Galen : two bibliographical demonstrations in the library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 9th December, 1891, and 30th March, 1893 / by James Finlayson.

James Finlayson

Date:: 1895

Credit: Galen : two bibliographical demonstrations in the library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 9th December, 1891, and 30th March, 1893 / by James Finlayson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$stadium, carrying it along by the impetus of its own motion, the flesh being in a state of putrefaction, but the bones still cohering, until it has been caught in the nooks of some elevated piece of ground and landed there. When such an occurrence has happened,^ a medical man should carefully prepare it [i.e., the cadaver] for the teaching of his pupils. Sometimes, also, we see the skeleton of a robber-0 lying on a hillside, a little way off the road, who, when making an attack, has been killed by some traveller in self defence. No inhabitant of the district would order the body to be buried, but would rather, pursuing it with hate, take a pleasure in leaving it to be devoured by birds; and these having, for a couple of days, been removing the flesh, have left a dried skeleton, as it were, to anyone willing to examine it for instruction. But if no opportunity of this kind turn up, you can still avail yourself of the individual bones of dissected monkeys, having first removed the muscles ; for which purpose you will select those monkeys which most closely resemble the human figure (Kiihn, tom. ii, p. 220). One of the most important points demonstrated by Galen was the presence of blood, as distinguished from air or vital spirits, in the arteries or aorta. This he contended for by experiment and by argument. The following graphic account is quoted from Dr. Kidd's paper. It is quite a literal trans- lation, except from being put in the third person:— \Blood in Aorta.^—There are some teachers, Galen says, who are in the habit of advancing opinions which they are not prepared, and, therefore, not inclined, to put to the test. Such was the case with a certain teacher of anatomy, who, having declared that the aorta contains no blood, and having been earnestly desired by several ardent pupils of Galen to exhibit the requisite demonstration, they themselves ottering animals for the experiment, declined, after various subterfuges, to satisfy them without a suitable remuneration, on which the pupils immediately raised a subscription among themselves for the purpose, to the amount of a thousand drachmm [equivalent probably to about twenty-five or thirty pounds of our money]. The professor being thus compelled to commence the 20 In Cheselden's Osteographia (London, 1733) there is a fine plate, as a frontispiece, representing Galen contemplating the skeleton of a robber.$