Significant People

• Rhazes


  • What: Discovered sulphuric acid & described smallpox.
  • When: 865 - 925
  • Why: Improve Galen.
• Avicenna


  • What: Wrote over 450 books in different subjects, famous works include Book of Healing, Canon of Medicine.
  • When: 980 - 1037.
  • Why: Followed approach of Hippocrates and Galen.
• Ibn Nafis


  • What: Wrote a medical encyclopaedia, correctly described how blood moves around the body.
  • When: 1126 - 1198
  • Why: Argue against Galen & to advance medical knowledge.
• John of Arderne


  • Trained as a surgeon in London.
  • Famous for >50% survival rate of removal of growths.
  • Surgeon on battlefield.
  • Developed own pain killing ointment.
  • Made from hemlock, opium, henbane.
  • Wrote book - Practice of surgery.
  • Challenged Galen
  • Charged the rich, treated the poor for free.
• Vesalius


  • Belgian
  • 1515-1564
  • Studied anatomy
  • Found the jaw had one bone - questioned Galen.
  • Performed own dissections.
  • Claimed professors should perform dissections.
  • Wrote a book: Fabric of the Human Body.