BOOK X - THE FACE, MOUTH AND PHARYNX

Summary

In the name of God the compassionate, the merciful. The Tenth Book of Galen's work on Anatomy. In this Book, the eyes, tongue, lips and the movements of deglutition will be surveyed.

INTRODUCTION. DISSECTION OF THE ORBIT AND ITS CONTENTS.

In the immediately preceding book we have described the particular parts of the brain and of the spinal cord, and the damage which can befall both. This should suffice in order to make clear the method which, when followed in dissection, reveals best to visual inspection those parts and the injuries which they suffer. As for these latter, they are to be seen by vivisection, while in other respects the descriptions apply in part to dead animals alone.

In this Book I now describe the method of dissecting the structures of the face, and of the whole of the head, including the symptomatic changes which are to be observed in each one of them. I make my start with those parts where symptomatic changes follow when one divides them, bruises them, ligatures them with a cord, presses them with the fingers or twists them or stretches them unduly far. For when they are exposed to such conditions, the [normal] activity of such organs will be either completely or partially suppressed.

Let us assume now that the brain has been exposed, in that the enveloping bones have been removed, as we have previously explained.