THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 63 



regarding the inner composition of organs, the structure 

 and development of their deepest and most delicate parts, 

 the curious properties of those infinitely tiny corpuscles 

 that group together to make up living beings. The prob- 

 lems of life stand forth in such studies in all their grandeur, 

 all their mystery and charm. The silent revelations of the 

 microscope are here associated with the eloquent language 

 of experiments on the animal frame. All the complexities 

 of chemistry here give their aid to expositions which are 

 but the more convincing for their extreme positiveness. 

 And medicine itself, if it would escape stagnation, is forced 

 to ask from such studies the key to riddles never answered 

 by any power of empiricism. These words describe fully 

 enough the interest that must attend a complete picture of 

 the present condition of general anatomy. 



General anatomy has been created only of late days. 

 Ancient anatomists, limiting their studies to the examina- 

 tion of the surface of organs, neglected to explore their 

 depths. Besides, they were long forced to do without that 

 instrument, most indispensable in this kind of investigation, 

 the microscope. During the period beginning with Heroph- 

 ilus and Erasistratus, who flourished three hundred years be- 

 fore the Christian era, and who are the real founders of de- 

 scriptive anatomy of the human body, extending down to 

 Galen, and from Galen onward, including the time of Vesa- 

 lius, the main subject of anatomy was formed nearly as a 

 complete body. A great number of points that remained ob- 

 scure were afterward cleared up by Berenger de Carpi, Mas- 

 sa, Servet, Sylvius, who discovered the valves of the veins ; 

 Eustachi, who found the tube and valve named after him ; 

 Varolus, who examined the brain ; Botal, Bauhin, Cesalpi- 

 nus, Fabricius of Aquapendente, and a host of others, who, 

 during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, produced in en- 



