SECTION I. THE NEW BIOLOGY 

 THE REVIVAL OF BOTANY 



The emancipation of the biological sciences from tradi- 

 tional learning was long hindered by the pretensions of 

 an obsolete medicine. It is not difficult to understand 

 that the extraordinary complexity of most questions 

 relating to health and disease should have made medicine 

 slow to adopt scientific methods, or that the medical 

 profession should have been sensitive about its reputa- 

 tion and prone to assert its infallibility. In the six- 

 teenth century botany was regarded as a main branch 

 of medicine, and may be said to have constituted nearly 

 the whole of therapeutics. Euricius Cordus, who was 

 in all things a reformer, laboured to convince his 

 hearers and readers that there were three things which 

 the physician was bound to know : the human body, 

 the disease and the remedy, but in practice knowledge 

 of a reputed remedy was held to be the main thing. It 

 was generally believed that for every ill that flesh is 

 heir to, nature had designated some plant as the 

 appropriate cure. Some believed that Providence had 

 caused particular plants to grow in those districts where 

 the diseases which they cured were prevalent.^ When 



'^ E.g. Theodore of Berg-zabern, who is known to science by his Latinised 

 name of Tabernsemontanus. 



