Chapter CLIV: Act 1875: , but, broadly speaking, they are divided into two (10)

Not long after Marinus appeared Rufus (or Ruffus) of Ephesus, a Greek physician, who in the reign of Trajan was much attached to physiology, and as a means of cultivating this science studied Comparative Anatomy and made sundry experiments on living animals. Of the anatomical writings of this author there remains only a list or catalogue of names of different regions and parts of the animal body. He appears, however, to have directed attention particularly to the tortuous course of the uterine vessels, and to have recognized even at this early period the Fallopian tube. He distinguishes the nerves into those of sensation and those of motion. He knew the recurrent nerve. His name is further associated with the ancient experiment of compressing in the situation of the carotid arteries the pneumogastric nerve, and thereby inducing insensibility and loss of voice.

Galen.

Of all the authors of antiquity, however, none possesses so just a claim to the title of anatomist as Claudius Galenus, the celebrated physician of Pergamum, who was born about the 130th year of the Christian era, and lived under the reigns of Hadrian, the Antonines, Commodus and Severus. He was trained by his father Nicon (whose memory he embalms as an eminent mathematician, architect and astronomer) in all the learning of the day, and initiated particularly into the mysteries of the Aristotelian philosophy. In an order somewhat whimsical he afterwards studied philosophy successively in the schools of the Stoics, the Academics, the Peripatetics and the Epicureans. When he was seventeen years of age, his father, he informs us, was admonished by a dream to devote his son to the study of medicine; but it was fully two years after that Galen entered on this pursuit, under the auspices of an instructor whose name he has thought proper to conceal. Shortly after he betook himself to the study of anatomy under Satyrus, a pupil of Quintus, and of medicine under Stratonicus, a Hippocratic physician, and Aeschrion, an empiric. He had scarcely attained the age of twenty when he had occasion to deplore the loss of the first and most affectionate guide of his studies; and soon after he proceeded to Smyrna to obtain the anatomical instructions of Pelops, who, though mystified by some of the errors of Hippocrates, is commemorated by his pupil as a skilful anatomist. After this he appears to have visited various cities distinguished for philosophical or medical teachers; and, finally, to have gone to Alexandria with the view of cultivating more accurately and intimately the study of anatomy under Heraclianus. Here he remained till his twenty-eighth year, when he regarded himself as possessed of all the knowledge then attainable through the medium of teachers. He now returned to Pergamum to exercise the art which he had so anxiously studied, and received, in his twenty-ninth year, an unequivocal testimony of the confidence which his fellow-citizens reposed in his skill, by being intrusted with the treatment of the wounded gladiators; and in this capacity he is said to have treated wounds with success which were fatal under former treatment. A seditious tumult appears to have caused him to form the resolution of quitting Pergamum and proceeding to Rome at the age of thirty-two. Here, however, he remained only five years; and returning once more to Pergamum, after travelling for some time, finally settled in Rome as physician to the emperor Commodus. The anatomical writings ascribed to Galen, which are numerous, are to be viewed not merely as the result of personal research and information, but as the common depository of the anatomical knowledge of the day, and as combining all that he had learnt from the several teachers under whom he successively studied with whatever personal investigation enabled him to acquire. It is on this account not always easy to distinguish what Galen had himself ascertained by personal research from that which was known by other anatomists. This, however, though of moment to the history of Galen as an anatomist, is of little consequence to the science itself; and from the anatomical remains of this author a pretty just idea may be formed both of the progress and of the actual state of the science at that time.

The osteology of Galen is undoubtedly the most perfect of the departments of the anatomy of the ancients. He names and distinguishes the bones and sutures of the cranium nearly in the same manner as at present. Thus, he notices the quadrilateral shape of the parietal bones; he distinguishes the squamous, the styloid, the mastoid and the petrous portions of the temporal bones; and he remarks the peculiar situation and shape of the sphenoid bone. Of the ethmoid, which he omits at first, he afterwards speaks more at large in another treatise. The malar he notices under the name of zygomatic bone; and he describes at length the upper maxillary and nasal bones, and the connexion of the former with the sphenoid. He gives the first clear account of the number and situation of the vertebrae, which he divides into cervical, dorsal and lumbar, and distinguishes from the sacrum and coccyx. Under the head Bones of the Thorax, he enumerates the sternum, the ribs (ai pleurai), and the dorsal vertebrae, the connexion of which with the former he designates as a variety of diarthrosis. The description of the bones of the extremities and their articulations concludes the treatise.

Though in myology Galen appears to less advantage than in osteology, he nevertheless had carried this part of anatomical knowledge to greater perfection than any of his predecessors. He describes a frontal muscle, the six muscles of the eye and a seventh proper to animals; a muscle to each ala nasi, four muscles of the lips, the thin cutaneous muscle of the neck, which he first termed platysma myoides or muscular expansion, two muscles of the eyelids, and four pairs of muscles of the lower jaw--the temporal to raise, the masseter to draw to one side, and two depressors, corresponding to the digastric and internal pterygoid muscles. After speaking of the muscles which move the head and the scapula, he adverts to those by which the windpipe is opened and shut, and the intrinsic or proper muscles of the larynx and hyoid bone. Then follow those of the tongue, pharynx and neck, those of the upper extremities, the trunk and the lower extremities successively; and in the course of this description he swerves so little from the actual facts that most of the names by which he distinguishes the principal muscles have been retained by the best modern anatomists. It is chiefly in the minute account of these organs, and especially in reference to the minuter muscles, that he appears inferior to the moderns.

