92 



were over ; it was in Padua that medicine, long 

 degraded or disguised, was now to prove her 

 lineage as the mother of natural science, and 

 the truth of the saying of Hippocrates that to 

 know the nature of man one must know the nature 

 of all things. But on Harvey's arrival, Padua, 

 which had become the first school of Medicine in 

 Europe, as was Bologna of Imperial Law 1 , was 

 settling down upon the lees of the once noble 

 school of Averroes: a discipline which, by its 

 original strength, by its freedom of thought, and 

 by the ascendency of its professors, had withstood 

 in the thirteenth century the direct condemnation 



devastation, but had scarcely deserved its good fortune. 

 There was much active teaching of a routine kind, many for- 

 malities, much serving of tables ; but of living interest in 

 science, learning, or high culture there was not a trace. Of 

 classical learning, in Casaubon's sense, there was naught. 

 Ecclesiastical controversies absorbed or overwhelmed all other 

 subjects; and the University was regarded by the Government 

 as an instrument of party. The professors were all clerks, and 

 ardent only as pamphleteers. Thus, says Pattison, "the 

 University took its full share of national passion, prejudice 

 and religious sentiment, but was wholly destitute of any power 

 to vivify, to correct, to instruct, or to enlighten." Pattison's 

 Casaubon, p. 417. 



1 Both in Bologna and Padua of course there was a faculty 

 of Medicine ; but its tradition in Bologna was traditional and 

 galenical, in Padua independent and progressive. Montpellier 

 had suffered in the desolation of Languedoc. 



