who assigned the brain as the center of intelligence

In the third century BCE, the school of Alexandria dominated thought. That historical era witnessed the birth of a number of intellectuals such as Ptolemy Euclid, Archimedes‏ and Galen. Scientists who contributed in making Alexandria the commercial and cultural hub of the world. No wonder its lighthouse was considered one of the seven wonders of the world radiating not only light but knowledge. However it saw also its demise with the spread of Christianity. After a major part of the library was ruined in a fire in the year 48 BCE, during the siege of Julius Caesar, one of the patriarchs shut it down in the third century AD and expelled its students. The library was transferred into a church and the philosophers were persecuted on charges of witchcraft. All that remains of it today is a damp basement, a temple that was built in honor of knowledge and some collapsing shelves.      

In that era three medical schools dominated scientific knowledge: The first was the Pythagorean school, the second was the Escolapian school and the third was the Hippocratic school. The Escolapian school was based on charlatanism because of the wide range belief of its followers in the healing power of snakes, hence the adoption of the snake as the symbol of medicine. The Hippocratic medicine was based on logic and believed in the natural factors as the cause of diseases. As such Hippocrates is considered the “father of modern medicine”. Despite that, during his era, the  Escolapian medicine dominated and was more organized and had branches in temples in no less than 300 cities around the ancient world.

One of the most famous centers was in the city of Pergamum (Bergama today, in Asia Minor or Turkey). In this city Claudius Galen was born in 129 BC and played an important role in the history and development of medicine and some say for the worst. Perhaps it would have been impossible for him to self liberate from the dominance of the Escolapian school in which he had inner belief, and it influenced his thoughts and attitude.

According to the norm of that time, Galen, or Galenus, as he was known during the Arab Muslim civilization, was home schooled until the age of 14. After that he moved driven by an inspiration to study medicine until he was 21. When he felt that the wise men of his hometown could no longer satisfy his thirst for knowledge he left for Alexandria where he studied Hippocrates and Aristotle until the age of 27. He then returned home to practice medicine. He became famous and was summoned to Rome and appointed at the Colosseum as a physician of the gladiators who battled themselves and lions in festivals for the pleasure of Caesar and the thirst of the Roman society for bloody entertainment. Since the Romans, despite their atrocities, did not allow the dissection of bodies, his work provided him a chance to practice in unique cases and circumstances that were never accessible to his peers. Notably, he acquired his expertise by treating cases resulting from immediate violence.

A reminder at first that Aristotle, who used to conduct his experiments on animals after chocking them,  had concluded that the veins were empty channels and as such transported the soul. Whereas Galen dealt with living humans who were subjected to such violent massacres. The experience of seeing blood pouring out of the sudden opening of the carotid artery – which supplies the head and neck with blood – in the case of slaughtering or stabbing, was a traumatic experience with consequences. He deducted that the draining of the artery after it opens proved that the vein contained blood not air, thus refuting Aristotle’s dominant theory both medically and religiously.

Galen was the first physician to introduce clinical monitoring in laboratories. He personally dissected live animals and left behind more than 20,000 pages of experiments. He used to strip the vein and then tie it with ligature and the blood would stop pulsating. He would then open the vein and pass through a hollow tube, untie the ligature to find that blood, not air, came out, thus refuting the idea of the presence of the “soul” in the veins.

Galen’s ideas were in fact a mixture of theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle and Hippocrates. And in order to avoid embarrassment, especially in terms of specifically refuting Aristotle’s theory, he chose to reconcile between all of them on the one hand, and the results of his experiments on the other. He succeeded in that by using a simple intellectual trick that ruled in favor of the widespread concept from which he could not liberate himself.

And this is what we will be reviewing in the upcoming article.

Issue # 99 - October 2010