FIFTH: PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE

(Continued)

CHAPTER VII

MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

A CURSORY glance at the history of medicine

during the last century shows a great advance in the progress of all the sciences to which it is related. It is a long stride of development from Guy Patin and Sylvius de la Boe to Boerhaave; from the speculations of Stahl and Hoffman to the expositions of Haller. The advance has been marvellous; and it has been conducted by men with a genius for work, for toil-toil without hope of reward, except it be the love of truth, unmasking fiction, and establishing the verities. During this period there have been men, brilliant in the profession, grasping the discoveries of others and using them to further their own ends, and winning for themselves fame and glory which wealth brings-making no discoveries themselves whereby to enrich the profession. Kings and nobles have vied with each other to endow colleges and universities as never before, and by such worthy objects multiplied many fold the means of invention and discovery and the progress of science and

philosophy. Great events convulsed the moral and political world, of which the profession was apparently oblivious. The map of Europe was again changed. The civilized world was still in a state of intellectual ferment; the profession, over the action of acids and alkalies; forces, natural and supernatural, chemical and vital; humoralism and solidism; contraria contrariis, and similia similibus, etc. The theological fraternity were in acrid dispute over questions of equal non-importance, such as the Trinity; Transubstantiation, the doctrine of the Presence; the amount of blood shed at the Crucifixion that was needed for the purpose of redemption, and what to do with what remained, etc. The first specific against an epidemic disease had been discovered and fortunes made by its sale and use. Many men of great ability and distinguished repute won fame and fortune in the practice of medicine, without adding any contribution to the profession of medicine except writing ponderous quartos of opinions and theories of which the medical world was growing weary. The medical luminaries of this period were chiefly men of this sort, learned men, excellent men, men who would honor any position in which fortune might place them. In medicine they took advantage of the occasion to appropriate to themselves, in the practice of the art, the labors and discoveries of other men, on which they wrote voluminously books which may be found on the library shelves, and which are never read except

by historians; their names being well-known and prominent for a while, but soon to dim in public memory, or to be forgotten altogether; while the patient seeker after knowledge, bent on the discovery of the secrets of nature, and never known unless he succeed, makes contributions to knowledge which revolutionize philosophy, and upset the foundations of medical theory and practice. Such an example was afforded in Baglivi, who discovered that diseases might originate in the solids, and proved that humoralism, in the pathology of Hippocrates, while not false, was not the whole truth. Baglivi was a great plodder in science and discovery, and cared little for the glamour of the successful man of affairs. This little discovery did not make him a millionaire, but it put him at once at the head of an epoch in pathology and therapeutics. The discovery was made nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, but every student of medicine knows the name of Baglivi.

Although we are writing of medicine in the eighteenth century, we are by no means out of the shadows of the seventeenth century, nor away from the influence of brilliant men who came upon the scene before the close of that century. Boerhaave was still in the ascendancy, and by his brilliant lectures at the University of Halle, naturally commanded more of the public attention than any other medical teacher in Europe. He was not making discoveries in medical science,

except in materia medica; he was still with very rudimentary notions of the nervous system, though he accepted the anima of his excellent contemporary, Stahl; but he exerted a most commanding influence upon medicine by his ready use of the knowledge of his day, and the elegance with which he presented that knowledge to his pupils and classes. Moreover, he was assisted in his labors by his nephew and pupil, Kaau Boerhaave, a man of learning; and also by a pupil by the name of Gaubius; likewise by another pupil, Gorter by name, both of whom made contributions to medical literature of no inconsiderable value. Jan van Gorter, the above mentioned, was born in Friesland, in 1689; studied medicine under Boerhaave while the latter was yet at Leyden; wrote a treatise on "Insensible Perspiration," and a "Compendium of Medicine"; and became physician to Elizabeth of Russia. He is said to have added considerable to the knowledge of the nervous system. He died in 1733.

David van Gorter, a son of the foregoing celebrity, was also a physician of note at this period, succeeding his father as physician to the Empress of Russia. He made contributions to Botany, and wrote a work entitled "Flora Ingrica"; he died in 1783.

Hieronymus David Gaubius, a favorite pupil of Boerhaave, likewise referred to above, was born at Heidelberg in 1705, and through the influence of Boerhaave, was advanced to the Chair of Chem

istry at Leyden about 1731, when he was twentysix; and a year or two later took also the Chair of Medicine in the same institution. He made valuable contributions to the knowledge of the nervous system to which Boerhaave was indebted, and wrote De Regimine Mentis quod Medicorum est ("On the Government of the Mind which is within the Province of Medicine"); and a work on Institutiones Pathologia ("Institutes of Pathology"), both works of merit. He reached the age of 75, an unusual age for savants of that era. He died in 1780.

The ambition of medical students at this time, as has been observed, was to discover and to demonstrate truth; to accept nothing on the authority of a great name. The Oracles in theology were dying; and Authority, which had enslaved the minds of the profession for more than a thousand years, was weakening. Patient, persevering toil in the dissecting-rooms and vivisection of animals were being carried forward with industry. The student seemed more ambitious to acquire knowledge by the inductive process laid down by Bacon, of which we have seen examples in the previous century, than to become a merely popular physician, or accomplished in polemics.

A more distinguished pupil of Boerhaave than any which has been mentioned is perhaps Gerard van Swieten, who was born at Leyden in 1699. He was expelled from the University of Leyden by