Galen, Galenus

자료: Wikipedia, http://www.answers.com/topic/galen#Galenism_in_history

For other uses, see Galen (disambiguation).

Claude Galien. Lithograph by Pierre Roche Vigneron. (Paris: Lith de Gregoire et Deneux, ca. 1865)

Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (AD 129 – 200), better known as Galen of Pergamum (Greek: Γαληνός, Galēnos), was a prominent Roman physician and philosopher of Greek origin,^[1] and probably the most accomplished medical researcher of the Roman period. 

• His theories dominated and influenced Western medical science for well over a millennium. His account of medical anatomy was based on monkeys as human dissection was not permitted in his time, 
• but it was unsurpassed until the printed description and illustrations of human dissections by Andreas Vesalius in 1543.^[2] 

Galen's account of the activities of the heart, arteries and veins endured until William Harvey established that the blood circulates with the heart acting as a pump in 1628.^[3]In the 19th century, student physicians would still read Galen to learn some concepts. Galen developed many nerve ligation experiments that supported the theory, which is still believed today, that the braincontrols all the motions of the muscles by means of the cranial and peripheral nervous systems.^[4] Galen wrote a small work called "That the Best Physician is also a Philosopher"^[5], and he saw himself as being both, which meant grounding medical practice in theoretically sound knowledge or "philosophy" as it was called in his time. Galen was very interested in the dispute between Rationalist and Empiricist medical sects,^[6] and his use of direct observation, dissection and vivisection in medical training and as a way to ground medical practice can be understood as considering both of those perspectives and constructing a more complex and nuanced middle ground that avoided problems with each position.^[7]

Contents  [hide] 1 Life 1.1 Early life 1.1.1 Controversies over name 1.1.2 Life in Pergamum 1.1.2.1 First voyage 1.2 Rome 1.2.1 Eudemus 1.2.2 Bloodletting 1.2.3 Reputation 1.2.4 Pergamon interlude (166-168) 1.2.5 Return to Rome 1.2.6 Death 2 Work 3 Published works 4 Legacy 4.1 Galenism in history 4.1.1 Islam 4.1.2 Reintroduction to Medieval Western culture 4.1.3 Renaissance 4.1.3.1 Downfall of Galenism 4.1.4 Contemporary scholarship 5 Selected bibliography 5.1 Introductory Treatises (Prolegomena, Εισαγωγη (Isagogici), Introductio) 5.2 I: Physiology and Anatomy 5.3 II: Hygiene 5.4 III: Aetiology 5.5 IV: Semeiotics 5.6 V: Pharmacy 5.7 VI: Instruments of Clinical Practice 5.8 VII: Therapeutics 5.9 Additional works 5.10 Spurious 5.11 Fragments 5.11.1 Other (not in Coxe taxonomy) 5.12 Collections 5.12.1 BIUM Online sources 6 Sources 6.1 On Galen 6.1.1 Galenic bibliography 6.2 On Ancient Medicine 6.3 On the History of Medicine 6.4 On Philosophy 6.5 On classical texts 6.6 On related topics 7 See also 8 References 9 External links 9.1 Works 9.2 Commentaries 9.3 Other

.......

Legacy

In his time, Galen's reputation as both physician and philosopher was legendary, ^[30] the Emperor Marcus Aurelius describing him as "Primum sane medicorum esse, philosophorum autem solum" (first among doctors and unique among philosophers Praen 14: 660). Other contemporary authors in the Greek world confirm this including Theodotus the Shoemaker, Athenaeus and Alexander of Aphrodisias. The 7th century poet George of Pisida going so far as to refer to Christ as a second and neglected Galen.^[31] 

• Galen continued to exert an important influence over the theory and practice of medicine until the mid seventeenth century in the Byzantine and Arabic worlds and Europe. 
• Hippocrates and Galen form important landmarks of 600 years of Greek medicine. 

AJ Brock describes them as representing the foundation and apex respectively. ^[8] A few centuries after Galen Palladius Iatrosophista in his commentary on Hippocrates, stated that Hippocrates sowed and Galen reaped. Thus Galen summarised and synthesised the work of his predecessors, and it is in Galen's words (Galenism) that Greek medicine was handed down to subsequent generations, such that Galenism became the means by which Greek medicine was known to the world. Frequently this was in the form of restating and reinterpreting, such as in Magnus of Nisibis' fourth century work on urine, which was in turn translated into Arabic. ^[32] Yet the full importance of his contributions was not appreciated till long after his death. ^[8] Galen's rhetoric and prolificity were so powerful as to convey the impression that there was little left to learn. The term Galenism has subsequently taken on both a positive and pejorative meaning as one that transformed medicine in late antiquity yet so dominated subsequent thinking as to stifle further progress. ^[32]

Galenism in history

The era following Galen's death, and the gradual dissolution of the Roman and then Byzantine Empire was one of continual political turmoil during which scientific study held a low priority. Many commentators of the subsequent centuries such as Oribasius - physician to the emperor Julian who compiled a Synopsis in the 4th Century - preserved and disseminated Galen's works, making Galenism more accessible. Nutton refers to these authors as the "medical refrigerators of antiquity". ^[8] [32] In late antiquity medical writing veered increasingly in the direction of the theoretical at the expense of the practical. Many authors merely debating Galenism. Magnus of Nisibis was a pure theorist, as was John of Alexandria and Agnellus of Ravenna with their lectures on Galen's De Sectis. ^[13] [33] So strong was Galenism that other authors such as Hippocrates began to be seen through a Galenic lens, while his opponents became marginalised and other medical sects such as Asclepiadism slowly disappeared. ^[32]