The angiological knowledge of Galen, though vitiated by the erroneous physiology of the times and ignorance of the separate uses of arteries and veins, exhibits, nevertheless, some accurate facts which show the diligence of the author in dissection. Though, in opposition to the opinions of Praxagoras and Erasistratus, he proved that the arteries in the living animal contain not air but blood, it does not appear to have occurred to him to determine in what direction the blood flows, or whether it was movable or stationary. Representing the left ventricle of the heart as the common origin of all the arteries, though he is misled by the pulmonary artery, he nevertheless traces the distribution of the branches of the aorta with some accuracy. The vena azygos also, and the jugular veins, have contributed to add to the confusion of his description, and to render his angiology the most imperfect of his works.

In neurology we find him to be the author of the dogma that the brain is the origin of the nerves of sensation, and the spinal cord of those of motion; and he distinguishes the former from the latter by their greater softness or less consistence. Though he admits only seven cerebral pairs, he has the merit of distinguishing and tracing the distribution of the greater part of both classes of nerves with great accuracy. His description of the brain is derived from dissection of the lower animals, and his distinctions of the several parts of the organ have been retained by modern anatomists. His mode of demonstrating this organ, which indeed is clearly described, consists of five different steps. In the first the bisecting membrane--i.e. the falx (menigx dichotomousa)--and the connecting blood-vessels are removed; and the dissector, commencing at the anterior extremity of the great fissure, separates the hemispheres gently as far as the torcular, and exposes a smooth surface (ten choran tulode pos ousan), the mesolobe of the moderns, or the middle band. In the second he exposes by successive sections the ventricles, the choroid plexus and the middle partition. The third exhibits the pineal body (soma konoeides) or conarium, concealed by a membrane with numerous veins, meaning that part of the plexus which is now known by the name of velum interpositum, and a complete view of the ventricles. The fourth unfolds the third ventricle (tis alle trite koilia), the communication between the two lateral ones, the arch-like body (soma psalidoeides) fornix, and the passage from the third to the fourth ventricle. In the fifth he gives an accurate description of the relations of the third and fourth ventricle, of the situation of the two pairs of eminences, nates (glouta) and testes (didumia or orcheis), the scolecoid or worm-like process, anterior and posterior, and lastly the linear furrow, called by Herophilus calamus scriptorius.

In the account of the thoracic organs equal accuracy may be recognized. He distinguishes the pleura by the name of inclosing membrane (umen upezokos, membrana succingens), and remarks its similitude in structure to that of the peritoneum, and the covering which it affords to all the organs. The pericardium also he describes as a membranous sac with a circular basis corresponding to the base of the heart and a conical apex; and after an account of the tunics of the arteries and veins, he speaks shortly of the lung, and more at length of the heart, which, however, he takes somepains to prove not to be muscular, because it is harder, its fibres are differently arranged, and its action is incessant, whereas that of muscle alternates with the state of rest; he gives a good account of the valves and of the vessels; and notices especially the bony ring formed in the heart of the horse, elephant and other large animals.

The description of the abdominal organs, and of the kidneys and urinary apparatus, is still more minute, and in general accurate. Our limits, however, do not permit us to give any abstract of them; and it is sufficient in general to say that Galen gives correct views of the arrangement of the peritoneum and omentum, and distinguishes accurately the several divisions of the alimentary canal and its component tissues. In the liver, which he allows to receive an envelope from the peritoneum, he admits, in imitation of Erasistratus, a proper substance or parenchyma, interposed between the vessels, and capable of removal by suitable dissection. His description of the organs of generation is rather brief, and is, like most of his anatomical sketches, too much blended with physiological dogmas.

This short sketch may communicate some idea of the condition of anatomical knowledge in the days of Galen, who indeed is justly entitled to the character of rectifying and digesting, if not of creating, the science of anatomy among the ancients. Though evidently confined, perhaps entirely by the circumstances of the times, to the dissection of brute animals, so indefatigable and judicious was he in the mode of acquiring knowledge, that many of his names and distinctions are still retained with advantage in the writings of the moderns. Galen was a practical anatomist, and not only describes the organs of the animal body from actual dissection, but gives ample instructions for the proper mode of exposition. His language is in general clear, his style as correct as in most of the authors of the same period, and his manner is animated. Few passages in early science are indeed so interesting as the description of the process for demonstrating the brain and other internal organs which is given by this patient and enthusiastic observer of nature. To some it may appear absurd to speak of anything like good anatomical description in an author who writes in the Greek language, or anything like an interesting and correct manner in a writer who flourished at a period when taste was depraved or extinct and literature corrupted--when the philosophy of Antoninus and the mild virtues of Aurelius could do little to soften the iron sway of Lucius Verus and Commodus; but the habit of faithful observation in Galen seems to have been so powerful that in the description of material objects, his genius invariably rises above the circumstances of his age. Though not so directly connected with this subject, it is nevertheless proper to mention that he appears to have been the first anatomist who can be said, on authentic grounds, to have attempted to discover the uses of organs by vivisection and experiments on living animals. In this manner he ascertained the position and demonstrated the action of the heart; and he mentions two instances in which, in consequence of disease or injury, he had an opportunity of observing the motions of this organ in the human body. In short, without eulogizing an ancient author at the expense of critical justice, or commending his anatomical descriptions as superior to those of the moderns, it must be admitted that the anatomical writings of the physician of Pergamum form a remarkable era in the history of the science; and that by diligence in dissection and accuracy in description he gave the science a degree of importance and stability which it has retained through a lapse of many centuries.

