Biography of Galen | philosopher and physician.

(Pergamon, Turkey current, 129 - ID, 216) Greek philosopher and physician. Galen thought exerted a profound influence on the medicine practiced in the Byzantine Empire, which was extended later to Middle East, to finish coming to medieval Europe, which remained until into the 17TH century.

Educated as a man of letters, at age sixteen Galen decided to orient its activities to the study of medicine. With this object he travelled to Smyrna and finally to Alexandria, to return back to Pergamon in the year 157, where served as doctor of the troop of gladiators.

Galen

At 162 Galeno he moved to Rome, where he became soon famous cures practiced members of patrician families that previously had been evicted, as well as the use of an eloquent rhetoric in public discussions. Galen was a physician of the emperors Marcus Aurelius, comfortable and Septimius Severus, before returning back to Pergamon, where he died in the 216.

Influenced by the Hippocratic doctrine, Galen argued thesis that the health of the individual is based on the balance between blood and a series of moods known as yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Galen pioneered the scientific observation of physiological phenomena, and practiced many dissections, which enabled him to identify seven pairs of cranial nerves, describing the valves of the heart, and even to establish the structural differences between veins and arteries. Also, Galen managed to prove that arteries not carrying air, as it was then believed, but blood. Author of more than three hundred works, currently preserved are of them, total or partially, a hundred and fifty.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas