Note that word “proved.” Galen knew vivisection was a good show, but it was not merely a show for him. It was utterly essential to understanding how bodies worked. As Galen wrote: “the anatomy of the dead teaches the position . . . of the parts. That of the living may reveal the functions.” His writing is littered with the phrases of empiricism: “then you can show . . . ,” he writes at one point; “you have seen all this publicly demonstrated,” he adds at another; “you observed . . . ,” he writes at a third.4 He was a dedicated empiricist* and had nothing but the deepest scorn for anyone who
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