Chapter I: The Sixteenth Century (2)

“The end of Vesalius was tragic enough. ‘Hispanum curabat nobilem petiit ab amicis defuncti corpus aperire ut mortis scrutaretur causam. Quo concesso, visum cor in aperto jam pectore adhuc palpitans.’ The punishment ordered for this was a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his return voyage he was wrecked on the island of Zacinthus. ‘Inops, in loco solitario, omnique carens subsidio miserabiliter vitam finivit 1564.’”

“VESALIUS,” says Portal, “appears to me one of the greatest men who ever existed. Let the astronomers vaunt their Copernicus, the natural philosophers their Galileo and Torricelli, the mathematicians their Pascal, the geographers their Columbus, I shall always place Vesalius above all their heroes. The first study for man is man. Vesalius has this noble object in view, and has admirably attained it; he has made on himself and his fellows such discoveries as Columbus could only make by travelling to the extremity of the world. The discoveries of Vesalius are of direct importance to man; by acquiring fresh knowledge of his own structure, man seems to enlarge his existence; while discoveries in geography or astronomy affect him but in a very indirect manner.”

The zeal of Vesalius and his fellow-students of anatomy often led them to weird adventures. Hallam says:[850] “they prowled by night in charnel-houses, they dug up the dead from the graves, they climbed the gibbet, in fear and silence, to steal the mouldering carcase of the murderer; the risk of ignominious punishment, and the secret stings of superstitious remorse, exalting no doubt the delight of these useful but not very enviable pursuits.” Vesalius, as has been said above, was once absurdly accused of dissecting a Spanish gentleman before he was dead. He only escaped the punishment of death by undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he was shipwrecked, and died of famine in one of the Greek islands.[851]

GABRIEL FALLOPIUS (1523-1562) was a prominent pupil of Vesalius who studied the anastomoses (the blending together) of the blood-vessels. His researches in the anatomy of the bones and the internal ear greatly advanced anatomical knowledge. He discovered the tubes connected with the womb, called after him the “Fallopian tubes.” Fallopius is described as a savant distinguished by his sense of justice, his modesty and gentleness; yet Dr. Baas says,[852] “the fact that even Fallopio did not shrink from accepting the gift of some convicts, and then poisoning them—indeed, when the first experiment proved a failure, he tried it again with better success—is characteristic of the zeal of the age in the investigation of the human body, and of the barbarous idea that might makes right towards those guilty before the law!”

EUSTACHIUS was a contemporary of Vesalius. He divides with him the honour of having created the science of human anatomy. His name is perpetuated by the tube in the internal ear, called the “Eustachian tube.” His researches on the anatomy of the internal part of the organ of hearing, his studies in the anatomy of the teeth, in which he was the pioneer, his famous _Anatomical Engravings_, and his labours in connection with the intimate structure of the organs of the body, taken in connection with their relative anatomy, prove that he laboured for the advancement of the knowledge of the structure of the human frame with the utmost assiduity and success.

J. C. ARANZI (1530-1589), of Bologna, gave the first correct account of the anatomy of the fœtus, and his description of that of the brain is exceedingly minute and lucid. He named the _hippocampus_, described the choroid plexus, and the fourth ventricle under the name of the _cistern of the cerebellum_.

COLUMBUS (died 1559) was a pupil of Vesalius, whom he succeeded in the chair of anatomy at Padua. He had a glimpse of how the blood passes from the right to the left side of the heart, but he had no true knowledge of the circulation.

_Michael Servetus_ (1511-1553) was either a pupil or fellow-student of Vesalius, who, in 1553, described accurately the pulmonary circulation. He recognised that the change from venous into arterial blood took place in the lungs, and not in the left ventricle. He was a pioneer in physiological science by his great discovery of the respiratory changes in the lungs.

LEVASSEUR (about 1540), says Hallam,[853] appears to have known the circulation of the blood through the lungs, the valves of the veins, and their direction and purpose.

