Chapter LXXIII: Part 73

"In the earliest conceptions which men entertained of their
power of moving their own members, they probably had no
thought of any mechanism or organization by which this was
effected. The foot and the hand, no less than the head, were
seen to be endowed with life; and this pervading life seemed
sufficiently to explain the power of motion in each part of
the frame, without its being held necessary to seek out a
special seat of the will, or instruments by which its impulses
were made effective. But the slightest inspection of dissected
animals showed that their limbs were formed of a curious and
complex collection of cordage, and communications of various
kinds, running along and connecting the bones of the skeleton.
These cords and communications we now distinguish as muscles,
nerves, veins, arteries, &c.; and among these, we assign to
the muscles the office of moving the parts to which they are
attached, as cords move the parts of a machine. Though this
action of the muscles on the bones may now appear very
obvious, it was, probably, not at first discerned. It is
observed that Homer, who describes the wounds which are
inflicted in his battles with so much apparent anatomical
precision, nowhere employs the word muscle. And even
Hippocrates of Cos, the most celebrated physician of
antiquity, is held to have had no distinct conception of such
an organ. … Nor do we find much more distinctness on this
subject even in Aristotle, a generation or two later. … He
is held to have really had the merit of discovering the nerves
of sensation, which he calls the 'canals of the brain' … ,
but the analysis of the mechanism of motion is left by him
almost untouched. … His immediate predecessors were far from
remedying the deficiencies of his doctrines. Those who
professed to study physiology and medicine were, for the most
part, studious only to frame some general system of abstract
principles, which might give an appearance of connexion and
profundity to their tenets. In this manner the successors of
Hippocrates became a medical school, of great note in its day,
designated as the Dogmatic school; in opposition to which
arose an Empiric sect, who professed to deduce their modes of
cure, not from theoretical dogmas, but from experience. These
rival parties prevailed principally in Asia Minor and Egypt,
during the time of Alexander's successors,—a period rich in
names, but poor in discoveries; and we find no clear evidence
of any decided advance in anatomy. … The victories of
Lucullus and Pompeius, in Greece and Asia, made the Romans
acquainted with the Greek philosophy; and the consequence soon
was, that shoals of philosophers, rhetoricians, poets, and
physicians streamed from Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, to
Rome and Italy, to traffic their knowledge and their arts for
Roman wealth. Among these was one person whose name makes a
great figure in the history of medicine, Asclepiades of Prusa
in Bithynia. This man appears to have been a quack, with the
usual endowments of his class. … He would not, on such
accounts, deserve a place in the history of science, but that
he became the founder of a new school, the Methodic, which
professed to hold itself separate both from the Dogmatics and
the Empirics. I have noticed these schools of medicine,
because, though I am not able to state distinctly their
respective merits in the cultivation of anatomy, a great
progress in that science was undoubtedly made during their
domination, of which the praise must, I conceive, be in some
way divided among them. The amount of this progress we are
able to estimate, when we come to the works of Galen, who
flourished under the Antonines, and died about A. D. 203. The
following passage from his works will show that this progress
in knowledge was not made without the usual condition of
laborious and careful experiment, while it implies the curious
fact of such experiment being conducted by means of family
tradition and instruction, so as to give rise to a caste of
dissectors. In the opening of his Second Book on Anatomical
Manipulations, he speaks thus of his predecessors: 'I do not
blame the ancients, who did not write books on anatomical
manipulation; though I praise Marinus, who did. For it was
superfluous for them to compose such records for themselves or
others, while they were, from their childhood, exercised by
their parents in dissecting, just as familiarly as in writing
and reading; so that there was no more fear of their
forgetting their anatomy, than of forgetting their alphabet.
But when grown men, as well as children, were taught, this
thorough discipline fell off; and, the art being carried out
of the family of the Asclepiads, and declining by repeated
transmission, books became necessary for the student.' That
the general structure of the animal frame, as composed of
bones and muscles, was known with great accuracy before the
time of Galen, is manifest from the nature of the mistakes and
deficiencies of his predecessors which he finds it necessary
to notice. … Galen was from the first highly esteemed as an
anatomist. He was originally of Pergamus; and after receiving
the instructions of many medical and philosophical professors,
and especially of those of Alexandria, which was then the
metropolis of the learned and scientific world, he came to
Rome, where his reputation was soon so great as to excite the
envy and hatred of the Roman physicians. The emperors Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus would have retained him near them;
but he preferred pursuing his travels, directed principally by
curiosity. When he died, he left behind him numerous works, an
of them of great value for the light they throw on the history
of anatomy and medicine; and these were for a long period the
storehouse of all the most important anatomical knowledge
which the world possessed. In the time of intellectual
barrenness and servility, among the Arabians and the Europeans
of the dark ages, the writings of Galen had almost unquestioned
authority; and it was only by an uncommon effort of
independent thinking that Abdollatif ventured to assert, that
even Galen's assertions must give way to the evidence of the
senses. In more modern times, when Vesalius, in the sixteenth
century, accused Galen of mistakes, he drew upon himself the
hostility of the whole body of physicians."

