What Is Galen's Influence On American Medicine

Hippocrates and his followers were first to describe many diseases and medical conditions. He is given credit for the first description of clubbing of the fingers, an important diagnostic sign in chronic supportive lung disease, lung cancer and cyanotic heart disease. Herophilus of Chalcedon, working at the medical school of Alexandria placed intelligence in the brain, and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation. Herophilus also distinguished between veins and arteries, noting that the latter pulse while the former do not. He and his

We find that the “oldest written sources of western medicine are The Hippocratic writings from the 5th and 4th centuries BC; which covers all aspects of medicine at that time and contain numerous medical terms.”(Wulff) This was the beginning of the Greek era of the language of medicine, which lasted even after the Roman

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 18th century Europe there were a few effective medical developments but most treatments lacked medical value. An idea developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans insisted that bloodletting was a fantastic remedy to difficult diseases but it did more harm than good (Doc 4). Another flaw in medicine is the level of hygiene in the institutions that provided care. The sick were crammed into dirty hospitals, dead lay beside those clinging to life, and the air was

The Church did not encourage the development of new medical ideas, it was not in their interest. When Roger Bacon (a thirteenth century priest) he suggested that a new approach to medicine was needed he said that doctors should their own original research instead of learning from the books of ancient writers such as Galen.

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.

In medicine there were many things that changed and some that stayed the same between 1350 and 1750. Initially I will be looking at medicine and treatment in the Ancient World as a prelude to its importance during the Renaissance period, and also the influence it may have had in the Middle Ages.

In the time period between 1500 and 1800 there were changes in medical theory and philosophy, and while the ideas firmly established at the beginning and end of this period seem quite different on the surface, there are similarities. This is due to new theories incorporating pillars from previously accepted ideas and practices. Major points to take note of in this period are: the extent of improvement in quantity and the quality of medical care, the shifting relationship between theology and medical practice, and how the credibility of ancient medical theory changed.

Similar to how the Black Death gave rise to the creation of new economic systems, the Black Death also prompted the development of new medical and scientific techniques by proving older methods false. In the years before the Black Death, doctors mainly relied on the teachings of the Greek physician Galen. Galen was the pre-medieval medical theorist who came up with the theory of humorism. According to this theory, each of the four humors (mystical liquids that are in the human body) corresponded to one of the four elements (fire, water, air, and

Greek Antiquity was a time of some of the greatest minds of all time, such as Plato and Aristotle, leading to many inventions and ideas that are still relevant today, from hydraulics to astronomy. One of the most influential realizations, however, came from the mind of a man named Hippocrates, as he began the real start of the practice of medicine.

Although we do not know the details of Hippocrates and his life, we do know that he made very important contributions to the medical world that are still influential today. Without Hippocrates and his followers, the world would be a much different place. Even though he did not write all of the Hippocratic Corpus, his ideas were still very influential in the making of it. He was the first and only doctor of his time to base medical practice off of real healing remedies that were not based on

With the advent of an emergent Islamic culture from the seventh century CE, the Muslim realm spread to touch vast expanses of the globe. In particular, areas which had previously prospered as part of the Greek and Roman empires, exposed this incipient culture to immense medical and pharmacological knowledge; these had been produced and formulated by Classical scholars and practitioners such as Hippocrates and Galen. Thus began a lengthy process of translation and transmission of Greek medical treatises into the Islamic world, and a subsequent and unique cultural meeting ensued.

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

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