Experimental anatomy and physiology (Galen)
Anatomía y fisiología experimental (disección y vivisección de Galeno)
- Date
- c. 170 CE · confidence high
- Place
- Pergamon and Rome, Turkey / Italy
- Credited to
- Galen of Pergamon (building on Herophilus and Erasistratus in Alexandria, 3rd century BCE)
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Systematic dissection of animals (monkeys, pigs) and experiments such as tying off nerves and ureters to determine the function of organs, nerves and arteries. An anatomical synthesis that dominated until Vesalius.
Herophilus and Erasistratus practised human dissection (and perhaps vivisection of condemned prisoners) in Alexandria c. 280 BCE; Galen dissected only animals. Merged with 'Galenic anatomy and physiology' (duplicate, 23-09-2026).
What it led to
- Demonstration that the arteries carry blood and that the brain controls the nerves
- Medicine as an experimental, publicly demonstrative science
- Galenic authority in Islam (Avicenna) and in universities until the 16th century
- Errors (pores in the cardiac septum) whose refutation founded modern physiology (Harvey)
- medieval scholastic and Arab medicine
- textual authority that delayed direct observation until Vesalius
- experimental physiology (ligature of ureters, section of nerves)
Built on
- Hippocratic medicinec. 420 BCE
- Hippocratic humoral theoryc. 400 BCE
- Herophilus's human dissection in Alexandria
- Aristotle's biology
- Hippocratic humoral theory
- Alexandrian anatomy
Made possible
- Academy of Gondishapurc. 550
- Hunayn ibn Ishaq's Ten Treatises on the Eyec. 860
- Avicenna's Canon of Medicine1025
- Canon of Medicine and drug testing rules1025
- Mansur ibn Ilyas' illustrated anatomyc. 1390
- Vesalius's anatomy
- Harvey's circulation of the blood
- Avicenna's Canon
- Galenic pharmacology (galenical preparations)