Lectures on the history of physiology during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract

The History of Physiology.' We are, all of us, even in this farthest West, even in this closing year of the nineteenth century, Children of our Fathers.What we are is in part only of our own making, the greater part of ourselves has come down to us from the past.What we know and what we think is not a new fountain gushing fresh from the barren rock of the unknown at the stroke of the rod of our own intellect, it is a stream which flows by us and through us, fed by the far-off rivulets of long ago.As what we think and say to-day will mingle with and shape the thoughts of men in the years to come, so in the opinions and views which we are proud to hold to-day, we may, by looking back, trace the influence of the thoughts of those who have gone before.Tracking out how new thoughts are linked to old ones, seeing how an error cast into the stream of knowledge leaves a streak lasting through many changes of the ways of man, noting the struggles through which a truth now rising to the surface, now seemingly lost in the depths, eventually swims triumphant on the flood we may perhaps the better learn to appraise our present knowledge, and the more rightly judge which of the thoughts of to-day is on the direct line of progress, carrying the truth of yesterday on to that of to-morrow, and which is a mere fragment of the hour, floating conspicuous on the surface now but destined soon to sink, and later to be wholly forgot.f. l. 1 2 Vesalius :[lect.Nor need I, I trust, make any apology for having, though invited to speak to medical hearers, chosen not the history of medicine but the history of physiology.The whole story of the rise and growth of the art of healing is too vast to be gathered into one set of lectures, too varied to be treated of by one man alone.I have chosen that part of the whole story with which alone I am competent to deal; and I venture to think that, without appearing to exalt unduly my own studies, I may go so far as to say that a knowledge of the laws which govern the phenomena of all living things is so essentially the basis of all attempts to succour, or to watch over the welfare of, one set of beings that the history of physiology cannot be regarded in any other light than as the heart or kernel of the history of medicine.I do not propose to begin at the beginning of things.I will leave on one side, for the present at least, the details of the knowledge of the phenomena of life possessed by those whom we speak of as ' the ancients.'I will ask you to let me start with the middle of the sixteenth century, and indeed with the particular year 1543.Those were stirring times, times of wars and rumours of wars.The brilliant career of Charles V. was drawing towards its close; in that very year he was in the midst of his fourth, his last and short war with his rival Francis I. of France.Venice had still all the signs of outward splendour, but within the rift in the lute was rapidly widening.The Medici were once more established at Florence, and the burly Henry VIII.was ruling over England.Some twenty years before Cortez had conquered Mexico, some ten years before Pizarro had laid hold first of Peru and then of Chili ; and Europe in the East was enjoying the spoils of the West.The times were times of strong under-currents of thought.The Reformation was abroad.Luther was living his last yearshe died in 1546, the year after the Council of Trentand Calvin was strong at Geneva ; but the order of the Jesuits was already a year old, and the Inquisition held Spain in its grip.It was the heyday of Art.Though Raphael had been dead for three and twenty years, Michael Angelo had nearly as many i]His Forerunners and Followers.3 yet to live, and Titian was in his prime.The new learning was everywhere working like leaven ; the old Universities were expanding and new ones were springing up everywhere, the worth of the Greek tongue was preached by the learned ; and the great exponent of the oldest of sciences, that of the heavens, Nicolas Copernicus, closed his eyes in this very year.Moreover learning was being spread as well as made ; printing had seen its hundredth birthday and the presses of Venice and other cities were pouring forth the means of knowledge.The night of the middle ages had passed away in the dawn of modern 1 times.

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