In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. The Fifteenth Book of the writing of Galen on Anatomical Dissection.

INTRODUCTION. EXPOSURE OF SUPERFICIAL NERVES AND MUSCLES OF THE NECK.

Galen says: when surgeons speak of pairs of nerve roots, they apply the name not only to those pairs of nerves arising from the brain, but also to the paired nerves, growing out from the spinal cord, since the nerve roots are found on both sides, I mean on the right side and on the left. For branches break off either from the brain itself or from the spinal cord itself and become firmer and more dense, being braced together, and consequently they become different from the root from which they took origin. The texture of the spinal cord is just the same as that of the brain from which it starts out, but it is more indurated than the brain tissue. The degree of increase in this induration corresponds to the degree in which the nerve arising from the spinal cord is more indurated than the cord itself. It makes no difference to the exposition of Anatomy which we have in mind whether, considering the nerves arising from the spinal cord which we propose to mention here, we name the spinal cord according to the customary usage of the Greek language ‘vertebral marrow’, or simply ‘marrow’. For Plato applies the term ‘marrow’ to the spinal cord, which he calls ‘vertebral marrow’, and to the brain also, which he calls ‘cranial marrow’.

THIRD AND FOURTH VENTRICLES, AQUEDUCT OF THE MID BRAIN, AND PINEAL GLAND.

If you now repeat the movement of that body [the vermis] which covers the passage and, simultaneously with this movement, you raise it upwards somewhat, then you can see the end of the passage which opens out into the posterior ventricle. This is closed up and covered in by the vermiform process [vermis inferior] which, from behind, forms a sort of lid for it [the ventricle] as soon as you draw back the whole of the body which covers the passage towards the rear, and it [the ventricle] opens itself as soon as this body goes forwards. This is the moment to introduce from in front into the posterior ventricle whatever smooth cylindrical instrument you have available, the calibre of which corresponds to the opening of the passage, whether now the instrument be made of wood, copper, iron, silver or gold. Should it be of wood, then it should be first and foremost of boxwood, since this wood is strong and very smooth. The Greeks are accustomed to name all instruments of such use with the generic term sounds. For my part, I have sometimes in the past, when I had no other thing at hand, inserted into this passage from the middle ventricle the writing reed, though I did not introduce the tapered end with which one writes, for this is sharp, but the other rounded-off end, and I pressed it steadily and gradually onwards, until I brought it into the posterior ventricle without boring through any part of the surroundings. Do you now turn your attention to and consider particularly what I am about to describe for you.

In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. The Twelfth Book contains a summary of the structure of the generative organs. The Twelfth Book of the writing on Anatomical Dissection.

THE GONADS. NOMENCLATURE OF GLANDS.

In this Book I describe the structure of the generative organs. The significance of the anatomists’ expression ‘generative organs’ is the organs which are designed for the generation of children. They are the uterus and the testicles [ovaries], the penis of the male and the vulva of the female, together with the seminal ducts [uterine tubes and vasa deferentia]. For these are organs which are found in males and in females, though some say that the female possesses no testicles. This, then, is the first matter of which we must speak. For this is not one of those theories which are substantiated only by cogent argument, but it can be proved sound by visual inspection. This is something done by those peoples amongst the Greeks who practice witchcraft, and it also occurs among us in many districts, such as Cappadocia and elsewhere. Thus the village folk take sows, and tie them upon ladders. Then upon both sides, I mean on the right and left side, in the situation of the flanks, they make an incision in the longitudinal direction of these, of an extent which renders it possible to pull out the ovaries, of which they must know the situation, so that the incision is not made too long.

GALEN ‘ON ANATOMICAL PROCEDURES’

The treatise of which the latter part is here presented in English translation has, like some other works of Galen, experienced a chequered history, most of which we learn from Galen himself, in the opening chapter of the work, which is in the nature of a preface, and in a passage at the end of Book xi (below, pp. 107–8). It began as a comparatively brief treatise, in two Books, written at the request of Flavius Boëthus in A.D. 165. Later, after the death of Boëthus (in or shortly before A.D. 169), the work became unobtainable, since Galen's own copies in Rome had been destroyed in a fire, and Galen's friends accordingly pressed him to rewrite it. This he eventually did, but he took advantage of the opportunity to replan it on a much larger scale, and to include in it the fruits of his latest observations. He began this task in A.D. 177, and it is to this year that Dr Singer assigns the entire work. In Dr Singer's view, the treatise is not a literary work, written down as such, but rather ‘a shorthand record of actual lectures, though doubtless lightly revised by its author’. It is certainly true that there are numerous passages in which Galen seems to be addressing a pupil or an audience, and the considerable amount of repetition, wearisome to the modern reader, would be readily understandable in a text which is a verbatim transcript of lectures.

