THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN 



greater knowledge of the six hundred years' 

 experience with disease which lay between him 

 and Hippocrates, considering and weighing 

 (not dispassionately!) the views of the leading 

 intervening physicians. He was also a brilliant 

 investigator himself, and through his dissec- 

 tions and vivisections advanced the sciences of 

 anatomy and physiology. Even here he erred, 

 not infrequently, through applying the anat- 

 omy of pigs and apes to the human body, 

 which he did not dissect. Beyond this he was 

 led, and sometimes astray, by his conviction of 

 the sufficiency of his medical theories and the 

 philosophy of nature on which he sought to 

 base them. He was over-confident in himself 

 and his knowledge, and many a pillar of his 

 medical temple was destined to fall. Yet the 

 great building endured for fifteen centuries. 



To describe or sketch the contents of Galen's 

 writings would require a volume. They cover 

 medicine, and, one might say, biology; they 

 concern themselves with philosophy, with psy- 

 chology, and even with the arts. Many of them 

 were great and valuable treatises, as, for ex- 

 ample, that on The Places {or parts) Affected. 

 It sets forth the importance of reaching a clear 

 decision as to the part affected and the nature 

 [ 109] 



