428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



and fearlessly what they found, how almost certain it is that today 

 medical loiowledge would bo hundreds of years ahead of where it is, 

 with tuberculosis and cancer and arthritis perhaps only memories of 

 the past. 



THE EVER-PRESENT OPPOSITION TO MEDICAL ADVANCEMENT 



But all through the ages a large section of the people in every country 

 have kept saying, "No, you mustn't do this and you mustn't do that," 

 thus maldng it hard or impossible for physicians to carry on their 

 studies and their beneficent work for the relief of human suffering. 



Really, aren't we human beings curious in our mental processes? 

 In the middle ages they loved to hitch a dray horse to each of a man's 

 hands and feet and drive these horses off in four different directions; 

 they loved to strip off a man's skin while he was still alive, or to break 

 his bones on the wheel, or to roast him over a slow fire; but just 

 let the crowd which had looked on with approval and pleasure dis- 

 cover next day that an eminent teacher of medicine, trying to learn 

 how better to help suffering humanity, had dissected what was left 

 of the poor prisoner after the hangman was done, and they would 

 turn in wrath to rend the impious wretch who had dared to so dese- 

 crate a human body! 



But we must not smile at this in a superior way because even today, 

 it is not always easy to get human bodies for dissection, and so bitter 

 is the opposition of some animal lovers to the progress of scientific 

 medicine, that in many cities the pound man does not dare to sell even 

 a dead dog for study in the local medical school. 



Just think of Aristotle, the greatest naturalist, and one of the 

 greatest physicians of all time, having to admit that even \\ith the 

 backing of his pupil and patient, Alexander, the most powerful ruler 

 of the then known world, he had been unable to dissect even one human 

 body, and he had never seen a man's kidney or a woman's uterus! 



It was not until the sixteenth century that the opposition to dissec- 

 tion of the human body died down sufficiently in a few Itahan cities 

 so that the great Vesalius was able to learn how a man is made inside, 

 and to publish (in 1543) the first accurate book on anatomy. Obvi- 

 ously, until such knowledge was secured, the practice of surgery was 

 impossible. 



The next big step in the progress of medical science came in 1G28 

 with Harvey's great discovery of the circulation of the blood. With 

 this work was begun an era in which the functions of the many organs 

 of the body were studied. In 1683, Lceuwenhoek discovered bacteria, 

 and in 1719, Morgagni founded the science of pathology, which deals 

 with the changes that are to be found in the bodies of persons dead of 

 disease. 