GASPARE TAGLIACOZZI (1546-1599) was a professor at Bologna, whose name is famous in the history of surgery from his skill in performing “plastic operations.” Rhinoplastic operation is a term in surgery sometimes synonymous with the Taliacotian operation, which is a process for forming an artificial nose. It consists in bringing down a piece of flesh from the forehead, and while preserving its attachment to the living structures, causing it to adhere to the anterior part of the remains of the nose. Tagliacozzi, himself, to replace the lost substance employed the skin of the upper part of the arm, as BRANCA did previously. Patients flocked to him from all parts of Europe. The world was, as usual, ungrateful; the great surgeon was considered to have presumptuously interfered with the authority of Providence. Noses and lips which the Divinity had destroyed as a punishment for the sins of men had been restored by this daring man. After his death some nuns heard voices in their convent crying for several weeks: “Tagliacozzi is damned!” By the direction of the clergy of Bologna his corpse was taken from the grave and re-interred in unconsecrated ground.[854] We are not in a position to sneer at this, for the preachers of the nineteenth century said something very similar of the use of chloroform in midwifery only a few years ago. In 1742 the Faculty of Paris declared Tagliacozzi’s operation impossible; but the English journals, in 1794, discovered that such a method of surgical procedure had been in use in India from ancient times, and then the scientific world tried the experiment and succeeded perfectly.

AMBROISE PARÉ, “the father of French surgery” (1509-1590), availed himself of the opportunities offered him in military surgery during the campaign of Francis I. in Piedmont. It was the practice of the time to treat gunshot wounds with hot oil—a treatment which Paré revolutionized by using merely a simple bandage.

In 1545 he attended the lectures of Sylvius at Paris, and became prosector to that great anatomist. His book on _Anatomy_ was published five years later. By his employment of the ligature for large arteries, he was able so completely to control hæmorrhage that he was able to practise amputation on a larger scale than had before been attempted. Paré is considered as the first who regularly employed the ligature after amputation. He declares in his _Apologie_ that the invention was due to the ancients, and he explains their use of it, although he ascribes to inspiration of the Deity his own first adoption of the practice.

The PHILOSOPHER RAMUS in 1562 urged Charles IX. of France to establish schools for clinical teaching, such as already existed at Padua.

ROBERT FLUDD, M.D., or in the Latin style he affected, _Robertus de Fluctibus_, was born in 1574; he was an ardent supporter of the Rosicrucian philosophy. He had a strong leaning towards chemistry, but had little faith in orthodox medicine. His medical ideas consisted of a mysterious mixture of divinity, chemistry, natural philosophy, and metaphysics.

In 1573, Harrison, in his unpublished _Chronologie_, remarks that “these daies the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herb called tabaco, by an instrument like a little ladell, is gretly taken up and used in England against rewmes.”

It was not till 1576 that croup was well understood. Laënnec thinks it was quite unknown to the Greek and Arabian physicians; but Forbes says that it was known to Hippocrates and Aretæus, although its pathology was not understood. Ballonius was the first who accurately described the false membrane, which is a characteristic of the disease.[855]

At the Reformation in England under Elizabeth, some of the Catholic priests who refused to conform to the new religion sought in other professions the means of living. In a curious old book, _Tom of all Trades, or the Plaine Pathway to Preferment_, by Thomas Powell (printed 1631), there is a story which no doubt was founded in fact. “And heere I remember me of an old tale following, _viz._, At the beginning of the happy raigne of our late good Queene _Elizabeth_, divers Commissioners of great place, being authorized to enquire of, and to displace, all such of the _Clergie_ as would not conforme to the reformed _Church_, one amongst others was Conuented before them, who being asked whether he would subscribe or no, denied it, and so consequently was adiudged to lose his benefice and to be deprived his function; wherevpon, in his impatience, he said, ‘That if they (meaning the Commissioners) held this course it would cost many a man’s life.’ For which the Commissioners called him backe againe, and charged him that he had spoke treasonable and seditious words, tending to the raysing of a rebellion or some tumult in the Land; for which he should receive the reward of a Traytor. And being asked whether hee spake those words or no, he acknowledged it, and tooke vpon him the Iustification thereof; ‘for, said he, ‘yee have taken from me my liuing and profession of the Ministrie; Schollership is all my portion, and I have no other meanes now left for my maintenance but to turn _Phisition_; and before I shalbe absolute Master of that Misterie (God he knowes) how many mens lives it will cost. For few _Phisitions_ vse to try experiments vpon their owne bodies.’

