[Claudio Galeno and the lateral ventricles]

Galen of Pergamon is considered one of the fathers of occidental medicine. Because of cultural and religious precepts at his time, many authors hypothesize that the anatomical concepts of Galen were derived from dissection of monkeys. In this paper, the authors analyzed the ventricular system, according to the anatomic and functional concepts described by Galen's early work. Knowing that his work was derived and or influenced from other preceding anatomists and physicians (specially Hipocrates of Cos), we present our investigation in two parts. In the first part, we present the influences of previous religious, philosophic, medical and anatomical theories over the galenic work. The "pregalenic era" can be divided in three periods: 1) the pretecnic era (ending in VI BC) in which the man have only a rudimentary knowledge of human anatomy, 2) the hellenistic science (from VI to III BC) and 3) the period comprised between III BC to Galenic period. In each of the three periods, we analyzed the neuroanatomic knowledge of the most important cultures.