Q.1.1 Claudius Galenus, or Galen (129 – c. 216 AD), was an important and influential Greek physician in the Roman Empire. He is credited with laying out a new standard in medicine that had considerable influence on medical practice for more than a millennium (Cook, 2015). The letters exchanged between Peter the Venerable, an abbot of a monastery at Cluny (in France) and Bartholomaeus, a physician, date back to the year 1150, a time when Galenic ideas in medicine were being practiced and followed extensively in most of Western Europe. Peter the Venerable describes the disease that has inflicted upon him, catarrh, with symptoms of excessive build-up and discharge of mucus from the nose and throat. The Humoral Theory in medicine, introduced by
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Bartholomaeus was a physician trained in the city of Salerno, Italy, famous for “Salerno school”, a medical school which used Galenic texts in its medicine course (Cook, 2015). In his reply to the Venerable, he mentions that the illness was “aggravated...by an excess of phlegm”, a direct indication of using the Humoral theory as his aid in diagnosis. Galen contributed to the Theory by introducing different temperaments that affect an individual’s susceptibility to certain diseases, which are formed by the four humours and four natural elements. According to Galen, blood was considered to be “hot and wet”, and phlegm “cold and wet” confirmed in the letters when the abbot mentioned “heat of the blood drawn off along with the blood itself…coldness of the already corrupted phlegm”. Galen was an ardent advocate of clinical observation, and supported experience and reason in medical practice, rejecting the value of charms and spirits (Cook, 2015). Indeed, this is reflected in Doctor Bartholomaeus’s reply, as he based his diagnosis on what he observed himself when he stayed with the abbot the previous year and also on specific symptoms explained by the patient in the letter – thus Galen’s physician was a ‘learned attendant to each individual patient’ (Cook,
Bartholomaeus was a physician trained in the city of Salerno, Italy, famous for “Salerno school”, a medical school which used Galenic texts in its medicine course (Cook, 2015). In his reply to the Venerable, he mentions that the illness was “aggravated...by an excess of phlegm”, a direct indication of using the Humoral theory as his aid in diagnosis. Galen contributed to the Theory by introducing different temperaments that affect an individual’s susceptibility to certain diseases, which are formed by the four humours and four natural elements. According to Galen, blood was considered to be “hot and wet”, and phlegm “cold and wet” confirmed in the letters when the abbot mentioned “heat of the blood drawn off along with the blood itself…coldness of the already corrupted phlegm”. Galen was an ardent advocate of clinical observation, and supported experience and reason in medical practice, rejecting the value of charms and spirits (Cook, 2015). Indeed, this is reflected in Doctor Bartholomaeus’s reply, as he based his diagnosis on what he observed himself when he stayed with the abbot the previous year and also on specific symptoms explained by the patient in the letter – thus Galen’s physician was a ‘learned attendant to each individual patient’ (Cook,