The centrality of anatomy to medicine’s project was proclaimed in the Renaissance

Broken bones were treated with fat from the ñandú, an ostrich-like bird, and llama kidney juice was dropped into aching ears.

The idea of probing into bodies, living and dead (and especially human bodies) with a view to improving medicine is more or less distinctive to the European medical tradition.

The god would either perform the cure himself, or would give the patient a dream to be deciphered by the priest.

‘Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experience fallacious, judgment difficult,’ proclaims the first of the Hippocratic aphorisms, outlining the arduous but honourable labour of the physician.

Thus to many, from classical poets up to the prophets of modernity, disease has seemed the dark side of development, its Jekyll-and-Hyde double: progress brings pestilences, society sickness.

To cure night-blindness fried ox liver was to be taken – possibly a tried-and-tested procedure, as liver is rich in vitamin

they might even be blown into the urethra through a tube.

The task of hygiene was to maintain a balanced constitution, and the role of medicine was to restore the balance when disturbed. Parallels to these views appear in the classical Chinese and Indian medical traditions.