Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/192

 CHAPTER XV

CLAUDIUS GALEN

During the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era, Greek medicine was represented by a collection of treatises which had been written by Hippocrates and his followers on anatomical, physiological, pathological, therapeutical and ethical subjects, and which constituted a fairly complete but not always easily intelligible system. As time went on, however, and especially as new and useful facts were constantly being added to the existing stock of medical knowledge, the more thoughtful physicians began to feel that the system, which up to that day had proved acceptable, needed to be perfected in a number of respects; and accordingly, as a result of this feeling of dissatisfaction, and also as an expression of the prevailing desire for a more perfect knowledge of the truth, there developed, as has been stated in the preceding chapters, a number of different medical sects. When Galen first appeared in the field as a physician of unusual promise, these various sects were all still in a thriving condition. The Methodists, in particular, were very popular. Galen did not favor any special sect, but in his writings he made it manifest that he attached more importance to the teachings of Hippocrates than to those of any other author. "It was Hippocrates," he said, "who laid the real foundations of the science of medicine." It is therefore not surprising that Galen should have devoted so much time to the writing of elaborate commentaries on the works of Hippocrates. The service which he thus rendered to medicine, says Daremberg, was of very great value. But Galen, notwithstanding his great admiration for Hippocrates, did not hesitate to