Galen's patients

Today, Galen of Pergamon is best known as the most influential exponent of the ancient world’s cumbersome medical doctrines—especially humoral theory—and for many subtle anatomical discoveries, as well as mistakes about human anatomy and physiology. Galen is antiquity’s most prolifi c author in Greek, and his works formed the basis of medical education in the Byzantine empire and in Europe for many centuries. But Galen saw himself mainly as a medical practitioner and not as an anatomist, theorist, or researcher. He treated patients in the Roman empire, and mainly in the city of Rome, for many decades—from about 162 CE until his death some time after 203—and his works are today our most immediate insight into how medicine was practised by
the ancient world’s most highly trained doctors. Mehr