6o THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



has strangely combined the many-sided biological learning of antiquity with 

 the mystical trend of thought of the new era. 



The last great biologist of antiquity 

 Galen was born in 131 at Pergamum in Asia Minor, of Greek parents. 

 After moving to Rome he latinized his name and called himself Claudius 

 Galenus, but continued to write in Greek, this being a characteristic ex- 

 ample of the mixed culture prevailing at this time. His father, Nicon, was 

 an architect; through a dream he learnt that his son was destined to be a 

 physician, and Galen thus entered upon his medical career under what was 

 thought to be divine instigation. Even before this occurred, he had been 

 initiated by good teachers into the philosophy of his time: in his native town 

 he studied under Platonists, Epicureans, and Stoics, but he was particularly 

 versed in the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Medicine he studied in 

 his native country, then in Corinth, and finally in Alexandria, everywhere 

 acquiring, besides medicine, philosophical knowledge from the best teachers 

 of his time. Having thus completed his education, he returned home in the 

 year 158 and was employed in his native city as physician in the temple of 

 .^sculapius, as well as, characteristically enough, at the city's gladiatorial 

 school. After six years, however, he moved to Rome and there began to give 

 lectures on his own scientific subjects, as a result of which he won the friend- 

 ship of men of repute and the envy of other physicians. In a still greater 

 degree did the immense practice he acquired awaken feelings of bitterness, 

 and as he himself never attempted to conciliate his envious fellow physicians, 

 but on the contrary strongly resented the decline in the efficiency of medical 

 practitioners, such a storm of hostility broke over his head that for a time 

 he had to fly the field and return to his own country. Wa had, however, such 

 an established reputation that after the lapse of onh' a few years he was 

 summoned to become body-physician to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and 

 thus, under the protection both of him and of his son Commodus, he was 

 able to carry on his work in Rome unmolested. His last vears passed quietly; 

 it is not known when and where he died, but probably about the year 2.10 

 at Pergamum. 



Galen s zvri tings 

 As a writer Galen was very productive; he himself states that he wrote 156 

 treatises, of which 131 were of a medical character. Of the Ktter, 83 are still 

 extant. His other works embraced philosophy, mathematic?, grammar, and 

 law, but most of them are now lost. He was thus a many-sided man of cul- 

 ture, with interests far above the specialized fields of activifv of contempo- 

 rary physicians and even of the classical Alexandrine doctors, and well 

 capable of critically examining the various medical schools, which by work- 

 ing in opposition to one another with their dogmatically formulated pro- 

 grams brought medical science into disrepute. He also laid great store by 



