SECT, i] EMBRYOLOGY IN ANTIQUITY 77 



1-5. The Hellenistic Age 



Aristotle died in 322 e.g. From that year until 1534, the date of 

 the birth of Volcher Goiter, first in time of the Renaissance embryo- 

 logists, embryology has very little history. 



The founder of the stoical philosophy, Zeno of Gitium, was born 

 some twenty years before the death of Aristotle. "Pious and mag- 

 nanimous as Stoicism was in the field of conduct", says AUbutt, 

 "creating or nourishing that elevation of mind which distinguished 

 the nobler Roman of the Empire, yet in Rome, as in England, its 

 natural science was of no account. The spirit of it was indeed rather 

 alien than akin to science. The mind of the Porch which called itself 

 'practical' was reluctant to all 'speculation', natural science in- 

 cluded." The Stoics regarded the four quahties of cold, hot, wet, 

 and dry, as ultimate, instead of the earth, fire, air, and water of the 

 Peripatetics and their predecessors, Plutarch, in his summary of 

 philosophic opinions already mentioned, has some passages relating 

 to their views on the development of the embryo. "The Stoicks say", 

 he relates, "that the foetus is fed by the fecundine and navell; where- 

 upon it is that midwives presently knit up and tie the navell string 

 fast, but open the infants mouth, to the end that it be acquainted 

 with another kind of nourishment." And elsewhere, "The Stoicks 

 say that it is a part of the wombe and not an animall by itselfe. For 

 like as fruits be parts of trees, which when they be ripe do fall, even 

 so it is with an infant in the mother's wombe. . . . The Stoicks are 

 of opinion that the most parts are formed all at once ; but Aristotle 

 saith the backbone and loines are first framed like as the keele in 

 a ship." But to which of Zeno's successors, Gleanthes, Ghrysippus, 

 Grates or the rest, these sayings are to be attributed, is not known. 



The Epicureans also had opinions on these subjects. They thought 

 that the foetus in utero was fed by the amniotic liquid or the blood, 

 and they also beheved, in contradistinction to the Peripatetics, that 

 both male and female supplied seed in generation, as is shown by 

 the lines of Lucretius : 



usque adeo magni refert, ut semina possint 

 seminibus commisceri genitaliter apta 

 crassaque conveniant liquidis at liquida crasso. 



But much more important than the teaching of these philosophers 

 was the rise of what might be called the scientific faculty of the great 