The death of Galen, which took place at Pergamum in the seventieth year of his age and the 200th of the Christian era, may be regarded as the downfall of anatomy in ancient times. After this period we recognize only two names of any celebrity in the history of the science--those of Soranus and Oribasius, with the more obscure ones of Meletius and Theophilus, the latter the chief of the imperial guard of Heraclius.

Soranus, who was an Ephesian, and flourished under the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, distinguished himself by his researches on the female organs of generation. He appears to have dissected the human subject; and this perhaps is one reason why his descriptions of these parts are more copious and more accurate than those of Galen, who derived his knowledge from the bodies of the lower animals. He denies the existence of the hymen, but describes accurately the clitoris. Soranus the anatomist must be distinguished from the physician of that name, who was also a native of Ephesus.

Oribasius.

Oribasius, who was born at Pergamum, is said to have been at once the friend and physician of the emperor Julian, and to have contributed to the elevation of that apostate to the imperial throne. For this he appears to have suffered the punishment of a temporary exile under Valens and Valentinian; but was soon recalled, and lived in great honour till the period of his death (387). By le Clerc, Oribasius is regarded as a compiler; and indeed his anatomical writings bear so close a correspondence with those of Galen that the character is not altogether groundless. In various points, nevertheless, he has rendered the Galenian anatomy more accurate; and he has distinguished himself by a good account of the salivary glands, which were overlooked by Galen.

To the same period generally is referred the Anatomical Introduction of an anonymous author, first published in 1618 by Lauremberg, and afterwards by C. Bernard. It is to be regarded as a compilation formed on the model of Galen and Oribasius. The same character is applicable to the treatises of Meletius and Theophilus.

The decline indicated by these languid efforts soon sank into a state of total inactivity; and the unsettled state of society during the latter ages of the Roman empire was extremely unfavourable to the successful cultivation of science. The sanguinary conflicts in which the southern countries of Europe were repeatedly engaged with their northern neighbours between the 2nd and 8th centuries tended gradually to estrange their minds from scientific pursuits; and the hordes of barbarians by which the Roman empire was latterly overrun, while they urged them to the necessity of making hostile resistance, and adopting means of self-defence, introduced such habits of ignorance and barbarism, that science was almost universally forgotten. While the art of healing was professed only by some few ecclesiastics or by itinerant practitioners, anatomy was utterly neglected; and no name of anatomical celebrity occurs to diversify the long and uninteresting period commonly distinguished as the dark ages.

Arabian Physicians.

Anatomical learning, thus neglected by European nations, is believed to have received a temporary cultivation from the Asiatics. Of these, several nomadic tribes, known to Europeans under the general denomination of Arabs and Saracens, had gradually coalesced under various leaders; and by their habits of endurance, as well as of enthusiastic valour in successive expeditions against the eastern division of the Roman empire, had acquired such military reputation as to render them formidable wherever they appeared. After a century and a half of foreign warfare or internal animosity, under the successive dynasties of the Omayyads and Abbasids, in which the propagation of Islam was the pretext for the extinction of learning and civilization, and the most remorseless system of rapine and destruction, the Saracens began, under the latter dynasty of princes, to recognize the value of science, and especially of that which prolongs life, heals disease and alleviates the pain of wounds and injuries. The caliph Mansur combined with his official knowledge of Moslem law the successful cultivation of astronomy; but to his grandson Mamun, the seventh prince of the line of the Abbasids, belongs the merit of undertaking to render his subjects philosophers and physicians. By the directions of this prince the works of the Greek and Roman authors were translated into Arabic; and the favour and munificence with which literature and its professors were patronized speedily raised a succession of learned Arabians. The residue of the rival family of the Omayyads, already settled in Spain, was prompted by motives of rivalry or honourable ambition to adopt the same course; and while the academy, hospitals and library of Bagdad bore testimony to the zeal and liberality of the Abbasids, the munificence of the Omayyads was not less conspicuous in the literary institutions of Cordova, Seville and Toledo.

Notwithstanding the efforts of the Arabian princes, however, and the diligence of the Arabian physicians, little was done for anatomy, and the science made no substantial acquisition. The Koran denounces as unclean the person who touches a corpse; the rules of Islam forbid dissection; and whatever their instructors taught was borrowed from the Greeks. Abu-Bekr Al-Rasi, Abu-Ali Ibn-Sina, Abul-Qasim and Abul Walid ibn Rushd, the Rhazes, Avicenna, Abulcasis and Averroes of European authors, are their most celebrated names in medicine; yet to none of these can the historian with justice ascribe any anatomical merit. Rhazes has indeed left descriptions of the eye, of the ear and its meatus, and of the heart; and Avicenna, Abul-Qasim and Averroes give anatomical descriptions of the parts of the human body. But of these the general character is, that they are copies from Galen, sometimes not very just, and in all instances mystified with a large proportion of the fanciful and absurd imagery and inflated style of the Arabian writers. The chief reason of their obtaining a place in anatomical history is, that by the influence which their medical authority enabled them to exercise in the European schools, the nomenclature which they employed was adopted by European anatomists, and continued till the revival of ancient learning restored the original nomenclature of the Greek physicians. Thus, the cervix, or nape of the neck, is nucha; the oesophagus is meri; the umbilical region is sumen or sumac; the abdomen is myrach; the peritoneum is siphac; and the omentum, zirbus.

