After Aristotle 65 



the revival of learning Dioscorides continued to attract an 

 immense amount of philological and botanical ability, and 

 scores of editions of his works, many of them nobly illustrated, 

 poured out of the presses of the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries. 



But the greatest biologist of the late Greek period, and 

 indeed one of the greatest biologists of all time, was Claudius 

 Galen of Pergamon (A.D. 131-201). Galen devoted himself to 

 medicine from an early age, and in his twenty-first year we 

 hear of him studying anatomy at Smyrna under Pelops. With 

 the object of extending his knowledge of drugs he early made 

 long journeys to Asia Minor. Later he proceeded to Alexandria, 

 where he improved his anatomical equipment, and here, he tells 

 us, he examined a human skeleton. It is indeed probable that 

 his direct practical acquaintance with human anatomy was 

 limited to the skeleton and that dissection of the human body 

 was no longer carried on at Alexandria in his time. Thus his 

 physiology and anatomy had to be derived mainly from animal 

 sources. He is the most voluminous of all ancient scientific 

 writers and one of the most voluminous writers, of antiquity in 

 any department. We are not here concerned with the medical 

 material which mainly fills these huge volumes, but merely with 

 the physiological views which not only prevailed in medicine 

 until Harvey and after, but also governed for fifteen hundred 

 years alike the scientific and the popular ideas on the nature 

 and workings of the animal body, and have for centuries been 

 embedded in our speech. A knowledge of these physiological 

 views of Galen is necessary for any understanding of the history 

 of biology and illuminates many literary allusions of the 

 Middle Ages and Renaissance. 



Between the foundation of the Alexandrian school and the 

 time of Galen, medicine was divided among a great number 

 of sects. Galen was an eclectic and took portions of his teaching 

 from many of these schools, but he was also a naturalist of 



2540-1 E 



