26 



NA TURE 



[May 14, 1908 



living tissues of which muscular contractility is only 

 one manifestation. We must not forget the connection 

 of the College of Physicians with what is now called 

 " The Pharmacopoeia," and thereby with the growing 

 study of chemistry. 



The eminence of Sir Thomas Brown was 

 literary rather than scientific, but his " Religio 

 Medici " confers undying lustre on perhaps the 

 greatest prose writer of the seventeenth century. His 

 son, Dr. Edward Brown, was educated at Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, and in 1644 he petitioned for his 

 degree, and was duly adni;.tcd by a Grace when Dr. 

 Francis Glisson was regius professor of physiology. 



On one of his visits u London, Edward Brown 

 studied the anatomy of a hare and a skeleton of a 

 monkey, and a few weeks later dissected a hedgehog 

 and a badger; on this occasion he saw in the King's 

 zoological collection several outlandish {i.e., foreign) 

 deer, a sheep from Guinea, a white raven, and a stork 

 which had broken his leg and used a wooden substi- 

 tute with dexterity. 



Edward Brown remained with his father at Norwich, 

 studying anatomy, botany, and chemistry; in 1664 he 

 left Norwich for London and Dover, and thence to 

 Paris, where he lived in a room in the Rue Zacharie 

 for seven francs a month; here he attended lectures 

 on surgery, hernia and fevers, and studied in the 

 "Hotel Dieu " and "La Charit<5," as so many 

 English physicians have done since, and still do if 

 they are wise. On leaving Paris he went to Mont- 

 pellier, then famous as a school of medicine. 



He ne.Kt visited Rome, thence travelled to Venicf 

 and Padua; and returned to iVIontpellier and Paris 

 where he caught small-pox. After his recoveq 

 he returned home, but in 1668 he visited Holland 

 devoting himself to its libraries, museums, and uni- 

 versities; Thence he travelled to Vienna and Greece, 

 and returned by Styria and Hungary to England ; his 

 last journey was to Cologne. He was president ol 

 the College of Physicians in 1704, and died in 170S. 



Sydenham was comparatively uninfluenced by th( 

 progress of anatomy and science, and this, as Dr. 

 Payne has shown, was probably due to his brother' 

 and possibly himself having enlisted in the Common 

 wealth Army. 



It is remarkable how very few " cases " of diseast 

 are described by Sydenham or his predecessors; the 

 explanations of the symptoms, which were mostly 

 mistaken, leave little room for observation of facts. 

 We must admit that in the latter part of the seven- 

 teenth century, as in the first half of the nineteenth 

 century, the most fruitful progress in clinical medicine 

 was in Paris, not in London. 



Dr. Moore was the first to direct attention to the 

 accurate clinical account of the symptoms during life, 

 and to read between the lines by the light of our 

 present knowledge, that in all likelihood the death of 

 Henry Prince of Wales, which changed the course o! 

 English, and perhaps of European, history, was due to 

 enteric fever, as shown by the symptoms during life 

 and by the examination after death. 



The medical memoir on his father, James L, was 

 accurate and interesting, but it is difficult to mak( 

 NO. 201 I. VOL. 78] 



out more than that he suffered from gout, while that 

 on Ann of Denmark is illustrated by a letter from 

 herself to Mayerne. 



Thomas Willis, the author of " The Anatomy of the 

 Brain," published in 1664, accomplished his great 

 anatomical work at Oxford, where he filled the chair 

 of natural philosophy. 



Richard Morton published in 16S9 his treatise on 

 consumption under the title " Phthisiologia. " It has 

 the great merit of being no mere speculation, but 

 variis historiis illusttatum. He discusses causes of 

 phthisis, which he regards as sometimes a nervous 

 disease. Other cases he ascribes to haemorrhage, 

 others to excessive lactation or to dysentery. 



Another section treats of wasting due to diabetes 

 with polyuria. He gives the names and addresses of 

 many of his patients, but uses the decent obscurity 

 of a learned language. Other cases of diabetes he. 

 ascribes to salivation, others to dropsy. 



The eighteenth century was, on the whole, inferior 

 to the seventeenth in England. The leading physicians 

 were Radcliffe, the founder of the museum which bears 

 his name at Oxford ; and .'\rbuthnot, the first of the 

 many physicians who earned perpetual fame by their 

 services to great men of letters. They were followed 

 by Mead, who was also repaid by the gratitude of 

 Pope; Freind, who began the " History of Medicine " 

 too early to be of much value, but who gave occasion 

 for extorting from Walpole the prescription which 

 cured his gout, and also secured Freind's pardon. 

 Sir Samuel Garth was more literary than medical. 

 Mead and Freind were good writers, but did not attain 

 to the level of Arbuthnot. 



In the latter half of the eighteenth century, Heber- 

 den w-as the leading physician in London after he had 

 lectured on medicine in Cambridge, where notes of 

 his lectures were taken by Dr. Erasmus Darwin in 

 1752. He died in 1801, having lived nearly ninety 

 vears, and his admirable commentaries were only 

 published after his death by his second son. This was 

 the most original and valuable treatise an English 

 physician had then made; as Dr. Moore remarks, the 

 method of examining a patient in the time of Heberden 

 scarcely differed from that of Galen in the reign of 

 Marcus Aurelius, the chief e.xception being counting 

 the pulse. .Percussion and auscultation, the oph- 

 thalmoscope, the laryngoscope, and electrical reactions 

 were all invented in the nineteenth century. 



In the eighteenth century, Sir Hans Sloane, the 

 eminent botanist as well as physician and traveller, 

 was president of the College of Physicians, 1719 to 

 1735- -'^" Irishman by birth, he studied medicine at 

 Paris and Montpellier, and took his degree in the Lni- 

 versity of Orange ; on his return to England he lived 

 for a time with Sydenham, and practised as a physi- 

 cian in London, but in 1687 he accompanied the Duke 

 of -Mbemarle to Jamaica, where he studied the natural 

 history of that island. 



His first volume appeared in 1707. He was de- 

 servedly elected president of the College of Physicians 

 and of the Royal Society. 



Dr. Moore's book is a most interesting and scholarly 

 contribution to the history of medicine. 