From the general character now given justice requires that we except Abdallatif, the annalist of Egyptian affairs. This author, who maintains that it is impossible to learn anatomy from books, and that the authority of Galen must yield to personal inspection, informs us that the Moslem doctors did not neglect opportunities of studying the bones of the human body in cemeteries; and that he himself, by once examining a collection of bones in this manner, ascertained that the lower jaw is formed of one piece; that the sacrum, though sometimes composed of several, is most generally of one; and that Galen is mistaken when he asserts that these bones are not single.

School of Bologna.

The era of Saracen learning extends to the 13th century; and after this we begin to approach happier times. The university of Bologna, which, as a school of literature and law, was already celebrated in the 12th century, became, in the course of the following one, not less distinguished for its medical teachers. Though the misgovernment of the municipal rulers of Bologna had disgusted both teachers and students, and given rise to the foundation of similar institutions in Padua and Naples,--and though the school of Salerno, in the territory of the latter, was still in high repute,--it appears, from the testimony of M. Sarti, that medicine was in the highest esteem in Bologna, and that it was in such perfection as to require a division of its professors into physicians, surgeons, physicians for wounds, barber-surgeons, oculists and even some others. Notwithstanding these indications of refinement, however, anatomy was manifestly cultivated rather as an appendage of surgery than a branch of medical science; and according to the testimony of Guy de Chauliac, the cultivation of anatomical knowledge was confined to Roger of Parma, Roland, Jamerio, Bruno, and Lanfranc or Lanfranchi of Milan; and this they borrowed chiefly from Galen.

Mondino.

In this state matters appear to have proceeded with the medical school of Bologna till the commencement of the 14th century, when the circumstance of possessing a teacher of originality enabled this university to be the agent of as great an improvement in medical science as she had already effected in jurisprudence. This era, indeed, is distinguished for the appearance of Mondino (Mundinus), under whose zealous cultivation the science first began to rise from the ashes in which it had been buried. This father of modern anatomy, who taught in Bologna about the year 1315, quickly drew the curiosity of the medical profession by well-ordered demonstrations of the different parts of the human body. In 1315 he dissected and demonstrated the parts of the human body in two female subjects; and in the course of the following year he accomplished the same task on the person of a single female. But while he seems to have had sufficient original force of intellect to direct his own route, J. Riolan accuses him of copying Galen; and it is certain that his descriptions are corrupted by the barbarous leaven of the Arabian schools, and his Latin defaced by the exotic nomenclature of Avicenna and Rhazes. He died, according to G. Tiraboschi, in 1325.

Mondino divides the body into three cavities (ventres), the upper containing the animal members, as the head, the lower containing the natural members, and the middle containing the spiritual members. He first describes the anatomy of the lower cavity or the abdomen, then proceeds to the middle or thoracic organs, and concludes with the upper, comprising the head and its contents and appendages. His general manner is to notice shortly the situation and shape or distribution of textures or membranes, and then to mention the disorders to which they are subject. The peritoneum he describes under the name of siphac, in imitation of the Arabians, the omentum under that of zirbus, and the mesentery or eucharus as distinct from both. In speaking of the intestines he treats first of the rectum, then the colon, the left or sigmoid flexure of which, as well as the transverse arch and its connexion with the stomach, he particularly remarks; then the caecum or monoculus, after this the small intestines in general under the heads of ileum and jejunum, and latterly the duodenum, making in all six bowels. The liver and its vessels are minutely, if not accurately, examined; and the cava, under the name chilis, a corruption from the Greek koile, is trcated at length, with the emulgents and kidneys. His anatomy of the heart is wonderfully accurate; and it is a remarkable fact, which seems to be omitted by all subsequent authors, that his description contains the rudiments of the circulation of the blood. ``Postea vero versus pulmonem est aliud orificium venae arterialis, quae portat sanguinem ad pulmonem a corde; quia cum pulmo deserviat cordi secundum modum dictum, ut ei recompenset, cor ei transmittit sanguinem per hanc venam, quae vocatur vena arterialis; est vena, quia portat sanguinem, et arterialis, quia habet duas tunicas; et habet duas tunicas, primo quia vadit ad membrum quod existit in continuo motu, et secundo quia portat sanguinem valde subtilem et cholericum.'' The merit of these distinctions, however, he afterwards destroys by repeating the old assertion that the left ventricle ought to contain spirit or air, which it generates from the blood. His osteology of the skull is erroneous. In his account of the cerebral membranes, though short, he notices the principal characters of the dura mater. He describes shortly the lateral ventricles, with their anterior and posterior cornua, and the choroid plexus as a blood-red substance like a long worm. He then speaks of the third or middle ventricle, and one posterior, which seems to correspond with the fourth; and describes the infundibulum under the names of lacuna and emboton. In the base of the organ he remarks, first, two mammillary caruncles, the optic nerves, which he reckons the first pair; the oculomuscular, which he accounts the second; the third, which appears to be sixth of the moderns; the fourth; the fifth, evidently the seventh; a sixth, the nervus vagus; and a seventh, which is the ninth of the moderns. Notwithstanding the misrepresentations into which this early anatomist was betrayed, his book is valuable, and has been illustrated by the successive commentaries of Alessandro Achillini, Jacopo Berengario and Johann Dryander (1500-1560).

