Alcmaeon of Croton

Alcmaeon, an ancient Greek natural philosopher interested in particular in medicine and physiology, lived sometime around 500 B.C.E., during and close to the time of Pythagorus (ca. 570 – 490 B.C.E.) and Hippocrates (470 – ca. 370 B.C.E.). Scholars have no extant writings of Alcmaeon’s, but his ideas did not die with him. According Galen, Alcmaeon authored a book, On Nature, to which, before it disappeared, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and others had direct access for some time after Alcmaeon’s death. Alcmaeon’s ideas have earned him, according to some scholars the honorific, Father of Physiology, Father of Anatomy, Father of Psychology, Founder of Gynecology, Creator of Psychiatry, and indeed, by some, Father of Medicine.

Andreas Vesalius’s biographer, C. D. O’Malley credits Alcmaeon as the earliest known “student of anatomy”:

The earliest known genuine student of anatomy appears to have been Alcmaeon of Crotona, who lived in southern Italy, c. 500 B.C. Only the slightest fragments of his writing remain, but from these it does appear that he was the first to make dissections of animals, probably goats, and although almost nothing is known of the results, he did make the very important declaration that the brain is the central organ of intelligence.