Galen's System of Physiology and Medicine

The restoration of Galen to his rightful position in the history of medicine and science has been recognized as a very real need for some decades. In different ways contributions to this end have been made by such historians as Prendergast, Singer, and particularly Temkin. But, as Dr. Siegel says in his preface to this book, a systematic analysis of Galen's medical and physiological works has not yet appeared. This book is designed to meet that need. To condense the essence of Galen's views into less than 400 pages would be a tour de force. This feat is only partially performed here since Dr. Siegel has postponed dealing with Galen's physiology of the senses for another publication. Galen, like Aristotle, became posthumously almost too successful. As a result appreciation of his achievements has passed down through history in exaggerated positive and negative phases. His great contributions having for many centuries suffered from the distortions of adulation, fell during the nineteenth century into the dark pit of reactionary denigration. For the English-speaking world the task of assessment has been rendered all the more difficult by the paucity of English translations of many of Galen's most important works. At present, however, Galen is surely emerging from his slough of despond, and with the inevitable swing of opinion we have to be on our guard lest the impetus of enthusiasm carry us too far. The title of the book would lead the reader to expect that it would open with an appreciation of Galen's physiology as presented by him in his works on the Natural Faculties and Use of the Parts. Instead, however, Dr. Siegel chooses to set out straight away to expound Galen's views on the heart. Here he at once presents controversial views, arguing that Galen understood cardiac systole and diastole, mediated by the heart as a muscle, and that his knowledge of the expulsion of blood into the lungs through the pulmonary arteries was equivalent to an appreciation of the pulmonary circulation. In spite of Galen's quoted statement that, 'the contracting thorax compresses the pulmonary arteries inside the lungs. Therefore they send the air they contain forward into the pulmonary veins. . .' Dr. Siegel not only denies that Galen asserted that the pulmonary veins contained air, but uses rough words to those who believed Galen to have asserted this, from Ibn-an Nafis in the thirteenth century to Singer in …