Galen’s greatest hostility is towards Methodists: their theory (such as it is) is simply wrong. The extremity of Galen’s reaction here seems in part related to the very simplicity of their theory. For Galen, medicine is a large and complex art requiring years of training in both logical and clinical disciplines; the Methodists, possibly a consciously anti-intellectual movement representing a non-elite group in society, provocatively claimed that the art could be taught in six months; their minimalist theoretical framework hugely reduces the range of both empirical inputs and theoretical distinctions that can be considered relevant.