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ERASISTRATUS is thought to have been born at Iulis in the island of Ceos. Pliny speaks of him as a son of Aristotle's daughter Pythias; but of this there is no other evidence. It is probable that he studied under Theophrastus. He lived for some time at the court of Seleucus Nicator, where he gained much credit for relieving the king's son from a condition of nervous depression by the discovery of his love for Stratonice. But his real life's work was done in Alexandria, then in the full tide of intellectual energy, under the patronage of Ptolemy Soter. There he devoted himself to anatomical study, especially to the dissection of the human body; proceeding, it is said, in the case of criminals to vivisection, although from this source no discovery has been claimed. He wrote much on anatomy and on medicine; but we know his works only by the references to them in Celsus, Galen, and other writers. He appears from these to have had correct views of the anatomical relations of the heart and the great vessels connected with it. But he maintained the mistaken view that the purpose of the arteries was to collect air from the lungs and to distribute it through the body. Like Herophilus, his contemporary, he gave much attention to the anatomy of the nervous system, on the functions of which his views were far in advance of Aristotle.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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