Androtomy

You don't need to be Editor-In-Chief to add or edit content to WikiDoc. You can begin to add to or edit text on this WikiDoc page by clicking on the edit button at the top of this page. Next enter or edit the information that you would like to appear here. Once you are done editing, scroll down and click the Save page button at the bottom of the page.

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1] Phone:617-632-7753

Please Take Over This Page and Apply to be Editor-In-Chief for this topic: There can be one or more than one Editor-In-Chief. You may also apply to be an Associate Editor-In-Chief of one of the subtopics below. Please mail us [2] to indicate your interest in serving either as an Editor-In-Chief of the entire topic or as an Associate Editor-In-Chief for a subtopic. Please be sure to attach your CV and or biographical sketch.

Androtomy is the dissection of the human body. The first recorded dissection of the human body in the Western world took place in ancient Alexandria by Herophilus and Erasistratus. Though none of their writings have come down to us, other medical writers recorded what they had discovered.

One such writer was Celsus who wrote in On Medicine I Proem 23, "Herophilus and Erasistratus proceeded in by far the best way: they cut open living men - criminals they obtained out of prison from the kings and they observed, while their subjects still breathed, parts that nature had previously hidden, their position, color, shape , size, arrangement, hardness, softness, smoothness, points of contact, and finally the processes and recesses of each and whether any part is inserted into another or receives the part of another into itself."

Galen was another such writer who was familiar with the studies of the famous Alexandrians, Herophilus and Erasistratus.

See also

• vivisection
• autopsy
• forensics

References

• C. Celsus, On Medicine, I, Proem 23, 1935, translated by W. G. Spencer, (Loeb Classics Library, 1992).