Galen

GALEN (c. A.D. 130—C. 200), I Greek physician, was born in Pergamum (q.v.), the capital of Mysia in Asia Minor, a city re nowned for its magnificent library, the creation of the Attalid Kings. He is sometimes wrongly spoken of as Claudius Galen, but the cognomen Claudius has no authenticity and is a result of a misunderstanding on the part of Renaissance scholars. From his earliest years Galen was familiar with the Platonic, Peripatetic, Stoic and Epicurean schools of thought.. He began the study of medicine in 146, and two years later went to Smyrna to attend the lectures of Pelops, a celebrated physician. In search of knowledge he roamed through Greece, Cilicia, Phoenicia, Palestine, Crete, Cyprus and finally visited the famous medical school at Alexandria (q.v.). Settling at Rome in 164, Galen became ac quainted with some of the highest officers of the state, among them the consul Boethus, Severus the future emperor, and the uncle of Lucius. Many of these eminent people attended his lec tures and demonstrations. Galen used an unsparing pen against medical sects, the methodists, dogmatists, pneumatists and em pirics, then flourishing in Rome, and thus provoked the hostility of his professional brethren. He belonged to no particular school, though in philosophy he favoured Aristotelianism. Later he left Rome for Pergamum, but was recalled by the emperor Marcus Aurelius (q.v.) for service in the Germanic wars. This he man aged to evade, returning to Rome to look after the health of the youthful Commodus, heir of Marcus Aurelius. Little is known of the rest of his life. Apparently he was in Rome during the fire of 191, when many of his works were burnt, and he was still lec turing in the reign of Pertinax. He probably died in Sicily in A.D. 200.

Galen was the author of some Soo treatises written in clear Attic Greek. In his De Libris propriis he mentions 124 purely philosophical treatises, which include commentaries on the Cate gories and Analytics of Aristotle, and on the Timaeus and Philebus of Plato. He wrote five treatises on Ancient Comedy which are lost. Only an insignificant fraction remains of his non-medical works. Of the surviving medical works 98 are held to be genuine, 19 doubtful, 45 spurious, and 19 are merely fragments. (H. Choulant, Bucherkunde fur die Aeltere Medizin, 1841, pp. Ioo II2.) Galen may be regarded as the founder of experimental physio logy, and of ter Hippocrates, as the most distinguished physician of antiquity. To Hippocrates he acknowledges his deep obligations in practical medicine, and he is equally frank about his indebted ness to the Alexandrian anatomists.

Researches in Anatomy.

Galen's anatomical investigations were unrivalled in antiquity for their fullness and accuracy. He was an indefatigable dissector, describing mainly what he actually saw. He dissected apes and lower animals, though much that is relevant to the human body is incorporated in his works. As a specimen of his accuracy it may be mentioned that he recognised the lacteal vessels, and described the ducts of the lingual and submaxillary glands, though of their function he was unaware. Many structures, by which the names of 16th and 17th century anatomists eponymously linger, were observed by Galen, e.g., the aqueduct of Sylvius and the foramen ovale known as le trou Botal. The mode of closure of the latter Galen describes in language hardly since excelled.

Researches in Physiology.

Galen's physiological investiga tions were revolutionary. He knew of insensible perspiration, he ligatured the recurrent laryngeal nerve, he performed section of the spinal cord at various levels and observed the resulting sen sory and motor disturbances and incontinence. He correctly in terpreted the effect of cutting above the origin of the phrenic nerve. He described the heart with its three layers of fibres, which he hesitated to call muscle. The reasons for his reluctance are greatly to his credit. Thus, firstly, he noted that the cardiac substance presented characteristics different from those of or dinary muscle, as, for instance, in that its action was independent of volition, and, secondly, he recorded that section of its nerve supply was not followed by cessation of its activities. The valves of the heart are accurately described by him, and it is probable that he knew of the anastomosis of the vessels. One of his great est contributions was the demonstration that the arteries contain blood, and not air as the Alexandrian school had taught for over four hundred years. He partially grasped the principle of the lesser circulation, as Harvey (q.v.) pointed out. Galen described aneurism, differentiating the traumatic from the dilated variety and he was also familiar with the use of the catheter. His facile teleology led him, however, to some strange errors. Among them was the elaborate hypothesis which he formulated concerning the pneumata or spirits, to the influence of which he attributes many vital processes. He is also the author, or at least the propagator, of the fateful theory that the septum of the heart was pierced by imperceptible foramina, through which some of the blood was sup posed to exude from the right into the left ventricle.