“With vs, it is a Profession can maintaine but a few. And diuers of those more indebted to opinion than learning, and (for the most part) better qualified in discoursing their travailes than in discerning their patients malladies. For it is growne to be a very huswiues trade, where fortune prevailes more than skill.”

A writer in Hood’s _Every-Day Book_, on the date February 25, says that the monks knew of more than three hundred species of medicinal plants which were used in general for medicines by the religious orders before the Reformation. The Protestants, the more efficiently to root out Popery, changed the Catholic names of many of these. Thus the _virgin’s bower_ of the monastic physician was changed into _flammula Jovis_; the _hedge hyssop_ into _gratiola_; _St. John’s wort_ became _hypericum_; _fleur de St. Louis_ was called _iris_; _palma Christi_ became _ricinus_; _Our Master wort_ was christened _imperatona_; _sweet bay_ they called _laurus_; _Our Lady’s smock_ was changed into _cardamine_; _Solomon’s seal_ into _convallaria_; _Our Lady’s hair_ into _trichomanes_; _balm_ into _melissa_; _marjoram_ into _origanum_; _herb Trinity_ into _viola tricolor_; _knee holy_ into _rascus_; _rosemary_ into _rosmarinus_; _marygold_ into _calendula_; and a hundred others. But the old Catholic names cling to the plants of the cottage garden, and _Star of Bethlehem_ has not quite given place to _ornithogalum_; _Star of Jerusalem_ to _goat’s beard_; nor _Lent lily_ to _daffodil_.

The gullibility of mankind has never been exhibited in a clearer light than JOHANN VALENTIN ANDREÆ (1586-1654) succeeded in showing in his elaborate joke of the SOCIETY OF THE ROSY-CROSS. In 1614 a famous but entirely fabulous secret society set the scholars of Europe discussing the pretensions of the Rosicrucians, who were said to have derived their origin from one CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUZ, two hundred years previously. This philosopher, it was said, had made a pilgrimage to the East, to learn its hidden wisdom, of which the art of making gold was a portion. The character of the society was Christian, but anti-Catholic, and its ostensible objects were the study of philosophy and the gratuitous healing of the sick. Its device was a cross, with four red roses. Andreæ was a learned man, but jocular withal; for no sooner had the public eagerly swallowed his story, than he confessed the whole was pure invention, and that he had originated the idea with the view of ridiculing the alchemists and Theosophists, whose opinions were dominating European society. The public, however, liked the idea so well that it developed and flourished, and a society was established called _Fraternitas Rosæ Crucis_. The most celebrated followers of the Rosicrucians were Valentine Wiegel, Jacob Boehm, Egidius Gutman, Michael Mayer, Oswald Crollius, and Robert Fludd.[856]

De Quincey has traced the connection between the Rosicrucians and Freemasons. “Rosicrucianism,” he says, “it is true, is not Freemasonry, but the latter borrowed its form from the first.”[857]

Scrofula was anciently treated in a superstitious manner by the sovereigns of England and France by imposition of hands. This ceremony is said to have been first performed by Edward the Confessor (1042-1066). A special “Service of Healing” was used in the English Church in the reign of Henry VIII. (1484-1509).

The ceremonies of blessing cramp-rings on Good Friday, called the Hallowing of the Cramp-Rings, is described by Bishop Percy in his _Northumberland Household Book_,[858] where we have the following account:—

“And then the Usher to lay a Carpett for the Kinge to Creepe to the Crosse upon. And that done, there shal be a Forme sett upon the Carpett, before the Crucifix, and a Cushion laid upon it for the King to kneale upon. And the Master of the Jewell Howse ther to be ready with the Booke concerninge the Hallowing of the Crampe Rings, and Amner (Almoner) muste kneele on the right hand of the Kinge, holdinge the sayde booke. When that is done the King shall rise and goe to the Alter, wheare a Gent. Usher shall be redie with a Cushion for the Kinge to kneele upon; and then the greatest Lords that shall be ther to take the Bason with the Rings and beare them after the Kinge to offer.”

