A carelessly constructed sepulchre on the banks of a river had been undermined during a season of flood, and the corpse thus set free had floated down stream a short distance, until it finally lodged on the shore of a small cove. Passing near by I had the opportunity of inspecting this corpse. The fleshy parts had already disappeared to a great extent through the process of decomposition, but the bones were still held together by their fibrous connections. The picture presented to the eye was that of a human skeleton specially prepared for the instruction of young physicians. On another occasion, a few steps from the main road, I came across the dead body of a robber who had been killed by the traveler whose money he had attempted to steal. The peasants of that neighborhood were not willing to bury the corpse of such a bad man, and they accordingly allowed it to remain at the spot where it was first discovered. In the course of the following two days, as might be expected, the vultures removed every particle of flesh from the bones, so that, when I saw what remained of the body, the only thing visible was a nicely cleaned skeleton. (Le Clerc: _Histoire de la Médecine_, p. 711.) Here were two excellent opportunities for gaining the additional knowledge of human anatomy which Galen so much desired, but he evidently was not at all disposed to avail himself of them--doubtless because his mind was deeply imbued with the feeling that any such interference on his part would be a sacrilegious act. Under the circumstances, therefore, there was nothing left for him to do but to utilize animals for purposes of dissection, and more particularly apes, whose anatomy very closely resembles that of the human being. Several of Galen’s books on anatomy have come down to our time, but quite a number of others have been lost. From those which we possess, and especially from the one entitled “Anatomical Administrations,” it is permissible to conclude that he was a most skilful dissector and an extremely close and careful observer, and that he was very particular to set down the results of his observations in admirably clear language. Indeed, Le Clerc assures us that Vesalius, the great Flemish anatomist of the sixteenth century, bestowed high praise upon Galen’s anatomical descriptions; and that, too, notwithstanding the fact that the latter sometimes erred in his statements regarding the similarity between certain parts observed in dissections of an animal and the corresponding parts in man. In one of his treatises[40] Galen states distinctly that the arteries contain blood. In another he gives a remarkably full and accurate description of the nervous system, including the brain, spinal cord, and many of the nerves.