History of Anatomy and Physiology: the Classical and Medieval Periods
Anatomy is the science of the structure of animal bodies, either living or dead. Physiology is the science of the function, purpose, or action of living animal tissue. Both sciences usually study either humans alone or humans in relation to other animals.
Major skeletal, muscular, and even visceral structures were identified in many prehistoric and ancient cultures. The ancient Hindu medical and surgical system, Ayurveda, was based on extensive knowledge of anatomy and pharmacy. Anatomical models were being used in India by 700 B.C. Also advanced in surgical anatomy were Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoan Crete, and pre-Columbian Peru. The ancient Chinese had a fair understanding of physiology, but little of anatomy, because human dissection and most surgeries were forbidden. Chinese medicine attempted to preserve health by maintaining balance between two primal energies, yin (passive) and yang (active), and among five fundamental substances: fire, earth, water, metal, and wood.
Similarly, the humoral theory of the ancient Greeks advocated the harmonious proportion of four elements: fire (hot and dry), earth (dry and cold), water (cold and moist), and air (moist and hot); four qualities: dryness (fire and earth), cold (earth and water), moistness (water and air), and heat (air and fire); the four humors: yellow bile (hot and dry), black bile (dry and cold), phlegm (cold and moist), blood (moist and hot); the four temperaments: choleric (predominance of yellow bile), melancholic (predominance of black bile), phlegmatic (predominance of phlegm), and sanguine (predominance of blood); and the four seasons: summer (hot and dry), autumn (dry and cold), winter (cold and moist), spring (moist and hot). The four elements were correlated with the astrological fire signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius), earth signs (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn), water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces), and air signs (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius), thus providing the basis of an occult influence on medicine and science that lasted into the eighteenth century.
Several ancient Greek physicians pursued empirical studies of anatomy and physiology. About 500 B.C. Alcmaeon of Croton studied comparative anatomy and differentiated arteries from veins. About 400 B.C. Democritus advocated the preformation theory of human generation and regarded the human brain as the seat of thought. Herophilus of Chalcedon (fl. 300 B.C.) performed public dissections of humans and animals. In Alexandria with Erasistratus (fl. 275 B.C.), he continued studies of the nervous and circulatory systems.
In the West, the earliest important codifier of anatomy and physiology as separate sciences was Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). Works about anatomy and physiology are also attributed to "The Father of Medicine," Hippocrates (ca. 460-375 B.C.), but, unlike Aristotle, his interests were mainly clinical rather than purely scientific. Thus anatomy and physiology are subordinate to therapy in his writings. Both Aristotle and Hippocrates contributed to founding the science of embryology.
Aristotle, the world's first meticulous biologist, conducted his own experiments and advocated that others likewise do so. Nevertheless, in a very un-Aristotelian way, his results and those of his school were enshrined in the centuries after his death while his rigorous empirical method was mostly ignored.
Galen (ca. 130-ca. 200) compiled all medical, surgical, anatomical, physiological, and zoological knowledge up to his time, including some of his own observations and discoveries, into a gigantic multivolume work that dominated Western philosophy of medicine for at least one thousand and probably thirteen or fourteen hundred years. Few dared to question the authority of Galen until the Renaissance.
With the fall of Rome in 476, Byzantine Emperor Justinian closing the Platonic Academy and banning non-Christian scholarship in 529, and the Dark Ages pervading Western Europe from the fifth to the ninth centuries, the locus of Western civilization shifted to the Arabic world and Persia. Latin and Greek classics were translated into Arabic. Islamic science, medicine, and mathematics were the best in the world from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. Al-Kindi (800-873) studied the physiology of vision and wrote 22 books on medicine. Albucasis (936-1013) performed human dissections and described hemophilia. Avicenna (980 ndash; 1037), the Arabic Galen, studied the functions of the heart, lungs, and eyes. Avenzoar (ca. 1092-1162) advanced knowledge of the abdominal viscera. Ibn-al-Nafis (ca. 1210-1288) discovered pulmonary circulation.
With the exception of the School of Salerno, few bright lights existed in medieval European medical science. The Western European shift away from the slavish acceptance of ancient authority toward the renewed empirical study of nature was led by Albertus Magnus (ca. 1193-1280) and Roger Bacon (1214-1292). William of Saliceto (1210-1280), professor of surgery at the University of Bologna, performed his own human dissections and wrote a treatise on surgical anatomy that was authoritative for 300 years. Henri de Mondeville (ca. 1260-1320), Mondino de Luzzi (ca. 1275-1326), Johannes de Ketham (d. ca. 1490), and Giacomo Berengario da Capri (ca. 1460-ca. 1530) also contributed to medieval anatomy. Gabriele de Zerbis (1445-1505) wrote Liber anathomie corporis humani et singulorum membrorum illius, one of the most accurate anatomical texts of its time. The earliest anatomical text printed in English was the 1525 translation of a German surgical handbook by Hieronymus Brunschwig (1450-ca. 1512).
In medieval Europe, some progress occurred in anatomy, but little in physiology. Some might argue that the science of physiology was reborn through the Swiss alchemist Philipp Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, known as "Paracelsus" (1493-1541), who rejected Galenic authority, Arabic medicine, and the humoral theory, teaching instead that life and its processes depend upon chemistry and the environment.
The work of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) marked the end of medieval thought about anatomy and physiology. This remarkable polymathic genius described capillary action, drew the famous "Vitruvian Man" to demonstrate ideal human proportion, filled his notebooks with scrupulously accurate anatomical sketches from secret dissections, advanced the science of embryology, cast the brain ventricles in wax, and invented the technique of cross-sectional anatomy. His direct empirical studies of the human body prepared the way for not only surgical anatomists such as Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), but also artists such as Michelangelo (1475-1564).
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