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Kühn’s Galen edition publishes the principal medical narrative of the Antonine plague

Karl Gottlob Kühn’s Leipzig Galen (from 1821) printed the Greek medical passages later used to reconstruct the Antonine plague of Marcus’s wars. This Fact stores that epidemic as a received health disaster whose public dated carrier is the printed Galen, not a fake 165-01-01 death certificate. In the causal graph this event weakens Infectious-Disease Transmission, a driver that weakens Life expectancy at birth — an improving welfare path.

Kühn’s Galen edition publishes the principal medical narrative of the Antonine plague

Sources: [1][2]

Read the full account

Karl Gottlob Kühn’s Leipzig Galen (from 1821) printed the Greek medical passages later used to reconstruct the Antonine plague of Marcus’s wars. This Fact stores that epidemic as a received health disaster whose public dated carrier is the printed Galen, not a fake 165-01-01 death certificate.

Context

Armies returning from the Parthian war are the usual mechanism in the sources. Numbers in later telling grow. Confidence stays medium on totals, high that a severe epidemic is in the medical and historical record of the reign.

Marcus Aurelius is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

Why it matters

Health-harm path. Medium confidence on scale, high on occurrence in the received record.

Who was responsible

Contribution type and responsibility level for each recorded actor — not sole-author shorthand.

  • Marcus Aurelius

    Person

    Direct responsibility

    responsibility level 0.45 · verified

    The epidemic occurred in his co-rule and sole rule. Galen’s narrative, as later printed, is the medical indictment. Complex, not a WHO certificate he signed.

What changed

Fact → Driver → Indicator. Relationship strength orders the paths; it is not the observed indicator movement.

Evidence

The sources behind this fact and its verification state.

Verified2 sources on file
  1. 1.Britannica — Marcus AureliusEncyclopaedia Britannica · High credibility · verified
  2. 2.NCBI/NLM literature on the Antonine plague as later medical historyNational Center for Biotechnology Information · High credibility · verified
What the sources establish

NLM/NCBI-indexed medical history and Britannica independently narrate the Antonine plague under Marcus. They are not a 2nd-century parish register.

Established: later printed Galen and standard histories record a severe plague in Marcus’s reign.

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

Causal path

How this event connects to drivers and indicators in the graph.

  1. ActorMarcus Aurelius
  2. contributed toFactKühn’s Galen edition publishes the principal medical narrative of the Antonine plague
  3. weakensDriverInfectious-Disease Transmission
  4. weakensIndicatorLife expectancy at birth

Cite this page

Factrail. (2026). Kühn’s Galen edition publishes the principal medical narrative of the Antonine plague. Factrail. https://factrail.ai/facts/ma-antonine-plague-galen-print

https://factrail.ai/facts/ma-antonine-plague-galen-print

Accessed 15 October 2026.

By the Factrail desk · Method: how we source and score · Last reviewed

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