54 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 



points to the historical fact that human 

 anatomy was the starting- point and basis 

 of comparison for the morphological study 

 of the lower animals. 



In the sixteenth century practically all 

 of the valuable contributions to botany 

 and to zoology were made by physicians, so 

 that natural history scarcely existed apart 

 from medicine. Of the medical con- 

 tributors to botany it must suffice to men- 

 tion the names of Brunfels, Fuchs, Do- 

 doens, Gesner and above all Cesalpinus, 

 who has been called "the founder of 

 modern scientific botany," the most im- 

 portant name before John Ray in the his- 

 tory of systematic botany, and a distin- 

 ^ished figure likewise in medical history. 

 Of names associated with the history of 

 zoology in this century the most im- 

 portant are those of the physicians, Conrad 

 Gesner, a marvel of encyeloptedic learn- 

 ing, and Aldrovandi, who ranks with the 

 founders of modern zoology and compara- 

 tive anatomy; of lesser lights Edward 

 Wotton may be singled out for mention as 

 the pioneer English zoologist. He Avas 

 doctor of medicine of Padua and of Ox- 

 ford, president of the Royal College of 

 Physicians, and physician to Henry VIII. 



A name of the first rank in the history 

 of science is that of the physician, Georg 

 Agricola, who founded before the middle 

 of the sixteenth century the science of 

 mineralogy and developed it to a state 

 where it remained for nearly two hundred 

 years without important additions. I 

 may here remark in passing that the first 

 American chair of mineralogy was estab- 

 lished in 1807 in the College of Physicians 

 and Surgeons of New York and was occu- 

 pied by Dr. Archibald Bruce, a name 

 familiar to mineralogists, the founder of 

 the first purely scientific journal in this 

 country, the American Journal of Miner- 

 alogy, which was the immediate predecessor 

 of Silliman's American Journal of Science. 



The difficult step from Hippocrates and 

 Galen to Euclid and Archimedes was sur- 

 mounted by several physicians of the six- 

 teenth century, as it has also been re- 

 peatedly in later times. The reader of 

 Don Quixote will recall that as late as the 

 seventeenth century the physician was also 

 called "algebrista" in Spain, a survival of 

 a Moorish designation— and the sixteenth- 

 century physicians Geronimo Cardano, as 

 extraordinary a figure in the history of 

 medicine as in that of mathematics, and 

 Robert Recorde, the author of the first 

 treatise on algebra in the English language, 

 exemplified the union of the healing art 

 with the pursuit of mathematics as stri- 

 kingly as did the Sedbergh surgeon, John 

 Dawson, in the latter part of the eighteenth 

 century, who had eight senior wranglers 

 among his pupils and was one of the few 

 British analysts of the period who could 

 follow the work of the great contemporary, 

 continental mathematicians. It may here 

 be mentioned that of the celebrated Ber- 

 noulli family of mathematicians, two of the 

 most distinguished, John and Daniel, were 

 doctora of medicine, the latter being for a 

 time professor of anatomy and botany at 

 Basel. 



The student of medical history, who 

 takes up a history of physics, such as that 

 of Rosenberger, will probably be surprised 

 to find how many of the contributors to the 

 latter subject in the sixteenth century were 

 physicians and that among these are such 

 old friends as Fernel and Fracastorius, 

 whom he has identified so intimately with 

 the annals of his profession. It is to be 

 presumed that he already knew that the 

 most famous of all, Copernicus, was a 

 doctor of medicine of Padua and practised 

 the medical art gratuitously among the 

 poor in Frauenburg. 



Far more important for the subsequent 

 history of science than any relations be- 

 tween medicine and physics at this period 



