Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th, 1899 (IA b24975941).pdf/10

 furnished with all the practical instruction possible. Anatomy, the groundwork of medicine, was in an advanced state, and was taught by dissection of the human body. The practice of embalming had been followed in Egypt for centuries before the time when, as we read in Genesis, the body of Jacob was embalmed by the physicians; and it is not sur- prising that a knowledge of anatomy and disease should have first attained exactitude in a land where "post-mortem examinations" were of hourly occurrence.

It is impossible not to believe that these frequent observations of the dead must have led to the accumulation of facts which were of value to the living.

In the centuries immediately preceding and fol- lowing the Christian Era there was an enthusiasm for natural knowledge, and the great ones of the earth vied with each other in the collection of books and the provision of facilities for students. In Pergamos, the birth-place of Galen, was a famous library and medical school; and Galen, we are told, studied not only here but also at Alexandria, Corinth, and Smyrna, where (as probably elsewhere) similar facilities existed.

The reader of Celsus cannot fail to be struck with his accurate records of cases, and to be convinced that by this author (as probably by his contem- poraries) observation counted for much and mere authority for little. It is well to remember that