De propriis placitis is Galen's final work in which he reflected on some of the fundamental medical problems that occupied him throughout his long career. "This treatise is not quite the comprehensive survey of a lifetime's work that the title might lead one to expect; in fact, it is surprisingly disorganized and hardly useful as a clinical guide. It is rather more accurately seen as a work about epistemology and medical methodology, in which Galen considers what aspects of medicine are knowable or not and how one formulates principles in the face of our inconsistent knowledge of the body and, indeed, of the world" (http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=classics_papers, accessed 02-2017).

Nutton used archaeological and written evidence to survey the development of medical ideas from early Greece to Late Antiquity.

This critical edition, based upon the 1601 edition, the last edition published in Mercuriale's lifetime, includes the Latin text and English translation, reproductions of the woodcuts attributed to Coriolan and the original drawings by Pirro Ligorio for the illustrations, a full bibliography of Mercuriale's writings, translator's notes, and Jean-Michel Agasse's, "Girolamo Mercuriale—Humanism and physical culture in the Renaissance", a treatise of about 150 pages.

In 2005 a long lost treatise by Galen, entitled Περι αλυπιας (Avoiding distress), was discovered in the Monastery of the Vlatades (Moni Vlatadon) in Thessaloniki, central Macedonia, Greece. The manuscript, identified as Vlatadon 14, dates from the fifteenth century. In Peri ton idion biblio (De Libris propriis liber, On his Own Writings), Galen referred to Περι αλυπιας, but the last evidence of the text was preserved by the 13th century physician and writer Joseph ben Judah ibn Aknin, who paraphrased and/or translated extacts of it into Hebrew. Rediscovery of the complete text is considered one of the most spectacular finds ever in ancient literature.

Galen was motivated to write Περι αλυπιας in 192 CE after a large portion of his library, his supply of medicines and medical instruments, and wax molds for the casting of new instruments that he had invented, and other valuable items, were destroyed when a devastating fire burned the Temple of Peace (Forum of Vespasian) and nearby storehouses on the Via Sacra, the main street of ancient Rome, where his property was kept. Galen chose to keep his library there because the storehouse also held some of the imperial archives, and was kept under military guard. The fire that destroyed Galen's library also burned all the public libraries on the Palatine Hill.

Galen's Περι αλυπιας provides significant information on the use of the codex form of the book in the second century CE, on the general vulnerability of books and texts, and on the production, copying, dissemination and storage of information, including the operation of Rome's imperial public libraries and Galen's use of them. It also provides information on the "consolation genre" of writings in antiquity. For the 2013 edition Galen's Avoiding distress was edited and translated by Vivian Nutton. For further details see HistoryofInformation.com at this link.

The first translation into English of Johann Guinter’s textbook as revised and annotated by Guinter’s student, Andreas Vesalius, in 1538. Despite Vesalius’ fame as an anatomist, his 1538 revision has attracted almost no attention. However, this new translation shows the significant rewrites and additional information added to the original based on his own dissections. 250 newly discovered manuscript annotations by Vesalius himself, preserved in his own copy of the book and published here in full for the first time, also show his working methods and ideas. 

A very readable and relatively brief, but comprehensive, biography. The appendix provides a complete list of Galen's works with their titles in Latin, also in English translation, correlated to the best editions and translations of each text.