"The seed having been cast into the womb or into the earth - for there is no difference [he says] then after a certain definite period a great number of parts become constituted in the substance which is being generated; these differ as regards moisture, dryness, coldness and warmth, and in all the other qualities which naturally derive therefrom [such as hardness, softness, viscosity, friability, lightness, heaviness, density, rarity, smoothness, roughness, thickness and thinness]. Now nature constructs bone, cartilage, nerve, membrane, ligament, vein and so forth at the first stage of the animal's genesis, employing at this task a faculty which is, in general terms, generative and alterative, and, in more detail, warming, chilling, drying and moistening, or such as spring from the blending of these, for example, the bone-producing, nerve-producing and cartilage-producing, faculties (since for the sake of clearness these terms must be used as well).
Now the peculiar flesh of the liver is of a certain specific kind, also that of the spleen, that of the kidneys and that of the lungs, and that of the heart, so also the proper substance of the brain, stomach, oesophagus, intestines and uterus is a sensible element, of similar parts all through, simple and uncompounded.
... Thus the special alterative faculties in each animal are of the same number as the elementary parts, and further, the activities must necessarily correspond each to one of the special parts, just as each part has its special use. As for the actual substance of the coats of the stomach, intestine and uterus, each of these has been rendered what it is by a special alterative faculty of Nature; while the bringing of these together, the combination therewith of the structures that are inserted into them, etc., have all been determined by a faculty which we call the shaping or formative faculty; this faculty we also state to be artistic-nay, the best and highest art-doing everything for some purpose, so that there is nothing ineffective or superfluous, or capable of being better disposed.
"I return again to what was postponed from the beginning. This (embryo) draws to itself through the vessels descending to the uterus blood and pneuma, each to its own particular cavity; and, as was said earlier also, along with its own particular cavity ; and as was said earlier also, along with the pneuma that comes through the arteries, it draws in a blood that is finer and warmer than the blood in the veins.
From these it creates tile warmest of the inner organs; and that other thick blood produces for it the form of the liver. And accordingly the many veins that pass through the chorion proceed to (the liver); but the arteries (proceed) to the other organ, the warmer one, which because of a superabundance of heat like a flame does not stop moving but constantly expands and contracts by turns. The veins and arteries that carry matter to these inner organs are as it were their roots; and those that carry (the matter) out to the whole foetus are analogous to trunks that split into many branches. And they too have their generation in the hollowing out of the substance of the semen.
The third of the ruling parts, from which all the nerves grow. has its generation from the semen itself and from it alone. For in the mixing with the female semen many of the bubbles burst, and the pneuma from them passed inside and deep down, in the desire to preserve itself- it was not a kind of vapour but was a self-moving source of the animal and likewise the surrounding fluid of its own accord formed within the semen a cavity filled with pneuma. Then to prevent its being readily emptied out, (the puenma) makes for itself a tightly sealed chamber, pushing back to the outer circumference all that was thicker and harder in the semen's moist substance surrounding it; and this, when heated and dried, would in time be alone
The power that moulds the animal performs this work at the start; but it is not yet visible at the start because of its small size; when it can first be seen, these are the largest and they lie in order, close to each other and touching, the part that is going to become the source of the nerves, the one that we call the brain being assigned to a higher post; and below it the heart and liver touching each other. As time goes on the three sources mentioned stand further apart and send their offshoots this way and that to the entire body of the animal that is fitted to them, the brain sending out the spinal medulla, a kind of trunk, as it were, the heart the greatest artery, which Aristotle calls the aorta, and the liver the vena cava. And also in the early stages, simultaneously with the generation of these parts, the spine appears around the spinal medulla, hardened in just the way that we described a little earlier; and around the brain, enclosing it on all sides, the cranium appears; and the thorax around the heart, like some spacious yet tightly sealed chamber. At the time of birth this would be not a chamber only, but the first and principal organ of respiration. These parts, then, come into being at some later time.
But let us take the account back again to the first conformation of the animal, and in order to make our account orderly and clear, let us divide the creation of the foetus overall into four periods of time. The first is that in which as is seen both in abortions and in dissection, the form of the semen prevails. At this time, Hippocrates too, the all marvellous, does not yet call the conformation of the animal a foetus; as we heard just now in the case of semen voided in the sixth day, he still calls it semen. But when it has been filled with blood, and heart, brain and liver are still unarticulated and unshaped yet have by now a certain solidarity and considerable size, this is the second period; the substance of the foetus has the form of flesh and no longer the form of semen. Accordingly you would find that Hippocrates too no longer calls such a form semen but, as was said, foetus. The third period follows on this, when, as was said, it is possible to see the three ruling parts clearly and a kind of outline, a silhouette, as it were, of all the other parts. You will see the conformation of the three ruling parts more clearly, that of the parts of the stomach more dimly, and much more still, that of the limbs. Later on they form "twigs", as Hippocrates expressed it, indicating by the term their similarity to branches.
The fourth and final period is at the stage when all the parts in the limbs have been differentiated; and at this part Hippocrates the marvellous no longer calls the foetus an embryo only, but already a child, too when he says that it jerks and moves as an animal now fully formed."
- Galen -
This is:
a) More detailed than the Qur'an
b) About 500 years earlier than the Qur'an, Galen being alive in the 2nd Century AD
Score one for rational science.
