[IV] 



PRE-ALEXANDRIAN ANATOMY-1000 to 



300 B.C. 



Wi, 



hether any actual dissections on man were performed in 

 the period immediately before the development of the Alexan- 

 drian School, beginning about 332 B.C. is speculative (Kempf, 

 '04; Singer, '25; Taylor, '22). 



In Egypt, medicine lagged behind achievements in the arts 

 although the Egyptian embalmer can be classified as the pre- 

 cursor of the anatomist. It was he who was one of the first to view 

 some of the organs of the human body. During that remote era, 

 the populace had definite, antagonistic views concerning those 

 who tried to dissect. No qualms were felt about killing a man 

 or satisfying vengeance on the body of an enemy after death, but 

 it was a different matter when a corpse was cut for the purpose 

 of learning structure. Anatomy was a mixture of mystery, imagina- 

 tion, and a few facts learned in everyday life. Magic continued to 

 play an important part in the religious and commonplace existence 

 of the Egyptians and was applied to the dead as well as to the 

 living (Cave, '50; Frazer, '20; Haggard, '29; Wright, '18). 



Although it may seem that their knowledge of human an- 

 atomy was vague and retarded in Egypt, there is little doubt that 

 it was ahead of contemporaries in other parts of the world. This 

 was possible because the Egyptians pioneered in the art of em- 

 balming; they were the first to open the dead for what they 

 thought was a practical purpose: namely, to preserve it for re- 

 entrance of its soul; the motive was, therefore, religious, the 

 process of mummification being important to them in respect 

 to what happened in the afterworld. Certain of tlie viscera were 

 removed, in the embalming procedure, so that it was natural tliat 

 they gleaned something about the topography of the body, par- 

 ticularly in the thorax and abdomen. Names were given to some 



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