Galen (Greek: Γαληνός, Galēnos; Latin: Claudius Galenus, or Cladius Clarissimus Galen) ca. AD 129-200 of Pergamon was a prominent Roman physician and philosopher of Greek origin [1], and probably the most accomplished medical researcher of the Roman period, whose theories dominated Western medical science for well over a millennium. The forename "Claudius", absent in Greek texts, was first documented in texts from the Renaissance and was probably an erroneous interpretation of "Cl." which stood for "Clarissimus".
Life
Early life
Galen was born in the ancient Greek city of Pergamon (Pergamum), now Bergama in the region of Mysia on the Sea of Marmara, Asia Minor, now Turkey, which was part of the Roman Empire, in ca. 129 (estimates vary from 125-131)[1] His father Aelius Nicon was a wealthy patrician, an architect and builder, with eclectic interests including mathematics, logic, astronomy and literature. At that time Pergamon was a major cultural and intellectual centre, noted for its library, and attracted both Stoic and Platonic philosophers, to whom Galen was exposed at 14. His father planned a traditional career for Galen in philosophy or politics. However Galen states that in around 144, his father had a dream in which the God Asclepius appeared and commanded Nicon to send his son to study medicine. Following his earlier liberal education, he now studied at the prestigious local sanctuary of Asclepius, God of medicine, as a therapeutes ("attendant" or "associate") for four years. The temple at Pergamum was eagerly sought by Romans in search of a cure. In 148, when he was 19, his father died leaving him independently wealthy. He then followed the advice he found in Hippocrates' teaching and travelled and studied widely including Smyrna (now Izmir), Corinth, Crete, Cilicia (now Çukurova), Cyprus and Alexandria, exposing himself to the various schools of thought in medicine. In 157, aged 28, he returned to Pergamum as physician to the gladiators of the High Priest of Asia for four years. There he learnt the importance of diet, fitness, hygiene and preventive measures, as well as living anatomy, and the treatment of fractures and severe trauma, referring to their wounds as "windows into the body". At the same time he pursued studies in theoretical medicine and philosophy.[1][2] [3]
Rome
Political unrest in Pergamon forced Galen to leave Pergamon in 161, travelling in the Eastern Mediterranean studying the properties of minerals. His travels took him to Lemnos, Cyprus, and Palestinian Syria (now Israel), before reaching Rome in 162, where his ambitiousness created enemies. He was known there for his anatomical demonstrations, sucess with influential patrons where others had failed, learning and rhetoric. His background and wealth and friendship with a former tutor, Eudemus, helped his advance in Roman society. When he returned to Pergamum (166-168) he claimed he had departed due to professional jealousy, although an outbreak of plague may have contributed to this. He was recalled to Rome by the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus to serve in the German wars. Amongst his clients was the consul Flavius Boethius, who had introduced him to the imperial court, where he became personal physician to Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus, returning to Rome on the death of Verus in 169. He later also served as physician to the Emperor Septimius Severus. His own writings are rich with anecdotes illustrating the heights of his fame.[4] Despite being a member of the court, Galen reputedly shunned Latin, preferring to speak and write in his native Greek, a tongue that was actually quite popular in Rome. Galen spent the rest of his life at the Roman imperial court, where he was given leave to write and experiment.
Because of a reference in the 10th century Suda lexicon, the year of Galen's death has traditionally been placed at around 200. However, since some scholars argue that textual evidence shows Galen writing as late as 207, they contend that he lived longer, the latest year proposed being 217, according to Arab biographers. [1] [5] [2] [3]
Work
Although Galen studied the human body, dissection of human corpses was against Roman law, so instead he used pigs, apes, and other animals. He performed vivisections of numerous animals to study the function of the kidneys and the spinal cord. His favorite animal subject was the Barbary Macaque. The legal limitations forced on him led to quite a number of mistaken ideas about the body. For instance, he thought a group of blood vessels near the back of the brain, the rete mirabile, was common in humans, although it actually is absent in humans.
Galen performed many audacious operations — including brain and eye surgeries — that were not tried again for almost two millennia. To perform cataract surgery, he would insert a long needle-like instrument into the eye behind the lens, then pull the instrument back slightly to remove the cataract. The slightest slip could have caused permanent blindness.
Galen identified veins (dark red) and arterial (brighter and thinner) blood, each with distinct and separate functions. Venous blood was thought to originate in the liver and arterial blood in the heart; the blood flowed from those organs to all parts of the body where it was consumed.
Published works
Galen may have possibly written up to 600 treatises, although less than a third of his works have survived. The Kühn edition contains the original Greek, with translation to Latin and is over 20,000 pages in length. It has been reported that Galen employed 20 scribes to write down his words.citation needed In 191, a fire in the Temple of Peace destroyed many of his works, particularly treatises on philosophy. Others were lost in the destruction of the Library at Alexandria and in the general chaos associated with the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Arabs captured and preserved some ancient medical texts during the expansion and Golden Age of the Arab Empire - only those works exist today, and some still exist only in Arabic translation.[6] [7] The 22 surviving volumes in Greek, represent half of all the original Greek literature we have today.[2] For some of the ancient sources, such as Herophilus, Galen's account of their work is all that survives.
