ARISTOTLE S DISSECTIONS. 105 



repugnance against mutilation of the human body and 

 against any neglect of speedy burial was prevalent. The 

 execution of the Athenian commanders after the Battle of 

 Arginusse, part of the charge being that they neglected to 

 recover and bury some of the slain, and the attacks made at 

 various time by orators against those who neglected to bury 

 their deceased relatives, illustrate this. The agony of 

 Antigone, the sad appeal of the shade of the unburied 

 Patroclus, and the fervent wishes of many of Homer s 

 heroes that their funeral rites might not be neglected accord 

 well with the feelings of the Greeks. So strong were these 

 feelings that it is unlikely that anyone could dissect a human 

 body without exciting bitter feelings against himself. To 

 meet this difficulty, some have held that Aristotle dissected 

 the human body secretly. An assertion of this kind can 

 neither be proved nor disproved. 



Not many years after Aristotle s time, dissections of the 

 human body were made at Alexandria, and Galen refers in 

 many passages to dissections of this kind made by Erasis- 

 tratus and Herophilus, about B.C. 280. These anatomists 

 were followers of Aristotle, and their dissecting operations 

 show that his oft-repeated advice about the importance of 

 dissections did not fail to be effective. The anatomists of 

 Europe were less fortunate than those of the Alexandrian 

 Medical Schools ; Galen s dissections were mostly made on 

 Barbary apes, and, at a much later time, the anatomists of 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries experienced diffi 

 culties in obtaining human bodies for purposes of dissection. 



From the above it may be concluded that Aristotle dis 

 sected many of the lower animals, and that, judged in 

 relation to the anatomical knowledge of his time, his dissec 

 tions were carefully performed. It may be said also that he 

 dissected, to a small extent, the human foetus, but that he 

 did not further dissect the human body. 



In various parts of his works, one or more of the internal 

 parts of about one hundred and ten animals are described in 

 sufficient detail to suggest that he dissected them. It is 

 practically certain that he did not dissect some of these, 

 e.g., the hippopotamus and the crocodile, his knowledge of 

 which seems to depend chiefly on Herodotus, but there are 

 many for which definite information is given of so reliable a 

 nature that it is fair to conclude that he dissected them. A 

 list of these animals is given in the following table : 



