[pookie]

Hello, i've been revising the importance of different individuals and i have noticed that in ALL books Galen is said to have been a huge factor in the development of medicine. Ok, he was very influential and people followed his ideas for a very long time but surely, as his ideas were wrong, he would have been a hinderence to medical development. Nobody wished to challenge the great Galen and so correct ideas and discoveries were delayed. So why is he so important? Please help- i'm very confused!
Oh and also i'm finding the history revision quite taxing as there is sooooooooo much and i was wondering if anybody could tell me what i should focus on or if there is anything that never comes up in exams? Just a thought- but i'm probably out of luck on that one i guess! Thankyou, Pookie

[Mr Field]

I don't teach the Medicine through Time topic, but you might find this revision section helpful:
http://www.schoolhis.../medicine.shtml

[Mr S Drew]

I often think it is quite useful to come at questions like this from a totally different angle. So.....

Imagine a world in which nobody really knows much about how the human body works or what the insides of the body look like. Imagine that you cannot find out what the body looks like becuase it is illegal to dissect dead bodies because religion (which everyone believes in and follows totally) says that the body has to be left fully intact for the afterlife. Now imagine that along comes a doctor who uses the most popular and well respected theories of the day, but actually manages to develop them further than the great doctor who came before him did. Now imagine that this same new doctor is a great showman who works for the emperor of the day (his son actually but it does not matter really). This new doctor is an arrogant showman who is usually right and makes most other doctors of the time look stupid. So when this new doctor writes books and papers on the structure and function of the human body, people believe him, have no way of proving him wrong, and in fact dare not challenge him.

This is Galen and his work in the Roman Empire.

Galen took Hippocrates groundbreaking work on the Four Humours and actually developed the idea with his Theory of the Opposites. Hippocrates was seen as THE greatest doctor of the Ancient World, and then Galen manages to IMPROVE his ideas. Galen's status is huge. Couple that with his dissection of animals and knowledge gained from working at Alexandria (where dissection of humans had once been allowed) AND his previous job as a doctor at a gladiator school (where he saw lots of severed limbs and slashed open bodies), and you have a man who can write knowledgeably about the human body in a way that no-one else at the time seemed able to.

However this only goes so far in telling you why Galen was so important / significant in medical history.

This bit of the answer relates to the fact that it took over 1 500 years from the time of Galen's death for his ideas to be successfully challenged in Europe. Until the 16th century (The Renaissance) doctors and medicine were totally dominated by Galen's work. After the fall of the Roman Empire in Europe in the 5th century, much of Galen's work was lost as was the public health and medical developments of the Romans and Greeks. However by the 11th century the Europeans had regained access to much of Galen and Hippocrates' work on medicine and they came back to totally dominate medicine in the Middle Ages (11th to 15th centuries).

The Catholic Church in Europe totally dominated medicine at this time. They controlled the libraries, publishing of books and controlled the new medical schools in places such as Salerno and Padua. The Catholic Church also loved Galen. This was related to one of Galen's beliefs about the creation of the human body. Galen was not a Christian, but what he basically said was:

"The human body is the perfect creation of a god figure".

Now, although Galen did not mean the Christian God, the Catholic Church decided that he meant that their God had created the perfect human body. They therefore adopted Galen's work as totally correct and refused to allow it to be challenged. So when the new medical schools were set up from the 11th century onwards, the Catholic Church ensured that they taught using the books of Galen. Even though Galen made plenty of mistakes about the human body based on his use of animals,

the most famous ones are:

Getting the placement of the womb wrong from his study of dogs.
Claiming that there are two bones in the human jaw because of his study of animals

the church would not allow these mistakes (and others) to be challenged. Students cutting up dead bodies were simply doing it to prove Galen right. The medical professor sat in a chair and read out of one of Galen's books. Any things that were obviously wrong in Galen's book were simply put down to the dead body that was being cut up being deformed in some way! Either that or the student had done something wrong.

The Catholic Church would not allow Galen to be challenged as this would be seen as the same as going against God. Once Galen's work had been the accepted text and foundation of knowledge in Europe for over 1000 years, challenging it (especially as it had the backing of the all powerful Catholic Church) was extremely difficult.

