Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/849

Rh HISTORY.] ANATOMY 805 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 univer sally 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, abian Anatomical learning, thus neglected byEuropean nations, ysicians. 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 Omrruads and Abbassides, in which the propagation of Islamism was the pretext for the extinction of learning and civilisation, and the most remorseless system of rapine and destruction, the Saracens began, under the latter dynasty of princes, to recognise the value of science, and especially of that which prolongs life, heals disease, and alleviates the pain of wounds and injuries. The caliph Almansor combined with his official knowledge of Moslem law the successful cultiva tion of astronomy; but to his grandson Almamun, the seventh prince of the line of the Abbassides, 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 patronised speedily raised a succession of learned Arabians. The residue of the rival family of the Ommiads, 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 Baghdad bore testimony to the zeal and liberality of the Abbassides, the munificence of the Onimiades 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 per son who touches a corpse ; the rules of Islamism forbid dissection ; and whatever their instructors taught was borrowed from the Greeks. Abu-Bekr Al-Rasi, Abu-AH Ibn-Sina, Abul-Cassem, and Abu-Walid Ibn-Roshd, the Rhazes, Avicenna, Abulcasis, and Averrhoes of European authors, are their most celebrated names in medicine ; yet to none of these can the historian with justice ascribe any anatomical merit. Al-Rasi has indeed left descriptions of the eye, of the ear and its meatus, and of the heart ; and Ibn-Sina, Abul-Cassem, and Ibn-Roshd 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 neri; 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 study ing 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 ; School o: and after this we begin to approach happier times. The Bologna, university of Bologna, which, as a school of literature and law, was already celebrated in the twelfth century, became, in the course of the following one, not less distinguished for its medical teachers. Though the misgovernment of 1222-24 the municipal rulers of Bologna had disgusted both teachers and stud^iits, 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 1241-71, repute, it appears, from the testimony of 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. Notwith standing 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, Roland, Jamerio, Bruno, and Lanfranc ; 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 fourteenth 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, under whose Mondino 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, 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 Ibn-Sina and Al- Rasi. He died, according to Tiraboschi, in 1325. Mondino divides the body into three cavities (venires), 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 append ages. 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 sipliac, in imitation of the Arabians, the omentum under that of zirbus, and the mesentery or euckarus as distinct from