(14) Morris Jastrow:  The Liver in Antiquity and the
     Beginnings of Anatomy.  Transactions College of Physicians,
     Philadelphia, 1907, 3. s., XXIX, 117-138.

Three points of interest may be referred to in connection with Babylonian medicine.  Our first recorded observations on anatomy are in connection with the art of divination—­the study of the future by the interpretation of certain signs.  The student recognized two divisions of divination—­the involuntary, dealing with the interpretation of signs forced upon our attention, such as the phenomena of the heavens, dreams, etc., and voluntary divination, the seeking of signs, more particularly through the inspection of sacrificial animals.  This method reached an extraordinary development among the Babylonians, and the cult spread to the Etruscans, Hebrews, and later to the Greeks and Romans.

Of all the organs inspected in a sacrificial animal the liver, from its size, position and richness in blood, impressed the early observers as the most important of the body.  Probably on account of the richness in blood it came to be regarded as the seat of life—­indeed, the seat of the soul.  From this important position the liver was not dislodged for many centuries, and in the Galenic physiology it shared with the heart and the brain in the triple control of the natural, animal and vital spirits.  Many expressions in literature indicate how persistent was this belief.  Among the Babylonians, the word “liver” was used in hymns and other compositions precisely as we use the word “heart,” and Jastrow gives a number of illustrations from Hebrew, Greek and Latin sources illustrating this usage.

The belief arose that through the inspection of this important organ in the sacrificial animal the course of future events could be predicted.  “The life or soul, as the seat of life, in the sacrificial animal is, therefore, the divine element in the animal, and the god in accepting the animal, which is involved in the act of bringing it as an offering to a god, identifies himself with the animal—­becomes, as it were, one with it.  The life in the animal is a reflection of his own life, and since the fate of men rests with the gods, if one can succeed in entering into the mind of a god, and thus ascertain what he purposes to do, the key for the solution of the problem as to what the future has in store will have been found.  The liver being the centre of vitality—­the seat of the mind, therefore, as well as of the emotions—­it becomes in the case of the sacrificial animal, either directly identical with the mind of the god who accepts the animal, or, at all events, a mirror in which the god’s mind is reflected; or, to use another figure, a watch regulated to be in sympathetic and perfect accord with a second watch.  If, therefore, one can read the liver of the sacrificial animal, one enters, as it were, into the workshop of the divine will."(15)