vi INQUIRY AND INTERPRETATION 



caterpillars, flies," and as to making experiments on the 

 weight of air, even Charles II., who took great interest 

 in the Society, is said by Pepys to have " mightily 

 laughed at Gresham College, for spending time only in 

 the weighing of ayre, and doing nothing else since they 

 sat." 



From the time of Galen (130-200 A.D.), the first 

 physiologist and the last of the Greek physicians, to 

 the end of the fifteenth century, knowledge of the 

 human body made practically no progress. Dialectic 

 and dogma, mysticism and tradition, dominated the 

 science of medicine, and physicians lived fifteen centuries 

 on the capital accumulated for them by one who went 

 to Nature for his facts. 



By the dissection of animals, Galen proved that the 

 brain is the centre of sensation and receives its messages 

 through the nerves. His authority and that of Aristotle 

 were considered sufficient for all time upon every 

 question relating to the human organism ; and the results 

 of the experimental work of William Harvey (1578-1657) 

 were opposed by dogma derived from the work of 

 an investigator on the other side of the bridge which 

 spanned the intervening gulf of centuries of bankruptcy 

 of medical science. 



Harvey takes a place with Gilbert and Galileo as an 

 experimental philosopher and an apostle of the scientific 

 method. He observed things for himself, experimented 

 in order to see Nature at work, and did not let the views 

 of Galen or Aristotle influence his conclusions. " I 

 sought to discover," he says, " the motions and uses 

 of the heart from actual inspection and not from the 

 writings of others ; at length, and by using greater and 

 daily diligence and investigation, making frequent 

 inspection of many and various animals, and collating 



