Talk:Galen

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Contents 1 comments 2 Public dissections 3 Expansion 4 Missing 5 Year of birth 6 Legacy 7 Pagan Rome and Christian Europe

[edit] comments

So when did he die? 201 (top of page) or 203 (halfway down the page)? - Kimiko 18:45 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

Bergama, the modern day Pergamon, is not in "Greece" but in Turkey.

SetarconeX Feb, 16, 2004

There seems to be a lot of debate in scholarly circles on the exact date of his death. Someone really should do some serious research into this.

Also, when was he born?? AD129 as i believed or AD131 as it states here???

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The articlce states "His favorite subject was the barbary ape" but if I recall properly, he actually didn't like to vivisect apes because their "piteous cries sounded too human-like." Anyone else recall this? -Ikkyu2 23:01, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

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Why does it also link to Vasily Blyukher? I have read the article, and there is no mention of the word Galen in the article. Phalanxia 11:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh wait, there it is..... :p Phalanxia 14:30, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

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I think the sentence crediting him with inventing the "δουχβαγ, an instrument which is still used today in the remote and somewhat primitive Ουικιπεδια region" might be bogus - the region mentioned is Greek for Wikipedia... -ben84621-

The line about twenty scribes seems a little fantastical...here it says he wrote everything himself, which took ages... http://campus.udayton.edu/~hume/Galen/galen.htm SchredlickEngel (talk) 00:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Public dissections

The paragraph referring to public dissections is contradictory. At first it mentions that "One of his methods was to publicly dissect a living pig ..." but then it goes on to say "Crucially, he never dissected animals in public ...". Could someone clarify this issue? --GringoInChile 16:38, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I also noticed this contradiction... does anyone who is actually familiar with Galen want to remedy it? If not I am just going to remove both parts. Dunne409 03:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

If nobody does fix it soon, maybe the paragraph could be commented out rather than completely removed in case someone does come along at a latter date to clarify the matter --GringoInChile 08:21, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I think we should just remove the "Crucially, he never dissected animals in public ..." sentence, all the way to "... yet to reach Rome." The paragraph makes perfect sense without it, and I've seen a Modern Marvels documentary on the History Channel which corroborates the fact that he did public dissections. Hardly a source beyond reproach, I know, but given that the article makes mention of his dissections in several places, I'd support axing this sentence.Hegar 15:18, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree--GringoInChile 19:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I think Dunne409 has done a very good job with editing the paragraph in line with what Hegar reported. It is a lot clearer and no longer contradictory. Well done both of you. --GringoInChile 19:56, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion

There is no mention of any of his works in this article. It says he writes but what did he write? It also doesn't mention what kind of experimenting he did with the brain. Maybe after I finish my term paper this weekend I'll work on it. But no promises.Aether24 06:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing

There's nothing here about Galen's ideas about the circulatory system - ie/ blood being made in the liver, seeping out, being 'used up'. Whilst these ideas have now been proved wrong, they were accepted as the truth for a very long time, until the time of William Harvey - early 1600s. Wattylfc 17:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Year of birth

Was he born in 128 (first line) or 129 (category)? Every WP seems to offer its own year. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 09:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

My 1984 Encyclopedia Britannica says 129. The article had 129 until September 19th, when an anon IP editor changed it to 128, with no other changes or edit summary. I've changed it back to 129 And added referencing. Studerby 10:35, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Legacy

This section is wildly inaccurate and misleading. It claims:

As for the Western Christians, they abolished surgery in both knowledge and practice: it was pagan and it was a sin.[4]

The source cited does say this (near the end of the article), but provides no evidence for it. On the contrary, it attributes the decline in medical knowledge and practice to the destruction of the Roman empire by the barbarian invasions:

The destruction of the library at Alexandria coincided with the end of the Roman empire. One of the reasons for Rome’s decline and fall was a lack of central authority – the long-distance networks simply fell apart. And the same thing happened with medicine. It was not that medicine wasn’t still practised, but there was no longer a great centre. And when the centre of medical knowledge disappeared, the loss rippled through the empire. Everywhere great medical works disappeared, either deliberately destroyed or simply lost to time.

The source cited goes on to point out that Galen's writings were not only accepted by the church, but held in reverentially high esteem:

Even more unfortunately, many of his other theories (none of which had any medical validity) and his huge number of remedies (none especially useful) were used by doctors for centuries, becoming the medical equivalent of holy writ. In fact, they later became part of Church dogma.

Finally, and most ironic of all, the source cited states that Galen (not Christianity), was almost singlehandedly responsible for crippling Western medical knowledge:

The egotistical Galen would probably have been pleased to know that he effectively held back the advancement of medicine for centuries.

Saying that Western Christians 'abolished surgery in both knowledge and practice', because they believed 'it was pagan and it was a sin', is not only completely inaccurate but contradicted by the article's own statements. I would like to see a proper source cited, not this nonsense.

[I have added a link to a BBC article discussin an archaeological find from Yorkshire (10th-11th century] with an actual example of "Dark Age" cranial surgery saving a man that had received a critical head blow. Overall, the entire "legacy" section needs a complete rewrite to avoid being entirely inaccurate.]

This section in the article also represents Vesalius as being the uncritical and enthusiastic supporter of Galen's theories, whereas in fact Vesalius corrected Galen's many errors regarding human anatomy, because Vesalius was permitted by the Christian government to carry out autopsies on human bodies, which Galen never did. Galen was forbidden by pagan Roman law to dissect human bodies, and his theories on human anatomy were based on dissecting animals and guessing that they were identical to humans. --Taiwan boi (talk) 02:32, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pagan Rome and Christian Europe

The sentence in the Legacy section implicitly attributes the lifting of the ban against autopsies and dissections of humans to change of religion. It seems to be that this is unfounded, since I strongly doubt that the ban during the ancient times was strictly religious in nature. It seems likely that the dissections in Europe were inspired by the ones conducted by Arabic physicians with the translation of some of their texts. The reason that there was no ban against dissections in the Arab empire is unknown to me, but I wouldn't automatically assume that it has anything to do with Abrahamitic religion - as far as I know there is no specific mentioning of autopsies and dissections being allowed or disallowed in any of the core texts of these religions.

To sum up, the the (relative) acceptance to autopsies and dissections in Medieval Europe is not necessarily, or likely, due to religious changes and should hence not be attributed to them.

I will happily accept references to the contrary, though.

On a different issue – the sentence about Galen's influence being so great that empirical observations were disregarded when they contradicted his teachings seems to imply that this was also the case in the Arab world. That contrasts with the earlier paragraph that clearly states that his teachings were not taken unquestioningly there. I do not know enough about the issue to tell which one is right. The argument of the earlier paragraph seems solid enough, though. Phizq (talk) 10:35, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Which part 'implicitly attributes the lifting of the ban against autopsies and dissections of humans to change of religion'? It just says that unlike pagan Rome, Christian Europe didn't prohibit autopsies. As for Europeans borrowing from the autopsies of Arab physicians after reading translations of their texts, I'd like to see evidence for that. In the 11th and 12th centuries there were Muslim physicians who carried out human dissections and autopsies, but I'm not aware they influenced the West, and after the end of the brief 'Golden Age' of Islam this came to an end. Islam has for centuries required the immediate burial of a body, and has prohibited both autopsy and organ donation. I'm not sure what it is about the other sentence which implies that the Arabs viewed Galen's teachings unquestioningly. --Taiwan boi (talk) 15:00, 30 May 2008 (UTC)