EVOLUTION, HEREDITY, EUGENICS 511 



to support as many as 100 collectors bringing animals and plants 

 from all over the known world. 



Pliny the Elder {i^-'Jf) A. D.) was a Roman who, although of 

 great learning and an enthusiastic student of Nature, did more than 

 any of his contemporaries to hiyider the development of the scientific 

 method and spirit. He prepared 37 volumes of natural history 

 and published the first cyclopedia. An honest compiler, he per- 

 petuated much nonsense. Since he was considered an authority 

 on natural history, his writings turned the minds of people away 

 from science to books. 



From the time of Aristotle to the i6th century, the period of the 

 Anatomists, Fabricius and Vesalius, anatomy and zoology were at a 

 standstill. 



Galen (130-200 A. D.) was a great Anatomist whose studies on 

 lower mammals were very carefully made, but who erred in con- 

 cluding that the human body had the same structure. The writings 

 of Galen were used as texts, and anatomy was not independently 

 treated until the field was enriched by the vigorous original work of 

 Vesalius. 



Vesalius (1514-1564 A. D.) published several tables of anatomy 

 and in 1 543 brought out a work on the Anatomy of the Human Body, 

 the earliest accurate and authoritative human anatomy. 



Studying the human subject, Vesalius raised anatomy to a 

 degree of accuracy hitherto unknown. Galen, from his studies of 

 the lower mammals, had taught that the lower jaw of man is divided. 

 Vesalius showed on the contrary that it is a single bone in man. 

 Vesalius announced, much to the discomfiture of the theologians^ 

 that man had the same number of ribs as woman. When pressed 

 too hard, Vesalius said that he would leave the question of an 

 indestructible " resurrection bone " to be decided by the theologians^ 

 as it was not an anatomical question. 



The aim in Biology in the Middle Ages was apparently devoid of 

 spirit and method. Much of it was in the Medical line. Medical 

 writers were concerned with healing. They had charms against 

 disease. The dominant powers thought, even up to the time of 

 Newton, that the devil possessed the power to give men new ideas. 



Nicholas Coperyiicus kept a fearful secret for thirty years, his 

 idea that the sun and planets do not revolve around the earth, but 

 that the earth revolves around the sun. 



Giordano Bruno was bolder, but after stating a similar belief 



