ATTRACTING AN AUDIENCE
Galen’s Early Career
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Galen concluded his medical studies in Alexandria in 157 CE and then returned to his hometown, Pergamon. He was just twenty-eight years old, but not long after his return, he was appointed physician to a team of gladiators:
“I don’t know how but the high priest of our city decided to entrust to me alone the care of the gladiators, although I was still young as to stage of life.”
Of course, Galen had no real doubt that it was superior medical skill that landed him the job, and he even recounts a memorable performance attended by this high priest as well as prominent physicians from the city. It was a public anatomical demonstration, and to showcase his exceptional talent, Galen vivisected a monkey. After slicing open the living animal’s abdomen and removing its innards, he challenged the other doctors in attendance to replace the intestines and close the incision. Startled and unnerved by the prospect of the live, suffering primate, none of the other doctors dared to attempt the difficult task. So Galen restored the intestines and closed the wound himself. As a finale, he severed a few of the monkey’s large arteries and again issued a challenge to the senior physicians, this time to staunch the bleeding. Again, the other doctors were frozen. And as before, Galen intervened and stopped the hemorrhage. The feat succeeded in
“making it clear to the intellectuals who were present that [physicians] who possess skills like mine should be in charge of the wounded.”
Mosaic detail of a monkey from the scene of Orpheus surrounded by animals. Roman, 2nd–3rd century CE. Triclinium, House of Orpheus, Volubilis (present-day Morocco). Photo: © DeA Picture Library / Art Resource, NY.
In the Roman world, the body was frequently at the center of spectacular demonstrations of violent power. Medical contests and demonstrations were a public entertainment, and Galen’s unexpected vivisection of a monkey is just one form of gruesome competition. The anecdote reveals more than just his precocious talent at treating wounds; the bloodied, suffering body itself was the source of the spectacle as much as Galen’s technical adeptness. Gladiatorial competitions, too, put the strength and fragility of the body in the spotlight: trained, armed athletes fought in refereed combat—frequently deadly despite formal rules of engagement—as entertainment for a wide Roman public.
Detail of the “Gladiator Mosaic.” Roman, 320–330 CE. Limestone and marble. Torre Nuova Estate, Via Casilina, Rome. Galleria Borghese. Photo: Scala / Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali / Art Resource, NY.
Although the best physician of the land, Galen, was hired to care for these expensive wounded warriors, gladiators’ lives were essentially disposable and the athletes largely interchangeable. Such grizzly activities were smaller parts of the larger Roman entertainment culture, which also included even more brutal beast fights, boxing with metal and broken-glass gloves, total-combat no-holds-barred wrestling, and public penal executions. In the ancient world, as in the present, violence reveals social hierarchies: man’s relationship with nature, and man’s relationship with his fellow man.
Mosaic detail depicting a condemned prisoner offered up to wild animals in an amphitheater spectacle. Roman, late 3rd century CE. Sollertiana Domus, Thysdrus (present-day El Jem, Tunisia). Musée d’El Jem. Photo: © Gilles Mermet / Art Resource, NY.
Gladiatorial games and the killing of animals for entertainment long predate Galen. They were so entrenched in Roman culture that the ethics of these practices were seldom questioned. Critics of gladiatorial combat found fault with the spectators’ loss of control more often than the brutality of the fight itself, and Galen makes no ethical comments about these battles at all. His role with the gladiators was unquestionably positive—to preserve life, to restore health—and, by his own account, he excelled and saved more gladiators than any other physician. In keeping, his anatomical demonstrations were aimed at increasing knowledge about the structure of the body and the function of its parts, and ultimately led to deeper medical understanding.
Galen’s public dissections and vivisections did indeed accomplish this goal and brought him to even greater prominence after his move from Pergamon to Rome in 162 CE. While he always maintained a dispassionate, unflinching, and rational style in his descriptions of the patients he treated and the animals he studied, he was not unfeeling, and one does find moments of sympathy in Galen’s writings. Vivisections of monkeys, he later concluded, while useful because their bodies most resemble a human’s, should be avoided, because of the pain that registers on their faces: