Galen. All the medical schools which I have mentioned were still holding their ground in the 2nd century a.d., with more or less popular acceptance, when the great Galen made his entry into the world of Graeco-Roman medicine. [Pg xvi]
His Nature and Nurture. Claudius Galenus was born at Pergamos in Asia Minor in the year 131 a.d. His father was one Nicon, a well-to-do architect of that city. “I had the great good fortune,” says Galen,[1] “to have as a father a highly amiable, just, good, and benevolent man. My mother, on the other hand, possessed a very bad temper; she used sometimes to bite her serving-maids, and she was perpetually shouting at my father and quarrelling with him—worse than Xanthippe with Socrates. When, therefore, I compared the excellence of my father’s disposition with the disgraceful passions of my mother, I resolved to embrace and love the former qualities, and to avoid and hate the latter.”
Nicon called his son Γαληνός, which means quiet, peaceable, and although the physician eventually turned out to be a man of elevated character, it is possible that his somewhat excessive leaning towards controversy (exemplified in the following pages) may have resulted from the fact that he was never quite able to throw off the worst side of the maternal inheritance.
His father, a man well schooled in mathematics and philosophy, saw to it that his son should not lack a liberal education. Pergamos itself was an ancient centre of civilisation, containing, among other culture-institutions, a library only second in importance to that of Alexandria itself; it also contained an Asclepieum.
Galen’s training was essentially eclectic: he studied all the chief philosophical systems of the time—Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Epicurean—and then, at the age of seventeen, entered on a course of medical studies; these he pursued under the best teachers at his own city, and afterwards, during a period of Wanderjahre, at Smyrna, Alexandria, and other leading medical centres.
Returning to Pergamos, he received his first professional appointment—that of surgeon to the gladiators. After four years here he was drawn by ambition to Rome, being at that time about thirty-one years of age. At Rome the young Pergamene attained a brilliant reputation both as a practitioner and as a public demonstrator of anatomy; among his patients he finally numbered even the Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself.
Medical practice in Rome at this time was at a low ebb, and Galen took no pains to conceal his contempt for the ignorance, charlatanism, and venality of his fellow-practitioners. Eventually, in spite of his social popularity, he raised up such odium against himself in medical circles, that he was forced to flee the city. This he did hurriedly and secretly in the year 168 a.d., when thirty-six years of age. He betook himself to his old home at Pergamos, where he settled down once more to a literary life.
His respite was short, however, for within a year he was summoned back to Italy by imperial mandate. Marcus Aurelius was about to undertake an [Pg xviii] expedition against the Germans, who at that time were threatening the northern frontiers of the Empire, and he was anxious that his consulting physician should accompany him to the front. “Patriotism” in this sense, however, seems to have had no charms for the Pergamene, and he pleaded vigorously to be excused. Eventually, the Emperor gave him permission to remain at home, entrusting to his care the young prince Commodus.
Thereafter we know little of Galen’s history, beyond the fact that he now entered upon a period of great literary activity. Probably he died about the end of the century.