Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/131

 THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN greater knowledge of the six hundred years' experience with disease which lay between him and Hippocrates, considering and weighing (not dispassionately!) the views of the leading intervening physicians. He was also a brilliant investigator himself, and through his dissec- tions and vivisections advanced the sciences of anatomy and physiology. Even here he erred, not infrequently, through applying the anat- omy of pigs and apes to the human body, which he did not dissect. Beyond this he was led, and sometimes astray, by his conviction of the sufficiency of his medical theories and the philosophy of nature on which he sought to base them. He was over-confident in himself and his knowledge, and many a pillar of his medical temple was destined to fall. Yet the great building endured for fifteen centuries. To describe or sketch the contents of Galen's writings would require a volume. They cover medicine, and, one might say, biology; they concern themselves with philosophy, with psy- chology, and even with the arts. Many of them were great and valuable treatises, as, for ex- ample, that on The Places {or parts) Affected. It sets forth the importance of reaching a clear decision as to the part affected and the nature [ 109]