GAILEN (Gk. raXnv6s, galenos), or CLAUDIUS GALENUS (130-201?). A celebrated physician, born at Pergamus, in Mysia. He first studied medicine at Pergamus, afterwards at Smyrna, Corinth, and Alexandria. He returned to his native city in his twenty-ninth year, and was at once appointed physician to the school of gladi ators. In his thirty-fourth year he went to Rome, where he stayed about four years, and was offered, but declined, the post of physician to the Emperor. He returned to his native coun try in his thirty-eighth year, and had scarcely resumed his ordinary course of life when he received a summons from the emperors 3L Aurelius and L. Verus to attend them on the northeastern frontiers of Italy, whither they had gone to make preparations for a war with the northern tribes. He joined the camp toward the end of the year 169; but a pestilence breaking out, the emperors and their court set off for Rome, whither Galen accompanied or followed them. The place and date of his death are not known with certainty, but it is believed that he died in Sicily.
The works that are still extant under the name of Galen consist of 83 treatises acknowl edged to he genuine, 19 whose genuineness has been questioned, 45 undoubtedly spurious, 19 fragments, and 15 commentaries on different works of Hippocrates. Besides these, he wrote a great number of works whose titles only are preserved, and altogether it is believed that the number of his distinct treatises cannot have been less than 500. We may divide his works into: (1) Those on anatomy and physiology; (2) those on dietetics and hygiene; (3) those on pathology; (4) those on diagnosis and semeiolo gy; (5) those on pharmacy and materia medics; (6) those on therapeutics, including surgery; (7) his commentaries on Hippocrates; and (8) his philosophical and miscellaneous works. We have most of these works in Greek, the language in which they were originally written; some are, however, preserved in Latin translations, and a few only in Arabic. His most important anatomical and physiological works are: De Anatomicis Adntinistrationibus and De Usu Partium Corporis Human/. His anatomical and physiological writings are by far the most vain able of his works. They contain undoubted evi dence of his familiarity with practical anatomy; but whether he derived his knowledge from dis sections of human bodies or those of the lower animals is uncertain. The latter is the most probable view, (1) because he frequently recom mends the dissection of apes, bears, goats, etc., and (2) because he mentions, as something ex traordinary, that those physicians who attended the Emperor M. Aurelius in his wars against the
Germans had an opportunity of dissecting the bodies of the barbarians. His pathology was very speculative and imperfect. In his diagnosis and prognosis he laid great stress on the pulse, on which subject he may be considered as the first and greatest authority, for all subsequent writers adopted his system without alteration. He likewise placed great confidence' in the•doc trine of critical days, which he believed to be influenced by the moon. In materia medica his authority was not so high as that of Dioscorides. Numerous ingredients, many of which were prob ably inert, enter into most of his prescriptions, and he seems to place a more implicit faith in amulets than in medicine. His practice is based on two fundamental principles: (1) that dis ease is something contrary to nature, and is to be overcome by that which is contrary to the disease itself ; and (2) that nature is to be preserved by that which has relation to nature. Judged by modern standards, his ideas and prac tice were of course childish.
Before Galen's time' the medical profession was divided into several antagonistic sects, including the Dogmatici, Empirici, Eclectici, Pneumatici, and Episynthetici. After his time all these sects merged into one, the Galenici. The subsequent Greek and Roman medical writers were mere compilers from his writings, and as soon as his works were translated (in the ninth century) into Arabic, they were' at once adopted through out the East, to the exclusion of all others. The Greek text has been published four times. The first edition was the Aldine, printed in 1525, in five folio volumes; the most complete edition is that of Kuhn, in twenty octavo volumes, the publication of which extended from 1821 to 1833. Galen's minor works were edited•by Muller and Helmrich, and published in three volumes at Leip zig (1884-93). Several of Galen's works have been translated into French or German. Kidd, in the Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, vol. vi. (London, 1837), gives a good account of Galen's anatomical and physiological knowledge. Consult Daremberg, Ex • position des connaissances de Galien sur l'anato mie (Paris, 1841), an epitome of which in Eng lish has been published, from the pen of Coxe (Philadelphia, 1846). Consult also Ilberg, "Die S•hriftstellerei des Klaudios Galenos," in the I?_henisches Museum far l'hilologie for 1889, 1892, and 1896.