Page:EB1911 - Volume 01.djvu/979

Rh 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.

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.

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, &mdash;and though the school of Salerno, in the territory of the latter, was still in high repute,&mdash;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.

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