Dissections and Vivisections

Michael Lahanas

Griechische Medizin: Obduktionen und Sektionen am lebendigen Körper

Herophilus and Erasistratus proceeded in by far the best way: they cut open living men - criminals they obtained out of prison from the kings and they observed, while their subjects still breathed, parts that nature had previously hidden, their position, color, shape , size, arrangement, hardness, softness, smoothness, points of contact, and finally the processes and recesses of each and whether any part is inserted into another or receives the part of another into itself. Celsus (Κέλσος ), Roman medical writer, On Medicine I Proem 23


Dissection of a pig with “instruments” as used by Descartes and probably very similar by Galen.

There is a story that Democritus known from his atomic theory dissected animals. He said that he was able to found the cause of madness in animals. The Abderites called

  • Roger French, Medicine before Science, The Business of Medicine from the Middle Ages to the Enlighenment, Cambridge University Press 2003.

  • Ancient Greece

    Medieval Greece / Byzantine Empire

    Modern Greece