Matthew de Gradibus, a native of Gradi, a town in Friuli, near Milan, distinguished himself by composing a series of treatises on the anatomy of various parts of the human body (1480). He is the first who represents the ovaries of the female in the correct light in which they were subsequently regarded by Nicolas Steno or Stensen (1638-1687).

Objections similar to those already urged in speaking of Mondino apply to another eminent anatomist of those times. Gabriel de Zerbis, who flourished at Verona towards the conclusion of the 15th century, is celebrated as the author of a system in which he is obviously more anxious to astonish his readers by the wonders of a verbose and complicated style than to instruct by precise and faithful description. In the vanity of his heart he assumed the title of Medicus Theoricus; but though, like Mondino, he derived his information from the dissection of the human subject, he is not entitled to the merit either of describing truly or of adding to the knowledge previously acquired. He is superior to Mondina, however, in knowing the olfactory nerves.

Achillini.

Eminent in the history of the science, and more distinguished than any of this age in the history of cerebral anatomy, Achillini of Bologna (1463-1512), the pupil and commentator of Mondino, appeared at the close of the 15th century. Though a follower of the Arabian school, the assiduity with which he cultivated anatomy has rescued his name from the inglorious obscurity in which the Arabian doctors have in general slumbered. He is known in the history of anatomical discovery as the first who described the two tympanal bones, termed malleus and incus. In 1503 he showed that the tarsus consists of seven bones; he rediscovered the fornix and the infundibulum; and he was fortunate enough to observe the course of the cerebral cavities into the inferior cornua, and to remark peculiarities to which the anatomists of a future age did not advert. He mentions the orifices of the ducts, afterwards described by Thomas Wharton (1610-1673). He knew the ileo-caecal valve; and his description of the duodenum, ileum and colon shows that he was better acquainted with the site and disposition of these bowels than any of his predecessors or contemporaries.

Berenger.

Not long after, the science boasts of one of its most distinguished founders. Berengario, commonly called Berenger of Carpi, in the Modenese territory, flourished at Bologna at the beginning of the 16th century. In the annals of medicine his name will be remembered not only as the most zealous and eminent in cultivating the anatomy of the human body, but as the first physician who was fortunate enough to calm the alarms of Europe, suffering under the ravages of syphilis, then raging with uncontrollable virulence. In the former character he surpassed both predecessors and contemporaries; and it was long before the anatomists of the following age could boast of equalling him. His assiduity was indefatigable; and he declares that he dissected above one hundred human bodies. He is the author of a compendium, of several treatises which he names Introductions (Isagogae), and of commentaries on the treatise of Mondino, in which he not only rectifies the mistakes of that anatomist, but gives minute and in general accurate anatomical descriptions.

He is the first who undertakes a systematic view of the several textures of which the human body is composed; and in a preliminary commentary he treats successively of the anatomical characters and properties of fat, of membrane in general (panniculus), of flesh, of nerve, of villus or fibre (filum), of ligament, of sinew or tendon, and of muscle in general. He then proceeds to describe with considerable precision the muscles of the abdomen, and illustrates their site and connexions by woodcuts which, though rude, are spirited, and show that anatomical drawing was in that early age beginning to be understood. In his account of the peritoneum he admits only the intestinal division of that membrane, and is at some pains to prove that Gentilis Fulgineus, who justly admits the muscular division also, is in error. In his account of the intestines he is the first who mentions the vermiform process of the caecum; he remarks the yellow tint communicated to the duodenum by the gall-bladder; and he recognizes the opening of the common biliary duct into the duodenum (quidam porus portans choleram.) In the account of the stomach he describes the several tissues of which that organ is composed, and which he represents to be three, and a fourth from the peritoneum; and afterwards notices the rugae of its villous surface. He is at considerable pains to explain the organs of generation in both sexes, and gives a long account of the anatomy of the foetus. He was the first who recognized the larger proportional size of the chest in the male than in the female, and conversely the greater capacity of the female than of the male pelvis. In the larynx he discovered the two arytenoid cartilages. He gives the first good description of the thymus; distinguishes the oblique situation of the heart; describes the pericardium, and maintains the uniform presence of pericardial liquor. He then describes the cavities of the heart; but perplexes himself, as did all the anatomists of that age, about the spirit supposed to be contained. The aorta he properly makes to arise from the left ventricle; but confuses himself with the arteria venalis, the pulmonary vein, and the vena arterialis, the pulmonary artery. His account of the brain is better. He gives a minute and clear account of the ventricles, remarks the corpus striatum, and has the sagacity to perceive that the choroid plexus consists of veins and arteries; he then describes the middle or third ventricle, the infundibulum or lacuna of Mondino, and the pituitary gland; and lastly, the passage to the fourth ventricle, the conarium or pineal gland, and the fourth or posterior ventricle itself, the relations of which he had studied accurately. He rectifies the mistake of Mondino as to the olfactory or first pair of nerves, gives a good account of the optic and others, and is entitled to the praise of originality in being the first observer who contradicts the fiction of the wonderful net and indicates the principal divisions of the carotid arteries. He enumerates the tunics and humours of the eye, and gives an account of the internal ear, in which he notices the malleus and incus.

