Greats of Anatomy and Physiology Anatomy

Herophilus Herophilus was born in modern day Turkey and lived around 300BC. Known as the 'Father of Anatomy', he spent most of his life in Alexandria, Egypt, where he was co-founder of the city's first medical school.

He was the first to dissect animal and human bodies. His subjects were prisoners condemned to death and sometimes he performed these dissections in public. He recognised that the brain was the source of intelligence. There is even an area of the brain named after him (the torcular of Herophili). He investigated the spinal column and identified nerves and tendons. He distinguished between sensory and motor nerves. He studied the alimentary canal and named the first part of the small intestine, the duodenum, which means '12 fingers long'. He described the liver, pancreas, salivary glands and genital organs in his writings. He identified the prostrate gland which means 'guard of the bladder'. He differentiated between arteries and veins and measured the pulse with a water clock. That 'a drug is nothing without the person who knows how to use it correctly' is a famous quote from Herophilus Although he recorded his findings in his book 'On Dissections', all of his writings have been lost. Galen, however, quoted him extensively centuries later.
Galen Galen was a Greek doctor who was born in Pergamum (also in modern day Turkey) in 129 AD. He become chief physician to the Gladiators at in 158 AD and was appointed as court physician to Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Rome. . He gained his knowledge by studying wounds and also from dissections of pigs and apes.

Herophilus had assumed that arteries contained air since the vessels of dead animals were empty. Galen showed that they contained blood. However, he believed that blood travelled back and forth in an ebb and flow motion. He also thought that venous blood came from the liver while arterial blood originated in the heart. It then flowed throughout the body where it was consumed. He recommended blood-letting to treat ailments, a practice which remained until the 19th century. He also studied the kidneys and spinal cord. He performed many daring surgeries, including operating on the eye to remove a cataract. Procedures like this were not attempted for over a millennium after his death. He encouraged a systematic approach to the study of medicine. He had a major impact in the Islamic world. Later on, his teachings were the accepted authority in medieval universities.
Andrea Vesalius Vesalius was born in Brussels in 1514 into a family of physicians and pharmacists. He studied medicine at the University of Paris where he analysed the structure to the skeleton. In Louvain, he wrote a thesis on the work of the Arab physician Rhazes who was the first to refute, through experiment, the widely accepted ideas of Galen.

While lecturing at the University of Padua, he himself performed dissections of human cadavers. While he revived the classical writings, he did demonstrate anatomical errors made by Galen. He took great care in preparing the text and illustrations for this own book On the Structure of the Human Body (known as the Fabrica). He even travelled to artist's studios to supervise the work. In keeping with the spirit of the renaissance, Vesalius shed new light on ancient learning. His method of dissecting human cadavers to gain anatomical knowledge became standard practice. The

Fabrica gave a new language for describing anatomy and raised anatomical illustration to greater excellence. As a result, study of anatomy became a scientific discipline. While he corrected Galen's assumptions on body structure, he didn't question some of Galen's false principles of physiology most notably on the circulation of blood.
William Harvey Harvey was born in Folkestone, Kent in 1578. His main contributions were his findings on circulation of the blood and reproduction in animals.

The belief at the time held that blood was consumed as soon as it was produced and that there were two systems of venous or 'nutritive' blood flowing from the liver and another of arterial or 'vivifying' blood from the lungs. Harvey estimated the amount of blood flowing through the heart by measuring the volume of the ventricles and the rate of heartbeat. Although his estimates were not accurate, he still showed that way more blood circulated than could possibly be produced. He corrected the direction of flow to and from the heart at the centre. He also concluded that on the active phase of the heartbeat, the muscles contract, heart volume decreases and the heart expels blood with considerable force. Later in life, Harvey distinguished between oviparous reproduction where the embryo develops in an egg and viviparous where development occurs within the mother's body. He also examined the role of sperm and menstrual blood in embryo formation. Also a Renaissance scholar, Harvey based his conclusions on a macrocosm/microcosm view of life and he refuted a mechanical description of the body.

Physiology
Richard Lower Born in Cornwall in 1631, Lower studied medicine at Oxford and was appointed court physician. His two major areas of study were transfusions and the workings of the heart and lungs which he recounted in his book Tractatus de Corde.

Using dogs as subjects, he injected broth and other nutritious fluids directly into the bloodstream. His instrument was a tin pipe about 2 inches long and as wide as a jugular vein. He wanted to see if a dog could survive without meat while receiving these transfusions. He went a step further by investigating the transfusion of blood between two dogs and how 'harmoniously' the blood would mix. Blood from the artery of one dog went into the vein of a second. He was the first Western scientist to perform the blood transfusions, initially on dogs but later on human subjects also. As for the heart and lungs, the big question at the time was what caused the difference in arterial and venous blood. His contemporary, John Willis, thought that the heart enkindled energy into the blood. Although he accepted this theory initially, Lower was the first to suggest that it was the lungs that 'impregnate' the blood with 'nitrous pabulum'. His Tractatus de Corde received widespread acclaim at the time as a major breakthrough.
Claude Bernard Born near Lyons, France, in 1813, Bernard was a pharmacist's assistant who went on to study medicine. He became an assistant doctor at the College de France. Although Bernard did not excel academically, his professor recognised Bernard's skill in dissection and he helped Bernard in his career.

He made discoveries in four major areas: 1. He recognised that blood sugar levels vary greatly among individuals and that a high level does not necessarily indicate disease. 2. He studied the liver and its ability to produce glucose. Allied to this, he recognised that the

pancreas secretes gastric juices which are essential for digestion. 3. He noted that blood vessels can constrict or dilate and he identified the nerves of the sympathetic nervous system responsible for this. 4. Like Lowell, he studied the oxygenation of venous blood. It was Bernard who recognised the need for a constant internal environment in humans and animals to survive changing external conditions. Rather than being indifferent to the external world, higher animals are sensitive to its changes and respond to it by maintaining equilibrium internally. In his major work, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), he laid down the principles by which science and medicine could advance.
Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer Born in Middlesex in 1850, Sharpey-Schafer rose to become a Professor of medicine at University College London and later at Edinburgh University. He is most famous for devising the prone method of artificial respiration which was used in cases of drowning, electric shock and asphyxiation.

In his early work, he studied histology and embryology. After that, he investigated the endocrine system including secretions of the pancreas and extracts of the adrenal and pituitary glands.. He examined the nervous system and he investigated tissues and cells at a microscopic level. He recorded his findings in The Essentials of Histology. He had a gift for communicating his ideas with enthusiasm and his text book went into 13 editions. According to Galen (200 AD), 'vital spirits' regulated bodily function. Claude Bernard recognised how 'internal secretions' serve to establish homeostasis. Sharpey-Schafer identified the secretions of the ductless glands, which he named 'endocrine', and how they regulate bodily function. He discovered that deficiency of a single substance (insulin) caused diabetes. Together with George Oliver, he investigated how an extract of the adrenalin gland, when injected into animals, produced an immediate increase in blood pressure. They concluded that epinephrine (adrenalin) stimulated the hormones.