346 Elementary Biology. 



To the Greek naturalists and the few Romans who, like 

 Pliny (23-79 A - D -)> followed in their steps, belongs the 

 honour of having laid that necessary foundation for future 

 generalisation the gathering of data. How great was the 

 work they achieved can scarcely be better shown than by 

 noting how men for centuries afterwards seemed to think 

 that Aristotle had probed the secrets of Nature to the 

 bottom ; that there was, in fact, nothing more to learn ; and 

 that what he said must be true simply because he said so. 



After these early natural historians they can scarcely be 

 called biologists in the sense in which we now understand 

 the word there comes a gap of nearly five hundred years 

 before we meet with the founders of Arabian, medicine, 

 whose labours afterwards bore fruit in the great medical 

 schools of Bagdad and Cordova. 



Wise men were not wanting in those early days -who saw 

 that the study of animals was one which was likely to throw 

 considerable light on the organisation of man himself, and 

 therefore must tend in great measure to advance the art of 

 medicine from what it was a mere collection ot recipes and 

 conclusions founded on empiricism to what it ought to be, 

 a well-digested and connected system of treatment based on 

 scientific generalisations arrived at by a careful study of the 

 comparative anatomy and physiology of man and the lower 

 animals. The work of the Arabian and Moorish doctors 

 consisted in the generalising of what was known for present 

 need ; and though necessarily very small absolutely, yet 

 relatively speaking the advance made was so great that it 

 took six hundred years more before the advent of the great 

 anatomists Vesalius (1514-1564), Fallopius (1523-1562), 

 Jabricius (1537-1619), and their pupils marked the begin- 

 ning of a new era of comparative morphology. 



Nothing strikes one more forcibly in looking back over 

 the history of the science of those days than the paucity 

 of generalisations, which are at once the summation of work 

 done and the basis for future effort. There were doubtless 



