THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF SCIENCE IN MEDICINE. I 7 



in one sphere of activity after another the fetters of the 

 past began to be shaken off. Art was the first to revive ; 

 sculpture and architecture almost reached the zenith of 

 their development in the thirteenth century : painting 

 took some tvi'O centuries longer to free itself from archaism. 

 Intellectual freedom was still longer delayed : from the 

 twelfth to the fifteenth century there was learning in 

 plenty, but it was study devoted to what had been 

 written in the past, not the free exercise of the mind in 

 fearless inquiry after the truth. It is easy to blame the 

 Church for this exclusive devotion to tradition and dogma, 

 but the Church could not prevent the Renaissance when 

 the times were ripe : we should rather regard the fact, 

 with Flinders Petrie, as part of the ordained cycle in the 

 evolution of a civilisation. Medicine reflects the spirit 

 of these centuries : the traditions of the past were still 

 supreme, and Galen was the god of the medical world. 

 Men felt him to have been a better man than themselves, 

 as in truth he was, and it was enough that Galen said 

 this or that, or that his writings could be interpreted in 

 such and such a sense, and there the matter ended. 



And then, in the fulness of time, after more than a 

 thousand years of intellectual slumber, men again began 

 to think for themselves, just as the Ionian Greeks had 

 done twenty centuries before. The Renaissance was at 

 first literally a Revival of Learning due to the renewed 

 study of the Greek language, and the discovery of much 

 of the classical literature which had been hidden away in 

 the libraries of the East. It is outside my province to 

 discuss this great movement, which spread from Italy to 

 England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, except 

 in so far as it influenced medical science. The first effect 

 of the revival was to strengthen the position of Galen. 

 It must be remembered that he was but imperfectly known 

 in mediaeval times. Much of his work had been lost, and 

 as for what remained it is unlikely that all the spirit of 

 the original would be conveyed by Greek writings, trans- 

 lated into Arabic, and later rendered into corrupt Latin. 

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