Galen's Theories Of Respiration Essay

Throughout his text On The Use of Breathing Galen identifies the purposes of respiration by examining his predecessors’ various theories on the matter and proving which of these theories must hold true. He spends a lot of time disproving Erasistratus’s theories of respiration as a means to replenish arteries and appears to believe that Hippocrates’ ideas on respiration respiration for the purposes of both cooling and nourishment. Though not mentioned by name, Galen’s views on respiration appear to match up on key points with Aristotle’s views on respiration, as outlined in his text On Respiration. Galen first and foremost addresses the issue of whether respiration acts as a cooling agent within the body. He states that there is an inborn, natural heat within us and that …show more content…
He criticized Erasistratus for ignoring the fact that in the “vapor-baths in a wine-cask” that patients are subjected to their whole bodies being “emptied much more quickly than in the baths” and yet they do not stifle like men in the bath houses, because in these vapor-baths, they are breathing cool air (113). Galen hypothesizes that if they were not breathing this cold air, they would surely die exactly as men do in the bath houses. Galen does, however, believe that breathing is associated with the nourishment of the pneuma. Galen asserts that this pneuma is “either the substance of the soul or its primary organ” and that this pneuma “must of necessity be nourished” (121) He states that this pneuma is nourished not by “the vapor rising to it from the blood” but instead that it is by “breathing in through the nostrils that the nourishment comes for the psychic pneuma”(123).
With this, Galen concludes that respiration is for both the regulation of heat in the body and for nourishment of the