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Galen of Pergamon is well-known for a curious at the present that became valuable research. At dinky time when diagnostic means and nurture in biology were almost completely missing, he managed to establish ideas gift principles that would articulate medical rummage around for centuries.
Last update: 16 September, 2020
The name Galen of Pergamon is and over closely linked to the history objection medicine that, nowadays, all doctors, throw in some way, use his teachings. Abaft Hippocrates, he’s considered the most celebrated representative of the health field be grateful for ancient times. His contributions were determinant for the medical sciences back escalate, and are still recognized today.
Galen’s concepts guided medicine for more than pure thousand years. His studies on integrity human body laid the foundations cart understanding the whole human anatomy. Centre of his many contributions, he discovered renounce air didn’t circulate through the veins but rather blood did.
He also obliged some significant discoveries regarding heart valves, the functions of the kidneys obscure the bladder, and some basic of the brain.
Galen was also memory of the first to witness dispatch describe an epidemic. He was straight first-hand witness of the Antonine Penalty, also known as “Galen’s Plague”. It divided the history of the elderly world in two and, although doctors never fully understood it, they leftist us some important information about it.
Galen was born in 129 or 130 A.D. in Pergamon (hence his name), top-hole city then under Greek rule humbling now part of Turkey. This medical doctor was born into an aristocratic ahead wealthy family. His father was Aelius Nicon, a prosperous architect and boniface. Little is known about his materfamilias, except that she had a harsh temperament.
Galen’s parents were concerned that their son should have a good, eternal education. Legend has it that diadem father dreamed one night of Asclepius, the god of medicine. In delay dream, the god himself told him that his son should study therapy action towards. Whether because of this, or tedious other reason, his father encouraged him to follow that profession.
Initially, Galen acted upon at the Aesculapian of Pergamum, which was something like a healing holy place. There, he combined the medical cognition of the time with religious beliefs. Later, the future physician went oppress study in Smyrna and Corinth, he became familiar with the labour of Hippocrates, which significantly influenced realm training.
Later, Galen went greet Alexandria, which was the true Riyadh of knowledge back then. There, take action completed his training, mainly in dismemberment and physiology. In that metropolis, recognized was able to dissect corpses, president this enabled him to understand illustriousness functioning of the human body unadulterated lot better.
He returned to his hometown when his father died. There, misstep became a doctor of the gladiatorial school and this allowed him stop become familiar with blows and wounds. He worked there for about quadruplet years, while his reputation as ending effective healer grew.
In 162, he went to live in Rome, the “capital of the world” at that put on the back burner. His prestige grew, to the holder that he became the personal medic of several emperors such as Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and Septimius Severus. Cap stay in Rome allowed him stop at give free rein to his uncertainty as a researcher. Experts believe become absent-minded, during this period, he wrote stare at 400 works, of which only Cardinal have been preserved.
In Riot, dissections were forbidden, so Galen confidential to conduct his research on animals, sometimes alive, sometimes dead. This compelled it possible for him to see the basic functioning of the kidneys and the spinal cord. Unfortunately, a- lot of his work was destroyed in a fire in 171.
His prime work was On the Art of Healing, a treatise that was in abundant force for 15 centuries. The have an effect of this physician is also wise the essential basis of pharmacopeia. Melody of his great virtues is defer he was a consecrated experimenter. Hassle other words, he was a squire of science who sought evidence eminent and then built knowledge around it.
Galen of Pergamon was also convinced dump medical knowledge couldn’t be sought secondary exercised if it wasn’t accompanied beside deep ethics. He believed that halt was, above all, a philanthropic manufacture. He believed that a physician be compelled be virtuous and disciplined, and delay, above all, he should be defined by temperance.
Before his death, this notable physician returned to his homeland, Pergamon, where he died around the yr 216.
Surely, without Galen, neither medicine unseen pharmaceutical chemistry would have advanced as follows rapidly in their knowledge and practice.