Galen: a Biographical Sketch

Galen: a Biographical Sketch

I. Birth and family
The physician and philosopher Galen was born at
Pergamum in A.D. 129. His father, Aelius Nicon, was
an architect and builder with an interest in
mathematics, logic, and astronomy and a fondness
for exotic mathematical and literary recreations. His
mother, according to Galen himself, was a hottempered woman, always arguing with his father;
Galen compared her to Socrates' wife Xanthippe.

Perhaps while still in his teens, Galen became a

therapeutes or 'attendant' of the healing god
Asclepius, whose sanctuary was an important

Galen: a Biographical Sketch

II. Education

Nicon had planned for his son to study philosophy or politics, the traditional
pursuits of the cultured governing class into which he had been born. But in 144 or
145 Asclepius intervened. In a dream, Galen says, the god told Nicon to allow his
son to study medicine, and for the next four years Galen studied with the
distinguished physicians who gathered at the sanctuary of Asclepius.
In 148 or 149 Nicon died, and Galen at 19 found himself rich and independent. He
chose to travel and further his medical education at Smyrna (modern Izmir),
Corinth, and Alexandria. In 157 he returned to his native city and a prestigious
appointment: physician to the gladiators. From autumn 157 to autumn 161 he
gained valuable practical experience in trauma and sports medicine, and he
continued to pursue his studies in theoretical medicine and philosophy.
By A.D. 161 Galen, now 32, may have realized that even a great and prosperous
provincial city like Pergamum could not offer the opportunities his talents and
ambition demanded. He left, returning only for a three-year span from 166 until
some time in 169. The rest of his career was spent in Rome.

Galen: a Biographical Sketch

III. At Rome
During his first stay at Rome Galen quickly became part of the intellectual
life of the capital. His public lectures and anatomical demonstrations
brought him to the attention of the consular Flavius Boethius, and through
him to the notice of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. In 168, Galen tells us,
Marcus and his co-emperor, Lucius Verus, invited him to return from
Pergamum and to join them at their headquarters in Aquileia, where they
were engaged in military operations against the Quadi and Marcomanni,
barbarian tribes threatening the Danubian frontier.

By the time Galen acted on the emperor's invitation, however, an

outbreak of plague had forced Marcus and his court to return to Rome.
There Galen joined them. He continued to write, lecture, and practice
medicine, with the emperor's son Commodus and Marcus himself as his
most illustrious patients. With the possible exception of a few journeys
taken to investigate scientific phenomena, he remained at Rome until his
death sometime after A.D. 210.

Galen: a Biographical Sketch

IV. Writings

In 191 a fire in the Temple of Peace, where he had deposited many of his
manuscripts for safe-keeping, destroyed important parts of Galen's work. What
remains, however, is enough to establish his reputation as the most prolific,
cantankerous, and influential of ancient medical writers. His extant works fill some
twenty volumes in Greek. Other works survive only in Arabic or medieval Latin
translations.
Galen's works fall into three main categories: medical, philosophical, and
philological. His medical writings encompass nearly every aspect of medical theory
and practice in his era. In addition to summarizing the state of medicine at the
height of the Roman Empire, he reports his own important advances in anatomy,
physiology, and therapeutics. His philosophical writings cannot be easily separated
from his medical thought. Throughout his treatises on knowledge and semantics
he is concerned to argue that medicine, understood correctly, can have the same
epistemological certainty, linguistic clarity, and intellectual status that philosophy
enjoyed. Likewise his treatises on the language of medicine and his commentaries
on Hippocratic texts form part of his project to recover authentic medical
knowledge from the accretions of mistaken doctrine.

Galen: a Biographical Sketch

V. Personality and Influence

From this consistent intellectual and scholarly program emerges a consistent

personality. Galen tells us more about himself, his opinions, and his life than
any other ancient medical author. He lambastes his contemporaries for their
ignorance, greed, and superficial knowledge of the art of medicine. In his fiery,
polemic quest for intellectual and rhetorical supremacy, Galen belongs among
the great public intellectuals of the Second Sophistic period.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of Galen for European medical
thought in the centuries between the fall of Rome and modern times. Even as
late as 1833, the index to Karl-Gottlob Khn's edition (still the only nearly
complete collection of Galen's Greek works) could be designed for working
medical practitioners as well as for classical scholars. Galen absorbed into his
work nearly all preceding medical thought and shaped the categories within
which his successors thought about not only the history of medicine, but its
practice as well.

Galen: a Biographical Sketch

Bibliography
Lee Pearcy
lpearcy@ea1785.org

Portions of this essay first appeared in

Archaeology, November/December 1985

Galen: a Biographical Sketch

Bibliography
Further Reading

Bowersock G. W. (1969) Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire

(Oxford)
Moraux P. (1969) Galien de Pergame: Souvenirs d'un mdecin
(Paris)
Nutton V. (1973) 'The Chronology of Galen's Early Career',
Classical Quarterly 23, 158-171
Pearcy L. (1985) 'Galen's Pergamum,' Archaeology 38.6
(November/December), 33-39
Scarborough J. (1971) 'Galen and the Gladiators,' Episteme 5,
98-111
idem (1988) 'Galen Redivivus: An Essay Review', Journal of the
History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 43, 313-321