ANATOMY. 



v'al animals which they accounted unclean, 

 subjected the person to the necessity of 

 purifications, &c. To touch a dead body 

 made a person unclean for seven days. 

 " Whosoever (says the Jewish lawgiver) 

 toucheth the body of any man that is dead 

 and purifieth not himself, defileth the ta- 

 bernacle of the Lord ; and that soul shall 

 be cut off from Israel." 



In tracing it backwards in its infancy, 

 we cannot go farther into antiquity than 

 the times of the Grecian philosophers. 

 As an art in the state of some cultivation, 

 it may be said to have been brought forth 

 and bred up among them, as a branch of 

 natural knowledge. We discover in the 

 writings of Plato, that he had paid atten- 

 tion to the organization and functions of 

 the human body. 



Hippocrates, who lived about four hun- 

 dred years before Christ, and was reckon- 

 ed the eighteenth in descent from JEscu- 

 lapius, was the first who separated the 

 professions of philosophy and physic, and 

 devoted himself exclusively to the latter 

 pursuit. He is generally supposed to be 

 the first who wrote upon anatomy. After 

 the restoration of Greek learning, in the 

 fifteenth century, it was so fashionable for 

 two hundred years together, to extol the 

 knowledge of the ancients in anatomy, as 

 in other things, that anatomists seem to 

 have made it a point of emulation, who 

 should be most lavish in their praise ; 

 some from a diffidence in themselves; 

 others through the love of detracting from 

 the merit of contemporaries ; many from 

 having laboriously studied ancient learn- 

 ing, and having become enthusiasts in 

 Greek literature ; but more, perhaps, be- 

 cause it was the fashionable turn of the 

 times, and was held up as the mark of 

 good education and fine taste. If, how- 

 ever, we read the works of Hippacrates 

 with impartiality, and apply his accounts 

 of the parts to what we now know of the 

 human body, we must allow his dc"rip- 

 tions to be imperfect, incorrect, some- 

 times extravagant, and often unintelli- 

 gible, that of the bones only excepted. 



From Hippocrates to Galen, who flou- 

 rished towards the end of the second cen- 

 tury, in the decline of the Roman empire, 

 that is, in the space of six hundred years, 

 anatomy was greatly improved ; the phi- 

 losophers still considering it as a most cu- 

 rious and interesting branch of natural 

 knowledge, and the physicians as a prin- 

 cipal foundation of their art. Both of them 

 in that interval of time, contributed daily 

 to the common stock, by more accurate 

 and extended observations, and by the 

 lights of improving philosophy. 



Aristotle, a disciple of Plato, and pre- 

 ceptor of Alexander the Great, is no less 

 entitled to immortality for his immense 

 labours in natural history, and compara- 

 tive anatomy, than as the founder of the 

 Peripatetic philosophy, which for two 

 thousand years held undisputed sway over 

 the whole learned world. He had formed 

 the most enlarged design which perhaps 

 was ever conceived by any man ; no less 

 than that of a general and detailed history 

 of all nature, a plan by far too vast for the 

 short life of an individual. The love of 

 science which distinguished Alexander no 

 less than his ambition and thirst for glory, 

 led him to encourage and assist the plans 

 of Aristotle in a manner worthy of so great 

 a prince, of so exalted a genius, and of 

 such magnificent designs. The sum of 

 money which he was thereby enabled to 

 devote to his works on natural history 

 would be almost incredible, did we not 

 consider the traits of greatness which 

 mark every action of Alexander, and were 

 not the circumstance stated by writers 

 of unexceptionable authority. Athenaeus, 

 Pliny, and .Elian, concur in representing 

 it at between one and two hundred thou- 

 sand pounds. 



Shortly after the foundation of Alexan- 

 dria, a celebrated school was established 

 there, to which the Greeks and other for- 

 eigners resorted for instruction, and 

 where physic and every branch of natural 

 knowledge were taught in the greatest 

 perfection. Herophilus and Erasistratus, 

 two anatomists of this school, are particu- 

 larly celebrated in the history of anato- 

 my. They seem to be the first who dis- 

 sected the human body. At least in the 

 time of Aristotle, who precededthese ana- 

 tomists by a very short interval, brutes 

 only had been anatomised. It might have 

 bee'n expected that the practice of em- 

 balming would afford favourable opportu- 

 nities of anatomical investigation, but the 

 rude manner in which the body was pre- 

 pared, and the dread of pollution, pre- 

 vented all instructive examination. The 

 progress of the science required that ana- 

 tomists should have subjects, on which 

 careful anddeliberate dissection might be 

 prosecuted without fear of interruption. 

 This benefit was obtained through the 

 taste which the princes of that time dis- 

 played for the arts and sciences. The PtOr 

 lomies inherited, with their share of the 

 empire of Alexander, the love of science, 

 which shone so conspicuously in that mon- 

 arch. Ptolemy Philadelphus invited to 

 his capital the greatest men of the age ; 

 and by collecting books from all parts, at 

 an immense expense, laid the foundation 



