History and Progress of Comparative Anatomy. 157 



chion, Archigenes, Dioscorides, Marinus, Ruffus of Ephesus, 

 Galen, and Oribasius. 



Of these, Aretaeus is commemorated for describing with some 

 accuracy the vena cava, the round and broad ligaments of the 

 womb, the pelvis of the kidney, and the proper muscle of the 

 tongue; and for teaching the glandular nature of the liver, 

 kidneys, and female breast. Soranus of Ephesus, who must be 

 distinguished from the physician of the same name, made some 

 accurate observations on the bladder, testicles, and womb. 

 Ruffus recognised the ramifications of the olfactory nerves in 

 the ethmoid bone, and the lower termination of the middle cere- 

 bral ventricle named the infundibtdum. He shewed that the emi- 

 nences injthe liver of the lower animals observed by the Harus- 

 pices, are indistinct in that of man, and he knew the biliary duct. 

 He describes the testes as pulpy bodies, two seminal glands, 

 apparently the prostate, and two varicose bodies, apparently 

 the seminal vesicles. The Fallopian or uterine tubes he de- 

 scribes from the sheep ; and from his account of the allantois or 

 urinary membrane, and speaking of two umbilical veins, it is 

 manifest that he had dissected chiefly, if not entirely, the lower 

 animals. He describes also the genital organs of the she-goat. 

 Ruffus farther distinguishes the nerves into those of sensation 

 and those of motion. He knew the recurrent nerve. He made 

 experiments on living animals, and his name is associated with 

 that of compressing,' in the situation of the carotid arteries, the 

 pneumogastric nerve, and thereby inducing insensibility and loss 

 of voice. 



Of all the authors of antiquity, however, none possesses so just a 

 claim to the title of anatomist, as Claudius Galenus, the celebrated 

 physician of Pergamus. For the particulars of his life and edu- 

 cation, I refer to his biographers. It is sufficient to say, that 

 he was born about the 131st year of the Christian era, and 

 lived under the reigns of Trajan, Antonine, Commodus, and 

 Aelius ; and that he was trained by his father Nicon, whose 

 memory he embalms as an eminent mathematician, architect, and 

 astronomer, to all the learning of the day, and initiated particu- 

 larly in the mysteries of the Aristotelian philosophy. After de- 

 voting his attention to various medical studies under different 

 teachers, in different cities, for several years, and studying ana. 



