the period of time about which I am now writing, and for many centuries afterward, there existed among all classes of the community a very strong prejudice against dissecting human corpses. And even Galen himself appears to have shared this prejudice, for, in spite of his intense eagerness to gain a more perfect knowledge of human anatomy, he apparently did not dare to undertake any such investigation, even when a favorable opportunity for so doing presented itself, as it did on the occasion to which he refers in the following brief extract taken from one of his treatises:—
A carelessly constructed sepulchre on the banks of a river had
been undermined during a season of flood, and the corpse thus set
free had floated down stream a short distance, until it finally
lodged on the shore of a small cove. Passing near by I had the
opportunity of inspecting this corpse. The fleshy parts had already
disappeared to a great extent through the process of decomposition,
but the bones were still held together by their fibrous connections.
The picture presented to the eye was that of a human skeleton
specially prepared for the instruction of young physicians. On
another occasion, a few steps from the main road, I came across
the dead body of a robber who had been killed by the traveler
whose money he had attempted to steal. The peasants of that
neighborhood were not willing to bury the corpse of such a bad
man, and they accordingly allowed it to remain at the spot where
it was first discovered. In the course of the following two days,
as might be expected, the vultures removed every particle of flesh
from the bones, so that, when I saw what remained of the body,
the only thing visible was a nicely cleaned skeleton.
(Le Clerc: Histoire de la Médecine, p. 711.)
Here were two excellent opportunities for gaining the
additional knowledge of human anatomy which Galen so
much desired, but he evidently was not at all disposed to
avail himself of them—doubtless because his mind was
deeply imbued with the feeling that any such interference
on his part would be a sacrilegious act. Under the circumstances,
therefore, there was nothing left for him to do but
to utilize animals for purposes of dissection, and more
particularly apes, whose anatomy very closely resembles
