There is of course no authentic likeness of Galen in existence. The Royal College of Physicians possesses an unquestionably antique bust, copied in Pettigrew’s Medical Portraits (and illustrated in the margin), which is traditionally credited with being a representation of the Physician of Pergamos. It was presented to the College by Lord Ashburton, to whom it was presented by Alexander Adair, who had acquired it from his relative Robert Adair, principal surgeon to the British forces at the siege of Quebec. This Robert Adair was a man of considerable eminence in his profession, and is described as a man of character and a scholar. Beyond this very slight evidence there is no authority for the presumption that the bust was intended for Galen. The other portrait is copied from the diploma of the Pharmaceutical Society, but this is not said to have any history. With these may be compared the portrait given on the title page of the first London Pharmacopœia. The conclusion will probably be reached that we have no idea what manner of man the eminent physician was.
Galen was born at Pergamos, in Asia Minor, A.D. 131, and died in the same city between A.D. 200 and 210. His father was an architect of considerable fortune, and the son was at first destined to be a philosopher, but while he was going through his courses of logic, Nicon (the father) was advised in a dream to direct the youth’s studies in the direction of medicine. It will be seen directly that Galen’s career was a good deal influenced by dreams.
Nothing was spared to obtain for the youth the best education available, though his father died when he was 21. After exhausting the Pergamos teachers, Galen studied at Smyrna, Corinth, and Alexandria. Then he travelled for some years through Cilicia, Phœnicia, Palestine, Scyros, and the Isles of Crete and Cyprus. He commenced practice at Pergamos when he was 29 and was appointed Physician to the School of Gladiators in that city. At 33 he removed to Rome and soon acquired the confidence and friendship of many distinguished persons, among them Septimus Severus, the Consul and afterwards Emperor, Sergius Paulus, the Prætor, the uncle of the reigning Emperor, Lucius Verus, many of whom he cured of various illnesses.
His success caused bitter jealousy among the other Greek physicians then practising in Rome. They called him Paradoxologos, and Logiatros, which meant that he was a boaster and a master of phrases. It appears that he was able to hold his own in this wordy warfare. Some of his opponents he described as Asses of Thessaly, and he also made allegations against their competence and probity. However, he quitted Rome in the year 167, and as at a later time he left Aquilea, both movings being coincident with the occurrence of serious plagues, his reputation for courage has suffered. It was at this period of his life that he visited Palestine to see the shrub which yielded Balm of Gilead, and then proceeded to Armenia to satisfy himself in regard to the preparation of the Terra Sigillata. He was able to report that the general belief that blood was used in the process was incorrect.
It was to Aquilea that Galen was sent for by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was there preparing a campaign against the Marcomans, a Germanic nation dwelling in what is now called Bohemia. Marcus Aurelius was in the habit of taking Theriaca, and would have none but that which had been prepared by Galen. He urged Galen to accompany him on his expedition, but the physician declined the honour and the danger, alleging that Æsculapius had appeared to him in a dream, and had forbidden him to take the journey. The Emperor therefore sent him to Rome and charged him with the medical care of his son Commodus, then 11 years of age. Galen is said to have done the world the ill-service of saving the life of this monster. Galen retained the favour of Marcus Aurelius till the death of the Emperor, and continued to make Theriaca for his successors, Commodus, Pertinax, and Septimus Severus. He died during the reign of the last named Emperor.
Galen is sometimes said to have kept a pharmacy in the Via d’Acra at Rome, but his “apotheca” there appears to have been a house where his writings were kept and where other physicians came to consult them. This house was afterwards burned, and it is supposed that a number of the physician’s manuscripts were destroyed in that fire.
His medical fame began to develop soon after his death. In about a hundred years Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea, reproaches the world with treating Galen almost as a divinity. Nearly all the later Roman medical writers drew freely from his works, and some seemed to depend entirely on them. Arabic medicine was largely based on Galen’s teaching, and it was the Arabic manuscripts translated into Latin which furnished the base of the medical teaching of Europe from the eleventh and twelfth centuries to the eighteenth.
Galen aimed to create a perfect system of physiology, pathology, and treatment. He is alleged to have written 500 treatises on medicine, and 250 on other subjects, philosophy, laws, grammar. Nothing like this number remains, and the so-called “books” are often what we should call articles. His known and accepted medical works number eighty-five. All his writings were originally in Greek.