Abstract
Knowledge of human anatomy was acquired through dissections of the human body that may have begun as long as 4000 years ago, in Babylonian times. Later documentation was in Egyptian times (3000 BC-1600 BC), as exemplified with the Ebers and other papyri. Around 300 BC, the Greek physician, Herophilus (335-280 BC), wrote a treatise on human anatomy and Erasistratus (304-250 BC), his student and colleague at the medical school of Alexandria, produced the first description, albeit brief, of liver cirrhosis observing that the liver of a man who died with anasarca (“hydrops”) was “as hard as a rock”, contrasting it with the soft consistency of the liver of another man who died from the bite of a poisonous snake. This description is evidence of Erasistratus’s ability, based on observation, to correlate the diseased organ with the consequence of its involvement and may be the first example of a clinicopathological correlation.
Highlights
The original writings of Herophilus and Erasistratus were lost and the first written record about autopsy dates from the 12th century work, the Gesta Regum Anglorum (“Deeds of the kings of the English”), by the English monk William of Malmesbury (1095-1143)
It is worth noting that Pope Innocent III, in 1209, had already recommended that all unexplained deaths should be evaluated by an experienced physician; this ruling reversed the church’s position against violation of the corpse. It was only at the height of the Italian Renaissance that Antonio Benivieni (1443-1502), a physician to the most important families of Florence, began to regularly rely on autopsies to explain the various causes of death and disease
Considered by many to be the creator of pathology as a science, he studied more than 100 clinical cases, 16 of which had autopsies
Summary
The original writings of Herophilus and Erasistratus were lost and the first written record about autopsy dates from the 12th century work, the Gesta Regum Anglorum (“Deeds of the kings of the English”), by the English monk William of Malmesbury (1095-1143). Drawing on the contributions of Morgagni and Bichat, he systematized the examination of the body and was one of those responsible for the recognition of pathology as a medical specialty.
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