Galen states that the greater part of Aristotle’s physiology was taken from Hippocrates. It has been the custom to make light of his anatomical knowledge, and to say that in face of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of procuring subjects for dissection, he could have had but little exact knowledge of the human body; but it is certain that by some means or other he must have dissected it. In proof of this it is only necessary to mention his treatise _On the Articulations_, especially that part of it which relates to the dislocation of the shoulder joint. Dr. Adams, in one of his valuable notes on the works of Hippocrates,[385] says: “The language of our author in this place puts it beyond all doubt that human dissection was practised in his age.” In Ashurst’s _International Encyclopædia of Surgery_[386] his descriptions of all dislocations are declared to be wonderfully accurate; and the writer adds that it is the greatest error imaginable to suppose, with the common conceit of our day, that all ingenious and useful improvements in surgery belong to the present age. In the treatise on the Sacred Disease (epilepsy), his description of the brain in man proves that he was acquainted with its dissection. In the treatise on the heart, again, the construction of that organ in the human body is referred to. Other allusions to the internal structure of the human frame in the Hippocratic treatises serve to confirm our opinion; and if it be objected that some of these are probably not genuine, they must at least be as old as his period, and it was far more likely that he should have written or inspired them than that they should have emanated from an inferior source. Those who argue to the contrary do so on the same grounds as the Greek commentators, who say that the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were not written by Homer, but by some other poet of the same name. Dr. Adams is confident, from his familiarity with the works of Hippocrates, that the knowledge of human anatomy exhibited therein had its origin in actual dissection, and he adds that: “I do not at present recollect a single instance of mistake committed by him in any of his anatomical descriptions, if we except that with regard to the sutures of the head, and even in that case I have endeavoured to show that the meaning of the passage is very equivocal.”[387] There is no doubt, in fact, that a great deal more human dissection went on than the Greek doctors dared to acknowledge for fear of exciting popular prejudice. Less than a hundred years after the death of Hippocrates there was abundant and open dissection of the human body in the schools of Alexandria, and it is incredible that the practice only received popular sanction at that particular time. Yet the anatomy of Hippocrates was very imperfect. The nerves, sinews, and ligaments were confounded together, all being classed as νεῦρον or τόνος.