General physiology : an outline of the science of life / by Max Verworn, tr. from the 2d German ed. and edited by Frederic S. Lee. With two hundred and eighty-five illustrations.

  • Max Verworn
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General physiology : an outline of the science of life / by Max Verworn, tr. from the 2d German ed. and edited by Frederic S. Lee. With two hundred and eighty-five illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    32/640 (page 12)
    withstanding the fact that here and there an isolated physiological observation was made. This condition of stagnation continued until into the sixteenth century. C. THE PERIOD OF HARVEV An independent advance in physiology is first met with in the sixteenth century. One of the first to abandon Galen's system was Paracelsus (1493-1541), who developed a complete system of nature. It was permeated with theosophical notions, a tendency that appeared still stronger in his followers and drove them wholly over to mysticism. Nevertheless, it contained many original, although frequently absurd, ideas. Paracelsus opposed the weak ■echoes of Galen's system and its outgrowths which had appeared during the middle ages, and this was at that time an important advance. The foundation of his system is the unity of nature. Nature is a unit, the macrocosm. In man as the centre of nature all forms of existence are contained. Hence, man is to be regarded as a microcosm. Nature, however, must not be considered as com- plete but as for ever becoming. The more special aspects of his system are arbitrary and unimportant, and, as is usual in such cases, this first beginning of independent investigation was com- paratively crude ; before all other things it lacked a purely empirical and experimental basis. At the same time, in France and in Italy a freer tendency began to appear in the medical schools. Fernelius (1497-1558) had many new ideas, although they were based wholly upon Galen's system. From the various forms of Galen's pneuina he separated the anima. The former consists of the most subtile material substance; the latter is the soul, which is to be recognised only by its effects. He advanced the further idea that the pheno- mena within the organism depend finally upon certain mysterious causes. Special ]}hysiological investigation received an impulse from the great anatomical discoveries in the schools of France and Italy, where knowledge of the anatomy of the human body was placed upon a wholly new and strictly empirical basis by Vesalius, Eustachio, Faloppio, and others. Researches upon the structure of the heart and the course of the vessels were the most fruitful for physiology. The doctrine of the circulation of the blood, as founded by Galen, underwent fundamental changes. B}^ proving the imperviousness of the interventricular septum, Serveto (1511-1553) refuted Galen's idea that the blood goes from the right ventricle of the heart directly into the left ventricle. His followers, Colombo (d. 1559) and Cesalpino (1519-1603), added to this new facts upon the circulation of the blood in the lungs; and Argentieri (1513-1572), who opposed the doctrine of the animal