IV. PROGRESS IN ANATOMY AND 

 MEDICINE 



IT IS by an easy transition that we turn 

 from biology to medicine, from pure 

 science inspired by the sheer desire to 

 know and account for living organisms, to the 

 healing art, which may be also scientific, 

 though led by practical beneficent intent. 

 The transition is the easier because we are in 

 the later fourth and the third centuries before 

 Christ, the most brilliant scientific age of 

 Greece, though Aristotle lived no longer. 

 Medicine in the Alexandrian school, led by 

 Herophilus and Erasistratus, was supported by 

 the now veritable sciences of anatomy and 

 physiology. 



And of their works only scattered fragments 

 have survived! Admirable as these men were, 

 we must remember that we are not engaged 

 upon a history of Greek medicine or biology, 

 but are thinking of the value to the moderns 

 of what the Greeks accomplished. Therefore 

 we must occupy ourselves chiefly with those 



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