Galen was a Greek physician who revived the work of Hippocrates and other Greek doctors. Galen died in the Roman era but his work was still read in the medieval times this may have been because of the regression in medicine which meant that doctors had to use cures and theories that had already been discovered such as Galen’s theory of the 4 humours and opposites. Due to lack of progress in the past 1000 year’s doctors continued to use Galen’s theories. Galen’s ideas were regarded as sensible and believable.
He put great emphasis on clinical observation – examining a patient very thoroughly and noting their symptoms. Galen also accepted the view that disease was the result of an imbalance between the 4 humours which were blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile. He came up with the theory of opposites, if a patient appeared to have a cold he would be treated with heat. Many of Galen’s ideas were incorrect but were still used 1000 years after he died; one main factor that contributed to this was war.
War led to lack of progress and held back new medical ideas from developing this was because a war would cost a lot of money for the government so they would compelled to spend all their money on new military equipment and salaries for the soldiers rather than new medical equipment which hindered the progress in medicine as they didn’t have the equipment that would enable them to progress. They also couldn’t give any money to help research new medical ideas meaning that no-one was able to come up with better ideas.
A war was very busy and chaotic which lead to doctors being unable to train and it also meant that it was too dangerous for them to travel so they had bad communication. Soldiers were injured in thousands doctors did not have any time to research and develop new ideas; all of their time would be occupied in using what they already know to help cure or save a soldiers life. At the time of a war many medical books were destroyed and thus some very important and new medical ideas were lost forever causing regression in medicine.
All of these factors lead to the lack of progression in medicine. Another factor which contributed to regression in medicine was religion. This was because it was mainly only monks and priests who learnt to read and write as they had control over education and the libraries were in their monasteries. This hindered the progression of medicine because it meant that trainee doctors were unable to read medical texts and learn from them. Because the church had control over
the books people read, it was only books that fitted in with the churches religion that people were allowed to read. It was also forbidden in most places for Humans to be dissected. This hindered the progress because it meant that no –one was able to prove Galen wrong or even come up with better ideas. The church agreed with Galen’s ideas because he believed in a soul just as they did and so people were scared to come up with new ideas as it would go against the church. However, there were some factors that helped the progression of medicine.
One of these was the fact that doctors were taken into the field during war to look after the soldiers which help them to learn about new ways of dealing with things they had never seen before. This helped Medicine because doctors would have been able to pass on what they had learnt to others. Another thing that helped was the fact the churches built universities for those who wanted to study medicines which gave them a place to test out new ideas and to understand medicine properly.
One final thing that helped the progression was that the governments began to put money back into the public health systems which allowed doctors to have the money to come up and test new and improved theories as well as help make the public live longer. In summary, I don’t completely agree with the statement but I do for the most part because there were more factors that hindered the progression of medicine so led to people reading Galen’s ideas then there were things that would have helped medicine progress.