IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
457 
secting, and the study of anatomy, physiology, &c., because 
it is the foundation, and thereby leads to successful practice 
respecting the treatment of diseases ; and he who becomes a 
good anatomist will never have any cause to repent, for it has 
been very justly observed “before the establishment of the 
Royal Veterinary College, for successive centuries, the igno¬ 
rant blacksmith was permitted to trifle with the diseases of 
our domestic animals, and thereby add to their sufferings the 
infliction of unnecessary tormentand perhaps it would 
have remained the same to this day if St. Bel had not ap¬ 
peared, and those liberal noblemen and gentlemen already 
mentioned, had not come forward and rendered him their 
assistance. In justice to the first Professor of the Royal 
Veterinary College, as well as to the medical gentlemen who 
at that day were connected with him, we cannot do better 
than here record the following observations, extracted from 
one of his works, because it will tend to show the idea which 
was entertained at that time respecting the study of anatomy, 
&c., and the scientific object which they had in view. 
“We know that the physicians of all ages applied them¬ 
selves to the dissection of animals, and that it was almost 
entirely by analogy, that those of Greece and Rome judged 
of the structure of the human body. We are told, indeed, 
that Herophilus and Erasistratus studied anatomy on the 
human frame some centuries before the Christian era, and 
that the former even dissected living subjects, having ob¬ 
tained the bodies of malefactors for that purpose; but it does 
not appear that this practice was continued. On the other 
hand, it is abundantly proved from history, that the great 
progress of anatomy, till within a few centuries, was made 
by the dissection of brutes. In Egypt and the East, as also 
in Greece and Rome, the dissection of the human body was 
held in abhorrence ; nor could any one dare to attempt it, 
without offending against the authority of the law, or the 
more formidable authority of public opinion. This supersti¬ 
tious reverence for the dead, which prevailed for many cen¬ 
turies, confined both the Greeks and Arabians to the dissec¬ 
tion of apes and quadrupeds.* Galen has given us the 
anatomy of the ape for that of man; and it is clear that 
his dissections were restricted to brutes, when he says, that 
if learned physicians have been guilty of gross errors, it was 
because they neglected to dissect animals. The dissection 
of the human frame was accounted sacrilegious in the time 
* Gibbon: Decline of Rom. Emp., ch. lii; Coutumes ties Peuples, par M. 
Demeunier, tom. iii, p. 255. 
