366 HUMAN ANATOMY 



We may divide the causes and motives into immediate and medi- 

 ate. As far as we can tell, it was the needs of medicine and of the 

 treatment of the sick which, in the most ancient times, gave origin 

 to the investigation of the human body. I do not consider here the 

 knowledge of the external form, which the simple observation and 

 examination of the naked body and the necessity of naming the 

 individual parts must give. Animal sacrifice and divination from 

 sacrifices, still more human sacrifice and cannibalism, as well as the 

 examination of large wounds and the natural attempt to bind them 

 up, in order to stop hemorrhage and to replace dislocated limbs, 

 as well as the occurrences during delivery and in many other con- 

 nections, gave man from his first appearance on the earth an oppor- 

 tunity to attain anatomic knowledge. We find it among the prim- 

 itive people of to-day, to the extent to which a people without script 

 can attain. The oldest anatomic and medical writings which have 

 come down to us show, already, a mass of facts obtained in the above 

 way, which was perhaps greater than those in any other realm of 

 biology at that time. 



Knowledge developed more rapidly with the awakening of scien- 

 tific medicine. At first it was naturally the requirements of practice, 

 particularly those of surgery and obstetrics, which were the cause of 

 development. The requirements of internal medicine were not felt 

 until later. Much later, but with so much the greater energy, physi- 

 ology, zoology, comparative anatomy, and human pathologic ana- 

 tomy showed their effect. The last, as well as human physiology, 

 is inconceivable without an accurate knowledge of human anatomy. 

 Zoology, comparative anatomy, and embryology are not absolutely 

 necessary to human anatomy, but none of these sciences can fully 

 reach its goal without a knowledge of the most highly developed 

 creation, man. 



State medicine felt the need of caring for anatomy among the 

 latest of the branches of medical instruction, but finally furthered 

 anatomic study. At the same time jurisprudence comes into relation 

 with anatomy, with animal as well as human. 



In all of this connection, excepting that of jurisprudence, the 

 biologic character which all have in common played a part. But 

 even the purely mental sciences, especially philosophy, and in this, 

 above all, psychology and the theory of perception, as well as the 

 history and beginnings of philosophy, required a study of anatomy 

 for their further development. The relations of the latter to psych- 

 ology and the theory of perception, as well as to other branches 

 of philosophy, first became striking when we began to penetrate 

 more deeply into the finer anatomy of the brain. Here, in spite of 

 books so numerous that one might fill libraries with them, we still 

 stand in the first stage of our knowledge. The anatomy of the brain 



