CLAUDIUS GALENUS. 2015.

“Always leave the table a little hungry, and you’ll be healthy forever”.

“Employment is nature’s physician, and is essential to human happiness”.

CLAUDIUS GALENUS

131-201 AD

Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher. He made a significant contribution to the study of anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, neurology, philosophy and logic.

CORE IDEAS Galen’s teaching is based on his close study of the organism of animals and man. In his opinion, nature itself protects and preserves the health of the body, the role of the doctor is reduced only to helping nature. He argued that there is no disembodied, devoid of matter, undying soul. Described about 300 human muscles. He concluded that “without a nerve there is not a single part of the body, not a single movement, called arbitrary, not a single feeling.”

CONTRIBUTION Accomplished about 400 works on philosophy, medicine and pharmacology. Galen introduced fundamental disciplines (anatomy and physiology) into the foundation of healing, therefore he is considered the founder of academic medicine. For 14 centuries, Galen’s works were the main source of medical knowledge in the Near and Middle East and in Europe. Galen was an ancestor of experimental anatomy and physiology.

WORKS “On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body”, “On Anatomy”, “On Anatomical Procedures”, “On Movement of Muscles”/