Medicine in Ancient Rome – GALEN
Galen was a Greek doctor who lived in the Roman Empire. He was very famous in Roman Empire because Greek doctors were considered as really good doctors and also because he was doctor to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He was a very experience surgeon who spent twelve years travelling to improve his knowledge; he also gained experience from working at a gladiator school where he would have obviously treated all sorts of wounds and illnesses. He also did a lot of work with animals especially animal anatomy.
People in the Roman Empire took notice of him because he came with new ideas that were practical and useful to them. He did not blame everything on the supernatural but look for explanations and causes for diseases. However, many of his ideas and theory seemed very similar to Hippocrates another famous Greek doctor who lived before him. Hippocrates believed that illness was caused by imbalanced of the Four Humours and so did Galen; yet, Galen builded on this to come with his theory of its own called the Use of Opposite. The theory suggested using the opposite humour to balance out the imbalanced humour in order to regain health. By example if you had a clod, Galen would give lot of HOT pepper as a cure.
Further, Galen encouraged other doctors to observe their patient, record and use past experience. This was also Hippocrates’ idea which is still in practice today. Galen has also dissected bodies, and this was also used by
The Egyptians, through mummification, yet Galen used it for medical purposes to find out about the body. In this picture he is seen doing his famous experiment. Here is trying to prove that it is the brain that controlled the body and not the heart as many people believed it at that time. Galen cut the vein of the squealing pig but the pig was still squealing, so then to prove his point he cuts the nerve that controls speech and the pig stop making is sound but his mouth was till moving. Galen by this experiment had shown than the brain controlled the body and not the heart, this idea was one of its own.
Another one of Galen’s idea was that he proved that different parts of the body fitted well together as well as a designed all. All this ideas were kept in the 60 books that Galen wrote but this was once again nothing new to medicine as Egyptians and Hippocrates before him also wrote down their ideas.
Galen used animal anatomy and human anatomy whilst studying in Alexandria to widen his knowledge about the body. Yet, in Rome he could have only used animals because of the traditions ad customs, yet, he encouraged doctors to use human bodies when possible. Although much of its work using animal anatomy was precise-like showing that the brain controlled the boy- some of the details of his work was often proven wrong. This however, went to prove that animal anatomy was different from Humans, because treatment that can work with animals may not work on humans.
Overall, Galen was important to medicine as he believed that illness was a natural cause, and it is this belief that made people look for causes and treatment of illness instead of blaming on the God. He came up with his own idea and through dissection he was able to build n previous ideas therefore this show to be a progress from Greek Empire.
Nevertheless, because Galen showed that different parts of the body fitted well together as well as a design whole, the church used that basis to persuade people into church as it agreed with Christian’s belief that God created humans. This meant that for the 1500 years after Galen when his books were still used no one bothered looking for more medical explanations because the church believe that Galen had it all in his book. Therefore, to some extend Galen’s work seems to had hindered medicine as it did not encourage any more medical experiments as the church thought Galen had all answers- simply because Galen’s idea f the design body agreed with Christian teachings and beliefs.
Useful links:
- http://www.amazing-grades.com/podcasts/harry_hill.html
- http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/galen.htm
- http://web.kingsnortonhigh.bham.sch.uk/documents/vle/files/971_Galen%20Mind%20Map.jpg
