ANALYSIS ON GALEN ON THE USEFULNESS OF THE PARTS OF THE BODY AND IBN AL-HAYTHAM'S

BOOK OF OPTICS

Student

History
 Medicine is a complex discipline, which takes years to learn for students who want to

become doctors. But this was not always the case; nowadays we take for granted all those facts

about the human body. Even if researchers continue to discover new things in medicine, the

major part of medical knowledge is based on old works.

One of these old works is Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (Peri Chreias Morion aka

De Usu Partium). The book was written by Galen, between 165 and 175 AD, in Rome. Galen,

born Aelius Galenus in 129 AD, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher. He was the son

of a rich architect, which gave him the opportunity to acquire the best education available at the

time. Galen traveled the world and saw multiple medical theories of the time being applied by

physicians, before settling in Rome. There, he became an accomplished physician himself,

serving several emperors.

Galen wrote multiple medicine works, based on his own experiences and the dissections

he conducted on monkeys and pigs. His works were influenced by the popular theory of the four

humors, which was introduced by Greek physician Hippocrates and remained popular for

centuries.

The Usefulness of the Parts of the Body was written based on the discoveries made

during the dissections conducted by Galen. As human dissections were prohibited, he used

monkeys and pigs, which he thought to resemble the human body anatomy the most an idea

still used today. The treaty remained the most reliable anatomy book until the 16 th century,

when human dissections became possible in Europe.

Galen wanted to show that the human body is the product of divine design 1and that each body

part was specifically designed to perform one specific function. These functions were assigned

by God, so there was no body part which could be defective. Based on this fact, we can assume

Galen wrote the treaty for his fellow scholars, who were interested in both religious matters and

medicine. Especially since literacy was rather low in the Roman world at the time, so a peasant

was unlikely to be able to read the treaty nor understand it 2.

But not all medical treaties were written by physicians. Another useful work on the

function of the human body belongs to Ab Al al-asan ibn al-asan ibn al-Haytha. Ibn al-

Haytham was born in 965 and he was a scientist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher.

He was interested in optics, visual perception and astronomy, along mathematics. Ibn al-

Haytham lived at the court of Fatimic Caliphate in Cairo and was the first scholar to consider that

a hypothesis needs to be demonstrated by solid evidences the basic concept of modern

research.

Ibn al-Haytham is considered the father of optics, thanks to his extensive work in the

field. He gathered all his discoveries in the field of optics in the Book of Optics, written

between 1011 and 1021. The treaty has seven volumes, which were translated in Latin for the

European scholars. The Book of Optics was among the most popular works in the Middle Ages

and it was the base of all the other developments in the field of optics, until the 1650s.

In the Book of Optics Ibn al-Haytham describes the anatomy of the eye and the

principles which make vision possible.

1 Margaret Tallmadge May. 1968 Introduction to Galen on the Usefulness of the Parts of

the Body. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N. Y.

2 W.V. Harris. 1989 Ancient Literacy, p. 331

It is obvious that Ibn al-Haytham's treaty was not dedicated to the masses, but to fellow

scholars, who could now understand how vision was possible. The work is based on Ibn al-

Haytham's discoveries, which he made using the first camera obscura. The entire Book of

Optics was written after the author proved each of his theories, using mathematics and logic, as

well as other disciplines available at the time.

Galen's treaty on the body parts and Ibn al-Haytham's treaty on vision complement

each other. The Book of Optics can be considered an extension to Galen's chapter on the eye,

which analyses the eye from an anatomical perspective. On the other hand, Ibn al-Haytham's

book analyses the eye from a functional perspective, detailing the principles of vision.

The two books influenced modern medicine and helped future generations develop their

knowledge on the human body.

 Bibliography

1. Margaret Tallmadge May. 1968 Introduction to Galen on the Usefulness of the Parts of

the Body. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N. Y.

2. W.V. Harris. 1989 Ancient Literacy, p. 331.