LECTURE VII. 



THE ENGLISH SCHOOL OF THE SEVENTEENTH 

 CENTURY. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF RESPIRATION. 



While we have been following the gradual enlightenment 

 of the physiological world we have seen how the spot of light 

 which was the centre of illumination shifted from place to 

 place, and shone now in one University, now in another. We 

 have seen it bursting out brilliantly at Padua in Vesalius, less 

 brightly in Fabricius; it appeared meteor-like in Switzerland 

 in Paracelsus ; then it moved to London and shone in Harvey. 

 Anon it burst out in the Northern countries in van Helmont 

 at Brussels, in Stensen at Copenhagen. It flitted back to 

 Italy, to Borelli in Pisa, to Malpighi in Bologna, and once more 

 returned to the North to Sylvius in Leyden and to others. 



I have now to ask you to go back with me once more to 

 London. Englishmen are justly proud of Harvey, and they 

 take some credit for Glisson. They may also boast of a little 

 band, worthy successors of Harvey, who in the middle and latter 

 part of the seventeenth century made remarkable progress 

 in the knowledge of the true nature of breathing. 



The exact physical science which Galileo had begun at 

 Pisa soon crossed the seas and passed to England, stirring 

 up a knot of men to pursue studies of the same kind, a knot 

 of men who some few years afterwards founded the Royal 

 Society of London, for the advancement of natural knowledge, 

 in the hope, a hope not wholly unfulfilled, that it would help 

 them in their " attempts by actual experiments to shape out 

 a new philosophy or to perfect the old." 



