Name: 古代ローマで最も悪名高い医師、ラモン・グラゾフ (Ancient Rome's most notorious doctor - Ramon Glazov)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:19:37.000Z
Duration: 5 min 11 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

a talented young anatomist named Andreas Vesalius made a shocking discovery:

the most famous human anatomy texts in  the world were wrong.

They not only failed to account for many details of the human body,

they also described the organs of apes and other mammals.

announcing these errors would mean challenging Galen of Pergamon–

the most renowned physician  in medical history.

And why did doctors working more than 1,300 years later so revere and fear him?

Galen left home as a teen to scour the Mediterranean for medical wisdom.

He returned home a gifted surgeon with a passion for anatomy

He gleefully entered public anatomy  contests,

he caused a pig to lose its voice by tying off one of its nerves.

In another, he disemboweled a monkey and challenged his colleagues to repair it.

These grizzly feats won him a position as  surgeon to the city's gladiators.

Eventually, he would leave the arena  to become the personal physician

While his peers debated symptoms and  their origins,

He was convinced that each organ had a specific function.

Since the Roman government largely  prohibited working with human cadavers,

Galen conducted countless dissections  of animals instead.

his exhaustive investigations yielded  some remarkably accurate conclusions.

One of Galen's most important  contributions

was the insight that the brain, not the heart, controlled the body.

He confirmed this theory by opening the cranium of a living cow.

By applying pressure to different  parts of the brain,

he could link various regions  to specific functions.

Other experiments allowed him to  distinguish sensory from motor nerves,

establish that urine was  made in the kidneys,

and deduce that respiration was  controlled by muscles and nerves.

But these wild experiments also produced  extraordinary misconceptions.

Galen never realized that blood cycles continuously throughout the body.

Instead, he believed the liver constantly produces an endless supply of blood,

which gets entirely depleted on its  one-way trip to the organs.

Galen is also credited with solidifying  the popular theory of the Four Humours.

Introduced by Hippocrates  centuries earlier,

this misguided hypothesis attributed most medical problems

to an imbalance in four bodily fluids  called humours.

To correct the balance of these fluids,  doctors employed dangerous treatments

Informed by his poor understanding  of the circulatory system,

Galen was a strong proponent  of these treatments,

despite their sometimes lethal  consequences.

Unfortunately, Galen's ego  drove him to believe that

all his discoveries were  of the utmost importance.

He penned treatises on everything from anatomy to nutrition to bedside manner,

meticulously cataloguing his writings  to ensure their preservation.

Galen's prolific collection dominated  all other schools of medical thought.

His texts became the standard works  taught to new generations of doctors,

who in turn, wrote new essays extolling  Galen's ideas.

Even doctors who actually dissected  human cadavers

would bafflingly repeat Galen's mistakes,

despite seeing clear evidence  to the contrary.

Meanwhile, the few practitioners bold  enough to offer conflicting opinions

For 1,300 years, Galen's legacy  remained untouchable–

until renaissance anatomist Vesalius  spoke out against him.

his authority influenced many young  doctors of his time.

But even then, it took another hundred years

for an accurate description  of blood flow to emerge,

and two hundred more for the theory  of the Four Humours to fade.

Hopefully, today we can reap the benefits of Galen's experiments

without attributing equal credence  to his less accurate ideas.

is the reminder that science is an  ever-evolving process,

which should always place  evidence above ego.