In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. The Thirteenth section of Galen's work on Anatomy, translated by Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq.

INTRODUCTION.

I will here explain to you how to train yourself to dissect veins and arteries in the best way. In my descriptions here also I shall propose as my intention and my aim to make my discourse clear and lucid to such a degree that it may be possible for one who studies them without ever having seen the dissection of an animal at all, after he has followed the account of the dissection of the veins and arteries as I have given it to him, to apply himself unaided to the study of them all.

DIRECTIONS FOR OPENING THE PERITONEAL CAVITY. THE GREATER AND LESSER OMENTA AND THE VESSELS THEY CONTAIN.

All anatomists uniformly call the veins and arteries specifically ‘vessels’. And I do not think that anyone's lack of understanding of anatomy will extend so far that, when he hears me say: ‘make an incision from the end of the sternum as far as the two pubic bones, an incision which passes straight over the body of the animal’, he will not understand what I mean. Rather he will follow and keep to my instructions. There is no one who does not know that when he sets his hand to making an incision, in the first place the skin only will be incised, and that beneath the skin there extends a covering which intervenes between it and what is subjacent to it.