History and Progress of Comparative Anatomy. 155 



little concern. As a cultivator of animal anatomy, he appears 

 to have understood perfectly the configuration of the brain ; he 

 described the posterior end of the vault or Jbrnioc as the principal 

 seat of the sensations ; he knew the ccrebellic or fourth ven- 

 tricle ; and we learn from Galen, that he was the first who ap- 

 phed to the linea furrow, at its inferior region, the name of 

 calamus scriptorius, or writing pen. He described well the 

 choroid or vascular membrane, and he distinguished the fourth 

 or straight sinus which still bears his name, (A»j»d?) torcular 

 Herophili. Though, in imitation of Aristotle, he denominates the 

 nerves ttu^oi (pori) or tubes, he maintains that all of them proceed 

 from the brain, and he distinguishes them into those of sensation 

 and those of motion. He first applied the name of 12 inch 

 bowel or duodenum i^a^iKct ^xktvoX?) to that part of the alimentary 

 canal (tK<pv(rig) which is next the stomach. He gives a good de- 

 scription of the liver, which Galen has thought deserving of pre- 

 servation ; and an important discovery is the distinction which 

 he establishes between the mesenteric vessels which proceed to 

 the liver and vena portal, and those which, going to the mesen- 

 teric glands, were manifestly the lacteals. Of these, however, he 

 appears to have formed less distinct notions than Erasistratus. 

 To Galen also we are indebted for a description of the organs 

 of the hare by Herophilus. By giving the pulmonary aitery 

 the denomination of arterious vein, it may be inferred that he had 

 distinguished the kind of blood which that vessel conveys ; but 

 though he studied attentively the beats of the arteries in the liv- 

 ing body, he appears to have framed no distinct conception of 

 the circular motion of the blood. The organs of generation he 

 appears to have studied attentively in both sexes. He has an- 

 ticipated tlie moderns, in finding the epididymis to be a cluster 

 of vessels, and he had seen the vas deferens^ at least in the dog, 

 and probably the vesiculce seminales and prostate gland. He 

 appears also to have seen the ovaries in the female. 



These two distinguished anatomists had given to the school 

 of Alexandria a degree of celebrity, which appears to have been 

 fatal to their successors. For neither among them, nor among 

 any of the subsequent philosophical authors, do we find any 

 name entitled to mention in the history of animal anatomy. 

 Cicero, indeed, in his treatise de Natura Deorum, gives some 



