HEROPHILUS OF ALEXANDRIA (325-255 B.C.) - THE FATHER OF ANATOMY

Herophilus (325-255 B. C.) is one of the group that has been called th e great Greek physicians. All members of this group lived during the l ast 400 years of Greek intellectual leadership and the first 200 years of Roman domination. Herophilus was born in the Greek town of Chalced on. He received his medical training under Praxagoras, a famous physic ian and anatomist who taught at the Hippocratean medical school on the island of Cos (Kos). He moved to Alexandria, Egypt, as a young man an d lived there for the rest of his life. With his younger contemporary, Erasistratus, he did the first ever scientific human cadaveric dissec tions for a short period of no more than 30-40 years. Human dissection then was forbidden and was not allowed again for 1800 years. It seems that only these two physicians ever performed human dissection until the Renaissance, around 1530 A. D. The anatomic and physiologic discov eries of Herophilus were phenomenal. As Hippocrates is called the Fath er of Medicine, Herophilus is called the Father of Anatomy. Most would argue that he was the greatest anatomist of antiquity and perhaps of all time. The only person who might challenge him in this assessment i s Vesalius, who worked during the 16th century A. D.