Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 13. (Budapest, 1959)
Dr. I. CSILLAG and Dr. H. JELLINEK: From primitive Haemostatic Methods to Modern Vascular Surgery
of the time, have stated air to exist in the arteries and blood only in the veins. Their starting point was the observation that the arteries are empty in cadavers, that is, no blood is contained by these vessels, merely air, which escapes at the moment of death. Contrariwise, the veins are filled with blood. In corps the arteries are empty indeed and the veins filled with blood, they therefore wrongly believed the same condition to exist in alive. The traces of this belief are detectable in the Bible as well. One ean read in the Bible that the "blood is the soul of the animal". If somebody ate the blood that spirted when slaughtering an animal, he did that under penalty of death, since only meat was allowed to be eaten but not the animal's soul. The ritual practive of carefully removing the blood vessels of an animal to be eaten may have derived from this belief. The incorrect view on the pneuma appears then several times in the history up to the time of Harvey in 1828. Venesection was well known among ancient peoples other than the Mesopotamians as well. In Daniel's book for instance, Nebuchadnezzar looks for "youths of faultless body" which may have meant persons in w r hom no venesection had been performed, that is, who have no scar. Blood-letting had been performed much more frequently than one would suppose. Similar views dominated in India at this time as prevailed in Egypt: the vascular system contains blood and air. 1000 years B. C. hot oil was used in India to check haemorrhages. Ancient medical science w y as practiced mainly by priests; it is they who deal with healing but, at the same time their knowledge in anatomy was rather poor since touching the dead was forbidden by strict laws. With Jews the Bible prohidited for the rabbi to stay even near the dead. The ancient Grecians were the only who were able to get rid of the inhibitory influence of religion. Though they did medication in the Church, practical curing remained the privilege of laymen. Beside the curing priests an actual layer of physicians developed w T ho were working independently. Thus it could happen that on the island of Kos, in Knidos veritable medical
