And hence we are indebted, for the correction of the error of
Erasistratus, to one of the greatest experimenters of ancient or modern
times, Claudius Galenus, who lived in the second century after Christ. I
say it was to this man more than any one else, because he knew that the
only way of solving physiological problems was to examine into the facts
in the living animal. And because Galen was a skilful anatomist, and a
skilful experimenter, he was able to show in what particulars Erasistratus
had erred, and to build up a system of thought upon this subject which was
not improved upon for fully 1,300 years. I have endeavoured, in Fig. 2, to
make clear to you exactly what it was he tried to establish. You will
observe that this diagram is practically the same as that given in Fig. 1,
only simplified. The same facts may be looked upon by different people
from different points of view. Galen looked upon these facts from a very
different point of view from that which we ourselves occupy; but, so far
as the facts are concerned, they were the same for him as for us. Well
then, the first thing that Galen did was to make out experimentally that,
during life, the arteries are not full of air, but that they are full of
blood. And he describes a great variety of experiments which he made upon
living animals with the view of proving this point, which he did prove
effectually and for all time; and that you will observe was the only way
of settling the matter. Furthermore, he demonstrated that the cavities of
the left side of the heart—what we now call the left auricle and the
left ventricle—are, like the arteries, full of blood during life,
and that that blood was of the scarlet kind—arterialised, or as he
called it "pneumatised," blood. It was known before, that the pulmonary
artery, the right ventricle, and the veins, contain the darker kind of
blood, which was thence called venous. Having proved that the whole of the
left side of the heart, during life, is full of scarlet arterial blood,
Galen's next point was to inquire into the mode of communication between
the arteries and veins. It was known before his time that both arteries
and veins branched out. Galen maintained, though he could not prove the
fact, that the ultimate branches of the arteries and veins communicated
together somehow or other, by what he called 'anastomoses', and that these
'anastomoses' existed not only in the body in general but also in the
lungs. In the next place, Galen maintained that all the veins of the body
arise from the liver; that they draw the blood thence and distribute it
over the body. People laugh at that notion now-a-days; but if anybody will
look at the facts he will see that it is a very probable supposition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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