256 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



basius onward, who did not refer to the magnet in some 

 / way often writing utter nonsense about it, sometimes in- 

 terspersing his rumors and vagaries with truths frequently 

 the more forceful for the re-telling in a new manner. If 

 in a multitude of counselors there is wisdom, if the truth 

 resides in numbers of witnesses, surely we may ascribe 

 some of the progress effected to the mutual cancellation of 

 the mistakes and misstatements repeated and reiterated in 

 the works of the old medical writers. The subject was 

 sifted through the books of the Arabs and by their great- 

 est leeches, Hali Abbas, Avicenna and Serapion the Moor; 

 while in Europe, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 

 physicians of commanding eminence hasten to contribute 

 their observations or speculations concerning it, to the 

 general fund of knowledge. Kernel and Dupuis in France, 

 Amatus in Portugal, Thomas Lieber (or Krastus) in Ger- 

 many, Fallopius, Fracastorio, Costaeus and Cardan in 

 Italy such were the men who, with an abundant crop 

 of tares, cultivated the harvest which, meagre as it was, 

 increased a thousandfold within the next hundred years. 



At the end of the sixteenth century, the Italians were 

 far in advance of all other nations in their medical attain- 

 ments, and the English well in the rear. I have encoun- 

 tered no writings by English physicians of that century 

 which entitle them to any credit for either preserving or 

 advancing electrical or magnetic knowledge. The prac- 

 tice of physic did not pass from the active control of the 

 priesthood and become an independent profession in Brit- 

 ain until Henry VIIL, in 1518, granted its charter to the 

 Royal College of Physicians in London. The names of Dr, 

 Linacre and Dr. Kaye (Shakespeare's Dr. Caius) then come 

 into prominence, but chiefly as leaders in the struggle of 

 the college to put down quackery, and to impose qualifica- 

 tions upon the medical practitioner, to maintain itself 

 against the pretensions of the clergy, who still arrogated 

 to themselves the right to license, and to assert its own 

 privileges and dignity. 



