• DOI:10.1353/PBM.1987.0050
• Corpus ID: 39137284

Galen on Erasistratus

@article{Christie1987GalenOE,
  title={Galen on Erasistratus},
  author={Ronald V. Christie},
  journal={Perspectives in Biology and Medicine},
  year={1987},
  volume={30},
  pages={440 - 449}
}

• R. Christie
• Published 7 January 2015
• Medicine
• Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

In the third century b.c., the School of Medicine in Alexandria produced two great men, Herophilus and Erasistratus, who were probably the first to demonstrate dissection of the human body. According to Celsus [1] "they laid open men whilst still alive—criminals received out of prison from the kings—and while they were still breathing observed parts which before hand nature had concealed" [I]. This story may well be an invention, but there is clear evidence that they dissected live animals. The custom of embalming was an ancient one in Egypt [2], and it is also likely that the removal of the viscera that was part of this procedure gave these Greek physicians a unique opportunity to study the human body, particularly in disease. Herophilus was mainly concerned with anatomy, while Erasistratus is usually considered to be the first experimental physiologist. Erasistratus discarded most of the humoural theory of disease and instead linked diseases with the abnormal changes found in individual organs. Unfortunately, this glimpse of the truth—which could have had a profound influence on medical progress—was soon to be forgotten, perhaps partly because these observations could not be confirmed since postmortems were not countenanced elsewhere and partly because they contradicted the humoural theories of Hippocrates and Galen. Erasistratus distinguished sensory from motor nerves and was probably the first to trace the origin of both to the brain. He believed that the brain— and not the heart, as was taught by Aristotle—was the centre of intelligence and suggested that certain palsies were a consequence of cerebral lesions. He made many other contributions to physiology and medicine, only a few of which are mentioned in the pages that follow. The school of the Erasistrians survived until after the time of Galen,