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kings, some of whom are stated to have studied medicine, and to have written on anatomy, than the Ptolemies, who might have encouraged these sciences, but who have never been accused of practising them.

The return of the soul to its material mould, after the exact lapse of 1000 years, is a doctrine, which one can hardly imagine to have prevailed even among the people. Shall we then believe that the priests, to whom the medical department was allotted, were deterred by it from dissecting the bodies of the dead?

Diodorus Siculus, who lived long after the decay of genuine learning in Egypt, and who has most grossly misunderstood and misrepresented the mysterious mythology of the Egyptians, cannot always be depended upon, when he describes the manners and customs of that people. He tells us that the embalmer, who was employed to open the body of a person deceased, in order to take out the intestines, was obliged to fly for his life from the presence of the relations and attendants, who assailed him with stones as soon as the operation was over. This tale is far from being confirmed by Porphyry, who states that the embalmer placed the entrails in a chest, made a solemn address to the Sun, and then threw the chest into the Nile. Who indeed can doubt that this account is the more probable of the two? The practice of embalming could hardly have been established for ages in a country, where it was the custom to stone the embalmer.

It is not to be doubted, that it was the general usage of the Egyptians to place the bodies of the dead in the catacombs, and to observe this ceremony with religious veneration. But it does not thence follow that every dead body was placed there. Diodorus himself admits, that the bodies of those, who had not been acquitted of their crimes, and who had not paid their debts, were not honored with interment. The ceremony performed, and the judgment pronounced in such cases, are singular enough. What became of the bodies? The historian gravely tells us, that they were kept in the houses of friends and relations, who with great devotion placed these unsepulcred bodies upright against the walls of their chambers. Herodotus and Plutarch inform us, that when the Egyptians gave an entertainment, a corpse, or a skeleton, was generally to be seen in a corner. These Greek wri

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ters could not say less than that this custom was observed, in order to remind the guests of the uncertainty of human life. But how is it possible to credit such stories? The Egyptians were a superstitious, but they were also a polished people. What citizen of Memphis, or Thebes, would have thought of transforming his bedchamber into a catacomb, or of making a church-yard of his diningroom? Is it not to libel a people, to suppose such monstrous customs general among them? But since in all events it is apparent that many bodies were not interred, and that those, which did not bear between their lips a fee for Charon, were left without a tomb, we may surely presume that subjects could not have been wanting to the anatomist.

If the dissection of dead bodies had been shocking to the prejudices of the people, can we believe that the first Greek king of Egypt would have been so impolitic as to permit it at Alexandria The dissection of human bodies was never practised in Greece. As far back as the time of Homer, every pious Greek must have held such a custom in abhorrence, since, according both to popular faith and poetical authority, the souls of the unburied dead were doomed to wander for one hundred years on the banks of the Styx. I will not deny, that the fable of Charon, as it was told in Greece, was derived from Egypt, where the bodies of the dead were ferried over the Nile, for the purpose of being interred in the catacombs. The Greeks however appear to have been more serious about the fiction, than the Egyptians were about the fact. When the judges, appointed to decide upon the rights of the deceased to obtain the honors of public sepulture, pronounced an unfavorable sentence, the Egyptians seem to have taken the body home again, and to have disposed of it as they thought proper, and may upon some occasions, as the Greeks assert, have kept the corpse to exhibit it to their guests before they went to dinner; though, I must own, I think it rather improbable that this could have been a general custom. The Greeks, on the other hand, were compelled both by law and by the influence of prejudice to bury the dead. At Athens, (I believe it is mentioned in one of the orations of Demosthenes) the magistrates were obliged to bury immediately, and at their own expense, such persons as died without money and without friends. If a traveller found a dead body

on his way, it was his duty, as Ælian intimates, instantly to cover it with earth. Is it not remarkable then, that Ptolemy Soter had no sooner mounted the throne of Egypt, than he authorised the Greek physicians, who had followed him into that country, and who had apparently forgotten the prejudices of their own, to dissect human bodies in the most public manner? Would he have ventured to have done so, if the dissection of human bodies had been considered by his new subjects as impious and criminal? Is it not rather to be concluded, that such a practice had been already established by the anatomists of Egypt? Tradition tells us, that the ancient kings of Egypt practised medicine, studied anatomy, and also dissected the bodies of the dead. Are we to refuse this testimony of tradition, merely in order to do honor to the Greeks, and to give them the credit of being the first who had examined the internal structure of the human frame?

