382 FOUNDATIONS OF BIOLOGY 



tween Greece and Rome. The chief interest of the Romans 

 lay in technology, and it is but natural that the practical 

 advantages to be gained from medicine should ensure its 

 advance. As it happens, however, two Greek physicians 

 were destined to have the most influence: Dioscorides, an 

 army surgeon under Nero, and Galen, physician to the 

 Emperor Marcus Aurelius. 



DIOSCORIDES wrote the first important treatise on applied 

 botany. This was really a work on the identification of 

 plants for medicinal purposes but, gaining authority with 

 age, it became the standard 'botany' for fifteen centuries. 



GALEN (131-201) was the most famous physician of the 

 Roman Empire and his voluminous works represent both a 

 depository for the anatomical and physiological knowledge 

 of his predecessors, rectified and worked over into a system, 

 and also a large amount of original investigation. Galen 

 was at once a practical anatomist and the first experimental 

 physiologist, inasmuch as he described from dissections and 

 insisted on the importance of vivisection and experiment. 

 Galen gave to medicine its standard 'anatomy' and 'physi- 

 ology' for fifteen centuries. 



Any consideration of the biological science of Rome would 

 be incomplete without a reference to the vast compilation 

 of fact and fancy indiscriminately mingled made by PLINY 

 the Elder (23-79). It was aside from the path of biological 

 advance, but long the recognized Natural History, passing 

 through some eighty editions after the invention of printing. 



B. MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE SCIENCE 



For all practical purposes we may consider that biology 

 at the decline of the Roman Empire was represented by the 

 works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Galen, and 

 Pliny. Even these exerted little influence during the Middle 



