Not surprisingly, perhaps, he himself remained unmarried. In his fourteenth year Galen attended lectures given by Stoic, Platonic, Peripatetic, and Epicurean philosophers from Pergamon.
Encouraged by Nicon, he refused to "proclaim [himself] a member of any of these sects" and said "there was no need for [the philosophy] teachers to disagree with one another, just as there was no disagreement among the teachers of geometry and arithmetic. Galen relates that Nicon "advised by a dream made me take up medicine together with philosophy … if I had not devoted the whole of my life to the practice of medical and philosophical precepts, I would have learned nothing of importance … the great majority of men practicing medicine and philosophy are proficient in neither, for they were not well born or not instructed in a fitting way or did not persevere in their studies but turned to politics.
Galen, being well born, fittingly instructed, and eschewing politics, persevered with his studies at Pergamon for the next 4 years, as he puts it, "urging [myself] above [my] companions to such a degree that I was studying both day and night. Nicon died in and the following year Galen went to Smyrna. While there he wrote his first treatise, On the Movements of the Heart and Lung.
In he went to Corinth and on to Alexandria, where he remained for 4 years studying with Numisianus, Quintus's most famous pupil. Although Galen admired Numisianus and "the physicians [who] employ ocular demonstrations [of human bones] in teaching osteology," he tells us that "in Alexandria the art of medicine was taught by ignoramuses in a sophistical fashion in long, illogical lectures to crowds of fourteen-year-old boys who never got near the sick.
To counteract the poor teaching and the misunderstandings of the students, Galen produced a number of dictionaries, both literary and medical. He also started a major work, On Demonstration. Unfortunately, no copy survives. In Galen returned to Pergamon, where he "had the good fortune to think out and publicly demonstrate a cure for wounded tendons" which gained him, in , the position of physician to the gladiators.
He was reappointed annually until the outbreak of the Parthian War in The traumatic injuries of the arena provided Galen with excellent opportunities to extend his knowledge of anatomy, surgery, and therapeutics, and throughout his life he drew on this fund of experience to illustrate his arguments. While physician to the gladiators, whose daily lives can be reconstructed from his writings, Galen produced some of his most original work, including his demonstration of the part played by the recurrent laryngeal nerve in controlling the production of the voice.
This for him and his contemporaries had wide implications, since it impinged on their ideas of the soul. In 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. 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.
Galen returned to Pergamon in However, a severe outbreak of plague among the Roman troops in Aquileia in caused the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus to send for him and appoint him physician-in-ordinary. Brill, Sarton, George. Galen of Pergamon. Tieleman, Teun. Galen and Chrysippus on the Soul. Walzer, R. Galen on Medical Experiences. Toggle navigation. Early life Various birth dates for Galen, from to , have been suggested, but is generally accepted.
Galen's education and training In his fourteenth year Galen attended lectures given by many different philosophers people who study and search for knowledge in Pergamon.
Medical practice In Galen returned to Pergamon, where the next year he went to work as a physician to the gladiators people who engaged in fights for public entertainment in ancient times. Later years In the winter of and a fire destroyed most of Galen's library. For More Information Debru, Armelle. Also read article about Galen from Wikipedia. User Contributions:.
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Human Verification:. Public Comment: characters. Send comment. Other articles you might like:. 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.
It was not until the Renaissance that many of his theories were refuted. Search term:. Read more.
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