Greek medicine was part of Greek culture and as such spread West into Asia through Syria and Persia, largely by the Nestorians. There it came into contact with the Islamic world which assimilated it. ^[8]

Islam

Islamic culture placed great emphasis on the teachings of Aristotle and Galen, which they systematised and commented on.^[8][34] Hunayn ibn Ishaq translated (c.830-870) 129 works of "Jalinos" ^[35] into Arabic. Galen's insistence on a rational systematic approach to medicine set the template for Islamic medicine, which rapidly spread throughout the Arab Empire. Arabic sources, such as Rhazes (Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi 865-925 AD), continue to be the source of discovery of new or relatively inaccessible Galenic writings. ^[28]As the title, Doubts on Galen by Rhazes implies,^[36] as well as the writings of physicians such as Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) and Ibn al-Nafis,^[37] the works of Galen were not taken on unquestioningly, but as a challengeable basis for further enquiry.

A strong emphasis on experimentation and empiricism led to new results and new observations, which were contrasted and combined with those of Galen by writers such as Rhazes, Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi (Haly Abbas), Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulasis), Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Zuhr and Ibn al-Nafis. For example, the experiments carried out by Rāzi^[36] and Ibn Zuhr contradicted the Galenic theory of humorism, while Ibn al-Nafis' discovery of the pulmonary circulationcontradicted the Galenic theory on the heart.^[38]

Reintroduction to Medieval Western culture

From the 11th century onwards, Latin translations of Islamic medical texts began to appear in the West, alongside the Salerno school of thought, and were soon incorporated into teaching at the universities of Naples and Montpellier. Galenism now took on a new unquestioned authority, Galen even being referred to as the "Medical Pope of the Middle Ages". ^[8] Constantine the African was amongst those who carried out translations of both Hippocrates and Galen. Galen's writings on anatomy became the mainstay of the medieval physician's university curriculum, alongside Ibn Sina's The Canon of Medicine which elaborated on Galen's works. Unlike pagan Rome, Christian Europe did not exercise a universal prohibition of the dissection and autopsy of the human body and such examinations were carried out regularly from at least the 13th century.^[39] However, Galen's influence, as in the Arab world, was so great that when dissections discovered anomalies in Galen's anatomy, the physicians often tried to fit these into the Galenic system. An example of this is Mondino de Liuzzi, who describes rudimentary blood circulation in his writings but still asserts that the left ventricle should contain air.

Renaissance

The Renaissance and fall of the Byzantine Empire (1453) was accompanied by an influx of Greek scholars and texts to the West, allowing direct comparison between the Arabic commentaries and their Greek originals. This New Learning and the Humanist movement, particularly the work of Thomas Linacre, promoted litterae humaniores including Galen in the Latin scientific canon, De Naturalibus Facultatibus appearing in London in 1523. Debates on medical science now had two traditions, the more conservative Arabian and liberal Greek. ^[8] The more extreme liberal movements, as exemplified by Paracelsus began to challenge the role of authority in medicine, symbolically burning the works of Avicenna and Galen at his medical school in Basle. ^[8]Nevertheless Galen's pre-eminence amongst the great thinkers of the millennium is exemplified by a 16th century mural in the refrectory of the Great Lavra of Mt Athos. This depicts pagan sages at the foot of the Tree of Jesse, with Galen between the Sibyl and Aristotle. ^[32]

Downfall of Galenism

Galenisms final defeat came from a combination of the negativism of Paracelsus and the constructivism of the Italian Renaissance anatomists, such as Vesalius in the 16th century. ^[8] In the 1530s, Belgian anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius took on a project to translate many of Galen's Greek texts into Latin. Vesalius' most famous work, De humani corporis fabrica, was greatly influenced by Galenic writing and form. Seeking to examine critically Galen's methods and outlook, Vesalius turned to human cadaver dissection as a means of verification. Galen's writings were frequently shown not to describe details present in humans but absent in monkeys by Vesalius, who demonstrated Galen's limitations through books and hands-on demonstrations, despite fierce opposition from pro-Galenist orthodoxy, such as Jacobus Sylvius. Since Galen is direct in his descriptions that he is using observations of monkeys (human dissection was prohibited) to give an account of what the body looks like,Vesalius could portray himself of using Galen's approach of description of direct observation to create a record of the exact details of the human body, since he worked in a time when human dissection was allowed. Galen argued that monkey anatomy was close enough to humans for physicians to learn anatomy with monkey dissections and then make observations of similar structures in the wounds of their patients, rather than trying to learn anatomy only from wounds in human patients as students being trained by the Empiricist medical sect would.^[40] The examinations of Vesalius also disproved medical theories of Aristotle and Mondino de Liuzzi. One of the most well known examples of Vesalius' overturning of Galenism was his demonstration that the interventricular septum of the heart was not permeable, as Galen had taught (Nat Fac III xv). Another convincing case where understanding of the body was extended beyond where Galen had left it came from these demonstrations of the nature of the circulation and the subsequent work of Andrea Cesalpino,Fabricio of Acquapendente and William Harvey. ^[8] Some Galenic teaching, such as his emphasis on bloodletting as a remedy for many ailments, however remained influential until well into the 1800s.^[41]