Galen

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Galen

Advantages

  • He was insistence on dissection led to improved knowledge of anatomy.
  • He discovered that the brain not the heart controlled speech and that veins and arteries carried blood around the body.
  • Galen encouraged doctors to observe patients and record their symptoms.
  • Galen was one of the first doctors to rely solely on his observation of his patients' symptoms.
  • We wrote over 500 medical books, he believed in carefully writing down his theories.
  • His books which combined knowledge from Greece, Alexandria and Rome were used to teach doctors and as reference books for the next 1,500 years.

Disadvantages

  • The problem with Galen was his methods and ideas were followed for 7,500 years.
  • Throughout this time his theories remained unquestioned throughout Europe, this was because the church liked Galen's theories as they linked in with religion.
  • Many people were too scared to challenge him.
  • Galen stated that the jaw bone was two bones, however later people discovered it was only one.
  • Galen dissected on animals mainly meaning that he got many things wrong.

Evaluation

Overall I think that Galen did bring something to medicine as people were starting to be allowed to dissect on animals which was a difference from before where people weren't allowed to dissect at all. However he hindered the improvements on medicine as his theories of the human anatomy  were wrong as he dissected on animals not humans, leading to many mistakes due to different anatomies. Also Galen still followed the Theory of the Four Humors and even made his own theory called Theory of Opposites which was that if one of the humors was out of balanced they should be treated with an opposite. This hindered medical improvements as new theories were not accepted and new discoveries couldn't happen due to the carried on belief of the Theory of the Four Humors.

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