his pertinacious opposition yielded to the arguments of Pecquet, express joy at coming to the knowledge before he died of the two important discoveries of the circulation and the absorbent system, adding, that he looked upon these two truths, which prove one another, ‘‘as the two poles upon which all medicine for the future ought to turn[1].”
Surgery appears to have had no earlier representative in this country, of any note, than John Ardern, of Newark, who removed to London in 1370. Dr. Freind speaks of him as ‘‘ the first man who revived the art of surgery in this nation.” He appears to have had an empirical reputation for the treatment of fistula.
Thomas Gale, the most eminent London surgeon of the sixteenth century, had served in the army of Henry VIII. at Montreuil in 1544, and in that of king Philip at St. Quintin in 1557, and was still living in 1586. He was a considerable, if not an original writer, on practical subjects, and dwelt especially on the methodical and scientific study of the art, which he displayed a laudable anxiety to rescue from illiterate and ignorant pretenders, by whom it was then, as it has since been, degraded.
This reasonable solicitude appears to have dictated the original Charter of Incorporation of Edward IV.,
- ↑ Freind’s History of Physic.
