or Galenical, in Medicine, is that manner of considering and treating diseases, founded on the principle of Galen, or introduced by Galen. This author, collecting and digesting what the physicians before him had done, and explaining every thing 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 galenical and chemical was occasioned signed 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, stirred 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 since ceased, yet the distinction of medicines which resulted from it is still sometimes observed.

Galenical medicines are those which are formed by the easier 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.