Why Were Hippocrates And Galen Influential For So Long?

Medicine had regressed since the Roman period, as people believed in more supernatural causes for illness instead of more natural ideas; one of the major causes of this was because the church continued to use Galen’s and Hippocrates’ ideas. During the medieval period the church dominated society, it controlled universities, libraries and towns. However it wasn’t just the church that kept Galen and Hippocrates’ ideas influential for so long.  

Galen remained influential for 1500 years for many reasons; he wrote down his ideas and he was highly respected therefore people were scared to criticise his ideas. His theories were acceptable to the Christian and Muslim religions as Galen often talked about the “creator” in his writings. This fitted in well with the church. The church in the Middle Ages believed that if people started to prove Galen’s ideas to be wrong then others may start to question the existence of god.

Galen was not a Christian or a Muslim but he believed in one God and talked about 'the creator'. This made his work acceptable to both Christian and Islamic cultures as it fitted in with their teachings. It was not until the Renaissance that people made accurate studies of human anatomy. They gained a new understanding of the way the body worked and began to challenge Galen's ideas.

By about 1100 versions of the works of Galen and Hippocrates were coming back into Western Europe bit by bit. Arabic texts based on them, especially Avicenna’s Canon, were being translated into Latin in Spain (which was partly Christian and partly Islamic) and Italy. The crusades had also made Europeans aware of scientific knowledge of the Arabists. About the same time medical schools began to appear in Western Europe, starting with the one in Salerno, Italy. This taught both men and women and had some women professors. Translations of the Arabic versions of Galen and Hippocrates were accepted as the absolute truth. This hindered the progress of medicine, however it wasn’t Galen’s and Hippocrates’ fault because they were not allowed to dissect humans which meant that there medical knowledge of the human anatomy was based on animals.

Galen’s and Hippocrates’ ideas were a strange mixture of commonsense and factual inaccuracies, however their ideas fitted in with the church, which at that time was very powerful. This meant that the church controlled society-forcing people to believe in Galen’s and Hippocrates’ ideas even though they had been round since the Roman period. This is the main reason why Hippocrates Galen stayed influential for so long.