1882] . 
Correspondence . 
305 
THE “ ERRORS ” OF THE OLD ANATOMISTS. 
To the Editor of the journal of Science . 
Sir,- — Whenever the result of modern investigation varies from 
that of the older anatomists, the latter are peremptorily con- 
demned. Is this a perfectly safe procedure ? Is it not open to 
doubt whether they might not have been right then ? Some of 
the blunders are indeed extraordinary. 
May not the different results yielded now, perhaps, arise from 
a further physiological evolution since then ? Nor is this un- 
plausible when we consider that it is more than 2000 years since 
Aristotle wrote. Hippocrates lived earlier still, and it is over 
1600 years since Galen flourished. 
E.g., if I am not mistaken, we are told that Galen describes 
the upper jaw as being divided into two bones, which is not the case 
now ; hence Galen is condemned as wrong, or as only drawing 
his results from animal disse< 5 tions. Would he have made such 
a mistake ? 
Therefore, looking at the matter in this light, one is surprised 
to see Prof. Huxley (“ Science and Culture ”), in defending one 
of Aristotle’s “errors,” say of certain others “ Not so much to 
be called errors as stupidities. What is to be made of the state- 
ment that the sutures of women’s skulls are different from those 
of men ; that men, and sundry male animals, have more teeth 
than their females ;* that the back of the skull is empty ; and so 
on ?” Were the heart, lungs, &c., as he describes ; were also 
these things “ stupidities ” then ? (as they undoubtedly would be 
if things were then as now). 
It is argued that the ancients, and therefore our quoted philo- 
sophers, never dared to dissedt a human body, yet it is impossible 
to get rid of the impression that they did ( see Hallam, in his 
“ Literature of Europe,” Chap. II., § 37). 
If Pjof. Huxley is rightly reported, and is corredb in his trans- 
lation and authority, that human beings were dissedted seems 
placed beyond doubt by the following extracft from page 188 of 
“ Science and Culture ” : — “ The lung is divided into two parts ; 
but in those animals which bring forth their young alive the sepa- 
ration is not equally well marked, least of all in man.” — (Aris- 
totle, Book I., 16). 
We know that, in spite of the immense prejudice against this 
“ sacrilege,” Mundinus, the father of modern anatomy in Italy, 
in the fifteenth century, managed to dissedt “ on the sly,” when to 
* It is a very familiar fatt that some people amongst us only develop two 
incisors in each jaw, instead of the usual number, though this is not confined 
to females, I think, nowadays, 
