NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



*55 



century we begin to find the first intelligible reports of medical 

 cases since the coming in of Christianity.* 



During the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries 

 the revival of learning, the invention of printing, and the great 

 voyages of discovery gave a new impulse to thought, and in this 

 medical science shared : the old theological way of thinking was 

 greatly questioned, and gave place in many quarters to a different 

 way of looking at the universe. 



In the sixteenth century Paracelsus appears a great genius, 

 doing much to develop medicine beyond the reach of sacred and 

 scholastic tradition, though still fettered by many superstitions. 

 More and more, in spite of theological dogmas, came a renewal of 

 anatomical studies by dissection of the human subject. The prac- 

 tice of the old Alexandrian School was thus resumed. Mundinus 

 dared use the human subject occasionally in his lectures ; but 

 finally came a far greater champion of scientific truth, Andreas 

 Vesalius, founder of the modern science of anatomy. The battle 

 waged by this man is one of the glories of our race. 



From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the 

 search for real knowledge he braved the most terrible dangers, 

 and especially the charge of sacrilege, founded upon the teachings 

 of the Church for ages. As we have seen, even such men in the 

 early Church as Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy in 

 abhorrence, and Pope Boniface VIII interdicted dissection as 

 sacrilege, threatening excommunication against those practicing 

 it. Through this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without 

 fear ; despite ecclesiastical censure and popular fury, he studied 

 his science by the only method that could give useful results. No 

 peril daunted him. To secure the material for his investigations, 

 he haunted gibbets and charnel-houses, risking the fires of the In- 

 quisition and the virus of the plague : first of all men he began 

 to place the science of human anatomy on its solid, modern foun- 

 dations on careful examination and observation of the human 

 body : this was his first great sin, and it was soon aggravated by 

 one considered even greater. 



Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that has ever been done 

 for Christianity is the tying it to forms of science which are 

 doomed and gradually sinking. Just as, in the time of Roger 

 Bacon, excellent men devoted all their energies to binding Chris- 

 tianity to Aristotle just as, in the time of Reuchlin and Erasmus, 

 they insisted on binding Christianity to Thomas Aquinas so, in 

 the time of Vesalius, such men made every effort to link Chris- 

 tianity to Galen. The cry has been the same in all ages ; it is the 

 same which we hear in this age for curbing scientific studies ; the 



* For the promotion of medical science and practice, especially in the thirteenth century, 

 by the universities, see Baas, pp. 222-224. 



