50 HUMAN DISSECTION. ITS DRAMA AND STRUGGLE 



his teacher while he was at Alexandria. It is known that anatomy 

 was in a marked state of decay at that time. 



Due to the changing of customs and beliefs regarding the 

 sanctity of the human body, liberalism toward the privilege of 

 dissection gradually declined until the end of the 1st Century 

 A.D. and died completely in the middle of the second. The prin- 

 cipal reason for this was the Roman invasion and domination of 

 Egypt. Although the Romans seemingly enjoyed and overtly spon- 

 sored any amount of gladiatorial bloodshed in their arenas, and 

 all sorts of inhumanities upon living beings, they held that con- 

 tact with or cutting a corpse was sacrilegious or irreverent. The 

 next to final blow to the great educational and medical institution 

 at Alexandria was struck by Julius Caesar who, in the 1st Century 

 A.D., ordered the library burned. Alexandria never recovered 

 its intellectual supremacy thereafter (Bailey, '11). Because of this 

 act, the originals of almost all the writers of those days were lost. 

 It is said that due to the feminine influence of Cleopatra, Mark 

 Antony later permitted the volumes of the library at Perga- 

 mon, in Asia Minor, to be transported and transferred to Alex- 

 andria but this was insufficient to restore the prestige of the school. 

 Counteracting the restoration were the rulings of Caracalla 

 (Marcus Aurelius Antonius, A.D. 188-217), who relieved the 

 teachers of their residency privileges, their financial support and 

 the right of making public lectures and holding discussions. This 

 was the death knell; it inaugurated the onset of the Dark Ages. 