Various attempts have been made to classify Galen's vast output. For instance Coxe (1846) lists a Prolegomena, or introductory books, followed by 7 classes of treatise embracing Physiology (28 vols.), Hygiene (12), Aetiology (19), Semeiotics (14), Pharmacy (10), Blood letting (4) and Therapeutics (17), in addition to 4 of aphorisms, and spurious works.
Legacy
In addition to his reputation in his own time, Galen continued to exert an important influence over the theory and practice of medicine until the mid seventeenth century, in the Byzantine world, Europe and the Arabic world. Hunayn ibn Ishaq translated (c.830-870) 129 of Galen's works into Arabic. Galen's insistence on a rational systematic approach to medicine set the template for Islamic medicine, which rapidly spread throughout the Arab Empire. The Arabs held Galen in high regard.[8] As the title Doubts on Galen of a book by Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes) (d. 925) makes clear, as well as the writings of physicians such as Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) and Ibn al-Nafis, the works of Galen were not taken on unquestioningly, but as a challengeable basis for further enquiry. A strong emphasis on experimentation and empiricism led to new results and new observations, which were contrasted and combined with those of Galen by writers such as Razi, Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi (Haly Abbas), Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulasis), Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Zuhr and Ibn al-Nafis.
Constantine the African helped reintroduce Greek medicine to Europe. His translations of Arabic versions of Hippocrates and Galen gave the West a view of Greek medicine as a whole for the first time.[9]
Later, in medieval Europe, Galen's writings on anatomy became the mainstay of the medieval physician's university curriculum, alongside Ibn Sina's The Canon of Medicine which elaborated on Galen's works. Unlike pagan Rome, Christian Europe did not forbid the dissection and autopsy of the human body and such examinations were carried out regularly from at least the 14th century. However, Galen's influence, as in the Arab world, was so great that when dissections discovered anomalies in Galen's anatomy, the physicians often tried to fit these into the Galenic system. An example of this is Mondino de Liuzzi, who describes rudimentary blood circulation in his writings but still asserts that the left ventricle should contain air.
In the 1530s, Belgian anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius took on a project to translate many of Galen's Greek texts into Latin. Vesalius' most famous work, De humani corporis fabrica, was greatly influenced by Galenic writing and form. Seeking to examine critically Galen's methods and outlook, Vesalius turned to human cadaver dissection as a means of verification. Galen's writings were frequently disproved by Vesalius, who demonstrated Galen's errors through books and hands-on demonstrations. The examinations of Vesalius also disproved medical theories of Aristotle and Mondino de Liuzzi.
Since some of Galen's writings were translated into Arabic, the Middle East knows and reveres him as "Jalinos".[10]
Galen's emphasis on bloodletting as a remedy for almost any ailment remained influential until well into the 1800s.
Selected bibliography
(with standardised bibliographical abbreviations:Liddell & Scott: Greek-English Lexicon)
- On the Humours
- On Black Bile Atr. Bil.
- On the Powers of Foods Alim. fac.
- On Uneven Bad Temperament Inaeq. Int.
- On the Causes of Disease Caus. Morb.
- On Barley Soup
- On Antecedent Causes
- On Semen (De Semine)
- On Bloodletting (De Venæsectione)
- On Language and Ambiguity (De Captionibus)
- On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (De Usu Partium)
- The Therapeutic Method
- On Anatomical Procedures AA
- On the Causes of Symptoms Caus. Symp.
- Medical Compounds According to Places Comp. Med. Sec. Loc.
- On Elements Elem.
- Commentary on Hippocrates' Aphorisms Hp. Aph. Com.
- On My Own Books Lib. Prop.
- On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato
- On Prognosis
- Three Treatises on the Nature of Science
- On Examinations by Which the Best Physicians Are Recognized
Collections
- Kühn, C.G. (ed.) Galeni Opera Omnia. Leipzig: C. Cnobloch, 1821-1833, rpt. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965.
- Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, Leipzig, 1914-present.
- Brock AJ. Greek Medicine, Being Extracts Illustrative of Medical Writers from Hippocrates to Galen. 1929 (repr. 1977)
- Selected works by Galen. Singer PN (trans.) OUP 2006
References
Sources
- Boylen M. Galen. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- The Writings of Hippocrates and Galen. Epitomised from the Original Latin translations, by John Redman Coxe (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1846).
- Siegel RE. Galen's System of Physiology and Medicine 1968
- Siegel RE. Galen on Sense Perception, His Doctrines, Observations and Experiments on Vision, Hearing, Smell, Taste, Touch and Pain, and Their Historical Sources. Karger, Basel 1970
- Siegel RE. Galen on Psychology, Psychopathology, and Function and Diseases of the Nervous System 1973
- Nutton V. Roman Medicine, 250 BC to AD 200, and Medicine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, in Lawrence C.(ed.) The Western Medical Tradition: 800-1800 A.D. 1995
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