Galen (c. 129 - c. 216) was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher who practised in the Roman Empire and became the most influential medical writer of antiquity. [1] Working from dissections of animals and from the Hippocratic tradition, he produced a systematic account of anatomy, physiology and therapeutics that dominated medicine in Europe and the Islamic world for more than a thousand years. [2] He served as physician to gladiators at Pergamon and later to the emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Early life and training
Galen was born in about 129 in Pergamon, a wealthy Greek city in the Roman province of Asia, the son of a prosperous architect who directed his early education in mathematics, logic and philosophy. [1] According to Galen's own account his father turned him toward medicine after a dream. He studied at the Asclepeion of Pergamon and then travelled for further training to Smyrna, Corinth and Alexandria, the leading centre of anatomical study in the ancient world.
Returning to Pergamon in about 157, he was appointed physician to the gladiators of the high priest of Asia, a post that gave him extensive experience of wounds, fractures and surgical treatment. [2] He later described wounds as windows into the body.
Career in Rome
Galen moved to Rome in 162 and built a reputation through public demonstrations, lectures and successful treatment of prominent patients. [1] After a period back in Asia he was summoned by the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and served as court physician to Marcus Aurelius and subsequently to Commodus and Septimius Severus. He remained in imperial service for the rest of his life and witnessed the epidemic known as the Antonine Plague, of which he left a clinical description.
Medical and anatomical work
Because the dissection of human bodies was not practised in the Roman world of his day, Galen based his anatomy on animals, principally Barbary macaques and pigs, and transferred his findings to humans. [2] This method produced both durable discoveries and errors that were repeated for centuries.
Among his demonstrated results were the role of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in producing voice, the proof that arteries carry blood rather than air, the function of the kidneys in producing urine, and the dependence of muscular movement on the nerves and spinal cord. [3] He organised medicine around the Hippocratic theory of the four humours, holding that health consisted in their balance and that disease and temperament followed from their excess or deficiency. [4] He also insisted that the physician must be trained in logic and philosophy, and he wrote extensively on pharmacology, diagnosis by pulse, and the treatment of disease by diet and regimen.
Writings and transmission
Galen was exceptionally prolific: several million words survive under his name, forming the largest body of writing left by any ancient author. [3] A fire at the Temple of Peace in Rome in 192 destroyed many of his manuscripts, and further works were lost in later centuries, though some survive only in Arabic or Syriac translation.
His texts were translated into Syriac and Arabic from the ninth century, studied and extended by physicians such as al-Razi and Ibn Sina, and returned to Latin Europe through translation from Arabic. [2] Galenic medicine became the core of the medieval and early modern university curriculum.
Legacy
Galen's authority was so complete that challenging it defined the beginnings of modern medicine: Andreas Vesalius corrected his anatomy from human dissection in 1543, and William Harvey overturned his account of the movement of blood in 1628. [4] His insistence on observation, experiment and systematic reasoning nonetheless shaped the discipline that eventually superseded him.