_W. Whewell,
History of the Inductive Sciences,
book 17, chapter 1, section 1 (volume 2)._

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"Galen strongly denied being attached to any of the sects of
his day, and regarded as slaves those who took the title of
Hippocratists, Praxagoreaus, or Herophilists, and so on.
Nevertheless his predilection in favor of the Hippocratic
writings is well marked, for he explains, comments upon them,
and amplifies them at length, refutes the objections of their
adversaries and gives them the highest place. He says, 'No one
before me has given the true method of treating disease;
Hippocrates, I confess, has heretofore shown the path, but as
he was the first to enter it he was not able to go as far as
he wished. … He has not made all the necessary distinction,
and is often obscure, as is usually the case with ancients
when they attempt to be concise. He says very little of
complicated diseases; in a word, he has only sketched what
another was to complete; he has opened the path, but has left
it for a successor to enlarge and make it plain.' This implies
how he regarded himself as the successor of Hippocrates, and
how little weight he attached to the labors of others. He held
that there were three sorts of principles in man—spirits,
humors, and solids. Throughout his metaphysical speculations
Galen reproduces and amplifies the Hippocratic dogmatism.
Between perfect health and disease there were, he thought,
eight kinds of temperaments or imperfect mixtures compatible
with the exercise of the functions of life. With Plato and
Aristotle he thought the human soul to be composed of three
faculties or parts, the vegetive, residing in the liver; the
irascible, having its seat in the heart, and the rational,
which resided in the brain. He divided diseases of the solids
of the body into what he called distempers; he distinguished
between the continued and intermittent fevers, regarding the
quotidian as being caused by phlegm, the tertian as due to
yellow bile, and the quartan due to atrabile. In the doctrine
of coction, crises, and critical days, he agreed with
Hippocrates; with him he also agreed in the positive statement
that diseases are cured by their contraries."

_Roswell Park,
Lectures on the History of Medicine (in MS.)._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 7-11th Centuries.
Medical Art of the Arabs.

"It probably sounds paradoxical (though it is not) to affirm
that, throughout the first half of the Middle Ages, science
made its home chiefly with the Semites and Græco-Romans (its
founders), while, in opposition to the original relations,
faith and its outgrowths alone were fostered by the Germans.
In the sterile wastes of the desert the Arabians constructed a
verdant oasis of science, in lands to-day the home once more
of absolute or partial barbarism. A genuine meteor of
civilization were these Arabians. … The Arabians built their
medicine upon the principles and theories of the Greeks (whose
medical writings were studied and copied mostly in
translations only), and especially upon those of Galen, in
such a way, that, on the whole, they added to it very little
matter of their own, save numerous subtle definitions and
amplifications. But Indian medical views and works, as well as
those of other earlier Asiatic peoples (e. g., the Chaldeans),
exercised demonstrably, but in a subordinate degree, an
influence upon Arabian medicine. The Arabians interwove too
into their medical views various philosophical theorems,
especially those of Aristotle, already corrupted by the
Alexandrians and still further falsified by themselves with
portions of the Neo-Platonic philosophy; and finally they
added thereto a goodly share of the absurdities of astrology
and alchemy. Indeed it is nowadays considered proven that they
even made use of ancient Egyptian medical works, e. g., the
papyrus Ebers. Thus the medicine of the Arabians, like Grecian
medicine its parent, did not greatly surpass the grade of
development of mere medical philosophy, and, so far as regards
its intrinsic worth, it stands entirely upon Grecian
foundations. … Yet they constantly advanced novelties in the
sciences subsidiary to medicine, materia medica and pharmacy,
from the latter of which chemistry, pharmacies and the
profession of the apothecary were developed. … The mode of
transfer of Greek medicine to the Arabians was probably as
follows: The inhabitants of the neighboring parts of Asia,
including both the Persians and Arabians, as the result of
multifarious business connexions with Alexandria, came, even
at an early date, in contact with Grecian science, and by
degrees a permanent alliance was formed with it. In a more
evident way the same result was accomplished by the Jewish
schools in Asia, the great majority of which owed their
foundation to Alexandria. Such schools were established at
Nisibis, at Nahardea in Mesopotamia, at Mathæ-Mechasja on the
Euphrates, at Sura, &c., and their period of prime falls in
the 5th century. The influence of the Nestorian universities
was especially favorable and permanent, particularly the
school under Greek management founded at Edessa, in
Mesopotamia, where Stephen of Edessa, the reputed father of
Alexander of Tralles, taught (A. D. 530). …. Still more
influential in the transfer of Grecian science to the Arabians
was the banishment of the 'heathen' philosophers of the last
so-called Platonic school of Athens, by the 'Christian' despot
Justinian I. (529). These philosophers were well received at
the court of the infidel Chosroës, and in return manifested
their gratitude by the propagation of Grecian science. …
From all these causes it resulted that, even as early as the
time of Mohammed (571-632), physicians educated in the Grecian
doctrines lived among the Arabians. … Arabian culture (and
of course Arabian medicine) reached its zenith at the period
of the greatest power and greatest wealth of the Caliphate in
the 9th and 10th centuries. At that time intellectual life was
rooted in the schools of the mosques, i. e., the Arabian
universities, which the great caliphs were zealous in
founding. Such Arabian universities arose and existed in the
progress of time (even as late as the 14th century) at Bagdad,
Bassora, Cufa, Samarcand, Ispahan, Damascus, Bokhara,
Firuzabad and Khurdistan, and under the scholastic Fatimides
(909-1171) in Alexandria. Under the Ommyiades (755-1031),
after the settlement of the Arabians in Spain in the beginning
of the 8th century, were founded the famous universities of
Cordova (possessing in the 10th century a library of 250,000
volumes), Seville, Toledo, Almeria and Murcia under the three
caliphs named Abderrahman and Al Hakem.
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Less important were the universities of Granada and Valencia,
and least important of all, those founded by the Edrisi
dynasty (800-986) in the provinces of Tunis, Fez and Morocco.
In spite of all these institutions the Arabians possessed no
talent for productive research; still less, like the ancient
Semites, did they create any arts, save poesy and
architecture. Their whole civilization bore the stamp of its
foreign origin. … 'The Prince of Physicians' (el Sheik el
Reis—he was also a poet) was the title given by the Arabians
to Abu Ali el Hossein ebn Abdallah ebn Sina (Ebn Sina,
Avicenna), 980-1037, in recognition of his great erudition, of
which the chief evidences are stored in his 'Canon.' This
work, though it contains substantially merely the conclusions
of the Greeks, was the text-book and law of the healing art,
even as late as the first century of modern times."

