Graziano & Raulin
Research Methods (9th edition)
Claudius Galen (ca 130-200) was a Greek physician and philosopher.
For the six or seven centuries prior to the emergence of the Christian era, Hippocratic medicine was the standard care in medicine. However, growing dissatisfaction with its inadequacies led to the formation of groups that offered significant changes to the Hippocratic approaches. Galen was a prolific writer and influential physician. At the time, when others were moving away from Hippocrates, Galen was reasserting the Hippocratic ideas.
Much of Galen’s writing were devoted to elaborate commentaries on Hippocratic works. His writings preserved the medical knowledge developed by the Hippocratic school when the original writings became lost during the Dark ages and Middle Ages. His treatises on medicine, particularly physiology and anatomy, were major contributions. Galen produced an encyclopedic array of books, including 9 in physiology, 6 in pathology, 16 essays on the pulse, 14 books on therapeutics, and 30 books on pharmacy.
Galen is considered the founder of experimental physiology for his work on the dissection of animals. He also experimented on animals by systematically severing animals’ spinal cords in different places to produce different types of paralyses.