150 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



philosophic idiom that his object is to discover the cause 

 of folly, the seat of which he suspects is in the bile. The 

 conference speedily establishes the wisdom and sanity of 

 the patient, and Hippocrates retires to allay the anxiety 

 of the citizens. Or in the expressive language of 

 Severini — " Says Hippocrates, ' By Jove, Democritus, 

 thou speakest truly and wisely.' " 



Between the decline of classical learning and the 

 invention of printing at the middle of the fifteenth 

 century, we search with little success for any example 

 of comparative anatomy, and this period is represented 

 almost exclusively by one small work — the Anatomia 

 Porci of Copho. Details of the life of Copho are entirely 

 wanting — we do not even know which of the two men of 

 that name is responsible for the Anatomia, but judging 

 from contemporary references it must have been written 

 before the end of the thirteenth century. This little 

 tract, which extends to only a few pages of type, may be 

 traced through eleven printed versions ranging from 

 1502 to 1852. It is a work of little merit or distinction, 

 and there are no illustrations. Its interest lies not so 

 much in what is disclosed, as on the light it throws on the 

 state of biological science at the time it was written. 

 And in comparing it with the mass of accurate and 

 detailed anatomy collected centuries before in the works 

 of Galen, we lament the total eclipse of the republic of 

 letters during the era known as the dark ages. 



Copho addressed himself to the internal anatomy of 

 the pig, as he tells us, because of its resemblance to that 

 of man, and he claims that the same reason explains the 

 comparative researches of the ancients. His point of 

 view is clearly that of the physician, and we gain the 

 impression that he has taken to anatomy as a doubtful 

 and irksome necessity. He describes in a brief and 



