GOODSIR LOOKS BEYOND. 83 



ceeded in clearing up the nature of several prepara- 

 tions and gathering a clue to the unsolved problems 

 affecting their history. Each cclaircissement afforded 

 a fresh starting-point to further inquiries, and Goodsir 

 was not the man to slacken the rein or spare the 

 whip as goal after goal came into view, indicating the 

 terminus as still beyond. The night's study at home 

 hardly kept pace with the daily observations in the 

 museum. From time to time the societies were 

 informed of his work, for Goodsir, looking beyond his 

 present status (1842), had become persuaded that he 

 should lose no opportunities of obtaining public acknow- 

 ledgment and approbation. " The times" were as ad- 

 vancing and aggressive in the biological as in the political 

 world. No man of enterprise or ambition thought of 

 hiding his talents under a bushel in the midst of such 



<- petitive forces as existed in the Medical School of 



Edinburgh, of which a sketch has been <nven in the 

 previous chapter. Moreover, in his special walk of 

 anatomy great strides were being made, and notably 

 in Germany and France — which nations, along with 

 Italy and England, constitute the four "Great Powers" 

 of science in Europe. 



Historians seem agreed that each grand epoch in 

 the art or science of medicine has derived its first 

 impulse from a new anatomy, originating a higher 

 physiology and theory of disease. Galen, though 

 learned in the philosophy of Plato, the physics of 

 Aristotle, and the aphorisms of Hippocrates, was little 

 known for these acquirements; but his anatomical 