In the Harleian Manuscripts there is a letter from Lord Chancellor Hatton to Sir Thomas Smith, dated Sept, 11th, 158-, about a prevailing epidemic, and enclosing a ring for Queen Elizabeth to wear between her breasts, the said ring having “the virtue to expell infectious airs.”[859]

Andrew Boorde, in his _Introduction to Knowledge_ (1547-48), says: “The Kynges of England by the power that God hath gyuen to them, dothe make sicke men whole of a sickeness called the kynges euyll. The Kynges of England doth halowe euery yere crampe rynges, the whyche rynges, worne on ones fynger, dothe helpe them the whyche hath the crampe.”[860]

Concerning the king’s evil, which Boorde explains is an “euyl sickenes or impediment,” he advises: “For this matter let euery man make frendes to the Kynges maiestie, for it doth pertayne to a Kynge to helpe this infirmitie by the grace the whiche is geuen to a Kynge anoynted.”[861]

In Robert Laneham’s letter[862] about Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Kenilworth Castle, it is told how on July 18th, 1575, her Majesty touched for the evil, and that it was “a day of grace.” “By her highnes accustumed mercy and charitee, nyne cured of the peynfull and daungerous diseaz, called the kings euill; for that Kings and Queenz of this Realm withoout oother medsin (saue only by handling and prayerz) only doo cure it.”

Sir John Fortescue, in his defence of the House of Lancaster against that of York, argued that the crown could not descend to a female because the Queen is not qualified by the form of anointing her to cure the disease called the king’s evil. On this account, and more especially after the excommunication of Elizabeth by the Pope in 1570, it must have been eminently comforting to all concerned to find that the power to cure disease by the royal touch had not been affected by the change of religion or any other cause. The practice was at its height in the reign of Charles II.[863]

Lord Braybrooke says,[864] “In the first four years after his restoration he ‘touched’ nearly 24,000 people.” We find that Dr. Johnson was touched by Queen Anne. “The Office for the Healing” continued to be printed in the Book of Common Prayer after the accession of the House of Hanover.

The custom evidently arose from the fact that Edward the Confessor was a saint as well as a king. William of Malmesbury gives the origin of the royal touch in his account of the miracles of Edward: “A young woman had married a husband of her own age, but having no issue by the union, the humours collecting abundantly about her neck, she had contracted a sore disorder, the glands swelling in a dreadful manner. Admonished in a dream to have the part affected washed by the king, she entered the palace, and the king himself fulfilled this labour of love, by rubbing the woman’s neck with his fingers dipped in water. Joyous health followed his healing hand; the lurid skin opened, so that worms flowed out with the purulent matter, and the tumour subsided. But as the orifice of the ulcers was large and unsightly, he commanded her to be supported at the royal expense till she should be perfectly cured. However, before a week was expired, a fair new skin returned, and hid the scars so completely, that nothing of the original wound could be discovered; and within a year becoming the mother of twins, she increased the admiration of Edward’s holiness. Those who knew him more intimately, affirm that he often cured this complaint in Normandy; whence appears how false is their notion, who in our times assert, that the cure of this disease does not proceed from personal sanctity, but from hereditary virtue in the royal line.”[865]

Many other miracles of healing were attributed to St. Edward. Jeremy Collier[866] maintains that the scrofula miracle is hereditary upon all his successors. The curious fact, however, is that the hereditary right of succession was repeatedly interrupted, yet the power remained. In connection with this royal touching, pieces of gold were given by the sovereigns to be worn by the patients as amulets. They were called “touching pieces,” and though not absolutely requisite for the cure, some persons declared that the disease returned if they lost the coins. We can only account for the great efficacy which in some cases seemed to have attended the royal treatment, by the confidence and exalted expectation awakened in the sufferers by the ceremony, which acted as a tonic to the system, and roused the patients’ imagination to contribute to their own cure.[867]

Chips and handkerchiefs dipped in the blood of King Charles I. are said to have been efficacious in curing sick persons in hundreds of cases.

The College of Physicians of Edinburgh was created by the king’s letters patent in 1581, one year after the foundation of Edinburgh University by James VI.

In the reign of Elizabeth, when physicians rode on horseback, they were seated sideways; many of them carried muffs, to keep their fingers warm when they had to feel their patient’s pulse. Twice a year everybody was bled—a system which must have caused many disorders.

Fifteen centuries after the age of CELSUS, with the revival of learning and science came the revival of human vivisection. VESALIUS, as above mentioned, is known to have vivisected men; and in the _Storia Universale_ of CESARE CANTÙ there is an account of the DUKE OF FLORENCE giving a man for vivisection to FALLOPIUS. This incident has been disputed; but the following series of cases, extracted by Professor ANDREOZZI from the Criminal Archives of Florence, and published by him in his book _Leggi Penali degli antichi e Cinesi_, are beyond question. COSMO DE MEDICI seems to have taken the anatomists of Pisa under his special favour, and to have sent them the miserable convicts from the prisons at his option. The following examples are a selection from the cases extracted by Signor ANDREOZZI from the _Archivio Criminale_:—

“1. January 15th, 1545.—SANTA DI MARIOTTO TARCHI DI MUGELLO, wife of BASTIANO LUCCHESE, was condemned to be beheaded for infanticide. Under the sentence is written, ‘Dicta Santa, de mente Excell^{mi} Ducis, fuit missa Pisis, de ea per doctores fieret notomia.’[No notice to be found of any execution of the woman, such as would have appeared had she been put to death before she was sent to Pisa.]

“2. December 14th, 1547.—GIULIO MANCINI SANESE was condemned for robbery and other offences. Sent to Pisa to be anatomised. ‘Ducatur Pisis, pro faciendo de eo notomia.’

“3. In the record of prisoners sent away, dated September 1st, 1551, occurs this entry:—‘Letter to the Commissioner of Castrocaro, that MADDALENA, who is imprisoned for killing her son, should be sent here, if she be likely to recover, as it pleases S. E. that she should be reserved for anatomy. Of this nothing is to be said, but she is to be kept in hopes. If she is not likely to recover, the executioner is to be sent for to decapitate her.’ The end of the horrible extract is,—‘Went to Pisa, to be made an anatomy.’

“4. December 12th, 1552.—A man named ZUCCHERIA, accused of piracy, was reserved from hanging, with his comrade, and sent to Pisa, ‘per la notomia.’

“5. December 22nd, 1552.—A certain ULIVO DI PAOLO was condemned by the Council of Eight to be hanged for poisoning his wife. Sentence changed—to be sent for anatomy. Was sent to Pisa on January 13th.

“6. November 14th, 1553.—MARGUERITA, wife of BIAJIO D’ANTINORO, condemned to be beheaded for infanticide.... December 20th, ‘she was released from the fetters and consigned to a familiar, who took her to Pisa to the Commissario, _who gave her, as usual, to the anatomist, to make anatomy of her_; which was done’ (‘che la consegni, secondo il solito, al notomista, per farne notomia, come fu fatto’).”

“Several other cases, from 1554 to 1570, are recorded, with equally unmistakable exactitude. In one instance the condemned man’s destiny was mitigated, and after having been ordered to be sent to Pisa for the Commissario to consign to the anatomist, ‘when he should ask for him, and at his pleasure,’ he was mercifully sentenced to be hanged at once at Vico, ‘by direction of Sua Excellenza Illustrissima.’ Two unfortunate thieves, PAOLI DI GIOVANNI and VESTRINO D’AGNOLO, were sent together by the Council of Eight to be anatomised; the Duke having written to say ‘that they wanted in Pisa a subject for anatomy.’”

After the date 1570 no more cases occur in the Archives.

Francis I. invited the Italian anatomist VIDUS VIDIUS to his royal college at Paris.

Several new medicines were introduced about this period.

Lemon juice was first spoken of as a remedy for scurvy in 1564. Its use was discovered by some Dutch sailors whose ship was laden with lemons and oranges from Spain.[868]

The virtues of sassafras as a medicine for scurvy were discovered, according to Cartier, in 1536, on a voyage to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence. The natives advised the sailors afflicted with the malady to use the wood of the tree ameda, which was thought to have been sassafras.[869]

Facsimile of a miniature from the _Epistre de Othea_, by Christine de Pisan. (Fifteenth century MS. in Burgundy Library, Brussels.) [_Face p._ 374]

Sarsaparilla was first brought to Europe by the Spaniards, in the middle of the sixteenth century, from Peru and Brazil.

