Greek Medicine 117 



bility. He opened by giving general directions for the process 

 of dissection and followed with detailed descriptions of the 

 various systems, nervous, vascular, glandular, digestive, genera- 

 tive, and osseous. There was a separate section on the liver, 

 a small part of which has survived. It is of his account 

 of the nervous system that we have perhaps the best record, 

 and it is evident that he has advanced far beyond the Hippo- 

 cratic position. In the braincase he saw the membranes that 

 cover the brain and distinguished between the cerebrum and 

 cerebellum. He attained to some knowledge of the ventricles 

 of the brain, the cranial and spinal nerves, the nerves of the 

 heart, and the coats of the eye. He distinguished the blood 

 sinuses of the skull, and the torcular Herophili (winepress of 

 Herophilus), a sinus described by him, has preserved his 

 name in modern anatomical nomenclature. He even made out 

 more minute structures, such as the little depression in the 

 fourth ventricle of the brain, known to modern anatomists 

 as the calamus scriptorius, which still bears the name which he 

 gave it (KaAa/xo? w y/xi(/>o/ier), because it seemed to him, as Galen 

 tells us, to resemble the pens then in use in Alexandria. 1 We still 

 use, too, his term duodenum (5oo5eKaaKruAo? !K</XWIS = twelve- 

 finger extension), for as Galen assures us, Herophilus * so named 

 the first part of the intestine before it is rolled into folds '. 2 

 The duodenum is a U-shaped section of the intestine follow- 

 ing immediately on the stomach. Being fixed down behind 

 the abdominal cavity it cannot be further convoluted, and 

 this accounts for Galen's description of it. It is about twelve 

 fingers' breadth long in the animals dissected by Herophilus. 



Erasistratus, the slightly younger Alexandrian contemporary 

 of Herophilus, has the credit of further anatomical discoveries. 



1 Galen, Trept avarofjuKaiv fyxeiprptw, On anatomical preparations, ix. 5 

 (last sentence). 



2 Galen, Trepi </>Xe/3coi> KOI aprr^piSiv uvaro^^ On the anatomy of veins and 

 arteries^ i. 



