i' THE BEGINNINGS OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY 



In the collected writings of Hippocrates and his school, 

 the ( 'in-pus Hippocraticiun, of which no part is later than 

 the end of the 5th century, there are recorded many 

 anatomical facts. The author of the treatise " On the 

 Muscles" knew, for instance, that the spinal marrow is 

 different from ordinary marrow and has membranes continuous 

 with those of the brain. Embryos of seven days(!) have all 

 the parts of the body plainly visible. Work on comparative 

 embryology is contained in the treatise " On the Development 

 of the Child." 1 



The author of the treatise " On the Joints," which Littre 

 calls "the great surgical monument of antiquity," is to be 

 credited with the first systematic attempt at comparative 

 anatomy, for he compared the human skeleton with that of 

 other Vertebrates. 



Aristotle (384-322 r,.C.) 2 may fairly be said to be the 

 founder of comparative anatomy, not because he was 

 specially interested in problems of " pure morphology," but 

 because he described the structure of many animals and 

 classified them in a scientific way. We shall discuss here the 

 morphological ideas which occur in his writings upon animals 

 in the Ilistoria Anunalinni, the 7V Partibus Aniinalinin, 

 and the De General ionc Aniiiialiiun. 



The Ilistoria Aniinalinin is a most comprehensive work, 

 in some ways the finest text-book of Zoology ever written. 

 Certainly few modern text-books take such a broad and sane 

 vi<-w of living creatures. Aristotle never forgets that form 

 and structure are but one of the many properties of living 

 things; he takes quite as much interest in their behaviour, 

 their ecology, distribution, comparative physiology. He 

 takes a special interest in the comparative physiology of 

 reproduction. The Historia Anhnaliiun contains a description 

 of the form and structure of man and of as many animals as 

 Aristotle was acquainted with and he was acquainted with 

 an astonishingly large number. The later 7V Ptirtibns 

 Aniinalimn is a treatise on the causes of the form and 



1 R. Burckhnnlt, Hiolfl^ic u. Hinnanisiints, p. S5, Jena, 1907. 



'-' Sec tin- interesting account uf Aristotle's hiolo^ii ,il work in I'rof. 

 D'Arcy \V. Thompson's Herbert Spencer lecture (1913) and his transla- 

 tion of the Historic .\niin<ilini in the Oxford series. 



