CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY, MIDDLE AGES Xy 



history of biological research, are all believed to be of later date than Hip- 

 pocrates and are at any rate influenced by his views. They give evidence of 

 a close study of anatomy and physiology with the help of dissections and 

 vivisections. From the enunciation of the anatomy of the human body, how- 

 ever, it is clear that it is not based on dissections of the dead body, but that 

 the results of experiments carried out on the dead bodies of animals have been 

 applied to the human body without further evidence. To dissect the human 

 body, to violate the dead bodies of human beings, was from the very earliest 

 times considered a dangerous procedure and on that account was forbidden; 

 the reason for this was undoubtedly the universal fear of ghosts, which has 

 already been touched upon. It is certain, at all events, that, except in a few 

 particularly unprejudiced cultural epochs, it has always been difficult, even 

 in more modern times, to procure dead bodies for purposes of scientific inves- 

 tigation and to obtain permission to utilize them. The first part of the human 

 body to be studied with any great care was the bone-construction, which 

 could be examined in the skeletons of long-decomposed and consequently 

 less dangerous individuals, while the ancient custom of preserving corpses 

 by the preservation of the skeleton — a practice known in most countries 

 from prehistoric times — must have given cause for observing and getting 

 to know the various bones of the body. The musculature also, at any rate 

 its external layers, which it was possible to study in living human beings in 

 wrestling and athletics, has been comparatively well understood, while the 

 internal organs — the digestive, respiratory, and circulatory systems — re- 

 mained longest shrouded in obscurity, as regards both their construction 

 and their functions. These facts have also had an inflluence on surgery; while 

 fracture's and sprains were carefully studied and cleverly treated even in Hip- 

 pocrates' time, the art of arresting hemorrhage was extremely primitive; 

 from antiquity to the Middle Ages there existed no better method than cau- 

 terizing with red-hot iron, and it was not until the sixteenth century that 

 people learnt how to apply ligatures when operating. 



Hippocrafic physiology: the four temperaments 

 The Hippocratic treatises assume with Empedocles and his successors that 

 the human body is composed of the four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. 

 To these elements correspond four "juices" in the body: blood, phlegm, 

 yellow bile, and black bile. Of these the yellow bile is produced in the liver, 

 and the black bile in the spleen. Proof of the existence of these juices was 

 found in the condition of the blood on coagulation, when, as is known, its 

 component parts become separated; in the undermost, black part of the clot 

 was recognized the black bile, in its uppermost, red part the blood; the 

 yellow bile was seen in serum, and the phlegm in the fibrin.^ The condition 



^ See Fahraeus: The Suspension Stability oj the Blood (Stockholm, 1911). 