_J. H. Baas,
Outlines of the History of Medicine,
pages 216-229._

"The Saracens commenced the application of chemistry, both to
the theory and practice of medicine, in the explanation of the
functions of the human body and in the cure of its diseases.
Nor was their surgery behind their medicine. Albucasis, of
Cordova, shrinks not from the performance of the most
formidable operations in his own and in the obstetrical art;
the actual cautery and the knife are used without hesitation.
He has left us ample descriptions of the surgical instruments
then employed; and from him we learn that, in operations on
females in which considerations of delicacy intervened, the
services of properly instructed women were secured. How
different was all this from the state of things in Europe: the
Christian peasant, fever-stricken or overtaken by accident,
hied to the nearest saint-shrine and expected a miracle; the
Spanish Moor relied on the prescription or lancet of his
physician, or the bandage and knife of his surgeon."

_J. W. Draper,
History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,
volume 2, chapter 2._

"The accession of Gehwer to the throne of Mussulman Spain,
early in the eleventh century, was marked by the promulgation
of regulations so judiciously planned, touching medical
science and its practice, that he deserves the highest
commendation for the unwavering zeal with which he supervised
this important branch of learning taught in the metropolis.
Those evils which the provinces had suffered previous to his
rule, through the practice of medicine by debased empirics,
were quickly removed by this sagacious Caliph. Upon the
publication of his rescripts, such medical charlatans or
ambulatory physicians as boldly announced themselves to be
medici, without a knowledge of the science, were ignominiously
expelled from the provincial towns. He decreed that a college
of skilled surgeons should be forthwith organized, for the
single specified function of rigidly examining into the
assumed qualifications of applicants for licenses to exercise
the curative art in municipal or rural departments, or sought
professional employment as physicians in the numerous
hospitals upon the Mahometan domains."

_G. F. Fort,
Medical Economy during the Middle Ages,
chapter 17._

"Anatomy and physiology, far from making any conquests under
Arabian rule, followed on the contrary a retrograde movement.
As those physicians never devoted themselves to dissections,
they were under the necessity of conforming entirely to the
accounts of Galen. … Pathology was enriched in the Arabian
writings by some new observations. … The physicians of this
nation were the first … who began to distinguish eruptive
fevers by the exterior characters of the eruption, while the
Greeks paid but little attention to these signs. Therapeutics
made also some interesting acquisitions under the Arab
physicians. It owes to them, among other things, the
introduction of mild purgatives, such as cassia, senna, and
manna, which replaced advantageously, in many cases, the
drastics employed by the ancients; it is indebted to them,
also, for several chemical and pharmaceutical improvements, as
the confection of syrups, tinctures, and distilled waters,
which are very frequently and usefully employed. Finally,
external therapeutics, or surgery, received some minor
additions, such as pomades, plasters, and new ointments; but
these additions were very far from compensating for the
considerable losses which it suffered by their abandoning a
multitude of operations in use among the Greeks."

_P. V. Renouard,
History of Medicine,
page 267._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 12-17th Centuries.
Mediæval Medicine.