In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, whose aid we invoke. Summary [of the contents] of the Eleventh Book of the work on Anatomical Dissection. There will be discussed the parts of the larynx in the bodies of apes; the structure of the muscles of the larynx; the organic parts which adjoin the larynx in the bodies of swine; what sort of form, in the bodies of swine, has the bone resembling the letter Λ in the Greek script [the hyoid bone]; the root of the tongue, the activities of the tongue, and its uses; the nerve [vagus] of the neck in the living animal.

SUPERFICIAL DISSECTION OF THE NECK, ANATOMY OF THE LARYNGEAL CARTILAGES, AND OBSERVATIONS ON BILATERAL SYMMETRY IN THE BODY.

Insofar as the organic parts of the larynx are concerned you must dissect them in the following manner. First, it is necessary that you remove the M. platysma, the thin muscle called the muscular carpet. In this way you will be able to observe the muscles that go from the larynx and the hyoid bone to the sternum, and you will see the spongy flesh [submandibular salivary gland] lying on each side of the wide part of the mandible. On each side there is this ‘flesh’ which forms a single unit of considerable size.

After this flesh, when it has been removed, and all the fascial coverings reflected which clothe and veil the entire laryngeal region, there appears the muscle of the mandible which one rightly calls ‘tendinous', since its intermediate part is tendinous and fleshless [M. digastricus]. Follow well, listener, what I say and expound to you.

In the name of God the compassionate, the merciful. The Tenth Book of Galen's work on Anatomy. In this Book, the eyes, tongue, lips and the movements of deglutition will be surveyed.

INTRODUCTION. DISSECTION OF THE ORBIT AND ITS CONTENTS.

In the immediately preceding book we have described the particular parts of the brain and of the spinal cord, and the damage which can befall both. This should suffice in order to make clear the method which, when followed in dissection, reveals best to visual inspection those parts and the injuries which they suffer. As for these latter, they are to be seen by vivisection, while in other respects the descriptions apply in part to dead animals alone.

In this Book I now describe the method of dissecting the structures of the face, and of the whole of the head, including the symptomatic changes which are to be observed in each one of them. I make my start with those parts where symptomatic changes follow when one divides them, bruises them, ligatures them with a cord, presses them with the fingers or twists them or stretches them unduly far. For when they are exposed to such conditions, the [normal] activity of such organs will be either completely or partially suppressed.

Let us assume now that the brain has been exposed, in that the enveloping bones have been removed, as we have previously explained.

In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. The Thirteenth section of Galen's work on Anatomy, translated by Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq.

INTRODUCTION.

I will here explain to you how to train yourself to dissect veins and arteries in the best way. In my descriptions here also I shall propose as my intention and my aim to make my discourse clear and lucid to such a degree that it may be possible for one who studies them without ever having seen the dissection of an animal at all, after he has followed the account of the dissection of the veins and arteries as I have given it to him, to apply himself unaided to the study of them all.

DIRECTIONS FOR OPENING THE PERITONEAL CAVITY. THE GREATER AND LESSER OMENTA AND THE VESSELS THEY CONTAIN.

All anatomists uniformly call the veins and arteries specifically ‘vessels’. And I do not think that anyone's lack of understanding of anatomy will extend so far that, when he hears me say: ‘make an incision from the end of the sternum as far as the two pubic bones, an incision which passes straight over the body of the animal’, he will not understand what I mean. Rather he will follow and keep to my instructions. There is no one who does not know that when he sets his hand to making an incision, in the first place the skin only will be incised, and that beneath the skin there extends a covering which intervenes between it and what is subjacent to it.

In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. The Fourteenth Book of the work of Galen on Anatomical Dissection. In it the anatomy of the nerves arising from the brain will be discussed.

MACERATION OF SKELETONS FOR STUDY OF NERVE-FORAMINA. NOTES ON OTHER ANATOMISTS AND THEIR VIEWS.

Galen says: The dissection of the nerves is a toilsome and difficult matter for many reasons. Among these is the fact that a thorough examination of the nerves springing from the brain and the spinal cord cannot be made unless you cut away, as completely as may be necessary, the bones which surround their sites of origin. But if we do cut away those bones, though the parts of the nerves that encircle their inner portion remain intact without having been cut or torn through, I mean the parts which emerge from the thicker of the two meninges of the brain and of the spinal marrow, what lies in the middle of these parts, which are like bark round the wood of a tree, does not remain uninjured, even though it is not cut or torn through. For its root, its site of implantation, is found in a soft tender body, I mean in the brain and the spinal marrow. Further, there is the fact that the fleshy tissue of the muscles veils and covers those nerves which distribute themselves in the musculature. Also, on account of the enveloping fat, many of the nerves elude the view.