion, decoction, &c. and by combining and multiplying ingredients; while those of chemistry draw their more intimate and remote virtues by means of fire and elaborate preparations, as calcination, digestion, fermentation, &c.