Herophilus was the friend and disciple of Praxagoras, who, according to Galen (de Dissect. Matr.) florished at Cos, a short time. after Hippocrates. I am inclined to fix the death of this great physician about the 106th Olympiad, 356 years B. C., though by some it is placed earlier, and by others five years later. Diocles and Praxagoras succeeded Hippocrates. If then Herophilus studied under Praxagoras, he could not have been very young, when he settled at Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy Soter, who did not assume the diadem of Egypt, until 324 or 323 years before our æra. It is besides to be observed, that Herophilus was the friend and contemporary of Eudemus, who is mentioned in the Plut. of Aristophanes. It must have been at the second representation of that comedy, in the 4th year of the 97th Olympiad, that the name of Eudemus was introduced into it. Still his age must have been very great when he joined Herophilus at Alexandria, since this could not have happened sooner than the 114th Olympiad. The reputation of Herophilus appears to have been already established about the 110th Olympiad, as it was then that he vanquished in argument Diodorus Cronus the dialectician. Upon the whole then I am obliged to conclude, that he must have been considerably above 60 years of age, when he settled at Alexandria. It is expressly stated by Galen, that Erasistratus was already a very old man, when he quitted the Court of Seleucus for that of Ptolemy.

I find it generally admitted that these two great anatomists held no very high rank as physicians. Herophilus blindly followed the precepts and the erroneous pathology of Praxagoras; and Erasistratus showed himself but a timid disciple of the school of Cos.

Is it not then rather surprising, that two physicians not very eminently skilled in their profession, should have begun at a very advanced period of life, to dissect human bodies at Alexandria, and should have finished by publishing such anatomical discoveries as have excited the admiration of all succeeding ages? Is it not likewise remarkable, that the anatomical researches of the Alexandrian Greeks commenced and ceased with them? Of the followers of Herophilus Galen speaks with contempt. They were occupied with trifles; and, like their master, (Plin. L. xix.) wasted much precious time in talking of the modulations, the rhythmical cadences, and the metrical laws of pulsations. It is a more serious charge against the Herophilean sect, that some of its members, while they adopted the faulty pathology of their leader, affected to treat with contempt the opinions of Hippocrates. Who can regret the loss of their works, which had deservedly become rare even in the time of Galen? The science of medicine soon fell into utter decay among them. Callimachus wrote a book about the bad effects produced upon the nerves by the scent of flowers. The patients of Apollonius Mys were directed by that empiric, as Plutarch tells us, to eat salt-beef to increase their appetite. Of Andreas it is enough to know, that he wrote a little pamphlet called Narther, or the box of unguents, and had the impudence to libel Hippocrates.

The Erasistrateans seem to have been not more skilful than their rivals. Strato of Berytus wrote a volume to prove the danger of having recourse to venesection in any case whatever; and assigned as a reason for his opinion, that it is very difficult to distinguish the difference between a vein and an artery.

Of the surgeons of the Alexandrian school we know little, except that they killed Antiochus the VIth in cutting him for the stone; that Sostratus employed much time in making bandages, to which he gave whimsical names; and that Amyntas, who settled at Rhodes, invented a curious ligature for keeping together the bones of a broken nose.

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The knowledge of anatomy suddenly displayed by Herophilus and Erasistratus, their great age when they began to dissect human bodies, and the rapid decline of the science among their countrymen who succeeded them, induce me to suspect, that they borrowed more from the Egyptians, than has been generally supposed. The keys to the hieroglyphics had probably been destroyed, together, with the genuine writings of Thoth, during the persecution of 40 years. But many traditions and fragments must have remained among the priests, not only of historical details, but of scientific systems. Most certainly if we can once admit it as probable, that Herophilus and Erasistratus were guided in their anatomical researches, by the scattered traditions of the Egyptians, we shall be better able to account both for their discoveries, and for some of the mistakes which they made, than we are at present. Let us suppose, for instance, that among the traditions which the priests still preserved of the physiological systems of their ancestors, there was one which bore that the nerves are the vehicles of sensation, and take their origin in the brain and the medulla. We can then easily conceive, that Herophilus, having heard of this tradition, ascertained the fact by dissection. But if this physician made the discovery by his own observations, and without any clue to guide him, how can we account for his astonishing ignorance of some other branches of anatomy more obvious and equally important? How can we suppose, that a man, who by unremitting attention to.. the internal structure of the human frame had traced the nerves to their roots in the cerebral and medullary substances, should admit it as possible that the veins have their origin in the liver? It really seems as if some tradition had guided him to the investigation of the first subject; and that not having happened to hear any thing of the second, he had left it where he found it.

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Erasistratus knew more of the vascular system than Herophilus; but he taught that the arteries are void of blood, and are inflated by a vital air, or spirit (TVEμa xov). This spirit he supposed to be separated in the lungs from the air respired, and to be conveyed by the arteries to every part of the body. Now this whimsical doctrine could not have been founded on observation. It must have been a physiological dream composed of ideas, which by want of their proper links no longer followed each other in a VOL. XVIII. CI. JI. NO. XXXV.

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