CLAUDIUS GALEN AND HIS INFLUENCE ON ANATOMY 57 



cine. He accepted many of the superstitions of the day and strongly 

 believed in various forms of divination which lie used to make 

 diagnoses of disease in his patients. Thus, he employed both 

 science and magic in his approach to medicine; he did not put his 

 whole faith in reason because he felt there were too many obvious 

 cases of divine providence. 



The Avorks of Galen were widely translated and published 

 through the 16th Century from Greek to Latin, Arabic and He- 

 brew. After the beginning of printing, the fame of Galen in- 

 creased by leaps and bounds. Many physicians were still swearing 

 by him in the 17th and even into the 18th Centuries. This deep 

 and long lasting influence was probably due to manifold causes: 

 his belief that form determines function, that the complexity and 

 beauty of organic structure must be due to a divine providence 

 and his opposition to atomism and evolution. These endeared him 

 to the theologians; they favored Galen over the disliked Epicurus 

 because his facts and methods provided a basis for their religious 

 views. There ^vas thus an emotional factor which gave intensity 

 and fervor to the renown of Galen. He became accepted as an 

 infallible master. Many regarded him as a god and even formed 

 a religious cult for his worship. By some, he was called the "Medi- 

 cal Pope" of the Middle Ages. This accounts for the fact that the 

 anatomical discoveries during the Renaissance which neutralized 

 some of the opinions of Galen, augmented the fanaticism of his 

 defenders. When he is assessed in terms of the medical climate in 

 which he lived or in comparison with the physicians of the 16th 

 and 17th Centuries, he measures up as one of the outstanding 

 men of his or any other time. It is, therefore, a question as to 

 whether he received a larger share of fame than he truly deserved 

 as a few historians have suggested. It is even possible that he has 

 been greatly underrated in recent years, especially when consid- 

 ering his over-all accomplishments. 



After Galen, the practice of dissection, in any form, disap- 

 peared, due either to a redoubling of the superstitions against it 

 or to the ignorant apathy of the physicians (Malloch, '26; Pren- 

 dergast, '30; Sarton, '54). 



