Did dissection play a role?

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pluto2

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Did dissection play a role in discovering facts about how the human body works and especially in neuroscience?
 
rpenner said:
How else are you to trace the nervous system and understand that different human beings usually have a great number of things usually in the same relative positions?

Thus we learn via dissection (and autopsy) what nervous system impairment looks like at death and learn causes of neurological disease.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anatomy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_neurology
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Today I believe there are other methods to get that information without dissection. Today we have X-ray machines and other medical imaging tools like MRI, fMRI, PET (Positron emission tomography) and neuroimaging tools like electroencephalography.

See for example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrophysiology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_imaging

The ancient Egyptians did indeed dissect dead humans. But the ancient Egyptians did not have the knowledge and the technology that we have today.
 
pluto2 said:
The ancient Egyptians indeed dissected dead humans. But the ancient Egyptians did not have the knowledge and technology that we have today.
Click to expand...

Thank you for clarifying that thousands of years ago people did not have x-ray machines and MRIs.
 
pluto2 said:
Did dissection play a role in discovering facts about how the human body works and especially in neuroscience?
Click to expand...

Yes, and it still does. The imaging modalities you describe (which are wonderful tools, especially for living bodies) don't give the same information as surgical exploration, microscopic examination, and biochemical analysis.

For example, here is a list of approved requests for human brain tissue samples from the Using Our Brains program of the NSW Tissue Resource Centre at the University of Sydney:
Approved tissue requests
 
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