Ill 



Such was the check which, after the death of Leo 

 the Tenth, had befallen liberal studies : no Bembo 

 now secretly protected freethinkers ; in Central 

 Europe the generous Maximilian the Second, who 

 died in 1576 while counselling tolerance in religion 

 to Henry the Third, was followed by reactionary 

 emperors. In England no doubt the sky was clearer ; 

 in the Salamis of modern civilization the malign 

 pretensions of Philip were shattered, and the 

 " spacious times of Elizabeth" were glorious in 

 their outburst of freedom, adventure, and culture. 

 Medicine, however, sinking in the sixteenth century, 

 fell, in the seventeenth, into that reproach which 

 has become a byword. All superstition was not 

 within the Faith. When Harvey's discovery, 

 like an earthquake, had broken up galenism 

 and other outworn sophistries, his masterly work 

 stood forth not only against long-winded dia- 

 lectics on ars sphygmica, critical days, coctions, 

 derivatives, revulsives, and like abstractions be- 

 queathed by realism and uncritical subservience to 

 texts, but also against a more lurid background 

 of folk superstitions of vampires, witch-burning, 

 magic, cabbalism, astrology, alchemy, chiromancy, 

 and water-casting. For medicine, says Bacon, is 

 associated with charlatanry as Aesculapius with 



