458 ON THE ORIGIN OF VETERINARY SCIENCE 
of Francis the First of France; and the Emperor Charles 
the Fifth, proposed the question to the theologians of Sala¬ 
manca, whether it was lawful to open a human body in order 
to become acquainted with the structure. c Which is the less 
to be wondered at, 5 says Mr. Boyle, c because even in this 
our age, that great people the Muscovites, have denied phy¬ 
sicians the use of anatomy and skeletons ; the former as an in¬ 
human thing, the latter as fit for little but witchcraft/ And he 
mentions one Q,uirin, an excellent German surgeon, who being 
found with a skeleton in Muscovy, hardly escaped with his life, 
and his skeleton, which he was obliged to leave behind him, 
was burned.* During these superstitious times, however, the 
foundation of anatomical knowledge was laid; and if we are 
to regret those prejudices which so long opposed that perfec¬ 
tion of the science to which it has since attained, we are no 
less to admire the compass of anatomical knowledge which 
zootomy and the study of the organisation of brutes was 
able to afford. The same Mr. Boyle having occasion to men¬ 
tion the scruples we have been speaking of, observes, c It was 
perhaps on some such account, that Aristotle said, that the 
external parts of the body were best known in man, the in¬ 
ternal in beasts/ It would be no difficult task to give a 
regular chronological account of the progress of comparative 
anatomy, and of the anatomists who applied themselves to 
that study, but as I do not pretend to write here the history 
of that science, I shall at present confine myself to the 
names of a few principal persons, and of the discoveries they 
made by means of zootomy. Erasistratus was the first who 
observed the lacteal veins in kids which he opened a short 
time after they had sucked; he observed the valves of the 
heart, and demonstrated, contrary to the opinion of Plato, 
that there was behind the trachea (windpipe), a canal or pas¬ 
sage, viz., the oesophagus, whose office was to convey food 
into the stomach. Rufus, of Ephesus, we are told, described 
those two ducts, the discovery of which is attributed to Fal¬ 
lopius, and from him are called the Fallopian tubes in the 
second century ; these he discovered in dissecting the womb 
of an ewe; and adds, ( that he strongly suspects them to be 
seminal vessels, and of the same nature with those in males, 
called the varicose prostate/f Galen demonstrated at Rome 
on living animals, the organs of sound and respiration; he 
made several observations on the brain of animals; he also 
showed the effect produced by ligature on the recurrent 
nerves. Vesalius showed by experiments on animals, that it 
* Boyle, vol. ii, p. 68, ‘Usefulness of Natural Philosophy.’ 
f Duten’s Enquiry, &c., p. 223. 
