Galen - The First Primadonna

Time: 12:00pm

Location: Curtis 213, Jefferson University

Galen was indeed the first primadonna of our craft. A brilliant mind, but also a self-promoting bully who had no qualms in squashing the competition by using his powerful connections (he was the personal physician of Emperor Marcus Aurelius), Galen was also a coward and a wimp, who abandoned his patients when the plague finally hit Rome, safely retreating to his native Pergamus. Definitely not the kind of guy you would like to have a beer with.

Still, he had a brilliant mind. And that is the catch, because when combined with arrogance and hubris, intelligence may actually be an aggravating circumstance -- like drinking while driving.

In the case of Galen, brilliance (and fame) contributed to embalm medicine for more than fifteen hundred years. What actually did it was his cockamamie idea that disease originates from an imbalance of 'humors’. Hence, the physician’s task of reestablishing the balance.

It was Vesalius who first dared to challenge the Master (by demonstrating that Galen had made tons of anatomical errors because he never dissected human beings, but always monkeys). Yet, it was finally Virchow who buried him under the evidence that disease hits cells and not humors. Still, for 1700 years people got bled to death in the attempt to reestablish Galenic humoral balance - including George Washington, who had six pints of blood removed for what was just a bad case of epiglottitis.

Even Stonewall Jackson rode into battle by holding his left arm upright while sucking on a lemon. It was his attempt to make himself more 'sanguine' and 'bilious', and thus better suited for action. Didn't help him much when his left arm was eventually hit by friendly fire (and, ultimately amputated), but then again this was the ever-lasting influence of Galen's wrong ideas.

The lesson for us is to always challenge dogma. Holy cows make the best burgers.

Please join us on Tuesday as we revisit the life and contributions of Claudius Aelius Galenus. We will offer drinks and desserts but lunch is on your own.