Galen 's Theory Of The Circulatory System

The logic and principles of medieval medicine shaped those of Modern medicine. Never was there a more efficient method perfected, so much that it remained through history through so many hundreds of years. Today’s concepts of diagnosis, relationships with the church, anatomy, surgery, hospitals and training, and public health were established in the Middle Ages.

William Harvey published the book called “An Anatomical Account of the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals” which was officially published a fair time after the other two’s books. He proved that the heart acts as a pump by recirculating the blood, and showed that the blood flows around the body and is carried away by the arteries and is carried back into the heart by the veins. This had a limited impact because likewise to Vesalius, it did not make anyone healthier at the time, and it made more of a long term impact on medicine. He had not found a way to practically cure people because he had just made a book to further people’s knowledge on how the body works. Although his book is very useful for us nowadays, at the time people would not know how to approach it, and really wouldn’t make much of an impact on the people’s health.

Prior to the Scientific Revolution, doctors relied mainly on the work of the ancient physician Galen. Galen’s work was not a good source of information for medieval physicians because he had very limited knowledge of human anatomy, which led to his work containing many errors. During the Renaissance, more physicians made an effort to study human anatomy in order to correct previous mistakes. This rapid increase in the study of human anatomy continued and grew during the Scientific Revolution. In 1543, the first precise study of anatomy, entitled On the Structure of the Human Body, was written by Andreas Vesalius.

1.The fluid surrounding tissue cells is called? interstitial fluid.2.What are the functions performed by the circulatory system?-The circulatory system supplies oxygen and nutrients to our body by working with the respiratory system.- It also helps carry waste and carbon dioxide out of the body3.What is the fluid type that holds many of the human body fluids? Intracellular fluid4. Name fluids that are nearly identical in content except for proteins. Plasma and interstitial fluids.5.What function of blood is most critical to life on a second to second basis? Blood Regulation6.What fluid has the highest concentration of proteins? Intracellular fluids7.What is the most prevalent positive ion in interstitial fluids? Sodium8.What is the principal

The heart, blood and blood vessels make up the basis of the cardiovascular system also known as the circulatory system. The average human body contains approximately 5 litres of blood which is carried around the body via a network of blood vessels split into three types; arteries, veins and capillaries. The arteries are the largest of the three vessels and carry blood away from the heart. Veins carry blood to the heart and are smaller than arteries, then finally the smallest vessels known as capillaries distribute the oxygen rich blood to organs whilst simultaneously picking up the waste carbon dioxide and water from the organs to transport back to the heart where it can be pumped into the lungs to be exhaled.

Galen was a Greek, who was born in Pergamum in AD 129. He was firstly

William Harvey was born in 1578 in Folkenstone, England. Like many young scholars at the time, he went to Kings College, graduated, and then enrolled at Italy’s famous medical school, University of Padua. As he graduated with high honors, Harvey also accumulated mixed experiences and knowledge coming from his predecessors and colleagues. Among such, the teachings of Claudius Galen regarding the heart’s circulation proved most profound and vague to Harvey. According to Galen, “A natural spirit promoting growth and nutrition was added in the liver and carried throughout the body by the veins” (Silverman 245). Galen suggested that all pulmonary artery and veins were centered on the liver. His hypothetical assumption resulted in a flawed belief about the

Harvey was the first scientists to accurately lay out and describe the functions of the human circulatory system. In 1593, at the age of 21 Harvey attended the University of Padua in Italy. His teacher Hieronymus Fabricius and him had become good friends and he had taught Harvey to use the method of dissection to better understand the human body. He had learned about the arteries and veins in the circulatory system and the valves within the veins. Harveys discovery dates back all the way to the thirteenth century when the respiratory system was described by Ibn al-Nafis. Harvey was well interested in the vascular system he decided to write a book containing his work called ‘Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus’ ( Latin for "An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Living Beings") or more commonly known as “ De Motu Cordis” which was later published in 1628 in Frankfurt (Famous Scientists). In 1553, a spanish theologian and physician named Michael Servetus believed that the blood would travel from the heart and then into the lungs, where it combines with air and then circulates back to the heart. Harvey realized that the muscle contractions

Harvey left a long lasting legacy to the medical world. Without his discoveries we would not know some of the things we know today. His discoveries were crucial to some of the theories to come later . His work could also be called vital because of his hypotheses, experiments, and conclusions. These all led to the discovery of modern physiology .Using experiments in animals such as the snake, he demonstrated that the blood passed from the veins to the right side of the heart (the right ventricle), that the supposed pores in the septum of the heart did not exist, and that the right ventricle propelled the blood into the lungs(Harvey, William paragraph 4). It then returned to the left side of the heart. Harvey 's discovery was perhaps natural that so novel and original a discovery that it would naturally generate controversy. On the continent, Leyden was the first university to accept Harvey 's conclusions; in many other schools, particularly in Paris, it was a further half century before Harvey 's work was fully appreciated. So important was his work, however, that by the beginning of the eighteenth century the great Dutch teacher of medicine in Leyden, Hermann Boerhaave, stated that nothing that had been written before Harvey was any longer worthy of consideration.

has to work harder pumping blood to the rest of the body. Blood in our

In this essay I will strive to show the extent upon which Galenic medicine was incorporated in to the predominantly Aristotelian world view, concluding that Aristotelian philosophies underpinned the majority of Galenic theories and concepts. To achieve this I will primarily demonstrate the perceived link between medicine and natural philosophy that existed at the time. I will continue with a description of the Aristotelian Form, Matter and Substance theories, which formed the basis for the Aristotelian world view. After considering the concepts that formed the Aristotelian philosophy, form, matter and substance, I will take a closer look at the Galenic

veins to the tissues of the body. These walls do not let out blood but

Through his investigation founded on beliefs of Aristotle, William Harvey was able to hypothesize on the movement of blood in the body. Prior to William Harvey’s research , the medical view of blood in the body came from a Greek doctor by the name of Galen. Galen explained the flow of blood as a to-and-fro movement being pumped by the veins and arteries themselves. Galen also believed that blood was made and then used up in the body. His conclusions were drawn mainly from outer appearances (Bayon 444). This made Harvey’s work more accurate because he performed specific experiments and calculations. One reason Harvey was able to determine the movement of blood through the body was founded in Aristotle’s belief of the perfection of circular motion because it is continuous path (Pagel 28). William Harvey combined this idea with Arsitotle’s view of the power of the heart to act independently of the brain. From these notions, Harvey created the theory of a constant circulation of blood throughout the body by the pumping of the heart. He began researching his hypothesis with a hen’s egg. He discovered that the first drops of blood in the hen’s egg eventually gave

Compare and contrasts the anatomy and physiology of blood vessels: arteries, veins and capillaries. Why are these differences significant in the overall function of the circulatory system? Please be specific.

As The Greek empire declined, Rome inherited its medical traditions and knowledge. During the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D health standards dropped considerably and outbreaks occurred of life threatening diseases. Galen of Pergamon, a follower of Hippocrates, gathered much of the medical knowledge of the time and added to it his studies of anatomy and physiology (mostly of animals). In Spite of his errors in describing certain anatomical and physiology phenomena, his writing created the foundation for medicine over 1500 years later in Europe. Though Galen created a historical event, he indeed followed and admired one of the