Short answers, pulled from the story.
Galen was born in the year 145. A wealthy architect named Aelius Nicon experienced a vivid dream where the god Asclepius commanded him to send his fourteen-year-old son Galen to study medicine instead of philosophy or politics.
During the winter of 168-69, an epidemic known as the Antonine Plague struck Roman forces stationed at Aquileia. The mortality rate reached between seven and ten percent causing approximately three point five to five million deaths across the empire while Galen documented symptoms like black exanthema covering victims' entire bodies.
Roman law prohibited human dissection since roughly 150 BC forcing Galen to rely on animal models for anatomical research. He performed vivisections on living animals and dissections on dead ones focusing primarily on primates like Barbary apes before switching to pigs to avoid prosecution.
Galen developed a tripartite soul model combining Platonic philosophy with medical observation where the rational soul resided in the brain the spiritual soul in the heart and the appetitive soul within the liver. Each part corresponded to specific organs controlling functions such as higher cognitive processes passions and living forces regulated by blood.
After 750 Syrian Christians made first translations of Galen into Syriac and Arabic. Job Edessa said he translated thirty six of Galen's works into Syriac and some later translated them into Arabic through Hunain ibn Ishaq.