Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/204

 particularly gratified to learn from this work that "Galen, although classed as a Pagan, unhesitatingly recognizes that it was an all-wise, an all-powerful, an all-good God who created man and all the other animals." Further on, Le Clerc refers to another statement which was made by Galen and which will be found on page 261 of Daremberg's version. It reads as follows:—

If I were to spend any more time in talking about such brutes—by which term he designates men who cannot appreciate the wisdom of God in distributing the different parts of the body in the manner in which He has done this—I should justly incur the blame of sensible persons. They would accuse me of desecrating the account which I am writing, an account which is intended as a hymn of sincere praise of the Creator of man. I believe that true piety consists, not in sacrificing numberless hecatombs nor in burning unlimited quantities of incense and a thousand perfumes, but in first searching out and then making known to my fellow men how great are the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of the Creator.

Galen's work on "The Utility of the Different Parts of the Human Body" is composed of seventeen books, all of which exist to-day in a complete state. Taken together they form, as may be seen by the following list of contents, a remarkably complete treatise on physiology. Books I. and II. are devoted to the hand, forearm and arm (105 pages); Book III. to the thigh, leg and foot (62 pages); Books IV. and V. to the alimentary organs and their accessories (101 pages); Book VI. to the respiratory organs (78 pages); Book VII. to the organs of the voice (67 pages); Book VIII. to the head, the encephalon and the organs of special sense (45 pages); Book IX. to the cranium, the encephalon and the cranial nerves (38 pages); Book X. to the eyes and their accessories (45 pages); Book XI. to the face and more particularly the jaws (55 pages); Book XII. to the neck and the rest of the spinal column (46 pages); Book XIII. to the shoulder and the structure of the spinal column in detail (40 pages); Books XIV. and XV. to the genital organs and the parts in which the foetus develops (70 pages); Book XVI. to the nerves, arteries and veins (43 pages); and Book XVII. Epilogue (11 pages).