"The difficulties under which medical science laboured may be
estimated from the fact that dissection was forbidden by the
clergy of the Middle Ages, on the ground that it was impious
to mutilate a form made in the image of God. We do not find
this pious objection interfering with such mutilation when
effected by means of the rack and the wheel and such other
clerical rather than medical instruments. But in the reign of
Philip the Second of Spain a famous Spanish doctor was
actually condemned by the Inquisition to be burnt for having
performed a surgical operation, and it was only by royal
favour that he was permitted instead to expiate his crime by a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he died in poverty and
exile. This being the attitude of the all-powerful Church
towards medical progress, it is not surprising that medical
science should have stagnated, and that Galen and Dioscorides
were permitted to lay down the law in the sixteenth century as
they had done since the beginning of the Christian era. Some
light is thrown upon the state of things here from resulting
by a work translated from the German in the year 1561, and
entitled 'A most excellent and perfecte homish apothecarye or
physicke booke, for all the grefes and diseases of the bodye.'
The first chapter is 'Concerning the Head and his partes.'
'Galen sayth, the head is divided into foure partes: in the
fore part hath blood the dominion; Colera in the ryght syde,
Melancholy in the left syde, and Flegma beareth rule in the
hindermost part. If the head doth ake so sore by reason of a
runninge that he cannot snoffe hys nose, bath hys fete in a
depe tub untill the knees and give him this medicine … which
riseth into hys head and dryeth hys moyst braynes. Galen sayth
He that hath payne in the hindermost part of hys head, the
same must be let blood under the chynne, specially on the
right side; also were it good ofte to burn the heyre of a man
before hys nose. The braynes are greved many wayes; many there
are whom the head whyrleth so sore that he thinketh the earth
turneth upsydedoune: Cummin refraineth the whyrling,
comforteth the braynes and maketh them to growe agayne: or he
may take the braynes of a hogge, rost the same upon a grede
yron and cut slices thereof and lay to the greved parts.'
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This doctrine of like helping like was of universal
application, and in medical works of the Middle Ages we meet
constantly with such prescriptions as these:—'Take the right
eye of a Frogg, lap it in a peece of russet cloth and hang it
about the neck: it cureth the light eye if it bee en flamed or
bleared. And if the left eye be greved, do the like by the
left eye of the said Frogg." Again—'The skin of a Raven's
heel is good against the gout, but the right heel skin must be
laid upon the right foot if that be gouty, and the left upon
the left. … If you would have a man become bold or impudent
let him carry about him the skin or eyes of a Lion or a Cock,
and he will be fearless of his enemies, nay, he will be very
terrible unto them. If you would have him talkative, give him
tongues, and seek out those of water frogs and ducks and such
creatures notorious for their continuall noise making.' On the
same principle we find it prescribed as a cure for the
quartane ague to lay the fourth book of Homer's Iliad under
the patient's head; a remedy which had at least the negative
merit of not being nauseous. … For weak eyes the patient is
to 'take the tounge of a foxe, and hange the same about his
necke, and so long it hangeth there his sight shall not wax
feeble, as sayth Pliny.' The hanging of such amulets round the
neck was very frequently prescribed, and the efficacy of them
is a thing curiously well attested. Elias Ashmole in his diary
for 1681 has entered the following—'I tooke this morning a
good dose of elixir, and hung three spiders about my neck, and
they drove my ague away. Deo gratias!' A baked toad hung in a
silk bag about the neck was also held in high esteem, as was a
toad, either alive or dried, laid upon the back of the neck as
a means of stopping a bleeding at the nose: and again, 'either
frogg or toade, the nails whereof have been clipped, hanged
about one that is sick of quartane ague, riddeth away the
disease forever, as sayth Pliny.' We have even a striking
instance of the benefit derived from an amulet by a horse, who
could not be suspected of having helped forward the cure by
the strength of his faith in it. 'The root of cut Malowe
hanged about the neck driveth away blemishes of the eyen,
whether it be in a man or a horse, as I Jerome of Brunsweig,
have seene myselfe. I have myselfe done it to a blind horse
that I bought for X crounes, and was sold again of XL
crounes'—a trick distinctly worth knowing."

_E. A. King,
Mediæval Medicine
(Nineteenth Century, July 1893)._

"If we survey the social and political state of Europe from
the twelfth to the sixteenth century, in its relation to the
development of medical art, our attention is at once arrested
by Italy, which at this period was far ahead of the rest of
the world. Taking the number of universities as an index of
civilization, we find that, before the year 1500, there were
sixteen in Italy,—while in France there were but six: in
Germany, including Hungary, Bohemia, Bavaria, &c., there were
eight: and in Britain, two; making sixteen in all,—the exact
number which existed in Italy alone. The Italian Universities
were, likewise, no less superior in number than in fame to
those of the north. … In many of the Italian republics,
during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the
power was chiefly in the hands of the middle classes; and it
is probable that the physicians occupied a high and
influential position among them. Galvanis Flamma describes
Milan in 1288, as having a population of 200,000, among whom
were 600 notaries, 200 physicians, 80 schoolmasters, and fifty
transcribers of manuscripts or books. Milan was about this
period at a pitch of glory which has not been equalled since
the Greek republics."

_J. R. Russell,
History and Heroes of the Art of Medicine,
chapter 5._

"Three schools, as early as 1158, had a reputation which
extended throughout the whole of Europe: Paris for theological
studies, Bologna for Roman or civil law, and Salerno as the
chief medical school of the west."

_G. F. Fort,
Medical Economy during the Middle Ages,
chapter 24._

"In 1215 Pope Innocent III. fulminated an anathema specially
directed against surgery, by ordaining, that as the church
abhorred all cruel or sanguinary practices, no priest should
be permitted to follow surgery, or to perform any operations
in which either instruments of steel or fire were employed:
and that they should refuse their benediction to all those who
professed and pursued it. … The saints have proved sad
enemies to the doctors. Miraculous cures are attested by
monks, abbots, bishops, popes, and consecrated saints. …
Pilgrimages and visits to holy shrines have usurped the place
of medicine, and, as in many cases at our own watering places,
by air and exercise, have unquestionably effected what the
employment of regular professional aid had been unable to
accomplish. St. Dominic, St. Bellinus, and St. Vitus have been
greatly renowned in the cure of diseases in general; the
latter particularly, who takes both poisons and madness of all
kinds under his special protection. Melton says 'the saints of
the Romanists have usurped the place of the zodiacal
constellations in their governance of the parts of man's body,
and that "for every limbe they have a saint." Thus St. Otilia
keepes the head instead of Aries; St. Blasius is appointed to
governe the necke instead of Taurus; St. Lawrence keepes the
backe and shoulders instead of Gemini, Cancer, and Leo: St.
Erasmus rules the belly with the entrayles, in the place of
Libra and Scorpius; in the stead of Sagittarius, Capricornus,
Aquarius, and Pisces, the holy church of Rome hath elected St.
Burgarde, St. Rochus. St. Quirinus, St. John, and many others,
which governe the thighes, feet, shinnes, and knees.' This
supposed influence of the Romish saints is more minutely
exhibited, according to Hone, in two very old prints, from
engravings on wood, in the collection of the British Museum.
Right hand: the top joint of the thumb is dedicated to God,
the second joint to the Virgin; the top joint of the
fore-finger to St. Barnabas, the second joint to St. John, the
third to St. Paul: the top joint of the second finger to Simon
Cleophas, the second joint to Tathideo, the third to Joseph;
the top joint of the third finger to Zaccheus, the second to
Stephen, the third to the evangelist Luke; the top joint of
the little finger to Leatus, the second to Mark, the third to
Nicodemus. Left hand: the top joint of the thumb is dedicated
to Christ, the second joint to the Virgin: the top joint of
the fore-finger to St. James, the second to St. John the
Evangelist, the third to St. Peter; the first joint of the
second finger to St. Simon, the second joint to St. Matthew,
the third to St. James the Great; the top joint of the third
finger to St. Jude, the second joint to St. Bartholomew, the
third to St. Andrew; the top joint of the little finger to St.
Matthias, the second to St. Thomas, the third joint to St.
Philip. …
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"The credulity of mankind has never been more strongly
displayed than in the general belief afforded to the
authenticity of remarkable cures of diseases said to have been
effected by the imposition of royal hands. The practice seems
to have originated in an opinion that there is something
sacred or divine attaching either to the sovereign or his
functions. … The practice appears to be one of English
growth, commencing with Edward the Confessor, and descending
only to foreign potentates who could show an alliance with the
royal family of England. The kings of France, however, claimed
the right to dispense the Gift of Healing, and it was
certainly exercised by Philip the First; but the French
historians say that he was deprived of the power on account of
the irregularity of his life. Laurentius, first physician to
Henry IV, of France, who is indignant at the attempt made to
derive its origin from Edward the Confessor, asserts the power
to have commenced with Clovis I, A. D. 481, and says that
Louis I, A. D. 814, added to the ceremonial of touching, the
sign of the cross. Mezeray also says, that St. Louis, through
humility, first added the sign of the cross in touching for
the king's evil. … If credit is to be given to a statement
… by William of Malmesbury, with respect to Edward the
Confessor, we must admit that in England, for a period of
nearly 700 years, the practice of the royal touch was
exercised in a greater or lesser degree, as it extended to the
reign of Queen Anne. It must not however be supposed that
historical documents are extant to prove a regular continuance
of the practice during this time. No accounts whatever of the
first four Norman kings attempting to cure the complaint are
to be found. In the reign of William III, it was not on any
occasion exercised. He manifested more sense than his
predecessors, for he withheld from employing the royal touch
for the cure of scrofula; and Rapin says, that he was so
persuaded he should do no injury to persons afflicted with
this distemper by not touching them, that he refrained from it
all his reign. Queen Elizabeth was also averse to the
practice, yet she extensively performed it. It flourished most
in the time of Charles II, particularly after his restoration,
and a public register of cases was kept at Whitehall, the
principal scene of its operation."

_T. J. Pettigrew,
Superstitions connected with the History and Practice
of Medicine and Surgery,
pages 34-37, and 117-121._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 16th Century.
Paracelsus.

Paracelsus, of whose many names this one stands alone in
history to represent him, was an extraordinary person, born in
Switzerland, in 1493. He died in 1541. "His character has been
very variously estimated. The obstructives of his own age and
many hasty judges since have pronounced him a quack. This is
simply ridiculous. As a chemist, he is considered to have been
the discoverer of zinc, and perhaps of bismuth. He was
acquainted with hydrogen, muriatic, and sulphurous gases. He
distinguished alum from the vitriols; remarking that the
former contained an earth, and the latter metals. He perceived
the part played by the atmosphere in combustion, and
recognized the analogy between combustion and respiration. He
saw that in the organic system chemical processes are
constantly going on. Thus, to him is due the fundamental idea
from which have sprung the chemico-physiological researches of
Liebig, Mulder, Boussingault, and others. By using in
medicine, not crude vegetables, but their active principles,
he opened the way to the discovery of the proximate principles
of vegetables, organic alkalis, and the like. But perhaps the
greatest service he rendered to chemistry, was by declaring it
an essential part of medical education, and by showing that
its true practical application lay not in gold-making, but in
pharmacy and the industrial arts. In medicine he scouted the
fearfully complex electuaries and mixtures of the Galenists
and the Arabian polypharmacists, recommending simpler and more
active preparations. He showed that the idea of poison is
merely relative, and knew that poisons in suitable doses may
be employed in medicine. He prescribed tin as a remedy for
intestinal worms, mercury as an anti-syphilitic, and lead in
the diseases of the skin. He also used preparations of
antimony, arsenic, and iron. He employed sulphuric acid in the
treatment of saturnine affections. The astonishing cures which
he undoubtedly performed were, however, due not so much to his
peculiar medicines, as to his eminent sagacity and insight. He
showed the importance of a chemical examination of urine for
the diagnosis of disease."

_J. W. Slater,
Paracelsus
(Imperial Dict. of Univ. Biog.)._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 16th Century.
The first English College of Physicians.

