Fathers of Biology

FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD
PERCIVAL & CO. KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN London 1890
Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Archaic and variant spellings remain as originally printed. Greek text appears as originally printed, but with a mouse-hover transliteration, Βιβλος.
It is hoped that the account given, in the following pages, of the lives of five great naturalists may not be found devoid of interest. The work of each one of them marked a definite advance in the science of Biology.
There is often among students of anatomy and physiology a tendency to imagine that the facts with which they are now being made familiar have all been established by recent observation and experiment. But even the slight knowledge of the history of Biology, which may be obtained from a perusal of this little book, will show that, so far from such being the case, this branch of science is of venerable antiquity. And, further, if in the place of this misconception a desire is aroused in the reader for a fuller acquaintance with the writings of the early anatomists the chief aim of the author will have been fulfilled.


Owing to the lapse of centuries, very little is known with certainty of the life of Hippocrates, who was called with affectionate veneration by his successors the divine old man, and who has been justly known to posterity as the Father of Medicine.
He was probably born about 470 B.C., and, according to all accounts, appears to have reached the advanced age of ninety years or more. He must, therefore, have lived during a period of Greek history which was characterized by great intellectual activity; for he had, as his contemporaries, Pericles the famous statesman; the poets Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Pindar; the philosopher Socrates, with his disciples Xenophon and Plato; the historians Herodotus and Thucydides; and Phidias the unrivalled sculptor.