After Hippocrates, there was another important physician of antiquity, but he became much less famous. Galen from Pergamon, born in 129 and died in 199 AD, is in fact a rather unknown personality despite his great works.
But what were his works? Among the most famous works of Galen of Pergamum were, for example, Simplicia, a writing about the simple medicines, a medical doctrine of diseases, which went down in medical history as humoral pathology and, of course, his life’s work, a discussion of the books of the Corpus Hippocraticum.
Even great thinkers start small….
He was able to make his first medical observations and learn healing methods first as a gladiator physician. He completed his knowledge later on wide journeys. Around 161 he settled in Rome and became famous there because of his medical skills, his investigations on animals and his public lectures.
He dissected animals…
Goats, pigs and monkeys had to be used for dissection – this allowed him to show how different muscles were controlled by different areas of the spine. He recognized the roles of the kidney and bladder and identified seven pairs of cranial nerves. He also showed that the brain controls the voice.
Galen discovered that the arteries carry blood, not air (as had been assumed for 400 years). He also described the heart valves and noted the difference in structure between arteries and veins, but he did not realize that blood circulated in the circulatory system.
He tried his hand as a philosopher
Galen wrote mathematical and philosophical writings. For example, following the ideas of Aristotle, in his treatise On the Tasks of the Parts of the Human Body, he held that nothing in nature was superfluous and everything had a definite meaning. Galen’s fundamental contribution to philosophical thought was the notion that God’s purposes could be known through the study of nature.
All in all, an important man
Galen wrote some 500 treatises on medicine, philosophy, and ethics, many of which have survived as translations. The anatomical findings were his most significant scientific achievements and milestones in medicine.
