EXPERIMENTATION" AND PHYSIOLOGY 



department of physiology owes its best devel- 

 opment to animal experimentation. 



As the arteries are empty after death, 

 Herophilus and Erasistratus (300 B. C.) orig- 

 inated the view that they contain air which is 

 supplied to them by respiration. Galen (131 

 to 201 A. D.) disproved this by a simple ani- 

 mal experiment. He wrote: "Whenever I in- 

 jured an artery blood always flowed from the 

 wounded vessel." He also tied a section of 

 artery in a living animal between two ligatures 

 and found it filled with blood. According to 

 Plato, the speculative philosopher, the intes- 

 tines were coiled many times in order that the 

 food may not pass too quickly through the 

 body and so occasion too soon an immoderate 

 desire for more; for, he adds, "such a constant 

 appetite would render the pursuit of philos- 

 ophy impossible." 



Later even more absurd functions were at- Early 

 tributed to the organs. During the first fifteen Christian 

 hundred years of the Christian Era the most physiology 

 preposterous notions of physiology existed, 

 being founded upon the sacred writings and 

 superstitions of the saints. Spontaneous gen- 

 eration was looked for everywhere. The slight . 

 glimmerings of truth as found in the writings 



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