THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF SCIENCE IN MEDICINE. I 5 



anatomy. It so happened that Galen was one of the 

 most proHfic writers w ho ever Hved, and by devious ways 

 much of what he wrote has come down to us. It is no 

 wonder that the works of so eminent a man should have 

 come to occupy in later ages a position in medicine almost 

 like that of the Bible. 



For, with Galen, we come to the end of the great age 

 of classical civilisation, and it will be fitting, before leaving 

 it, to summarise ^\•hat Greek genius had accomplished in 

 medical science. An atmosphere of intellectual liberty 

 had been established by the Greeks, essential to the birth 

 and growth of science : they had developed the love of 

 knowledge for its own sake. Their shrewd observation 

 had transformed medicine from a medley of traditional 

 empiricism and superstition into a natural science : they 

 freed it from magic, and laid the foundations of a rational 

 treatment of disease. Towards the close of their epoch 

 they devised the experimental method and used it to 

 found the science of physiolog}-. Indirectly medicine, 

 like the other sciences, owes to them the laws of clear 

 thinking, and the development of mathematics and 

 mechanics. Could I have selected four names from 

 antiquity who more fully deserve our gratitude as bene- 

 factors of this College than Thales, Hippocrates, Aristotle 

 and Galen ? 



When the Minoan civilisation passed away, the Greeks 

 had been compelled to begin again, almost from the 

 beginning. There was no such complete break between 

 the classical period and our modern civilisation : much 

 was handed on by direct tradition, and vastly more by 

 written manuscript. Nevertheless, after the fall of the 

 Roman Empire, Europe had to be re-made and to pass 

 through its dark ages before the dawn of a new culture. 

 The new mixture of races seems to have been incapable 

 of intellectual achievement till the ordained incubation- 

 period was over, and that period was at its darkest from 

 the fifth to the tenth centuries a.d. Art was at a low ebb, 

 and the culture of classical times was largely forgotten : 



