Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 13, 2025
A great Galenic anatomist is first to give a full and correct description of the valves and their function, but fails to see that any modification of the old view as to the motion of the blood is required. Two able dissectors carefully test their action by experiment, and come to a result, the exact reverse of the truth.
All his writings aim to promote progress in medicine, and to hold before the physician a grand ideal of his profession. In this his views are wide and far-reaching, based on the relationship which man bears to nature as a whole; but in his sweeping condemnations he not only rejected Galenic therapeutics and Galenic anatomy, but condemned dissections of any kind.
Boyle seems to have acquired most of his medical knowledge between, say, 1649 and 1662. It is worth recalling some of the trends and conflicts that formed the medical environment during this period. Among the major trends, first place, perhaps, must be given to Galenic doctrine, which had come under progressively severe attack.
Mundinus of Bologna, one of the first men in the Middle Ages to study anatomy from the subject, was under the strong domination of the Arabians, from whom he appears to have received a very imperfect Galenic anatomy.
He also discovered several other important mistakes in Galenic anatomy, and was so impressed with his discoveries that he contemplated writing a work on anatomy which should correct the great classical authority's mistakes.
Vesalius' translation of Rhazes was probably undertaken because he recognized in him a kindred spirit of original investigation and inquiry, whose work, because it was many centuries old, would command the weight of an authority and at the same time help in the controversy over Galenic questions.
However, side by side with the Galenic medical doctrines, there were the other prevalent doctrines, among which I can mention the idea of "specifics."
The basic principle of life, in the Galenic physiology, is a spirit, anima or pneuma, drawn from the general world-soul in the act of respiration. Here it will be best to leave it for a moment and trace the vascular system along a different route.
Intolerable as literature, his works are a valuable treasure house of medical knowledge and experience, custom, tradition, and history. As in the case of the Hippocratic corpus, so in the case of the Galenic corpus we are dealing to some extent with material from various sources.
Until the end of the fifteenth century progress in anatomy was almost imperceptible. During the fifteenth century more Galenic and Hippocratic texts were recovered and gradually turned into Latin, but still without vitally affecting the course of Anatomy.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking