MEDICINE
131
MEDICINE
man language. But, as early as 1528, he was com-
pelled, on account of the hostility he evoked, to leave
Basle secretly. After this he travelled through
various countries working constantly at his numerous
writings, until death overtook him at Salzburg in
1514. Paracelsus, like a blazing meteor, rose and
disappeared ; he shared the fate of those who have a
violent desire to destroy the old without having any
substitute to offer. Passing over his philosophic
views, which were based upon neo-Platonism, we find
practical medicine indebted to him in various ways,
6. g. for the theory of the causes of disease (etiology),
for the introduction of chemical therapeutics, and for
his insistence on the usefulness of mineral waters and
native vegetable tlrugs. He exaggerates indeed the
value of experience. His classification and diagnosis
of diseases are quite unscientific, anatomy and physi-
ology being wholly neglected. He thought that for
each disease there should exist a specific remedy, and
that to discover this is the chief object of medical art.
With him diagnosis hung upon the success of this or
that remedy, and because of this he
named the diseases according to
their specific remedies. Directly
repudiated by the Italian schools,
Paracelsus found adherents mainly
in Germany, among them being the
Wittenberg professor Oswakl Croll
(about 1560-1609). He also found
numerous friends among the travel-
ling physicians and quacks. His
teachings met with the most hostile
reception from the Paris faculty. Al-
though the further progress of anat-
omy and physiology indicated clearly
to physicians the right path, we meet
even in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries with two men who
start directly from Paracelsus:
Samuel P'riedrich Hahnemann (1755-
1S43), the originator of homoeopathy,
and Johann Gottfried Rademacher
(1772-1850), advocate of erapiri- Ba^on J^-^n-Nl^
cism. (1755
Surgery in the Sixteenth Century: Ambroise Pare. — The first fruits of the progress in anatomy were enjoyed by surgery, especially since most Italian anatomists were practical surgeons. After the intro- duction of fire-arms in war, the treatment of gimshot wounds was especially studied. While surgery had always enjoyed a high rank in Italy and France, in Germany it was in the hands of barbers and surgeons, unconnected with the universities and poorly edu- cated; hence it is readily understood why the best surgeons lived in the cities nearest the Romance coun- tries, especially Strasburg. With the member of the Teutonic Order, Heinrich von Pfolspeundt (" Biindth- Ertzney", 1460), the most important representatives were the Strasburg surgeons, Hieronymus Brunschwig (d. about 1534), and Hans von Gersdorff ("Feldtbuch der Wundtartzney ", 1517). Their equal was a .some- what younger man, Felix Wiirtz of Basle (1518-74). We are intlebted to the French field-surgeon Am- broise Pare for a marked change in the treatment of gunshot woimds and arterial hemorrhage. He aban- doned the .\rabic method of work with a red-hot knife, declared that supposedly poisoned gunshot wounds were simple contused wounds, and proceeded to ban- dage them without using hot oil. He was the first to employ the ligature in the case of arterial hemorrhage. Next to him in importance stands Pierre Franco (about 1560), known as the perfecter of the operation of lithotomy and that for hernia. Gaspare Taglia- cozzi of Bologna (1546-99) deserves credit for reintro- ducing and improving the ancient plastic operations. In the sixteenth century the Cesarean operation (Sectio ciEsarea, laparotomy) was performed on living persons.
Discovery op the Ciucul.ition op the Blood;
William Harvey and his Ti.me. — Galen's theory, ac-
cording to which the left heart and the arteries con-
tained air, the blood being venerated in the liver, had
long been regarded as improbable, but in spite of every
effort no one had as yet discovered the truth about
circulation. The solution of this problem, which
brought about a complete fall of Galen's system and a
revolution in physiology, came from the English physi-
cian William Harvey of Folkstone (1578-1657), a
pupil of Fabricius ab Aquapendente. Harvey's dis-
covery published in 1628, that the heart is the centre
of the circulation of the blood and that all blood must
return to the heart, at first received scant notice and
was even directly opposed by Galen's adherents ; but
further investigation soon made truth victorious.
Even as early as 1622, Gaspare Aselli (1581-1626)
found the chyle vessels, but correct explanation was
possible only after the discovery of the thoracic duct
(ductus thoracius) and its opening into the circulation
by Jean Pacquet (1622-74) and Johann van Home
(1621-70), and of the lymphatic ves-
sels by Olaus Rudbeck (1630-1702)
and Thomas Bartholinus (1616-SO).
A new field of investigation was
opened by the invention of the micro-
scope, by which Marcello Malpighi
(1628-94) discovered the smaller
blood-vessels and the blood corpus-
cles. From Harvey's time starts a
series of important anatomists and
physiologists, among them the Eng-
lishmen Thomas Wharton (1614-
73 ; glands) and Thomas Willis (1621
-75; brain) ; the Netherlanders Peter
Paaw (1564-1617), his pupil Niko-
las Pieterz Tulp (159.3-1678), both
teachers of anatomy at Leyden, and
Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-
1723) and Johann Swammerdam
(1647-80), micro.scopists; Reinierde
Graaf (1641-73; ovary); Nikolaus
^^.w uia CoRn.-,jiRT Stcuo of Copenliagcn (1638-86), and
IS-') the Germans, Moriz Hofman (1621
-98) and George Wii-sung, who investigated the pancreas.
Iatrophysicists and Iatrochemists. — The doc- trine of the circulation is based to a large extent upon the laws of physics. Consequently among a number of physicians, influenced by the works of Alfonso Borelli (1608-78) on animal motion, there was a marked effort to explain all physiological processes according to the laws of physics (iatrophysicists). Opposed to them was a party, which, influenced by the progress in chemistry, sought to make use of it for explaining medical facts (iatrochemists). This ten- dency goes back to Paracelsus am 1 his adherent Johann Baptist von Helmont (157S-1644). Helmont, who was an important chemist (the discoverer of carbonic acid), recognized the importance of anatomy, and de- serves credit for his work in therapeutics, although his failure to appraise the needs of his time prevented his doctrine from influencing the development of medicine, latrophysics was cultivated mainly in Italy and Eng- land; iatrochemistry in the Netherlands and Ger- many. The chief adherent of latrophysics in Italy was Giorgio Baglivi (d. 1707), professor at the Sapienza in Rome; in practical medicine, however, he held mainly to Hippocratic principles, while the English- man, Archibald Pitcairn (1652-1713), tried to follow out latrophysics to its utmost consequences.
Owing to the greater progress made in physics, iatrochemistry found fewer followers, and that it took root at all is the service of its chief representative Franz de le Boe Sylvius (1614-72), who in 1658 be- came professor of practical medicine at Leyden. At the .school there, founded in 1575, Jan van Heurne had
