210 ON THOUGHT IN MEDICINE. 



pupils, who copied their master, exaggerated his theory , 

 made it more one-sided and more logical, without 

 regard to any discordance with Nature. The more 

 rigid the system, the fewer and the more thorough 

 were the methods to which the healing art was re- 

 stricted. The more the schools were driven into a 

 corner by the increase in actual knowledge, the more 

 did they depend upon the ancient authorities, and the 

 more intolerant were they against innovation. The 

 great reformer of anatomy, Vesalius, was cited before 

 the Theological faculty of Salamanca; Servetus was 

 burned at Geneva along with his book, in which he 

 described the circulation of the lungs ; and the Paris 

 faculty prohibited the teaching of Harvey's doctrine of 

 the circulation of the blood in its lecture rooms. 



At the same time the bases of the systems from 

 which these schools started were mostly views on 

 natural science which it would have been quite right 

 to utilise within a narrow circle. What was not 

 right was the delusion that it was more scientific to 

 refer all diseases to one kind of explanation, than to 

 several. What was called the solidar pathology wanted to 

 deduce everything from the altered mechanism of the 

 solid parts, especially from their altered tension ; from 

 the strictum and laxum, from tone and want of tone, 

 and afterwards from strained or relaxed nerves and from 

 obstructions in the vessels. Humoral pathology was 



