THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF NEUROPHYSIOLOGY 



centuries in which human dissection could onl\' be 

 done relatively furtively, a more liberal view had 

 grown up in Italy and among a number of con- 

 temporary anatomists, Vesalius is pre-eminent. In 

 themselves, however, with the exception of an experi- 

 ment showing that the nerve sheath is not vital for 

 conduction, his studies made no contribution to the 

 dynamics of function. Although an opponent of 

 Galen and an exposer of his anatomical errors, 

 Vesalius had no more satisfactory concept of nervous 

 activity to offer than that of animal spirits flowing 

 from the brain down pipe-like nerves to the muscles. 

 Yet for the study of the nervous system, as for other 

 branches of physiology, the publication of De Humam 

 Corporis Fabrica is the outstanding contribution of 

 the sixteenth century, the earlier chalk drawings of 

 Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) not being widely 

 known to his contemporaries. The major contribu- 

 tions of Vesalius were not in physiology but in anat- 

 omy and in the demonstration that Galen was capa- 

 ble of error (though he himself was not without error). 



At the opening of the seventeenth century the im- 

 portant event for all science was the appearance 

 (in 1600) of William Giiberd's* classic book De 

 Magnete (10, 11). The significance of this work was 

 not only as a landmark for the future of the physical 

 sciences and of electrophy.siology through its dawning 

 recognition of a difference between electricity and 

 magnetism; it was the first book to advocate empirical 

 methods and in this way heralded the scientific 

 ferment of the eighteenth century. If one overlooks 

 the last two chapters oi De Magnete, the book is revolu- 

 tionary in its experimental approach. It stood out 

 alone in an age when scholasticism was concerned 

 with classification on qualitative lines without meas- 

 urement and without validation. Authoritative state- 

 ments of the ancients were the guides, and induction 

 from experiment was virtually unknown. Gilberd's 

 book makes a plea for "trustworthy experiments and 

 demonstrated arguments" to replace "the probable 

 guesses and opinions of the ordinary professors of 

 philosophy." 



Gilberd was physician to Queen Elizabeth (whom 



he only just survi\-cdj and a sketch identified as a 

 portrait of him appears in the contemporary draw- 

 ing (now in the British Museum) made by William 

 Camden, the Court Herald, of her funeral proces- 

 sion in 1603. A contemporary oil portrait of him 

 painted in 1591 has been lost and remains to us only 

 in engravings. Gilberd was born and lived part of 

 his life in his father's house in Colchester in East 

 Anglia; a portion of this house still stands and, at 

 the time of writing, is being restored. This flowering 

 of the .scientific method came during the golden age 

 of Elizabethan England; among Gilberd's contem- 

 poraries were Shakespeare, Walter Raleigh, Philip 

 Sydney, John Donne, Christopher Marlow and 

 Francis Bacon. 



Francis Bacon has a place in the history of all 

 .sciences, for he took scientific method a step farther, 

 to observation he added induction and to inference he 

 added verification. Scientists before him were content 

 with performing an experiment in order to make 

 an observation; from this oijservation a series of 

 propositions would follow, each being derived from its 

 predecessor, not by experiment but by logic. (Bacon 

 somewhat unjustly criticizes Gilberd for proceeding 

 in this way.) Bacon's contribution to scientific method 

 was to urge, in addition, the rigorous application of 

 a special kind of inductive reasoning proceeding 

 from the accumulation of a number of particular 

 facts to the demonstration of their interrelation 

 and hence to a general conclusion. This was in- 

 deed a new instrument, a Novum Organum (12). By its 

 application he overthrew reliance on authority of 

 the ancients and opened the way for planned experi- 

 ment. Although he had no place in his method for 

 the working hypothesis, and his forms of induction 

 and deduction are scarcely those of the modern 

 methodology, they were of considerable influence in 

 its development. The intelligent lines of Bacon's 

 face can be seen in his portraits. John Aubrey (13) 

 tells us that he "had a delicate, lively hazel eie" and 

 that "Dr. Harvey told me it was like the eie of a 

 viper." 



The first major work in physiology exemplifying 



10. Gilberd, William (1540 (or 1544)- 1603). De Magnete, 

 Magnetisque corporibus; et de mag?io magnete lellure; Physio- 

 logica nova plurimis et argumentis et experimentis demonstrata. 

 London: Peter Short, 1600; translated into English by 

 the Gilbert Club, William Gilbert of Colchester, physician 

 of London. London; Chiswick Press, igoo. 



11. Ibid. (2nd ed.) (posthumous). Gotzianio in Stettin, 1633. 

 This book, far rarer than the first edition, carries more 

 plates than the original, and has some additions by 

 Wolfgang Lochmann of Pomerania (1594- 1643). 



12. Bacon, Francis (1561-1626). .Novum Organum. 1620; 

 translated into English by Kitchin. Oxford, 1855. 



13. Aubrey, John (1626- 1697). Brief Lives set Down i66g- 

 i6g6, edited by Andrew Clark. Clarendon Press, 1898, 



vol. 2. 



' The spelling of Gilberd's name follows the form seen on his 

 portrait and memorial tablet; his name on his book is spelled 

 Gilbert. 



