In Book 3 of Jalaluddin Rumi's Masnavi, the ancient Greek physician Galen is employed as a metaphor for worldly intellect and material expertise. Rumi explains that practitioners of empirical sciences often cling desperately to the physical world because their specific skills—such as curing bodily ailments—are only applicable in the material realm. In the spiritual afterlife, these worldly proficiencies hold no currency, rendering experts like Galen completely equal to common people. This metaphor is used to underscore the limitations of purely material knowledge and the danger of investing solely in skills that lack spiritual endurance.