The development of science among nations / by Justus Liebig.

  • Justus von Liebig
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The development of science among nations / by Justus Liebig. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    and spread aliroad. The arts of writing and reading, which had been hitherto unknown'to the operatives, were felt to he the most important means of increasing and disseminating knowledge among the peojile. Their value was first per- ceived in the industrial towns, where a wandering life was incompatible with the habits of business. In these cities the first public schools were founded. The impulse to extend the knowledge of the ancients by means of schools was as strong amongst the learned classes as was the eagerness for information amongst the operatives. Both circumstances stimulated the demand for hooks, and it was the difficulty of satisfying this want by copying manu- scripts that called forth the discovery of printing in the middle of the fifteenth century. A century earlier this would have had no influence on mental development; but from the time of its occurrence, we date a new period in the history of mental culture. If we glance over the literature towards the end of the century in which the first book was printed, we are filled with astonishment at the extent and importance of the achievements in natural science and medicine, and at the extraordinary mass of facts and knowledge in astronomy, engineering, manufactures, and trades, which had been gained and handed to posterity by the people of the Middle Ages. This knowledge had been collected by the medical men, who were educated at the schools of learning, and who stood next in social position to the productive classes. In the sixteenth century, medical men were the founders of modern science; they took part in the increase and exten- sion of Grecian knowledge.
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