Grceda capta femur? tictorem cebit, et artes Lrtulit an-reeti Latio.
Although Rome produced orators, poets, philosophers, and historians which may h e brought into competition withthose of the Greeks, to the eternal disgrace of their empire it must he allowed that their his tory is hardly embellished with the name ofa single Roman who was greatin science or art, in painting or sculpture, in physic, or in any branch of natural knowledge. We cannot therefore introduce one I roman into the history of anatomy. Pliny and Celsius were mere compilers- from the Greeks. We may account for this appa rent neglect of anatomy among the Ro mans, as well indeed as for its slow pro gress among the Greeks, from some of their rekolis tenets, as well as from the notion already mentioned, of pollution be ing communicated by:touching a dead bo dy. It was bell eyed, that the souls of the unburied were not admitted into the a bodes of the dead, or, at least, that they wandered for a hundred years along the river Styx, before they were allowed to cross it. Whoever saw a dead body was obliged to throw some earth upon it, and if he neglected to do so,he was obliged to expiate his crime by sacrificing to Ceres. It was unlawful for the pontifex maxims not only to touch a dead body, but even to look at it ; and the flamen of Jupiter might even go where there was grave. Persons who had attended a fu neral were purified by a sprinkling of wa ter from the hands of the priest, and the house was purified in the same manner. If any one (says Euripides, in Iphigenia) pollutes his hands by a murder, by touch ing a corpse, or a woman who has lain in, the altars of God are interdicted to him.
There was n o anatomist or physiologist, of sufficient reputatiorlato attract our no tice, from the times of Herophilus and Erasistratus to the age of Galen. This il lustrious character was born at Pergamus, in Asia Minor, about the 130th year of the Christian :era. No expense was spared in his education ; after the completion of which, he visited all the most famous schools of philosophy which then existed; and afterwards resided chiefly at Rome, in the service ofthe emperors of that time, To all the knowledge which could be derived from the writings of Hippocrates, and the philosophical schools of the time, Galen added the results ofhis own labours and observations, and compiledfrom these sources a voluminous system of medicine.
It is generally consideredthat the subjects of his anatomical labours were chiefly brutes; and it is manifest from several passages, that his descriptions are drawn from monkeys. Indeed, he never express ly states that he has dissected the human subject, although he says he has seen hu man skeletons. He must be accounted the first who placed anatomical science on a respectable footing ; and deserves our gratitude for this, that he was the only source of anatomical knowledge for about ten centuries. The science declined with Galen; hissuccessors were contentedwith copying him; and there is no proof of a dissection of any human body.from Galen to the emperor Frederick II. We may observe, that when any man arrives at the reputation of having carried his art far be yond all others, it seems to throw the rest of the world into a kind of despair. Hope less of being-able to improve theirartstill further, they do nothing. The great man, who was at first only respectable, grows every day into higher credit, till at length he is deified, and every page of his nri tings becomes sacred and infallible. This Was actually the fortune of Aristotle in philosophy, and of Galen in anatomy, fOr many ages; and such respect sliewn to any man in any age must always be a mark of declining science.
Anatomy experienced the same fate as learningin general on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The moral and intellectual character of the Romans had been much debassd in the later ages of the empire. Philosophy and science were manifestly degenerating, and their place was supplied by- a debased and corrupted theology. The successive irruptions of the northern barbarians accelerated the approaching ruin. The great Inundation of the Goths into Italy, in the fifth centu ry-, extinguished, with the Roman empire, its laws, manners, and learning-, and plun ged the world into th e depths of ignorance and superstition. The succeeding ten centuries, which have received the appel lation of the dark ages of the world, pre sent a melancholy picture to the philoso phic observer of human nature ; a harren and dreary waste, not enlivened by a sin gle trace of cultivation.