PhD defence Chiara Cecconi: Herophilus and Erasistratus on dissection

On Monday 23 February, Chiara Cecconi will defend her dissertation ‘Herophilus and Erasistratus on Dissection: An Epistemological Perspective on a Controversial Practice’. Herophilus of Chalcedon (c. 330/320 – c. 260/250 BCE) and Erasistratus of Ceos (c. 330 – c. 255/250 BCE) were the first physicians in antiquity to practice systematic human dissection. By analysing surviving fragments and testimonies, Cecconi examines how knowledge was produced in early Hellenistic medicine.

Human dissection

Modern scholarship attributed the emergence of dissection in third-century BCE Alexandria to social, political, or cultural circumstances. Cecconi, however, shifts the focus to the internal motivations of the doctors. The main question she addresses is: which assumptions led Herophilus and Erasistratus to include dissection in their medical practice?

Cecconi argues that their use of dissection reflected fundamental beliefs about how doctors should gain reliable knowledge, especially the importance of observation, the limits of medical inquiry, and the relationship between observation and theory.

Gaining knowledge

Cecconi shows how Herophilus and Erasistratus understood anatomical investigation and justified dissection as a way of gaining knowledge. In doing so, she argues that the ideas of the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) influenced their views on the role of dissection in biology.

Cecconi’s research adds to the ongoing discussion about the role of dissection in ancient medicine. She highlights the interplay between reflection on methods and medical practice. Instead of treating human dissection as an exceptional event, she places it within a wider change in how doctors understood, defended, and questioned knowledge of the body in Hellenistic medicine.