ANATOMY. 
slow progress among the Greeks, from some 
of their religious tenets, as well as from the 
notion already mentioned, of pollution being 
communicated by touching a dead body. 
It was believed, that the souls of the un- 
buried were not admitted into the abodes 
of the dead, or, at least, that they wandered 
for a hundred years along the river Styx, 
before they were allowed to cross it. Who- 
ever saw a dead body was obliged to throw 
some earth upon it, and if he neglected to 
do so, he was obliged to expiate his crime 
by sacrificing to Ceres. It was unlawful 
for the pontifex maximus not only to touch 
a dead body, but even to look at it ; and the 
flamen of Jupiter might not even go where 
there was a grave. Persons who had at- 
tended a funeral were purified by a sprink- 
ling of water from the hands of the priest, 
and the house was purified in the same 
manner. If any one (says Euripides, in 
Ipbigenia) pollutes his hands by a murder, 
by touching a corpse, or a woman who has 
lain in, the altars of God are interdicted to 
him. 
There was no anatomist or physiologist of 
sufficient reputation to attract our notice 
from the times of Herophiius and Erasistra- 
tus to the age of Galen. This illustrious 
character was bom at Pergamus, in Asia 
Minor, about the 130th year of the Christian 
sera. No expense was spared in his educa- 
tion; after the completion of which he 
visited all the most famous schools of philo- 
sophy which then existed; and afterwards 
resided chiefly at Rome, in the service of 
the emperors of that time. 
To all the knowledge which could be de- 
rived from the writing of Hippocrates, and 
the philosophical schools of the time, Galen 
added the results of his own labours and 
observation, and compiledfrom thesesources 
a voluminous system of medicine. It is ge- 
nerally considered, that the subjects of his 
anatomical labours were chiefly brutes ; and 
it is manifest from several passages, that his 
descriptions are drawn from monkeys. In- 
deed, he never expressly states lhat he has 
dissected the human subject, although he 
says he has seen human skeletons. He must 
be accounted the first who placed anatomi- 
cal science on a respectable footing; and 
deserves our gratitude for this, that he was 
the only source of anatomical knowledge for 
about ten centuries. The science declined 
with Galen; his successors were contented 
with copying him; and there is no proof of 
a dissection of any human body from Galen 
to the Emperor Frederick II. We may 
observe, that when any man arrives at the 
reputation of having carried his art far be- 
yond all others, it seems to throw the rest 
of the world into a kind of despair. Hope- 
less of being able to improve their art still 
further, they do nothing. The great man, 
who was at first only respectable, grows 
every day into higher credit, till at length he 
is deified, and every page of his writings 
becomes sacred and infallible. This was 
actually the fortune of Aristotle in philoso- 
phy, and of Galen in anatomy, for many 
ages ; and such respect shewn to any man, in 
any age, must always be a mark of declining 
science. 
Anatomy experienced the same fate as 
learning in general on the decline and fall ot 
the Roman empire. The moral and intel- 
lectual character of the Romans had been 
much debased in the later ages of the em- 
pire. Philosophy and science were mani- 
festly degenerating, and their place was 
supplied by a debased and corrupted theo- 
logy. The successive irruptions of the nor- 
thern barbarians accelerated the approach- 
ing ruin. The great inundation of the Goths 
into Italy, in the fifth century, extinguished 
with the Roman empire its laws, manners, 
andlearning, and plunged the world into the 
depths of ignorance and superstition. The 
succeeding ten centuries, which have receiv- 
ed the appellation of the dark ages of the 
world, present a melancholy picture to the 
philosophic observer of human nature : a 
barren and dreary waste, not enlivened by 
a single trace of cultivation. 
The followers of the Arabian prophet dis- 
sipated the little remains of learning that 
were left in Asia and Egypt. A contempt 
of all human knowledge, and the religious 
obligation of extending the Mahometan faith 
by means of the sword, made these ignorant 
barbarians the most dangerous and destruc- 
tive foes to science and the arts. The city 
of Alexandria, the school of which had been 
the resort of the learned for Centuries, was 
taken in the year 640 by Amrou, the general 
of the Caliph Omar ; the celebrated library 
was burned, with the exception of those 
books which related to medicine, which the 
love of life induced the Arabians to spare. 
When the Saracens were established in 
their new conquests, they began to discern 
the utility of learning in the arts and scien- 
ces, and particularly in physic. Mahomet 
had made it death for any Mussulman to 
learn the liberal arts : this prohibition was 
gradually neglected, and many of the caliphs 
distinguished themselves by their love of 
M 2 
