Ancient Science · Part 21 · Maps · B2
Galen: Gladiators, Apes and the Doctor Who Ruled Medicine for Fifteen Centuries
Part 21 of Ancient Science: Galen of Pergamon, doctor to gladiators and emperors, proved by experiment that the arteries carry blood and that the brain controls the voice, but he dissected apes, not people, and his mistakes were believed for fifteen centuries. Sophia weighs the brilliant doctor against the authority nobody dared to question. Although, whereas, despite, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight I look far ahead, more than a century after you, Philo, to the most famous doctor of the Roman world: Galen of Pergamon.
For fifteen hundred years, doctors in Europe and the Islamic world learned medicine mainly from Galen. Although much of what he taught was right, some of it was wrong, and because everyone trusted him, the mistakes lasted for centuries.
Because he was brilliant, because he wrote so much, and because he never stopped telling people he was right. Let me show you.
Pergamon, Alexandria and Rome, 129 – about 216 CE
Galen was born in 129 CE in Pergamon, in what is now Turkey, the son of a wealthy architect. He studied medicine in Smyrna, Corinth and Alexandria, where, he says, he was able to see a human skeleton, which was rare.
Back in Pergamon, he became doctor to the gladiators, treating terrible wounds; he claimed that far fewer of them died under his care than under the doctor before him. Then he moved to Rome, where he became famous for public demonstrations, and later doctor to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus.
Or try our free games and lessons.