Herophilus Metamorphosis

Any attempts in order to understand the structure of living things go as far back as Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher and biologist. His dissection and study of animals and plants led to his formation of a classification system that was used by scientists for almost 2,000 years.

Some of the first human dissections were executed by Greek anatomists and physicians Herophilus and his apprentice Erasistratus. Herophilus made various discoveries and created several theories of the brain. He made it possible to tell the cerebrum from the cerebellum, suggested that the brain was the seat of intelligence, and identified and named several structures of the brain, some of which are still named after the names he gave them. He discovered that

Egyptians believed that a body needed to remain whole to enter the afterlife, and they engaged in the practice of mummification.

Some of the most important contributions to the science of anatomy were made by Greek physician Claudius Galen (A.D. 131–200). He very skillfully dissected and observed all kinds of animals but sometimes mistakenly applied what he saw in the animals to systems in the human body. Even so he was the first to observe that for every muscle that causes a joint to bend, there is an opposing muscle that places the joint to its original

Paralysis resulting from the cutting of the spinal cord and the urinary system in which urine passes from the kidneys to the bladder. In his observations about the heart and blood vessels, however, Galen mistakenly believed that blood was formed in the liver and was circulated throughout the body by the veins. When anatomy research stopped for many centuries, Galen's teachings remained as the most important medical authority. When human dissections were legalized in the sixteenth century, the long-held theories of Galen were overturned by the work of Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius. Vesalius, who founded modern scientific anatomy, noted obvious conflicts between what he discovered in his dissections of the human body and what Galen had described. He stated that Galen's errors resulted from only having done animal dissections instead of working on human bodies.

In 1543 Vesalius wrote and published one of the most important books in medical history and the world's first recorded educational book on anatomy. On the Structure of the Human Body. The book contains detailed anatomical descriptions of all parts of the human body, directions dissections, and well-drawn illustrations. Vesalius believed that accurate knowledge of the human body could only be gained by performing human dissections. In his book, he set forth an objective, scientific method of conducting medical research