Roman medicine aimed at helping the society as a whole, rather than individuals. They built aqueducts to carry fresh water, arranged for sewers to carry away the waste, and built public baths for personal cleanliness.
The most important physician during the Roman Empire was Galen.
Claudius Galen was a Greek physician who went to Rome and revived the ideas of Hippocrates and other Greek doctors.
Galen believed that, a thorough knowledge of the body is essential to good medical practice; "A physician needs to study the body, as an architect needs to follow a plan."
The Romans had passed harsh laws against dissecting human bodies. A doctor who dared open a body merely to satisfy his curiosity would be severely punished.
Galen did not dare break the laws. He traveled to Alexandria, to study medicine. There, he had the opportunity to study 2 complete human skeletons. After this, he dissected the bodies of animals - pigs, goats, and even apes. He learned much from his study of animals. He diligently described every detail of what he learned.
But not everything he learnt about animals could be used to treat humans.
At the age of 28 Galen returned to his hometown, and became the surgeon to a school of gladiators.
Although the Romans banned the dissection of human bodies, it perfectly fine and encouraged for professional warriors to hack their bodies apart, for the amusement of Colosseum crowds. Once the warrior died, his body was forbidden to be touched except for the preparation for burial.
While repairing the injured gladiators, he learned firsthand about the human body.
A few years later he traveled to Rome where he continued his study. And wrote the first of many books. He also took on his first important case:
Eudemus, a well-known physician, faced a mild paralysis in his right hand. The third and fourth fingers could not be moved. All the best physicians in the city who examined him failed to restore the feeling to his fingers.
Lastly, Eudemus saw Galen.
Galen asked him if he had injured his neck recently. Eudemus, bewildered, said that he had been thrown from a chariot and struck his neck against a stone. The young physician replied that the nerves the neck had been affected in the fall. Then, he treated the nerves in the neck instead of in the fingers.
Eudemus recovered completely.
His fame soured, but so did the jealousy of other doctors.
Especially when Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor hired him as his personal physician.
According to Galen, the existence of God could not be dismissed once a person saw the marvelous complexity of the human body.
Galen died in his hometown, Pargamum in A.D. 200.
Although Galen died, his ideas didn’t die with him.
His fame continued to grow. He had written about a 125 books, of which 80 still exist.
His books contained a mixture of facts, opinions and errors.
His effect on medicine grew rather than decreased.
His views unfortunately came to be regarded as the final authority in medicine.