"The modern doctor dates only from the reign of Henry VIII.,
when the College of Physicians in England was founded as a
body corporate by letters patent in the tenth year of the
reign. This grant was in response to a petition from a few of
the most notable members of the profession resident in London,
who were perhaps moved by both a laudable zeal in the
interests of science, and a compassion for the sufferings of
the subjects of astrological and toxicological experiments.
The charter thus obtained, though probably drafted by the
promoters themselves, was found to be so inadequately worded
and expressed, that it became necessary to obtain powers to
amend it by Act of Parliament. Among these early members were
Linacre, Wotton, and others, famous scholars beyond doubt,
though possibly but indifferent practitioners. In fact, we are
constantly struck throughout the early history of the
profession by the frequent occurrence of names associated with
almost every other branch of study than that strictly
appertaining to the art of medicine. We have naturalists,
magneticians, astronomers, mathematicians, logicians, and
classical scholars, but scarce one who accomplished anything
worthy to be recorded in the annals of medical science. Indeed
it is difficult to conceive any useful object that could have
been attained by the existence of the College as a
professional licensing body, other than the pecuniary
interests of the orthodox. … It is most significant as to
the social degradation of the science of medicine, that most
of the notorious empirics of the latter half of the sixteenth
century were both highly recommended and strenuously supported
in their resistance to the proctors of orthodoxy by some of
the greatest names of the age. These self-deluded victims of
quackery were not indeed adverse in theory to the pretensions
of more regular members of the profession.
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They would patronize the Court physicians, or, if favorites of
the Crown, they might even submit to the Sovereign's
recommendation in that behalf; but none the less their family
doctor was in far too many cases some outlandish professor of
occult arts, retained in learned state on the premises, who
undertook the speedy, not to say miraculous, cure of his
patron's particular disease by all the charms of the Cabala."

_H. Hall,
The Early Medicus
(Merry England; also in Eclectic Magazine, June, 1884)._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 16th Century.
The System of Van Helmont.

John Baptist van Helmont "was born at Brussels in the year
1577. … His parents were noble, and he was heir to great
possessions. He pursued in Louvain the usual course of
scholastic philosophy. … Becoming accidentally acquainted
with the writings of Thomas à Kempis and John Tauler, he from
that day adopted what goes by the vague term of mysticism.
That is, thoroughly convinced that there was a spiritual world
in intimate and eternal union with the spirit of man; that
this spiritual world was revealed to that human soul which
submitted to receive it in humility; and that the doctrines of
Christianity were not to be looked upon as a system of
philosophy; but as a rule of life, he resolved to follow them
to the letter. The consequence of this resolution was, that he
devoted himself to the art of medicine, in imitation of the
Great Healer of the body as well as of the soul; and as the
prejudices of his time and country made his rank and wealth an
obstacle to his entrance into the medical profession, he made
over all his property, with its honours, to his sister; that,
'laying aside every weight, he might run the race that was set
before him.' He entered on his new studies with all the zeal
of his character, and very soon had so completely mastered the
writings of Hippocrates and Galen, as to excite the surprise
of his contemporaries. But although styled a dreamer, and
having a mind easily moved to belief in spiritual
manifestation, he was not of a credulous nature in regard to
matters belonging to the senses. And as he believed that
Christianity was to be practised, and to be found true by the
test of experiment, so he believed that the doctrines of
Hippocrates and of Galen were to be subjected to a similar
trial. An opportunity soon occurred to himself. He caught the
itch and turned to Galen for its cure. Galen attributes this
disease to overheated bile and sour phlegm, and says that it
is to be cured by purgatives. Van Helmont, with the implicit
faith of his simple nature, procured the prescribed medicines,
and took them as ordered by Galen. Alas, no cure of the itch
followed, but great exhaustion of his whole body: so Galen was
not to be trusted. This was a serious discovery; for if he
could not trust Galen, by whom the whole medical world swore,
to whom was he to turn? … Van Helmont resolved to work out
for himself a solution of the great problem to which he had
devoted his life. Van Helmont's system may be called spiritual
vitalism. The primary cause of all organization was Archæus.
By Archæus, a man is much more nearly allied, he says, to the
world of spirits and the Father of spirits than to the
external world. Archæus is the creative spirit which, working
upon the raw material of water or fluidity, by means of 'a
ferment' excites all the endless actions which result in the
growth and nourishment of the body. Thus, digestion is neither
a chemical nor a mechanical operation; nor is it, as was then
supposed, the effects of heat, for it is arrested instead of
aided by fever, and goes on in perfection in fishes and
cold-blooded animals; but, on the command of Archæus, an acid
is generated in the stomach, which dissolves the food. This is
the first digestion. The second consists in the neutralization
of this acid by the bile out of the gall bladder. The third
takes place in the vessels of the mesentery. The fourth goes
on in the heart, by the action of the vital spirits. The fifth
consists in the conversion of the arterial blood into vital
spirits, chiefly in the brain. The sixth consists of the
preparation of nourishment in the laboratory of each organ,
during which operation Archæus, present everywhere, is itself
regenerated, and superintends the momentary regeneration of
the whole frame. If for digestion we substitute the word
nutrition, we cannot fail to be struck by the near approach to
accuracy in this description of the succession of processes by
which it is brought about. Van Helmont's pathology was quite
consistent with his physiology. As life and all vital action
depended upon Archæus, so the perturbation of Archæus gave
rise to fevers, and derangements of the blood and secretions.
Thus, gout was a disease not confined to the part in which it
showed itself, but was the result of Archæus. It will be seen
that by this theory the entire system of Galen was non-suited.
There is no place for the elements and the humours."

