In addition to these there was in the Middle Ages a definite anatomic tradition, which expressed itself constantly in:

(f)A series of five anatomical diagrams representing respectively the arteries, veins, bones, nerves, and muscles[99] (see Plate [XXXIII], opposite page 92 of the present volume). These diagrams were copied in the most servile fashion for centuries, and something very like them has remained in use to this day in Tibet.[100] The versions, whether in Persia or England, in Germany or Italy, were remarkably uniform.
(g)In several MSS. there has been found attached to these remarkable diagrams a short text describing the five systems, arteries, veins, nerves, bones, and muscles. This text, however, purporting to be from Galen, has little relation to the figures, which it does not really explain, and it should therefore be regarded as a separate work.[101]

From WIESBADEN CODEX B fo. 22 r

Plate XIX. BIRTH. THE ARRIVAL AND TRIALS OF THE SOUL

From WIESBADEN CODEX B fo. 25 r

Plate XX. DEATH. THE DEPARTURE AND FATE OF THE SOUL

Of these seven sources it appears to us that (c) and (f)—the short De humana natura of Constantine, and the five-​figure series—are those on which Hildegard drew. The absence of Arabisms and the scarcity of technical anatomical terms in her writings, her failure to distinguish between veins and arteries, the absence of anything of the nature of myology or osteology, together with the neglect of the spinal marrow as an important organ, make it very unlikely that she consulted Constantine’s longer works or the Salernitan authorities or the text of the five-​figure series. Her anatomical descriptions resemble those of Constantine’s shorter work, on the other hand, in the description of the three vesicles of the brain and their relations to the faculties of the mind, in the treatment of the five senses, in the view of the influence of the planets on the child and the emphasis laid on epilepsy, as well as in the absence of any distinction between arteries and veins, and in the loose doctrines of the humours and of the causes of deformities and monstrosities. In some of these respects also her account of the human body presents points of resemblance to the De hominis membris ac partibus of Hugh of St. Victor,[102] with whom, however, her contact appears to be less close than with Constantine.

We may infer that Hildegard had consulted anatomical diagrams and was accustomed to this method of representing the organs from a passage descriptive of the microcosm, in which she says that ‘in the mouth of the figure in whose body was the disk, I saw a light brighter than the light of day, in the form of threads, some circular, some in other geometrical forms, and some shaped like human members belonging to the figure, which was clearly portrayed on the disk upright and accurately limned’.[103] These ‘circles and geometrical figures’ fairly describe the highly diagrammatic manner in which the five-​figure series represents the internal organs, and several points suggest that she does indeed refer to this series. Her description of the abdominal muscles (umbilicus) ‘covering the viscera like a cap’, her general descriptions of the vessels (venae) and the muscles, and especially her account of the vessels of the leg and of the intimate relations of the main venae to the organ of hearing, fits in perfectly with the form of these remarkable diagrams (Plate [XVIII]).