Guaiacum was introduced into Europe in 1509, and in 1519 its use became common.

Holinshed complained[870] that estimation and credit given to compound medicines made with foreign drugs in his time was one great cause of the prevailing ignorance of the virtues and uses of “our own simples,” which he held to be fully as useful as the “salsa parilla, mochoacan, etc.,” so much in request. “We tread those herbs under our feet, whose forces, if we knew and could apply them to our necessities, we would honour and have in reverence.—Alas! what have we to do with such Arabian and Grecian stuff as is daily brought from those parts which lie in another clime?—The bodies of such as dwell there are of another constitution than ours are here at home. Certes, they grow not for us, but for the Arabians and Grecians.—Among the Indians, who have the most present cures for every disease of their own nation, there is small regard of compound medicines, and less of foreign drugs, because they neither know them nor can use them, but work wonders even with their own simples.”

CARLO RUINI, of Bologna, published in 1598 a work on the anatomy of the horse, in which Ercolani has found evidence that he, to some extent, anticipated Harvey’s discovery.[871]

NICHOLAS HOUEL (1520-1585) was born at Paris, 1520. He was a famous and learned pharmacien, who devoted the fortune which he acquired by his industry and skill to philanthropic and scientific purposes. He founded a great orphanage in Paris, and the School of Pharmacy of that city owes its origin to him. He wrote a _Treatise on the Plague_, and one on the _Theriacum of Mithridates_, both published in 1573. It is to his enlightened and charitable suggestion that dispensaries arose in Paris. His “Garden of Simples” inspired the creation of the _Jardin des Plantes_.[872]

Even at the close of the sixteenth century careful and sober men, as Mr. Henry Morley says,[873] believed in the miraculous properties of plants and animals and parts of animals. When the century commenced, the learned and unlearned alike believed in the influences of the stars and the interferences of demons with diseases, and in the mysteries of magic. The reason why students of such sciences as existed were punished and persecuted was the dread which men had that the knowledge of the occult powers of nature would afford the learner undue and mysterious power over them.

LEGAL MEDICINE.

That most important branch of medical science known as Medical Jurisprudence, or Forensic Medicine, first took its rise in Germany, and, later, was recognised as a necessary branch of study in England. Briefly this science may be described as “that branch of State medicine which treats of the application of medical knowledge to the purposes of the law.” It embraces all questions affecting the civil or social rights of individuals, and of injuries to the person. Although we find traces of the first principles of this science in ancient times, especially in connection with legitimacy, feigned diseases, etc., it is by no means certain that even in Rome the law required any medical inspection of dead bodies. The science dates only from the sixteenth century. The Bishop of Bamberg, in 1507, introduced a penal code requiring the production of medical evidence in certain cases. In 1532, Charles V. induced the Diet of Ratison to adopt a code in which magistrates were ordered to call medical evidence in cases of personal injuries, infanticide, pretended pregnancy, simulated diseases, and poisoning. The actual birth of forensic medicine, however, did not take place until the publication, in Germany, in 1553, of the _Constitutio Criminalis Carolina_.[874] The difficulties which the infant science had to contend against may be estimated from the fact that a few years later a physician named Weiker, who declared that witches and demoniacs were simply persons afflicted with hypochondriasis and hysteria, and should not be punished, was with difficulty saved from the stake by his patron, William, Duke of Cleves.

AMBROSE PARÉ wrote on monsters, simulated diseases, and the art of drawing up medico-legal reports.

In 1621-35 Paulo Zacchia, of Rome, published a work entitled _Quæstiones Medico-Legales_, which inaugurated a new era in the history of Forensic Medicine. He exhibited immense research in this classical work, the materials for which he collected from 460 authors. Considering that chemistry and physiology were then so imperfectly understood, such a work is a proof of the learning and sagacity of the author.

In 1663 the Danish physician Bartholin proposed the hydrostatic test for the determination of live-birth, the method used to-day in examining the lungs of an infant to discover whether the child was born alive or not, by observing whether they float or sink in water.