56 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. C80 



called attention to interesting observations 

 of Kepler on the pulse, which the great 

 astronomer believed to have some relation 

 to the heavenly motions, in this and certain 

 other views exemplifying, as some modern 

 physicists have done, the compatibility of 

 a firm hold of positive scientific truth with 

 an irresistible tendency to mysticism and 

 occult science. Kepler was not, as has been 

 stated, the first actually to count the pulse, 

 for we read that as long ago as the Alex- 

 andrine period Herophilus timed the pulse 

 with a water-clock. 



But if Galileo was only half a doctor of 

 physic, as Dr. Mitchell calls him, his elder 

 contemporary, William Gilbert, second in 

 importance only to Galileo among the 

 creators of experimental science, the 

 founder of the science of magnetism and a 

 significant name in the history of elec- 

 tricity, was fully identified with the pro- 

 fession, being the most distinguished Eng- 

 lish physician as well as man of science of 

 his day, physician to both Queen Elizabeth 

 and James I., and president of the Royal 

 College of Physicians. 



Galileo 's younger contemporary, "William 

 Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of 

 the blood, occupies in the history of ex- 

 perimental science an independent posi- 

 tion, quite unlike that of the other experi- 

 mental physiologists of the century. These 

 other physicians, as Sanctorius, Borelli, 

 Lower, Mayow, consciously took possession 

 of the method of experiment as a powerful 

 and newly discovered instrument of re- 

 search and were swayed in all their phys- 

 iological work by the discoveries of the 

 physicists. Not so Harvey, who was in- 

 fluenced but little by contemporary phys- 

 ical science and is linked on, not to Galileo 

 or to Gilbert, as exemplars of experimenta- 

 tion, but in a very direct way to the experi-. 

 mental physiologist, Galen, and to Aris- 

 totle, as well as to the Italian anatomists of 

 the preceding century. Harvey's genu- 



inely scientific mind was in greater sym- 

 pathy with Aristotle than with the essen- 

 tially unscientific Lord Bacon, who was his 

 patient and of whom he said, "He writes 

 philosophy like a Lord Chancellor." 



There is no more striking characteristic 

 of seventeenth-century science than the 

 wide range of inquiry covered by individ- 

 ual investigators. The natural sciences 

 were no longer apprenticed to medicine, 

 after Boyle had liberated chemistry, but 

 the problems of anatomy, of physiology 

 and even of practical medicine were not 

 separated from those of the natural phi- 

 losopher and of the naturalist. "With un- 

 paralleled versatility every one seemed to 

 roam at will over the whole domain of 

 knowledge and thought. How they leaped 

 and tumbled in the virgin fields and hied 

 "to-morrow to fi-esli woods and pastures 

 new ' ' ! 



Descartes was an anatomist and phys- 

 iologist as well as philosopher, mathema- 

 tician and physicist, and John Locke, the 

 other great liberator of thought in this cen- 

 tury, was educated in medicine, practised 

 it and, like Boyle, accompanied Sydenham 

 on his rounds. Kepler studied the pulse, 

 contributed to physiological optics and cal- 

 culated the orbits of the planets. Borelli 

 was an important mathematician, physicist 

 and astronomer, as well as one of the 

 greatest physiologists and physicians of 

 the century. Bartholinus was also pro- 

 fessor of mathematics as well as of medi- 

 cine, and discovered the double refraction 

 of Iceland spar. His even more remark- 

 able pupil, Steno, left a name memorable 

 in geology and paleontology as well as in 

 anatomy and physiology, and died a bishop 

 of the Eoman Catholic Church. Mariotte, 

 a pure physicist, discovered the blind spot 

 in the retina. Boyle anatomized, experi- 

 mented on the circulation and respiration, 

 started chemistry on new paths and per- 

 petuated his name in attachment to an im- 



