Both these men and their followers broke with the established Hippocratic theory. Although lacking sound anatomical and physiological knowledge, they nonetheless sought to explain symptoms and complaints by reference to observed morphological changes. Herophilos is believed to be among the first to pursue anatomy as a science, constantly trying to correlate structure with disease, while his contemporary, Erasistratos, was more a physiologist than an anatomist. The Roman writers Celsus and Tertullian stated that the Alexandrians not only dissected bodies of the dead, but also performed vivisection on living criminals (as part of the punishment). Unfortunately, their writings are all lost, and we know of their work only second hand. The first dissections of humans are attributed to the Alexandrian scientists Herophilos (335–280 BC) and Erasistratos (304–250). Similar circumstances apply to Aristotle (384–322), who can be considered as one the founders of zoology. Animal dissection was practised in this time, but human dissection was not part of medical practice. Despite the flaws of this theory, Hippocratic writers left remarkably clear descriptions of many pathological features, such as wound inflammation, tumours, haemorrhoids, malaria and tuberculosis (Fig. With his humoural theory of the nature of disease, Hippocrates influenced medicine until the Renaissance, and beyond. The ideas related to Hippocrates of Cos (460–370? BC) and his school had an enormous impact on Greek and Roman medicine. It was not until the last three centuries BC that the Alexandrian Greeks, heavily influenced by Hippocrates, made lasting contributions to anatomy and pathology Today, we know from recent investigations of mummies that bone tumours and tuberculosis of the spine occurred in Ancient Egypt, as well as atherosclerosis, gallstones and abscesses, yet there is little evidence that the Egyptians developed any systematic knowledge of these phenomena. However, despite the many thousands of ritualistic and painstaking embalmings during nearly 5,000 years of successive Egyptian dynasties, these surviving papyri contain only a slender body of information on pathological anatomy. These records contain information on different types of bone injuries, trachoma (Nile valley), ulcerating lumps (cancer?), parasites and other diseases. As a result, museums around the world contain marble and terra cotta statues expressing processes that can now be interpreted as examples of hernias, breast tumours, varicose veins, ulcers and other diseases.ĭocumentation of disease really begins with Egyptian medicine, where the most important sources are the Edwin Smith Papyrus (17th century BC) and Papyrus Ebers (about 1550 BC). In addition, over the last century, archaeological discoveries increasingly have been linked with palaeopathological investigations, furnishing a wealth of observations of gross external features of disease, from prehistoric peoples to the present time. For obvious reasons, those gross features of disease that were directly visible, either in life, or after death in funereal preparations, came first to notice. In fact, the history of pathology has roots in common with all other medical specialties, arising in antiquity when men reasoned about the physical ailments that afflicted them. There is no single event, no ‘Big Bang’, that demarcates the beginning of pathology as a defined area of interest for early medical practitioners. The Queen to Alice in ‘Through the Looking Glass’. “It is a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”.
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