Galen

Galen

Galen was one of the greatest doctors of the ancient world.

Galen performed dissections on monkeys, pigs, and other animals, and

established comparative anatomy as a field of anatomy.

Galen was born in Pergamum (Present day Turkey), a city of the Roman

Empire. He began to study medicine at the age of 14. He firstly began

at Rome but later went to the great city of Alexandria. At about A.D.

157, Galen became a physician for trained fighters called gladiators.

This was an indirect early breakthrough for him, for this experience

gave him valuable information about surgery and diet. In 161 or 162

AD, Galen went to Rome. There, he presented lectures on anatomy and

physiology and soon was hired to be the physician of the household of

the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius. This position enabled him to

write, research, and travel. By 200 AD, he had written many works on

medicine and physiology.

As time passed, some of Galen's main theories were proved false. For

example, Galen thought that the liver changed digested food into

blood, which then flowed to the rest of the body and was absorbed. In

1628, however, the English physician William Harvey showed that blood

circulates throughout the body and returns back to the heart.

Though Galen was proved wrong. He was the only doctor in ancient times

to come up with a theory so close to the correct one. And his theories

were very advanced for his age.

Galen discovered that the brain, not the heart, was the control centre

of the body. He also figured out that the arteries were filled with

blood not pneuma, which was what people believed it was filled with.

The three main Followings of Galen

1) Clinical Observation: -

The through observation of a patient's symptoms and behaviour. The

Doctor would later, note this down in a diary and would keep it in a

shelf. This information would then be referred to, if any other cases

with the same symptoms appeared.

Galen Followed Clinical observation very strongly.