362 HUMAN ANATOMY 



I may be permitted, in order to explain more clearly and better, 

 on the one hand, what branches of human science have been assisted 

 by anatomy, and on the other hand, which have furthered it, to 

 give a short sketch of the principal epochs in the course of develop- 

 ment of human anatomy. 



I think we may distinguish three great divisions of this develop- 

 ment. A first, pre-Galenic, which we may also designate in a certain 

 sense as prehistoric, a second, the period of Galenic anatomy, and 

 a third, the period of Vesalic anatomy, which extends until the time 

 of Theodor Schwann and Johannes Miiller, 1839, or, in round 

 numbers, 1840. At that time begins the epoch in which we now are. 



If I may briefly describe the first period, whose beginning is as 

 unknown to us as that of the human race, anatomy consisted of a 

 sum of unconnected facts concerning the inner and outer parts of 

 the body, such as were obtained from immediate experience and 

 from the observation of the body in its different motions. It was 

 also obtained by the observation of wounds, note the descriptions 

 in Homer, and from sacrifices of man and animals. The fact that 

 the human race undoubtedly first appeared in the tropics and 

 subtropics, and at first neither required nor used clothing, permitted 

 observations to be easily made. 



That which was so determined and handed down became, with 

 increased culture, more and more the property of the priests, and 

 of the physicians, who were generally of the priestly class. But what 

 we can learn from the Assyrian excavations, from old Egyptian, 

 old Chinese, old Japanese, old Thibetan, and old Indian literary 

 and other monuments is not sufficient to display this historically. 

 Therefore, I use the expression, "prehistoric," because in part their 

 material is entirely false, and nowhere is a complete system brought 

 together. It is merely "anatomic fragments " which we get to know. 

 From them we can form no clear idea of the state of anatomic 

 science of the time under consideration, or to what extent their 

 medical therapeutics was influenced by their anatomic knowledge. 

 There is, indeed, much in the papyri of Egypt and in the voluminous 

 Indian and Chinese literature, but in the short sketch given here, 

 I can only mention it in the above way. 



In pre-Galenic times the anatomic knowledge of the Greeks 

 appears to be more accurate. We possess statements that, already 

 before the time of Hippocrates, dissections of human bodies were 

 carried out, and we may assume that among the Indians and 

 Egyptians this was also occasionally the case. We know, however, 

 nothing more definite, and these dissections were certainly rarely 

 performed with sufficient care or with the definite intention of ob- 

 taining clear anatomic knowledge. Otherwise, the writings which 

 have come down to us would contain more facts. 



