262 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



examiner of his college. Then he studied medicine and 

 reached his Doctorate and a senior Fellowship in 1569, 

 when he terminated his eleven years' connection with the 

 University. 



The facilities for studying anatomy and clinical medi- 

 cine in England, at that time, were not comparable with 

 those to be obtained on the Continent. Vesalius, of the 

 University of Padua, had written, not long before, his 

 famous work based upon actual dissections of the human 

 body, and pointing out the errors into which Galen had 

 fallen through studies said to have been made upon the 

 organs of apes. Eustachius, then living, was continuing 

 the work of his greater contemporary upon the founda- 

 tions of the science of anatomy. The discoveries of Fallo- 

 pius were still new and arousing the keenest interest. 

 Cardan was teaching in Bologna. The chemical medicine 

 of Paracelsus was creating widespread controversy. For a 

 student such as Gilbert, whose turn of mind was of the 

 most practical nature and who possessed a keen taste for 

 experimental research, the opportunities for such study 

 available outside of England furnish abundant reason for 

 his sojourn of four years abroad, and make it needless to 

 picture him as simply making u the grand tour" which, 

 in those days, formed a part of the educational course of 

 well-to-do people. 



Although the habits and mode of thought acquired dur- 

 ing his period of study in the foreign universities had 

 much to do with the development of his later achieve- 

 ments, Gilbert was no one's disciple. No one even played 

 for him the part of a Southampton or an Essex, unless 

 sub silentio the Queen herself. Even the dedication to the 

 young Prince of Wales, who never wore the crown, which 

 prefaces his posthumous volume, was penned by his 

 brother, and not by himself. Nor is any especial influ- 

 ence recognizable which can be said to have aroused in 

 him a spirit of emulation and so to have directed him into 

 his chosen path of discovery. Galen and Dioscorides, in 