_J. R. Russell,
History and Heroes of the Art of Medicine,
chapter 8._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 17th Century.
Harvey and the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood.

William Harvey, "physician and discoverer of the circulation
of the blood, was born at Folkestone, Kent, 1 April 1578, in a
house which was in later times the posthouse of the town and
which still belongs to Caius College, Cambridge, to which
Harvey bequeathed it. His father was Thomas Harvey, a Kentish
yeoman. … In 1588 William was sent to the King's School,
Canterbury. Thence he went to Cambridge, where he was admitted
a pensioner in Gonville and Caius College, 31 May 1593. … He
graduated B. A. 1597, and, determining to study medicine,
travelled through France and Germany to Padua, the most famous
school of physic of that time. … He returned to England,
graduated M. D. at Cambridge 1602, and soon after took a house
in the parish of St. Martin-extra-Ludgate in London. … On 4
August 1615 he was elected Lumleian lecturer at the College of
Physicians, … and in the following April, on the 16th, 17th,
and 18th, he delivered at the college in Knightrider Street,
near St. Paul's Cathedral, the lectures in which he made the
first public statement of his thoughts on the circulation of
the blood. The notes from which he delivered these lectures
exist in their original manuscript and binding at the British
Museum. … In 1628, twelve years after his first statement of
it in his lectures, he published at Frankfurt, through William
Fitzer, his discovery of the circulation of the blood. The
book is a small quarto, entitled 'Exercitatio Anatomica de
Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus,' and contains
seventy-two pages and two plates of diagrams. The printers
evidently had difficulty in reading the author's handwriting,
and there are many misprints. …
{2134}
He begins by modestly stating how the difficulties of the
subject had gradually become clear to him, and by expressing
with a quotation from the 'Andria' of Terence, the hope that
his discovery might help others to still further knowledge. He
then describes the motions of arteries, of the ventricles of
the heart, and of its auricles, as seen in living animals, and
the use of these movements. He shows that the blood coming
into the right auricle from the vena cava, and passing then to
the right ventricle, is pumped out to the lungs through the
pulmonary artery, passes through the parenchyma of the lungs,
and comes thence by the pulmonary veins to the left ventricle.
This same blood, he shows, is then pumped out to the body. It
is carried out by arteries and comes back by veins, performing
a complete circulation. He shows that, in a live snake, when
the great veins are tied some way from the heart, the piece of
vein between the ligature and the heart is empty, and further,
that blood coming from the heart is checked in an artery by a
ligature, so that there is blood between the heart and the
ligature and no blood beyond the ligature. He then shows how
the blood comes back to the heart by the veins, and
demonstrates their valves. These had before been described by
Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente, but before Harvey no
exact explanation of their function had been given. He gives
diagrams showing the results of obstructing the veins, and
that these valves may thus be seen to prevent the flow of
blood in the veins in any direction except towards the heart.
After a summary of a few lines in the fourteenth chapter he
further illustrates the perpetual circuit of the blood, and
points out how morbid materials are carried from the heart all
over the body. The last chapter gives a masterly account of
the structure of the heart in men and animals, and points out
that the right ventricle is thinner than the left because it
has only to send the blood a short way into the lungs, while
the left ventricle has to pump it all over the body. This
great and original book at once attracted attention and
excited discussion. In the College of Physicians of London,
where Harvey had mentioned the discovery in his lectures every
year since 1616, the Exercitatio received all the honour it
deserved. On the continent of Europe it was received with less
favour, but neither in England nor abroad did anyone suggest
that the discovery was to be found in other writers. …
Before his death the great discovery of Harvey was accepted
throughout the medical world. The modern controversy … as to
whether the discovery was taken from some previous author is
sufficiently refuted by the opinion of the opponents of his
views in his own time, who agreed in denouncing the doctrine
as new; by the laborious method of gradual demonstration
obvious in his book and lectures; and, lastly, by the complete
absence of lucid demonstration of the action of the heart and
course of the blood in Cæsalpinus, Servetus, and all others
who have been suggested as possible originals of the
discovery. It remains to this day the greatest of the
discoveries of physiology, and its whole honour belongs to
Harvey."

_N. Moore,
Harvey
(Dict. of National Biog., volume 25)._

ALSO IN:
_R. Willis,
William Harvey: A history of the Discovery of
the Circulation of the Blood._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 17th Century.
Discovery of the Lymphatic Circulation.

"The discovery of the lymphatic vessels and their purpose was
scarcely less remarkable than that of the circulation of the
blood. It has about it less of eclat, because it was not the
work of one man, but was a matter of slow development.
Herophilus and Erasistratus had seen white vessels connected
with the lymph nodes in the mesentery of certain animals, and
had supposed them to be arteries full of air. Galen disputed
this, and believed the intestinal chyle to be carried by the
veins of the mesentery into the liver. In 1563 Eustachius had
described the thoracic duct in the horse; in 1622 Aselli,
professor of anatomy at Milan, discovered the lacteal vessels
in a dog which had been killed immediately after eating.
Having pricked one of these by mistake, he saw a white fluid
issue from it. Repeating the same experiment at other times he
became certain that the white threads were vessels which drew
the chyle from the intestines. He observed the valves with
which they are supplied, and supposed these vessels to all
meet in the pancreas and to be continued into the liver. In
1647 Pecquet, who was still a student at Montpelier,
discovered the lymph reservoir, or receptaculum chyli, and the
canal which leads from it, i. e., the thoracic duct, which he
followed to its termination in the left subclavian vein.
Having ligated it he saw it swell below, and empty itself
above the ligature. He studied the courses of the lacteals,
and convinced himself that they all entered into the common
reservoir. His discovery gave the last blow to the ancient
theory, which attributed to the liver the function of blood
making, and it confirmed the doctrine of Harvey, while, like
it, it had been very strongly opposed. Strangely enough,
Harvey in this instance united with his great opponent,
Riolan, in making common cause against the discovery of
Pecquet and its significance. From that time the lymphatic
vessels and glands became objects of common interest and were
investigated by many anatomists, especially Bartholin, Ruysch,
the Hunters, Hewson, and above all by Mascagni. He was the
first to give a graphic description of the whole lymphatic
apparatus."

