NA TURE 



25 



THURSDAY, MAY 14. 190S. 



A CO\'TRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF 



Ml■:DICI^E. 



The History of the Study of ?,Ieclicine in the British 

 Isles. By Dr. Norman Moore. The Fitz-Patrick 

 Lectures for 1905-6, delivered before the Royal Col- 

 lege of Physicians of London. Pp. viii + 202. 

 (0.\ford : Clarendon Press, igo8.) Price los. bd. 

 net. 



THERE are two ways in which a scientific subject 

 may be taught — the logical method, which de- 

 scribes the facts, and follows the course of reasoned 

 demonstration ; and the historical method, which 

 follows the progress of knowledge by which facts are 

 accumulated long before their logical sequence has 

 been ascertained. The geometry of Euclid follows the 

 former course, as do most of the exact sciences. The 

 history of navigation follows the historical method, 

 and so does the history of medicine. 



Complete histories of medicine are few and far 

 between, and, with the exception of the unfinished 

 treatise of Dr. Freind, have not dealt with more than 

 fragments of the subject. Medical biographies, like 

 Dr. Payne's " Life of .Sydenham," or the excellent 

 biographical articles dealing with physicians in the 

 " Dictionary of National Biography," begun by Leslie 

 Stephen, and happily completed by Sidney Lee, 

 furnish an example to all professions, but to write 

 the history of a science demands a knowledge of the 

 successive labours by which each in turn contributed 

 his stone to the great edifice. 



Dr. Caius, president of the College of Physicians of 

 London in 1555, Sir Hans Sloane, president in 1719. 

 beside Dr. Hamey in 1640, and Dr. Freind in 1725, 

 had each of them attempted a history of medicine. 



.\fter mentioning the names of some, chiefly Royal 

 physicians of our Norman kings, Dr. Moore gives a 

 comparatively full account of John Mirfeld, the author 

 of a treatise on medicine which he called the " Breviar- 

 ium Bartholomei " ; he Jived in the Convent of St. 

 Bartholomew, in Smithfield, a separate foundation 

 from that of St. Bartholomew, though both were 

 founded by Rahere. 



.\mong other "cases," Mirfeld records that of 

 hydrocephalus in a girl, who was tapped by a cautery 

 on two occasions, and with final success. 



Another patient of Mirfeld was a Canon, who was 

 Jhrown from his horse and taken up without sense 

 or niotion ; the patient's head was shaved, rubbed 

 with oil of roses in warm vinegar, bound up with 

 bandages, and covered over all with a lamb's skin. 

 Strict abstinence from food was enforced until the 

 fourth day, when for the first time he spoke, and was 

 able to swallow ; on the sixth day he was given some 

 chicken broth, followed by laxative pills. Mirfeld 

 afterwards recommended the patient to eat brains of 

 kids and fowls, with the object of supplying the in- 

 juries of the patient's brain. 



Beside the " Breviarium," which is based on the 



NO. 201 1, VOL. 78] 



famous " Regimen Sanitatis Salerni," Mirfeld com- 

 piled a " Florarium Bartholomei." which was dis- 

 covered among the MSS. of the British Museum. Mr. 

 Gilson, the discoverer of this MS,, lent it to Dr. 

 Norman Moore, who has given us four columns of the 

 text, which can be deciphered with comparative ease 

 by the help of a magnifying glass. Yet another frag- 

 mentary MS. by Mirfeld was discovered in the 

 library of Lambeth Palace, which is inscribed with 

 the name of .\rchbishop Sancroft, .\mong the more 

 modern medical works which Mirfeld mentions were 

 translations of " Rhazes' Serapion " and of 

 " .\vicenna." He knew something of Horace, Ovid 

 and Virgil, of Boethius, of ih,^ Vulgate, and of the 

 commentaries of Augustin, Anselm, and Thomas 

 .\quinas. 



Dr. Moore, in his second lecture, deals with the 

 education of London physicians in the century of 

 Harvey and Svdcnham. Thomas Linacre, the first 

 president of the college, was a learned man who had 

 studied Greek under Demetrius Chalcondylas, a 

 refugee from the Turkish invasion. He will always 

 be revered as the founder of the Royal Col- 

 lege of Physicians. Like Mirfeld and the earlier 

 physicians, he was a scholar first and a physician 

 afterwards, and like Mirfeld he took holy orders. He 

 wrote a Latin grammar, and belonged to that little 

 group of learned men who adorned the golden time 

 of Henry VHL's youth. Erasmus was a welcome 

 addition to the English scholars. Sir Thomas More 

 and Dean Colet, the founder of St. Paul's School. 

 The young king was himself a scholar and a musician 

 in that happy Decennium Neronis. 



AH these scholars were accomplished Grecians. Ed- 

 ward Wotton, who was president of the college in 

 1541, was a learned man, and also a natural historian. 

 He describes three kinds of thrushes, the missel-thrush, 

 Tiirdus viscivorits, the song-thrush, Turdus musiciis, 

 and the red-wing, Turdits iliacus. 



Another learned physician, Caius, who took up the 

 study of natural history, wrote a book on the breeds 

 of dogs in England, and a most valuable monograph 

 on the sweating sickness. He also founded at Cam- 

 bridge the college called after his name, which has 

 alwavs been connected with the study of medicine. A 

 greater genius than any except Harvey himself was 

 Wni. Gilbert (1540-1603), the author of the first 

 treatise on the magnet, published in 1600, the year in 

 which he was elected president of the College of Physi- 

 cians ; it has lately been re-published in a fine edition 

 by Prof. Silvanus Thompson in 1902. 



Dr. Moore wisely passes the two greatest names in 

 medicine with a bow, for the life and works of Harvey 

 and Sydenham have been repeatedly and adequately 

 dealt with. Dr. Payne's admirable volume on Syden- 

 ham, and several recent Harveian orations, render full 

 justice to each. Another early fellow of the college 

 was a French physician, Theodore de Mayerne (1573- 

 1655), an accomplished chemist, to whom we owe 

 " Lotio Nigra." 



Glisson is chiefly known by his work on the " .Ana- 

 tomy of the Liver," but to him is due the first recog- 

 nition of what he called irritability as a property of 



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