EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 



HOWEVER much the renewal of classical learning in 

 the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries may 

 have furthered the development of letters and of art, it 

 had anything but a favourable influence on the progress 

 of science. The interest awakened in the literature of 

 Greece and Rome was shown in admiration not only for 

 the works of poets, historians, and orators, but also for 

 those of physicians, anatomists, and astronomers. In 

 consequence scientific investigation was almost wholly 

 restricted to the study of the writings of authors like 

 Aristotle, Hippocrates, Ptolemy, and Galen, and it 

 became the highest ambition to explain and comment 

 upon their teachings, almost an impiety to question 

 them. Independent inquiry, the direct appeal to 

 nature, were thus discouraged, and indeed looked upon 

 with the utmost distrust if their results ran counter to 

 what was found in the works of Aristotle or Galen. 

 This spell of ancient authority was broken by the 

 anatomists of the sixteenth century, who determined at 

 all costs to examine the human body for themselves, 

 and to be guided by what their own observations 

 revealed to them ; and it was finally overcome by the 

 independent genius of two men working in very different 

 scientific spheres, Galileo and Harvey. These illus- 

 trious observers were contemporaries during the greater 

 part of their lives, and were some years together at the 

 famous University of Padua. Galileo and Harvey 

 refused to be bound by the teachings of Aristotle and 

 Galen, and appealed from these authorities to the 

 actual facts of nature which any man could observe for 





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