ANATOMY. 
From the sources which have been just 
Enumerated was derived the anatomical 
know ledge of early times. Tins knowledge 
was general or popular. Anatomy, properly 
so called, viz. the knowledge of the struc- 
ture of the body, obtained by dissections 
expressly instituted for that purpose, is of 
much more recent origin. 
Civilization and improvements of every 
kind would naturally begin in fertile coun- 
tries and healthful climates, where there 
would be leisure for reflection, and an ap- 
petite for amusement. It seems now to be 
clearly made out, that writing, and many 
other useful and ornamental inventions and 
arts were cultivated in the eastern parts of 
Asia, long before the earliest times that are 
treated of by the Greek or other European 
writers ; dud that the arts and learning of 
those eastern people were, in subsequent 
times, gradually communicated to adjacent 
countries, especially by the medium of traf- 
fic. The customs, superstitions, and cli- 
mates of eastern countries appear however 
to have been as unfavourable to practical 
anatomy, as they we're inviting to the study 
of astronomy, geometry, poetry, and all the 
softer arts of peace. In those warm cli- 
mates, animal bodies run so quickly into 
nauseous putrefaction, that the early inha- 
bitants must have, avoided such offensive 
employments as anatomical inquiries, like 
their posterity at this day. And, in fact, 
it does not appear, by the writings of the 
Grecians, Jew's, or Phoenicians, that anato- 
my was particularly cultivated by any of 
those nations. 
The progress of anatomy in the early ages 
of the world was more particularly prevent- 
ed by a very generally prevalent opinion, 
that the touch of a dead body communi- 
cated a moral pollution. When we consi- 
der the extent and inveteracy of this pre- 
judice, we shall cease to wonder at the im- 
perfect state of anatomical knowledge in 
the periods now under review. Tiie prac- 
tice of embalming the bodies of the dead 
did not at all reconcile the Egyptians to dis- 
sections. The person who made the inci- 
sion, through which the viscera were re- 
moved, immediately ran away, followed by 
the imprecations and even violence of the 
by-standers, who considered him to have 
violated the body of a friend. The cere- 
monial law of the Jews was very rigorous 
in this respect. To touch several animals, 
which they accounted unclean, subjected 
the person to the necessity of purifications, 
Ac. To touch a dead body made a person 
VOL. L 
unclean for seven days. “ Whosoever, 
(says the Jewish lawgiver) toucheth that 
body of any man that is dead, and purifieth 
not himself, defileth the tabernacle 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 attention to the 
organisation and functions of the human 
body. 
Hippocrates, who lived about four hun- 
dred years before Christ, and was reckoned 
the eighteenth in descent from /Esculapius, 
was the first who separated the professions 
of philosophy and physic, and devoted him- 
self 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 an- 
cients 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 de- 
tracting from the merit of contemporaries ; 
many from having laboriously studied an- 
cient learning, and having become enthu- 
siasts in Greek literature ; but more* per- 
haps, because it was the fashionable turn of 
the times, and was held up as the mark of 
good education and fine taste. If, however* 
we read the works of Hippocrates with im- 
partiality, and apply his accounts ol the 
parts, to what we now know of the human 
body, we must allow his descriptions to be 
imperfect, incorrect, sometimes extrava- 
gant, and often unintelligible, 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 philo- 
sophers still considering it as a most curious 
and interesting branch of natural know- 
ledge, and the physicians, as a principal 
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. 
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