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Nicomachus of Gethisrasa is mentioned in a small number of sources and we can date him fairly accurately from the information given. Nicomachus himself refers to Thrasyllus who died in 36 AD so this gives lower limits on his dates. On the other hand Apuleius, the Platonic philosopher, rhetorician and author whose dates are 124 AD to about 175 AD, translated Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic into Latin so this gives an upper limit on his dates. One of the most interesting references is by Lucian, the rhetorician, pamphleteer and satirist who was born about 120 AD, who makes one of his characters say: You calculate like Nicomachus. Clearly Nicomachus had achieved fame for his arithmetical work! Nicomachus was a Pythagorean. This is obvious from his writings on numbers and music, but we are also told this by Porphyry who says that he was one of the leading members of the Pythagoreans School. Nicomachus wrote Arithmetike eisagoge (Introduction to Arithmetic) which was the first work to treat arithmetic as a separate topic from geometry. Unlike Euclid, Nicomachus gave no abstract proofs of his theorems, merely stating theorems and illustrating them with numerical examples. However Introduction to Arithmetic does contain quite elementary errors which show that Nicomachus chose not to give proofs of his results because he did not in general have such proofs. Many of the results were known by Nicomachus to be true since they appeared with proofs in Euclid, although in a geometrical formulation. Sometimes Nicomachus stated a result that is simply false and then illustrated it with an example that happens to have the properties described in the result. We must deduce from this that some of the results are merely guesses based on the evidence of the numerical examples (and in some cases perhaps even based on one example!). - from Malaspina BiographyBooks from Alibris: Nicomachus
Greek anatomist who continued the systematic investigation of anatomy begun by Herophilus in Alexandria. Anatomical knowledge had its beginnings very early in the history of the race. Animal sacrifices led to a knowledge of animal anatomy which was readily applied to man. The art of embalming also necessitated a knowledge of the position of blood vessels and certain organic relations. Even Homer used many terms which indicate a much deeper knowledge of human structures than might be expected thus early. The first real development of anatomy as a science, however, did not come until the time of Hippocrates of Cos, about 400 B.C. The Grecian Father of Medicine knew the bones well, probably because of the ready opportunities for their study to be found in tombs, but did not know the distinction between veins and arteries, and uses the term artiria in reference to the trachea. He used the term nerve to signify a sinew or tendon. Until the time of Aristotle, about 330 B.C., no additions were made to anatomical knowledge. There seems to be no doubt that this Grecian philosopher frequently dissected animals. His description of the aorta and its branches is surprisingly correct. This is the first time in the history of anatomy that the word aorta, Greek aorti, a knapsack, was used. His knowledge of the nerves was almost as little as that of Hippocrates, but he was thoroughly familiar with the internal viscera, and he distinguishes the jejunum or empty portion of the small intestine; the caecum, or blind gut, so called because it is a sort of cul-de-sac; the colon, and the sigmoid flexure. The word rectum is the literal translation of his description of the straight process of the bowel to the anus. A contemporary of Aristotle, Praxagoras of Cos, was the first who distinguished the arteries from the veins and spoke of the former as air vessels because after death they always contained only air. - Malaspina BiographyBooks from Alibris: Greek Medicine
