138 THE RISE OF MEDICAL SOCIETIES CHAP. 



to search out " the knowledge of causes and secret motions 

 of things," helped to stimulate the movement, but political 

 unsettlement stood in the way. During the civil war, however, 

 about 1645, a group of scientific men were wont to meet 

 informally in London, and later in Oxford, and in 1660 they 

 established themselves as the Royal Society. Drs. Wilkins 

 and Wallis were among the earliest, and Petty, Boyle, and 

 Evelyn among the most famous of the group. French men 

 of letters held meetings in Paris from about 1629, and formed 

 the French Academy about 1634, gi vm g however, their chief 

 attention to literature. The Academic Roy ale des Sciences 

 was founded in 1666 ; it was included in 1795 in the vast 

 organism of the Institut de France. 



These societies met a great need ; the world was ready for 

 them ; they set up the frank interchange of knowledge by 

 mutual converse, in place of the study of ponderous Latin 

 tomes. The Royal Society, in particular, though it suffered 

 fluctuations, came to take a wide grasp of the known sciences, 

 and to pursue them in a catholic spirit ; and, knowing how to 

 honour itself by honouring others, it included in its own body 

 the most distinguished scientific workers of all lands. 



The example of England and France was soon followed by 

 other countries. The Leopold Academy of Halle is indeed the 

 direct offspring of a little company of doctors, who met at 

 Schweinfurth as early as 1652. The Berlin Akademie der 

 Wissenschaften dates from 1700, and that of Vienna from about 

 ten years later. Sweden, forward in science, had her similar 

 active societies at Upsala in 1710, at Stockholm in 1739, and 

 at Gothenburg in 1778. Madrid followed suit in 1713, and 

 the Imperial Academy of Science at St. Petersburg was opened 

 in 1725. Bordeaux and Marseilles possessed such academies 

 in 1712 and 1721. The genius of Franklin set up the American 

 Philosophical Society at Philadelphia in 1743, and the Academy 

 of Arts and Sciences at Boston was formed in 1780. The 

 Royal Society at Gottingen owed its origin to king George II. 

 in 1751 ; and in the cities of the Netherlands, Haarlem, Rotter- 

 dam and Brussels, the men of science gathered themselves 

 into academies in 1752, 1769 and 1772 respectively. In the 

 same century philosophical societies or institutions, which 

 had already appeared in Edinburgh and Dublin, were formed 

 in several parts of England as at Bristol, Bath, Peterborough, 

 Spalding, Manchester and Newcastle. 1 



1 The Ada Eruditorum, consisting o! scientific papers and reviews, and 

 issued monthly from Leipsic in 1682 and onwards, owed its origin to the 

 example set by the British and French societies. The Ephemerides of the 



