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(continued)
Practice in Rome
In 163 Galen went to Rome, where he was befriended by the philosopher Eudemus and
the consul Flavius Boethius. Galen's public anatomical demonstrations and his success as
a physician so aroused the jealousies of the Roman physicians that Eudemus "warned
him he was putting himself in danger of assassination." Galen, who accepted the Stoic
teachings "to scorn honors and worldly goods and to hold only truth in esteem," scorned
the self-seeking of his adversaries and deplored their inability to understand honesty of
motive and intellect when they encountered it. He says "his training and studies [did] not
fit him to cope with the ignorance and craftiness of his enemies," yet he felt it imperative
"to continue to speak out freely." This passion to disseminate knowledge as widely and
as publicly as possible is the key to understanding Galen and is the explanation of much
of the polemical writing he directed at those who set themselves up as authorities and
teachers and who either passed on false information or secretively withheld knowledge in
their possession.
Galen returned to Pergamon in 166. However, a severe outbreak of plague among the
Roman troops in Aquileia in 168 caused the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus
to send for him and appoint him physician-in-ordinary. In 169 Marcus made Galen
physician to his son, Commodus (emperor 180-192); and so until 175, when Commodus
rejoined Marcus on his military campaigns, Galen lived in one or another of the imperial
country houses. During this time he completed his major physiological work, ON THE
USEFULNESS OF THE PARTS OF THE BODY in 17 books, and wrote another major physiological
treatise, ON THE NATURAL FACULTIES, and many other treatises. In 176, as physician to
Marcus, Galen returned to Rome permanently. Now under imperial protection, he
continued his writing, lecturing, and public demonstrations.
In the winter of 191/192 a fire destroyed most of Galen's library. Yet in spite of this loss
(which he met with Stoic calm, saying "no loss was enough to cause me grief"), we are
very well informed about his writings, because he wrote two treatises on his own books
and their order of production. The first he wrote as a young man when "a certain book ...
plainly inscribed 'Galenus Medicus' proved on inspection ... to be a forgery." The second
was compiled in 198. Both works provide authoritative information on the authenticity of
his writings and are major sources of biographical detail.
From 179 to his death in 200, Galen continued his medical research and writings,
producing such major works as THE METHOD OF CURE. However, during his last decade he
wrote in a more philosophical vein, giving us such treatises as ON THE EQUALITY OF SIN AND
PUNISHMENT, THE SLIGHT SIGNIFICANCE OF POPULAR HONOR AND GLORY, and THE REFUSAL TO DIVULGE
KNOWLEDGE. His last work was titled INTRODUCTION TO DIALECTICS.
Assessment of Galen
That Galen was a man of his time is shown by his success and rapid preferment, by his
acceptance of dreams as sound directives for action and treatment, and by his
acceptance of the Hippocratic tradition and of the social role of public prognostics. That
he provoked such strong reactions shows him to have been a dominant individual in an
age of individuals. Galen believed the Hippocratic writings were never wrong -- merely
obscure -- and he saw his own work as the extension and clarification of the Hippocratic
corpus; for example, he systematized the theory of the four humors. Nevertheless,
Galen was aware of the intervening intellectual progress, saying "the fact that we are born
later than the ancients and receive from them the arts in an advanced state, is no small
advantage ... things that took Hippocrates a long time to discover one can now learn in a
few years and one can employ the rest of one's life in the discovery of the things that
remain to be learned."
The change in medical thought that Galen produced in his own lifetime was much greater
than the changes from Hippocrates's time to his own. When Galen commenced his
studies, there were as many "medicines" as there were sects and no criteria for judging
"the best sect." He showed that a major source of sectarian conflict and error was due to
the lack of philosophical training, which in turn led to "the use of unproven principles,"
the misunderstanding of "demonstrations," and "a disdain of dissection." Because he
accepted the mathematical model of truth, with its criterion of agreement, he claimed
that "if conclusions in connection with the cure of disease [were properly] grounded,
physicians would manifest an accord like that of geometricians, though it would require
[their] learning at the very beginning the meaning of every term, and what
undemonstrable propositions commonly called axioms will be accepted."
Galen saw the science of medicine as "based on two criteria, reason and experience,"
which guaranteed the truth or falsity of its propositions. His systematic anatomical
experiments provided a means of demonstrating to the senses those things which no
sane man could deny any more than he could deny the self-evident axioms of
mathematics. However, among his self-evident axioms we find "Nature [and/or the
Creator] does nothing in vain." His frequent appeal to this axiom for explanatory
purposes is in part responsible for the overemphasis on the teleological aspects of his
writings by both his followers and his critics. Galen's concept of Nature is subtle and
complex, and his Creator differs from the Christian God in not being omnipotent but
subject to both the laws of necessity and the nature of matter. It was the very success of
his program of unification of medical theory that led to its "rigidity" and supremacy in the
ensuing centuries.
Most surprisingly, we do not know Galen's family name, because, not wanting to trade on
his forebears' reputations, he used only his given name; the name Claudius often
associated with him is probably a Renaissance misunderstanding. Galen said of himself,
"I have worked only for science and truth and for that reason I have avoided placing my
name at the beginning of my books." On the other hand, he was pleased to record
Marcus Aurelius's lavish praise that he was "the first of physicians and the only
philosopher."
Further Readings
- The translation by M. T. May, GALEN: ON THE USEFULNESS OF THE PARTS OF THE BODY (2 vols., 1968), contains an excellent introduction and an extensive bibliography. Other translations of his works are R. Walzer, GALEN ON MEDICAL EXPERIENCES (1946); R.M. Green, A TRANSLATION OF GALEN'S HYGIENE (1951); A.J. Brock, GALEN ON THE NATURAL FACULTIES (1952); C. Singer, GALEN ON ANATOMICAL PROCEDURES: THE LATER BOOKS (1962); and P.W. Harkins and W. Riese, GALEN ON THE PASSIONS AND ERRORS OF THE SOUL (1964). A few selections can be read in M.R. Cohen and I.E. Drabkin, A SOURCE BOOK IN GREEK SCIENCE (1948), and L. Clendening, SOURCE BOOK OF MEDICAL HISTORY (1960). See also George Sarton, GALEN OF PERGAMON (1954).
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