Page:The Harveian oration 1896.djvu/35

THE ANATOMY OF GALEN

31 knowledge, and might have avoided some of his more serious errors ; but his resolute independence forbade him to describe what he had not seen. I quote a few instances to show his method of argument.

The most important error of Galen and the old anato- mists was no doubt that of attributing the origin of all veins to the liver. Nothing was a greater hindrance to a correct idea of the circulation. But this, as a prima facie view, was very natural. When we open the body after death has taken place by the ordinary asphyxial method we find all the veins full of blood, and all apparently com- municating with the liver, the systemic veins by the hepatic, the portal system separately. Moreover, the connexion of the umbilical vein with the liver in the foetus was also noticed. This view was not universally accepted. Galen’s first instructor in anatomy, Pelops, taught that all blood- vessels originated in the brain — a view which the scep- ticism of the pupil even at that early age refused to accept 1. The doctrine of Aristotle was that all blood-vessels origi- nated in the heart, the vena cava and its branches supply- ing the right side of the body, and the aorta and its branches supplying the left side. Aristotle’s views were maintained by contemporaries of Galen, whose answer to them was that there was one system of veins unconnected with the heart — namely, the portal system, which com- municated only with the liver. ‘ This,’ he says, ‘ I have demonstrated to those desirous of knowing the truth, and they have been astonished at the error of those who main- tained that all veins came from the heart V Galen’s argument is perfectly sound from his facts, though it con- firmed him in an erroneous conclusion. What Aristotle’s answer would have been we do not know. The Peripatetics, the followers of Aristotle in Galen’s time, seem to have had no answer except a priori arguments ; in fact, Galen’s argument was never answered except by Harvey.

It is well known that Erasistratus and all anatomists

1 De Placitis, lib. vi. cap. 3 ; Kuhn, v. p. 527.


 * Ibid., cap. 5 ; Kuhn, v. p. 542.