Harvey and his claims as a discoverer : a lecture, delivered at Folkestone on the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth (April 1st, 1578) / by Robert C. Jenkins.

  • Robert Charles Jenkins
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Harvey and his claims as a discoverer : a lecture, delivered at Folkestone on the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth (April 1st, 1578) / by Robert C. Jenkins. 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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    in a mistaken religious sentiment, wliicli attached an almost criminal guilt to every attempt at'anatomical demonstration. [ If I mistake not, one of tlie earliest of those who ventured upon \ any kind of dissection of a human body in modern times, was ' ]\Iarcus Antonins Turrianus (or della Torre), who lectured at Padua in 1500, and was permitted to dissect the bodies of ' criminals who had been executed by order of the Senate of ^Venice.* The ancient anatomists had here a great advantage, j which however they failed to turn to the best account. Erasis- tratus and llierophilus were not only animal, but human vivisectionists, the latter on so terrific a scale that he is said to have vivisected as many as seven hundred men. But from the ,I time of Galen, who does not appear to have taken such extreme ' measures, a rude kind of comparative anatomy supplied the place of an actual study of the human body, aud reduced the science from an experimental and inductive one, to a mere fol- lowing of the great masters, Hippocrates and Galen, on whose writings, especially on the A])horisms of the one, and the Ars parva of the other, the entire literature of centuries of medical works was based. I am not sure whether a study of these lesser Avorks Avould not be a better introduction to medical learning than tiie more elaborate treatise of Celsus—but they Avere used not as a mere introduction, but as an end. At last the great science which Harvey did so much to place on a better foundation became so degraded as to be wedded even to the occupation of a barber—and the ancient Company of the “ Barber-Surgeons’’’ of London, AAdiose Hall survived till the end of the last century, indicated the humiliation of a science AAdiich Avas held by the ancients, even in the days of its infancy, to have a divine origiu. Even the name of surgery (Keipovpyta) represents to us its simplest and most external function, that of the dressing of Avounds, and Ave may venture to affirm that the more ancient surgeons Avere little more than dressers. Even at Padua, almost the oldestf and altogether the most illustrious School of IMedi- cine in Europe, the Chair of Anatomy Avas not founded until tlie days of the famous Hieronynms ab Acquapendente, the friend and tutor of Harvey, and as late as the year 1565. HI. The third great obstacle to the study of anatomy Avas that abject devotion to every statement and even Avord of Galen, Avhose absolute authority in the schools rendered all originality ^ He is said to have illustrated the aiiatoniical Avorhs of Galen by actual demonstration, and to have disclosed in this manner many of the grave errors into which his predecessors had fallen. t That of Salerno is allirmed by J)r. Bartolomeo Corte, of Milan, to have been the oldest, being founded in the tenth century.