Speaker: Luis Alejandro Salas
Lecture Title: “The Licensing Function of Galenic Anatomical Procedures, Text, and Practice”
Location: Bernard Becker Medical Library, King Center, 7th floor
Time: Thursday, November 12, 4:30-5:30pm
A free lecture supported by the Becker Library and the Center for History of Medicine
Galen (129-216) was an immensely influential physician whose theories on humorism, anatomy, blood circulation, pharmacology, and neurology guided the field of medicine for nearly 1200 years after his death. The 48th Historia Medica Lecture, “The Licensing Function of Galenic Anatomical Procedures, Text, and Practice,” examines some ways in which Galen’s anatomical demonstrations and his reports of them are an outgrowth of an existing agonistic Greek intellectual tradition. It proposes that these demonstrations were likely to have performed primarily a social function rather than a strictly medical one given, among other reasons, the therapeutic limitations of ancient Greco-Roman surgery.
The speaker for the 48th Historia Medica Lecture is Luis Alejandro Salas, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at Washington University in St. Louis. He received his PhD in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin as a member of the Joint Program in Ancient Philosophy. His recent work is on the place of Galenic anatomical work in the context of second century medico-philosophical debates.