Abstract: This article addresses the still seldom-asked question about the reception of Galen’s treatise on Simples in the sixteenth century. The Aldine Press edition of 1525 and the new Latin translation that followed in 1530 explain the growing popularity of the text; Galen’s medical readership gradually expanded to include alchemists, while an eclectic scholarly culture developed. The study of Rabelais shows the beginnings of the “absorption” of the text into the French literature of this period.