However (nearly there!) from the late 1400s you get the period known as the Renaissance in Europe. This simply means "Rebirth" and refers to educated people rediscovering the work of the Ancient World and trying to develop their knowledge and understanding of how the world works. What soon happened though was that the doctos of the Renaissance started to find errors in the work of Galen. The differnece was that in the Renaissance they could dissect human bodies, unlike Galen who had to rely on animals.

The process of challenging Galen was actually helped by Galen himself. In 1531, a proffesor of anatomy at the University of Paris, Johannes Guinter, translated Galen's most important book "On Anatomical Procedures" ifrom Arabic into Latin for European doctors to understand. In this book Galen said that doctors who wanted to find out about the human body needed to dissect dead humans to be sure of their knowledge. Of course by following Galen's suggestions in this book, men like Vesalius soon found that Galen was wrong about the anatomy of the human body. By the 17th century Galen's ideas about the anatomy of the human body had been shown to be wrong.

In addition when Vesalius, and then Harvey, showed that Galen's explanation of blood flow was completely wrong and that the heart was a pump, belief in the Four Humours and Galen's Theory of the Opposites was also challenged.

Although belief in Galen did not die overnight, and Vesalius and Harvey had to fight for decades to get people to accept they were right and the great Galen was wrong, his power over medicine did eventually die.

However his influence over medicine was almost total in Europe and the Arab world for almost 1 500 years. This makes him one of the most important people in the history of medicine.

PHEW :zzz:

[pookie]

Thankyou again Mr Drew! That makes everything so much clearer- must have taken you ages! Thanks again, Pookie

[Mr Moorhouse]

Mr Drew has certainly offered a very good answer for you here Pookie. I'm only going to add one or two comments as there's no point repeating what he has already said:

Galen offered evidence to support what he said. This made him more believable than most other doctors.

Most of his ideas worked, to some extent at least, this led to his work becoming the accepted 'truth' by the catholic Church.

His position as doctor to the imperial family made his work more 'official' and authoratative in the eyes of many people.

These links should be of use:

http://www.schoolshi...rg.uk/galen.htm

http://hsc.virginia.edu/hs-library/histori...tiqua/galen.htm

http://scienceworld....aphy/Galen.html

http://www.users.glo...iandy/galen.htm

[Mr Moorhouse]

With regards things to revise.

A group of teachers who use the old folks forum came up with a lsit of recommended revision areas, this included:

THEMES

If you have a good understanding of the role of each of these in the development of medicine, and can throw in a few examples for each then you'll be ok. The themes are:

War
Religion
Role of the individual
Technology
Chance

On the revision page of my site there are details of the key individuals you'll need to know about and some links to activities that will help you revise. These can be found at: http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/gcsehisto...throughtime.htm

[Mrs Faithorn]

Dan Moorhouse, on May 24 2003, 03:56 PM, said:

THEMES

If you have a good understanding of the role of each of these in the development of medicine, and can throw in a few examples for each then you'll be ok. The themes are:

War
Religion
Role of the individual
Technology
Chance

You'll also find some very helpful notes about these Themes on Mr Walker's site. Scroll down the page til you get to the relevant section.

[Sparky]

Hello,

Sorry to bother you teachers but would it be possible if you could help me to find a primary source of Galens work? (This question is releated to a classical studies essay but I have nowhere read that this forum is soley for the purpose of History Classes.)

Please Help

[Mrs Faithorn]

You are right. There is no stated 'Rule' on this site that says we will only answer questions arising out of History classes. I doubt very much if you'd have too much luck if the question was about Chemistry though.

Your question is certainly within 'limits' since it's about the History of Medicine.

If I have understood your question directly you're looking for Galen's writings online?

This page has links to a translation of Galen's 'On the Natural Faculties'

I can't quickly find anything else on line.

[Sparky]

Thank you so much I searched for ages but with no results. Thanks.

[Mrs Faithorn]

No problem.

I found that link quite quickly. May be you weren't using 'useful' search terms? I used Google and I think I used Galen +"primary source".

[Sparky]

Aw yeah you told me about that before. Oh well thanks all the same.

[MrJohnDClare]

Various texts