Timeline: Herophilus, c. 335–c. 280 BCE

Herophilus (or Herophilos) is considered by many to be the father of scientific anatomy and, along with Hippocrates and Galen, is thought to be one of the greatest physicians of the ancient world. He was a Greek physician and anatomist born in the city of Chalcedon (in modern-day Turkey), but he spent most of his life in Alexandria, Egypt, where he became a co-founder of the city's medical school.

Herophilus performed human and animal dissections – including public dissections. Herophilus regarded the brain as the site of intelligence (unusual for the time) and studied its structure. He also studied the spinal cord, distinguishing between motor and sensory nerves, and the eye, reproductive systems, veins, arteries, and alimentary canal. He is credited with naming the duodenum.

According to Greek and Roman Medicine, Herophilus said that a drug was nothing without the person who knows how to use it correctly.

His discoveries were recorded in his book On Dissections, but all of his writings have been lost – though Galen (and other medical writers) quoted much of his work centuries later.

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