Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/127

 THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN between the heart and a ligated artery, but not beyond it. Like the Alexandrians, he inferred that the arteries and veins anastomose through certain invisible and extremely small vessels. He also showed that an excised heart will beat outside the body, a common incident at the sacrificial rites, and good evidence that its beat does not depend upon the nervous system. In these matters Galen gave to medicine that method of putting questions to nature and of arranging things so that nature may answer them, which we call experiments." ^^ In the depths of his mind, Galen was seeking to combine Hippocrates and Aristotle. He drew from the former the fruitful conception of the vital unity of the human organism, vital in its power of living and nourishing itself, and when sick or wounded of regaining its normal state through the vis medicatrix naturae, the restoring power of its own nature. The human organism was strictly a unity: the singleness of its life could not be divided. From Hippocrates he took also the four! humors, and, as it were, from any source one chooses, the four elements of fire, water, earth and air, and the four primary physical qual' ities of cold and warm and dry and moist i [105] '