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whale
Any of several species of exclusively aquatic mammals found in oceans, seas, rivers, and estuaries worldwide but especially numerous in the Antarctic Ocean. Whales are commonly distinguished from the smaller porpoises and mammalian dolphins and sometimes from narwhals, but they are all cetaceans. See also baleen whale, toothed whale.
whaling
Hunting of whales for food, oil, or both. Whaling dates to prehistoric times, when Arctic peoples used stone tools to hunt whales. They used the entire animal, a feat not accomplished by Western commercial whalers until the advent of floating factories in the 20th cent. The Basque were the first Europeans to hunt whales commercially; when seaworthy oceangoing vessels began to be made, they took to the open seas (14th-16th cent). They were followed by the Dutch and the Germans in the 17th cent. and the British and their colonists in the 18th cent. In 1712 the first sperm whale was killed; its oil proved more valuable than that of the right whale, which had hitherto been the object of whaling ventures. Whaling expeditions in pursuit of the free-ranging sperm whale could last for four years. The discovery of petroleum (1859), overfishing, vegetable oil, and steel-boned corsets led to a steep decline in whaling in the later 19th cent., but Norwegian innovations made hunting the hitherto "wrong" whales (incl. the blue whale and the sei whale; so called because they sank when killed) commercially feasible, and the number of whales killed rose from under 2,000 to over 20,000 between 1900 and 1911. The Norwegians and British dominated whaling into the mid-20th cent., when overfishing again made it unprofitable for most nations, though not Japan and the Soviet Union, which became the chief whaling nations. Concern over the near-extinction of many species led to the establishment in 1946 of the International Whaling Commission. Commercial whaling was prohibited altogether in 1986, but several nations, notably Japan, Norway, and the Soviet Union, initially refused to comply.
Galen
Greek physician, writer, and philosopher. Born in Pergamum, Asia Minor, he became chief physician to the gladiators in AD 157. Later, in Rome, he became a friend of Marcus Aurelius and physician to Commodus. Galen saw anatomy as fundamental and, based on animal experiments, described cranial nerves and heart valves and showed that arteries carry blood, not air. However, in extending his findings to human anatomy he was often in error. Following Hippocratic concepts (see Hippocrates), he believed in three connected body systems--brain and nerves for sensation and thought, heart and arteries for life energy, and liver and veins for nutrition and growth--and four humors (body fluids)--blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm--that needed to be in balance. Few had the skills to challenge his seductive physiological theory. He wrote about 300 works, of which about 150 survive. As they ...
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