French school.

Italy long retained the distinction of giving birth to the first eminent anatomists in Europe, and the glory she acquired in the names of Mondino, Achillini, Berenger and N. Massa, was destined to become more conspicuous in the labours of R. Columbus, G. Fallopius and Eustachius. While Italy, however, was thus advancing the progress of science, the other nations of Europe were either in profound ignorance or in the most supine indifference to the brilliant career of their zealous neighbours. The 16th century had commenced before France began to acquire anatomical distinction in the names of Jacques Dubois, Jean Fernel and Charles Etienne; and even these celebrated teachers were less solicitous in the personal study of the animal body than in the faithful explanation of the anatomical writings of Galen. The infancy of the French school had to contend with other difficulties. The small portion of knowledge which had been hitherto diffused in the country was so inadequate to eradicate the prejudices of ignorance, that it was either difficult or absolutely impossible to procure human bodies for the purposes of science; and we are assured, on the testimony of A. Vesalius and other competent authorities, that the practical part of anatomical instruction was obtained entirely from the bodies of the lower animals. The works of the Italian anatomists were unknown; and it is a proof of the tardy communication of knowledge that, while the structure of the human body had been taught in Italy for more than a century by Mondino and his followers, these anatomists are never mentioned by Etienne, who flourished long after.

Dubois.

Such was the aspect of the times at the appearance of Jacques Dubois (1478-1555), who, under the Romanized name of Jacobus Sylvius, according to the fashion of the day, has been fortunate in acquiring a reputation to which his researches do not entitle him. For the name of Dubois the history of anatomy, it is said, is indebted to his inordinate love of money. At the instance of his brother Francis, who was professor of eloquence in the college of Tournay at Paris, he devoted himself to the study of the learned languages and mathematics; but discovering that these elegant accomplishments do not invariably reward their cultivators with the goods of fortune, Dubois betook himself to medicine. After the acquisition of a medical degree in the university of Montpellier, at the ripe age of fifty-one Dubois returned to Paris to resume a course of anatomical instruction. Here he taught anatomy to a numerous audience in the college of Trinquet; and on the departure of Vidus Vidius for Italy was appointed to succeed that physician as professor of surgery to the Royal College. His character is easily estimated. With greater coarseness in his manners and language than even the rude state of society in his times can palliate, with much varied learning and considerable eloquence, he was a blind, indiscriminate and irrational admirer of Galen, and interpreted the anatomical and physiological writings of that author in preference to giving demonstrations from the subject. Without talent for original research or discovery himself, his envy and jealousy made him detest every one who gave proofs of either. We are assured by Vesalius, who was some time his pupil, that his manner of teaching was calculated neither to advance the science nor to rectify the mistakes of his predecessors. A human body was never seen in the theatre of Dubois; the carcases of dogs and other animals were the materials from which he taught; and so difficult even was it to obtain human bones, that unless Vesalius and his fellow-students had collected assiduously from the Innocents and other cemeteries, they must have committed numerous errors in acquiring the first principles. This assertion, however, is contradicted by J. Riolan, and afterwards by K. P. J. Sprengel and T. Lauth, the last of whom decidedly censures Vesalius for this ungrateful treatment of his instructor. It is certain that opportunities of inspecting the human body were by no means so frequent as to facilitate the study of the science. Though his mention of injections has led some to suppose him the discoverer of that art, he appears to have made no substantial addition to the information already acquired; and the first acknowledged professor of anatomy to the university of Paris appears in history as one who lived without true honour and died without just celebrity. He must not be confounded with Franciscus Sylvius (de le Boe), who is mentioned by F. Ruysch and M. V. G. Malacarne as the author of a particular method of demonstrating the brain.

Etienne.

Almost coeval may be placed Charles Etienne (1503-1564), a younger brother of the celebrated printers, and son to Henry, who Hellenized the family name by the classical appellation of Stephen (Stefanos.) It is uncertain whether he taught publicly. But his tranquillity was disturbed, and his pursuits interrupted, by the oppressive persecutions in which their religious opinions involved the family; and Charles Etienne drew the last breath of a miserable life in a dungeon in 1564. Etienne, though sprung of a family whose classical taste has been their principal glory, does not betray the same servile imitation of the Galenian anatomy with which Dubois is charged. He appears to have been the first to detect valves in the orifice of the hepatic veins. He was ignorant, however, of the researches of the Italian anatomists; and his description of the brain is inferior to that given sixty years before by Achillini. His comparison of the cerebral cavities to the human ear has persuaded F. Portal that he knew the inferior cornua, the hippocampus and its prolongations; but this is no reason for giving him that honour to the detriment of the reputation of Achillini, to whom, so far as historical testimony goes, the first knowledge of this fact is due. The researches of Etienne into the structure of the nervous system are, however, neither useless nor inglorious; and the circumstance of demonstrating a canal through the entire length of the spinal cord, which had neither been suspected by contemporaries nor noticed by successors till J. B. Senac (1693-1770) made it known, is sufficient to place him high in the rank of anatomical discoverers.

Vesalius.

