I assume dissecting corpses helped in the research and discovery, but what about functions that require a living a specimen?
In: Biology
Different organs were discovered at different times. A man named alexis st Martin was shot in his stomach and so he could open his stomach and his stomach acid could be removed. These were then studied and we learned about the stomach.
Another man phineas gage had a metal rod go through his head and it changed his personality and so from then on people learned about the brain.
As for today alot of research is done on mice though and so now we inject hormones and watch what happens. Or we study their organs.
Some functions, especially mental, are discovered via trauma. If somebody damaged part of their brain and as a result their behaviour changes, then there’s a good chance the damaged part is responsible for that behaviour
Almost every function was discovered by quite literally cutting humans open, looking what was there and then guessing. Later this was either confirmed or disproven.
Humans were cut open both dead (autopsy) or alive (vivisection).
Leonardo de Vinci did a lot of the early research by (illegally) cutting open cadavers and documenting what her found. This allowed him to get the shapes and locations of many of the internal organs and speculate on their functions. When the local authorities found out what he was doing, he was forced to stop (on threat of imprisonment, the church getting involved, etc etc).
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