Monotheistic Views.

Apart from his medical work Galen occupies a position of considerable interest in the history of both religion and philosophy. He was a firm believer in God as the supreme creator of the universe in all its parts. He had set himself to prove that the bodily organs are in such perfect relation to the functions to which they minister that it is impossible to imagine any better arrangement. Thus, following the Aristotelian principle that Nature makes naught in vain, he develops the problem of final causes along definite lines. These lines amount to determin ism with God as determiner. The peculiar feature of Galen's doc trine, however, is neither his determinism nor his monotheism, both of which were familiar to the thinkers of the day, but his extraordinary claim that God's purposes could be elicited in great detail from the examination of his works. This comes out most strikingly, perhaps, in his famous description of the hand, con tained in his treatise On the Uses of the Parts of the Body of Man.

In several places in his works Galen mentions both Judaism and Christianity, though without much respect. In the great anatom ical work under discussion he explains that in his belief God al ways works by law, and that it is just for this reason that natural law reveals him, and he adds that "in this matter our view . . . differs from that of Moses." It seems very probable that he had read some books of the Bible. His position can thus be summed up as intermediate between Stoicism and Christianity. On the one hand he accepted the natural law of the Stoic philosophy, but rejected its astrological corollary. On the other hand he accepted the divine guide and architect of the universe which corresponded to the Christian scheme, but rejected all idea of miracle.

Influence on Logic.

Galen is held to have had a certain in fluence on the development of logic. He was, however, simply purveying the ordinary Peripatetic doctrines of his day. Never theless he is of some importance as the carrier or transmitter of these doctrines by reason of the avidity with which his medical works were read during the middle ages. He is thus in some sense responsible for both scholastic methods and scholastic philosophy. His chief philosophical influence is, however, to be traced in the mediaeval doctrine of pneuma and the resulting conception of the nature of life.

Galen's monotheism no doubt contributed to his popularity in the ages that followed him. Nevertheless nearly all writings were lost to western Europe after the break-up of the Roman empire. They were, however, translated into Arabic and about the I I th century the Methodus Medendi, and the Ars Parva or so-called Microtegni, were recovered in Latin versions from Arabic sources. The fifteenth century saw the effective completion of the Galenic canon in Greek by humanist scholars. Latin translations were studied in the medical schools until the dawn of the 19th century. BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The standard edition of Galen is still that of C. G. Kuhn in 20 (2 2) volumes, Leipzig (1821-33). A critical edition is being produced in the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, of which several fascicules have appeared. A French translation of the important ana tomical and physiological writings is that of C. Daremberg (2 vols., Paris 1854) . A section of the De anatomicis administrandis, of which the Greek original is lost, is edited with German translation by M. Simon Sieben Bucher der Anatomie des Galen (2 vols., Leipzig 1906). The only work on Galen available in English is On the Natural Faculties, by A. Brock (1916).

On the philosophy of Galen there is little in English. Reference may be made to C. Singer in Religion, Science and Reality (edited by Joseph Needham 1926), and R. O. Moon, Relation of Medicine to Philosophy (1909). Other works are Iwan Muller, Galeni libellus quo demonstratur optimum medicum esse Philosophum (Erlangen, 1875) , C. Kalbfleisch, Galeni Institutio logica (Leipzig, 1896) ; I. Zimmermann, Material ziir Wiirdigung Galens als Geschichtsschreiben der Medizin, Forscher and Commentator (19o2) . A bibliography of recent work on Galen is given by Ernest Kind in the Jahresbericht fiber die Fort schritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 18o (Leipzig, 1919) . A list of the mss. of Galen has been prepared by H. Diels, Die Hand schriften der antiken Aerzte (19o5). (J. S. P.)