The French anatomy of the 16th century was distinguished by two circumstances unfavourable to the advancement of the science --extravagant admiration of antiquity, with excessive confidence in the writings of Galen, and the general practice of dissecting principally the bodies of the lower animals. Both these errors were much amended, if not entirely removed, by the exertions of a young Fleming, whose appearance forms a conspicuous era in the history of anatomy. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), a native of Brussels, after acquiring at Louvain the ordinary classical attainments of the day, began at the age of fourteen to study anatomy under the auspices of Dubois. Though the originality of his mind soon led him to abandon the prejudices by which he was environed, and take the most direct course for attaining a knowledge of the structure of the human frame, he neither underrated the Galenian anatomy nor was indolent in the dissection of brute animals. The difficulties, however, with which the practical pursuit of human anatomy was beset in France, and the dangers with which he had to contend, made him look to Italy as a suitable field for the cultivation of the science: and in 1536 we find him at Venice, at once pursuing the study of human anatomy with the utmost zeal, and requested, ere he had attained his twenty-second year, to demonstrate publicly in the university of Padua. After remaining here about seven years, Vesalius went by express invitation to Bologna, and shortly afterwards to Pisa; and thus professor in three universities, he appears to have carried on his anatomical investigations and instructions alternately at Padua, Bologna and Pisa, in the course of the same winter. It is on this account that Vesalius, though a Fleming by birth and trained originally in the French school, belongs, as an anatomist, to the Italian, and may be viewed as the first of an illustrious line of teachers by whom the anatomical reputation of that country was in the course of the 16th century raised to the greatest eminence.

Vesalius is known as the first author of a comprehensive and systematic view of human anatomy. The knowledge with which his dissections had furnished him proved how many errors were daily taught and learned under the broad mantle of Galenian authority; and he perceived the necessity of a new system of anatomical instruction, divested of the omissions of ignorance and the misrepresentations of prejudice and fancy. The early age at which he effected this object has been to his biographers the theme of boundless commendation; and we are told that he began at the age of twenty-five to arrange the materials he had collected, and accomplished his task ere he had completed his 28th year.

Soon after this period we find him invited as imperial physician to the court of Charles V., where he was occupied in the duties of practice and answering the various charges which were unceasingly brought against him by the disciples of Galen. After the abdication of Charles he continued at court in great favour with his son Philip II. To this he seems to have been led principally by the troublesome controversies in which his anatomical writings had involved him. It is painful to think, however, that even imperial patronage bestowed on eminent talents does not ensure immunity from popular prejudice; and the fate of Vesalius will be a lasting example of the barbarism of the times, and of the precarious tenure of the safety even of a great physician. On the preliminary circumstances authors are not agreed; but the most general account states that when Vesalius was dissecting, with the consent of his kinsmen, the body of a Spanish grandee, it was observed that the heart still gave some feeble palpitations when divided by the knife. The immediate effects of this outrage to human feelings were the denunciation of the anatomist to the Inquisition; and Vesalius escaped the severe treatment of that tribunal only by the influence of the king, and by promising to perform a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He forthwith proceeded to Venice, from which he sailed with the Venetian fleet, under James Malatesta, for Cyprus. When he reached Jerusalem, he received from the Venetian senate a message requesting him again to accept the Paduan professorship, which had become vacant by the death of his friend and pupil Fallopius. His destiny, however, which pursued him fast, suffered him not again to breathe the Italian air. After struggling for many days with the adverse winds in the Ionian Sea, he was wrecked on the island of Zante, where he quickly breathed his last in such penury that unless a liberal goldsmith had defrayed the funeral charges, his remains must have been devoured by beasts of prey. At the time of his death he was scarcely fifty years of age.

To form a correct estimate of the character and merits of Vesalius, we must not compare him, in the spirit of modern perfection, with the anatomical authors either of later times or of the present day. Whoever would frame a just idea of this anatomist must imagine, not a bold innovator without academical learning, not a genius coming from a foreign country, unused to the forms and habits of Catholic Europe, nor a wild reformer, blaming indiscriminately everything which accorded not with his opinion; but a young student scarcely emancipated from the authority of instructors, whose intellect was still influenced by the doctrines with which it had been originally imbued,--a scholar strictly trained in the opinions of the time, living amidst men who venerated Galen as the oracle of anatomy and the divinity of medicine,--exercising his reason to estimate the soundness of the instructions then in use, and proceeding, in the way least likely to offend authority and wound prejudice, to rectify errors, and to establish on the solid basis of observation the true elements of anatomical science. Vesalius has been denominated the founder of human anatomy; and though we have seen that in this career he was preceded with honour by Mondino and Berenger, still the small proportion of correct observation which their reverence for Galen and Arabian doctrines allowed them to communicate, will not in a material degree impair the original merits of Vesalius. The errors which he rectified and the additions which he made are so numerous, that it is impossible, in such a sketch as the present, to communicate a just idea of them.

Besides the first good description of the sphenoid bone, he showed that the sternum consists of three portions and the sacrum of five or six; and described accurately the vestibule in the interior of the temporal bone. He not only verified the observation of Etienne on the valves of the hepatic veins, but he described well the vena azygos, and discovered the canal which passes in the foetus between the umbilical vein and the vena cava, since named ductus venosus. He described the omentum, and its connexions with the stomach, the spleen and the colon; gave the first correct views of the structure of the pylorus; remarked the small size of the caecal appendix in man; gave the first good account of the mediastinum and pleura and the fullest description of the anatomy of the brain yet advanced. He appears, however, not to have understood well the inferior recesses; and his account of the nerves is confused by regarding the optic as the first pair, the third as the fifth and the fifth as the seventh.

