Charles Singer’s scientific contributions

... The culture of human dissection developed mainly in the Christian West, in contrast to the Greco-Roman culture of the dead body, in which the human corpse was often considered as impure (Park, 2006). In fact, Galen based his descriptions of human anatomy on dissections of animals such as sheep, oxen, pigs, dogs, bears, and particularly the "Barbary ape" (Macaca sylvanus) as explained above (Cole, 1975;Singer, 1959). It is remarkable that, for a millennium (before Vesalius: see below), few authors recognized this fact. ...

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Links between the discovery of primates and anatomical comparisons with humans, the chain of being, our place in nature, and racism