Hellenistic/Roman
Galen
129–c. 216
“this faculty we also state to be artistic—nay, the best and highest art—doing everything for some purpose, so that there is nothing ineffective or superfluous, or capable of being better disposed.”
Galen of Pergamum practiced and wrote as a physician in the Roman Empire and served the imperial court. joins Hippocratic medicine to Aristotelian teleology: the body works by natural powers whose functions anatomy can trace, and health depends on the balance of the humors. He held that the best physician is also a philosopher. Anatomy was his instrument. For more than a thousand years his system taught the West and Islam what a living body is, until Harvey and the moderns revised it by the same demand for structure and function.
In the Conversation
3 of the Great Ideas
Life & Nature
Animal
Anatomy reveals design: every part of the animal body is formed for a purpose, and comparative dissection proves it.
Element
The four elements of Greek physics become, through Hippocrates and then in Galen's own hands, the four humors that compose the living body and govern its health.
Medicine
The body operates through natural faculties whose workings can be traced by anatomy, and health depends on the right balance of the four humors.