The labours of Vesalius were not limited to the immediate effect produced by his own writings. His instructions and examples produced a multitude of anatomical inquirers of different characters and varied celebrity, by whom the science was extended and rectified. Of these we cannot speak in detail; but historical justice requires us to notice shortly those to whose exertions the science of anatomy has been most indebted.

Eustachius.

The first that claims attention on this account is Bartolomeo Eustachi of San Severino, near Salerno, who though greatly less fortunate in reputation than his contemporary Vesalius, divides with him the merit of creating the science of human anatomy. He extended the knowledge of the internal ear by rediscovering and describing correctly the tube which bears his name; and if we admit that G. F. Ingrassias anticipated him in the knowledge of the third bone of the tympanal cavity, the stapes, he is still the first who described the internal and anterior muscles of the malleus, as also the stapedius, and the complicated figure of the cochlea. He is the first who studied accurately the anatomy of the teeth, and the phenomena of the first and second dentition. The work, however, which demonstrates at once the great merit and the unhappy fate of Eustachius is his Anatomical Engravings, which, though completed in 1552, nine years after the impression of the work of Vesalius, the author was unable to publish. First communicated to the world in 1714 by G. M. Lancisi, afterwards in 1744 by Cajetan Petrioli, again in 1744 by B. S. Albinus, and subsequently at Bonn in 1790, the engravings show that Eustachius had dissected with the greatest care and diligence, and taken the utmost pains to give just views of the shape, size and relative position of the organs of the human body.

The first seven plates illustrate the history of the kidneys and some of the facts relating to the structure of the ear. The eighth represents the heart, the ramifications of the vena azygos, and the valve of the vena cava, named from the author. In the seven subsequent plates is given a succession of different views of the viscera of the chest and abdomen. The seventeenth contains the brain and spinal cord; and the eighteenth more accurate views of the origin, course and distribution of the nerves than had been given before. Fourteen plates are devoted to the muscles.

Eustachius did not confine his researches to the study of relative anatomy. He investigated the intimate structure of organs with assiduity and success. What was too minute for unassisted vision he inspected by means of glasses. Structure which could not be understood in the recent state, he unfolded by maceration in different fluids, or rendered more distinct by injection and exsiccation. The facts unfolded in these figures are so important that it is justly remarked by Lauth, that if the author himself had been fortunate enough to publish them, anatomy would have attained the perfection of the 18th century two centuries earlier at least. Their seclusion for that period in the papal library has given celebrity to many names which would have been known only in the verification of the discoveries of Eustachius.

Columbus.

M. R. Columbus and G. Fallopius were pupils of Vesalius. Columbus, as his immediate successor in Padua, and afterwards professor at Rome, distinguished himself by rectifying and improving the anatomy of the bones; by giving correct accounts of the shape and cavities of the heart, of the pulmonary artery and aorta and their valves, and tracing the course of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart; by a good description of the brain and its vessels, and by correct understanding of the internal ear, and the first good account of the ventricles of the larynx.

Fallopius.

Fallopius, who, after being professor at Pisa in 1548, and at Padua in 1551, died at the age of forty, studied the general anatomy of the bones; described better than heretofore the the internal ear, especially the tympanum and its osseous ring, the two fenestrae and their communication with the vestibule and cochlea; and gave the first good account of the stylo-mastoid hole and canal, of the ethmoid bone and cells, and of the lacrymal passages. In myology he rectified several mistakes of Vesalius. He also devoted attention to the organs of generation in both sexes, and discovered the utero-peritoneal canal which still bears his name.

Ingrassias.

Osteology nearly at the same time found an assiduous cultivator in Giovanni Filippo Ingrassias ( 1545-1580), a learned Sicilian physician, who, in a skilful commentary on the osteology of Galen, corrected numerous mistakes. He gave the first distinct account of the true configuration of the sphenoid and ethmoid bones, and has the merit of first describing (1546) the third bone of the tympanum, called stapes, though this is also claimed by Eustachius and Fallopius.

Aranzi.

The anatomical descriptions of Vesalius underwent the scrutiny of various inquirers. Those most distinguished by the importance and accuracy of their researches, as well as the temperate tone of their observations, were Julius Caesar Aranzi (1530-1589), anatomical professor for thirty-two years in the university of Bologna, and Constantio Varoli, physician to Pope Gregory XIII. To the former we are indebted for the first correct account of the anatomical peculiarities of the foetus, and he was the first to show that the muscles of the eye do not, as was falsely imagined, arise from the dura mater but from the margin of the optic hole. He also, after considering the anatomical relations of the cavities of the heart, the valves and the great vessels, corroborates the views of Columbus regarding the course which the blood follows in passing from the right to the left side of the heart. Aranzi is the first anatomist who describes distinctly the inferior cornua of the ventricles of the cerebrum, who recognizes the objects by which they are distinguished, and who gives them the name by which they are still known (hippocampus); and his account is more minute and perspicuous than that of the authors of the subsequent century. He speaks at large of the choroid plexus, and gives a particular description of the fourth ventricle, under the name of cistern of the cerebellum, as a discovery of his own.

Varollus.