A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



medical knowledge that was withheld from the inner 

 circles of the profession. As the peasantry of Eng- 

 land before Jenner had known of the curative value of 

 cow-pox over small-pox, so the peasant women of 

 Poland had learned that the annoying skin disease 

 from which they suffered was caused by an almost in- 

 visible insect, and, furthermore, had acquired the trick 

 of dislodging the pestiferous little creature with the 

 point of a needle. From them a youth of the country, 

 F. Renucci by name, learned the open secret. He 

 conveyed it to Paris when he went there to study medi- 

 cine, and in 1834 demonstrated it to his master AK- 

 bert. This physician, at first sceptical, soon was con- 

 vinced, and gave out the discovery to the medical 

 world with an authority that led to early acceptance. 

 Now the importance of all this, in the present con- 

 nection, is not at all that it gave the clew to the method 

 of cure of a single disease. What makes the discovery 

 epochal is the fact that it dropped a brand-new idea 

 into the medical ranks an idea destined, in the long- 

 run, to prove itself a veritable bomb the idea, 

 namely, that a minute and quite unsuspected animal 

 parasite may be the cause of a well-known, widely 

 prevalent, and important human disease. Of course 

 the full force of this idea could only be appreciated in 

 the light of later knowledge ; but even at the time of its 

 coming it sufficed to give a great impetus to that new 

 medical knowledge, based on microscopical studies, 

 which had but recently been made accessible by the 

 inventions of the lens-makers. The new knowledge 

 clarified one very turbid medical pool and pointed the 

 way to the clarification of many others. 



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