Claudius Galen 131-201 AD.

Claudius Galen of Pergamum: authority of medieval medicine.

Claudius Galen and his scholarly teachings defined the practice of medicine in Western Europe for 1500 years (Figure 1). His empiric approach, based on original animal experimentation, and his reputation for miraculous cures had an enormous influence on Western medicine during the Middle Ages and Renaissance until William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood in the early seventeenth c...

Galen (AD 129-200) of Pergamun: anatomist and experimental physiologist.

Galen was a brilliant anatomist and pioneer of experimental physiology. His many important discoveries exerted a profound influence on medicine during the next 1400 years. However, his wish to solve all the problems of health and disease led him to speculate and draw mistaken conclusions which were widely believed until after the Renaissance.

Galen's (130-201 AD) Conceptions of the Heart.

In the 2nd century AD, the prolific Greek physician Galen contributed significantly to the anatomical and physiological knowledge of the cardiovascular system. However his erroneous theory of blood circulation, based on the inaccurate notion that venous blood passes through tiny pores in the heart's septum, moves from the right ventricle to the left, and is mixed with inhaled air from the lungs...

Galen

Models, Sherlock Holmes and the Emperor Claudius

Recently, a number of authors have suggested that we understand scientific models in the same way as fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes. The biggest challenge for this approach concerns the ontology of fictional characters. I consider two responses to this challenge, given by Roman Frigg, Ronald Giere and Peter Godfrey-Smith, and argue that neither is successful. I then suggest an alter...