Ancient Science · Part 12 · Alexandria · B2
Herophilus and Erasistratus: Anatomy in Alexandria, and the Price of Knowledge
Part 12 of Ancient Science: in early Alexandria, Herophilus and Erasistratus opened human bodies and discovered the nerves, the valves of the heart and much more. Later writers say the kings gave them living criminals. Sophia shows what they found, what the evidence says about how they found it, and why the question still matters. Should have, shouldn’t have, could have, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight we stay in Alexandria and meet two doctors who did something no Greek had done before: they opened human bodies to see what was inside.
Dead bodies, certainly. And, according to two later writers, living ones: condemned criminals, given to them by the king. That is the hard part of tonight’s story, and we will not skip it.
Scholars still argue. Let me show you what we know, and how we know it.
In the early days of the Museum, two Greek doctors worked in Alexandria: Herophilus, from Chalcedon, and a little later Erasistratus, from the island of Ceos. They were the first people we know of to dissect human bodies systematically, cutting them open to study their parts. In most of the Greek world this was forbidden by custom and religion; in Alexandria, the first Ptolemies allowed it.
Their books are lost. We know their discoveries from later doctors, especially Celsus, a Roman who wrote about medicine in Philo’s own lifetime, and Galen, who lived a century and a half later.
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