_Roswell Park,
Lectures on the History of Medicine (in MS.)._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 17th Century.
Descartes and the dawn of modern Physiological science.

"The essence of modern, as contrasted with ancient,
physiological science appears to me to lie in its antagonism
to animistic hypotheses and animistic phraseology. It offers
physical explanations of vital phenomena, or frankly confesses
that it has none to offer. And, so far as I know, the first
person who gave expression to this modern view of physiology,
who was bold enough to enunciate the proposition that vital
phenomena, like all the other phenomena of the physical world,
are, in ultimate analysis, resolvable into matter and motion
was René Descartes. The fifty-four years of life of this most
original and powerful thinker are widely overlapped, on both
sides, by the eighty of Harvey, who survived his younger
contemporary by seven years, and takes pleasure in
acknowledging the French philosopher's appreciation of his
great discovery.
{2135}
In fact, Descartes accepted the doctrine of the circulation as
propounded by 'Harvæus médecin d'Angleterre,' and gave a full
account of it in his first work, the famous 'Discours de la
Méthode,' which was published in 1637, only nine years after
the exercitation 'De motu cordis;' and, though differing from
Harvey on some important points (in which it may be noted, in
passing, Descartes was wrong and Harvey right), he always
speaks of him with great respect. And so important does the
subject seem to Descartes that he returns to it in the 'Traité
des Passions' and in the 'Traité de l'Homme.' It is easy to
see that Harvey's work must have had a peculiar significance
for the subtle thinker, to whom we owe both the spiritualistic
and the materialistic philosophies of modern times. It was in
the very year of its publication, 1628, that Descartes
withdrew into that life of solitary investigation and
meditation of which his philosophy was the fruit. …
Descartes uses 'thought' as the equivalent of our modern term
'consciousness.' Thought is the function of the soul, and its
only function. Our natural heat and all the movements of the
body, says he, do not depend on the soul. Death does not take
place from any fault of the soul, but only because some of the
principal parts of the body become corrupted. … Descartes'
'Treatise on Man' is a sketch of human physiology, in which a
bold attempt is made to explain all the phenomena of life,
except those of consciousness, by physical reasonings. To a
mind turned in this direction, Harvey's exposition of the
heart and vessels as a hydraulic mechanism must have been
supremely welcome. Descartes was not a mere philosophical
theorist, but a hardworking dissector and experimenter, and he
held the strongest opinion respecting the practical value of
the new conception which he was introducing. … 'It is true,'
says he, 'that as medicine is now practised, it contains
little that is very useful; but without any desire to
depreciate, I am sure that there is no one, even among
professional men, who will not declare that all we know is
very little as compared with that which remains to be known;
and that we might escape an infinity of diseases of the mind,
no less than of the body, and even perhaps from the weakness
of old age, if we had sufficient knowledge of their causes and
of all the remedies with which nature has provided us.' So
strongly impressed was Descartes with this, that he resolved
to spend the rest of his life in trying to acquire such a
knowledge of nature as would lead to the construction of a
better medical doctrine. The anti-Cartesians found material
for cheap ridicule in these aspirations of the philosopher;
and it is almost needless to say that, in the thirteen years
which elapsed between the publication of the 'Discours' and
the death of Descartes, he did not contribute much to their
realisation. But, for the next century, all progress in
physiology took place along the lines which Descartes laid
down. The greatest physiological and pathological work of the
seventeenth century, Borelli's treatise 'De Motu Animalium,'
is, to all intents and purposes, a development of Descartes'
fundamental conception; and the same may be said of the
physiology and pathology of Boerhaave, whose authority
dominated in the medical world of the first half of the
eighteenth century. With the origin of modern chemistry, and
of electrical science, in the latter half of the eighteenth
century, aids in the analysis of the phenomena of life, of
which Descartes could not have dreamed, were offered to the
physiologist. And the greater part of the gigantic progress
which has been made in the present century is a justification
of the prevision of Descartes. For it consists, essentially,
in a more and more complete resolution of the grosser organs
of the living body into physico-chemical mechanisms. 'I shall
try to explain our whole bodily machinery in such a way, that
it will be no more necessary for us to suppose that the soul
produces such movements as are not voluntary, than it is to
think that there is in a clock a soul which causes it to show
the hours.' These words of Descartes might be appropriately
taken as a motto by the author of any modern treatise on
physiology."

_T. H. Huxley,
Connection of the Biological Sciences with Medicine
(Science and Culture, etc., lecture 13)._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 17th Century.
Introduction of Peruvian Bark.