Why is galen so famous

British Broadcasting Corporation Home. Claudius Galen was born in Pergamum modern-day Turkey of Greek parents. He studied in Greece, in Alexandria and other parts of Asia Minor and returned home to become chief physician to the gladiator school in Pergamum, gaining much experience of treating wounds. In the early s AD, Galen moved to Rome to work and, with the exception of a brief return to Pergamum, spent the remainder of his life in the Roman capital.

He became physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and would later serve in the same role to Aurelius's successors, Commodus and Septimius Severus. Galen was the originator of the experimental method in medical investigation, and throughout his life dissected animals in his quest to understand how the body functions.

Some of his anatomical and physiological observations were accurate - for example, he proved that urine was formed in the kidney as opposed to the bladder which was common belief.

His most important discovery was that arteries carry blood although he did not discover circulation. Galen was prolific, with hundreds of treatises to his name. He compiled all significant Greek and Roman medical thought to date, and added his own discoveries and theories. His influence reigned supreme over medicine for 15 centuries after his death. Proper organ function was very important to Galen's views on anatomy and physiology.

He tended to view health as the balanced, harmonious, optimal functioning of all the organs and systems of the body. Galen believed in the Aristotelian doctrine that, in Nature, form follows function. If we want to understand the function of an organ, tissue or body part, we must first study its form. That's why Galen considered anatomy to be so important. Galen was fanatical in his pursuit of anatomical knowledge. He conducted dissections and vivisections on animals, chiefly apes, to figure out by inference and experiment how the human body was structured, and how it worked.

By clamping the ureters of living apes and watching the kidneys swell, Galen concluded that the kidneys produce urine. By cutting or stimulating various spinal nerve roots, he figured out which organs and muscles they controlled. Galen is most admired by modern medicine for being a brilliant anatomist who was way ahead of his time.

Living so long ago, with so little previous knowledge to go on, it's amazing what Galen figured out; in fact, he almost got it all right. In pharmacology, Galen developed a system of Galenic degrees, which enabled physicians and pharmacists to gauge more precisely the effects of a medicinal substance. In the preparation of medicines, Galen considered increased quantity to be a poor substitute for poor quality of the ingredients.

Galen personally visited the exotic locales where many key ingredients of his medicinal formulas were produced to better understand matters of quality. Galen's most famous medicinal formula was Theriac, an herbal jam or electuary with some 64 differnt ingredients that was a virtual panacea or cure-all for many diseases, and an antidote to many poisons. Theriac's use and manufacture continued until the late 19th century. Since Venice was a key center for its manufacture, it is sometimes called Theriac Venezian, or Venice Treacle.

Galen was also an expert on the pulse; many consider him to be the originator of pulse diagnosis. He wrote a treatise on the subject, entitled De Pulsibus. Being a lifelong devotee of Asclepius, Galen was a firm believer in the healing and diagnostic power of dreams. He even wrote a treatise on the medical interpretation of dreams. Galen was a prodigious author, and wrote some 80 different medical treatises.

Today, many of them have been lost. Galen is often criticized for being egotistical, but perhaps in his case it was well-deserved.

His writings are full of long-winded refutations of his rivals and critics, whose partial knowledge and fallacious reasoning he despised. Galen considered the profit motive and the love of money to be the worst reasons for becoming a physician. Being independently wealthy, money mattered little to him. He was only after two things: dedication to relieving the suffering of humanity and the pursuit of medical excellence.

For over a thousand years after his death, Galen, with his prodigious accomplishments, was considered to be the gospel truth, the ultimate authority on all matters medical.