Kids Research Express

Galen, the most outstanding physician of antiquity after Hippocrates. His anatomical studies on animals and observations of how the human body functions dominated medical theory and practice for 1400 years. Galen was born of Greek parents in Pergamum, Asia Minor, which was then part of the Roman Empire. A shrine to the healing god Asclepius was located in Pergamum, and there young Galen observed how the medical techniques of the time were used to treat the ill or wounded. He received his formal medical training in nearby Smyrna and then traveled widely, gaining more medical knowledge. About 161 he settled in Rome, where he became renowned for his skill as a physician, his animal dissections, and his public lectures. About 169, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius appointed Galen as the physician to his son Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus. Most of Galen's later life was probably spent in Rome. Galen dissected many animals, particularly goats, pigs, and monkeys, to demonstrate ho...

Gabriello Fallopio (1523?-1562), also known as Gabriello Fallopio and Gabriel Fallopius, Italian anatomist, physician, botanist, and surgeon. Born in Modena, Fallopio studied medicine at the University of Ferrara, and after receiving his degree he worked and studied at various European medical schools. Fallopio became professor of anatomy at Ferrara in 1548 and professor of surgery and anatomy at the University of Pisa about a year later. In 1551 Cosimo I dè Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, called him to a similar post at Pisa to succeed Andreas Vesalius, the Belgian anatomist. There he also held the chair of botany and materia medica and was superintendent of the botanical gardens. Fallopio's work dealt primarily with cranial anatomy and he added considerably to the knowledge of the ear. He was the first to use the ear speculum instrument to diagnose diseases of the ear and the first to show the connection between the mastoid, a part of the skull that houses the ear, and the mi...