HISTORY OF PHYSIOLOGY. 13 



blood as it was used up. This view Galen supported by the 

 observed fact that when an artery of an animal was cut, not 

 only the arteries, but the veins, also, became emptied in a 

 very short time. 



Middle Ages. 



With Galen the progress of the ancients in physiology 

 conies to a close. A thousand years have elapsed before 

 physiological phenomena receive the least attention, and 

 nonsensical metaphysical debates on theological abstrac- 

 tions crowd out of the mind of the Middle Ages even the 

 known conceptions of the past. Miracle cures replaced 

 the medicines of Galen and Hippocrates, and superstition 

 gave way to the anatomy of the ancients. More than ten 

 centuries separate Galen from the first students of anatomy 

 in the universities of Italy. But the Middle Ages had car- 

 ried the seeds of physiology through these years of read- 

 justment, and when the Italian Renaissance came, anatom- 

 ical and physiological studies felt the mental awakening. 

 For the first time in modern history, lectures on, and dis- 

 sections of the human body formed a part of the regular 

 program of studies of the universities. Mondini of Bologna, 

 1315, wrote a treatise on anatomy and dissection which 

 remained the authorized text-book in most schools of med- 

 icine almost into the sixteenth century. Only twelve years 

 after the invention of printing this treatise was printed 

 in full, and by the year 1550 it had no less than thirteen 

 editions. 



The anatomy of the body is in many instances carefully 

 described, and the chief value of the book is from an 

 anatomical standpoint. In his physiological views the 

 established notions are not questioned. During the Renais- 

 sance the works of the ancients were seen to be so much 

 better than their present productions that practically implicit 

 confidence was given to all things that had the authority 

 of the past. Aristotle and Galen were not to be ques- 

 tioned, and it seemed senseless and unpardonable to try to 



