Januaky 10, 1908J 



SCIENCE 



57 



portant physical law. Hooke, most versa- 

 tile of all, claimed priority for a host of 

 discoveries, and did in fact explore nearly 

 every branch of science with brilliant, 

 though often inconclusive results. Malpi- 

 ghi was an investigator equally great in 

 vegetable and in animal anatomy and 

 physiology, and what a glorious time it 

 was for the mieroscopists, like Malpighi, 

 Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam and others, 

 who could immortalize their names by 

 turning the new instrument on a drop of 

 muddy waier, or blood, or other fluid, or a 

 bit of animal and vegetable tissue ! From 

 the funeral sermon upon Nehemiah Grew, 

 practitioner of physic and one of the 

 founders of vegetable anatomy and physi- 

 ology we are assured that he was "ac- 

 quainted with the theories of the heavenly 

 bodies, skilled in mechanicks and mathe- 

 maticks, the proportions of lines and num- 

 bers, and the composition and mixture of 

 bodies, particularly of the human body" 

 and also "well acquainted with the whole 

 body of Divinity and had studied Hebrew 

 to more proficiency than most divines." 



The early proceedings of the various sci- 

 entific societies and academies, started in 

 this century and destined to become power- 

 ful promoters of science, afford excellent 

 illustrations of the wide scope of scientific 

 inquiry. A quotation from the narrative 

 of the famous mathematician, Dr. Wallis, 

 gives further evidence of the position of 

 the medical and other sciences in the aims 

 and work of the little band of thoughtful 

 students of nature who assembled in Ox- 

 ford in 1645 and later in London, con- 

 stituting the so-called invisible college, 

 which grew into the Royal Society. He 

 says : 



Our business was (precluding matters of the- 

 ology and state affairs) to discourse and consider 

 of philosophical enquiries and such as related 

 thereto: — as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, As- 

 tronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, Chy- 

 mleks, Mechanicks and Natural Experiments; 



witli the state of these studies and their cultiva- 

 tion at home and abroad. We then discoursed of 

 the circulation of the blood, the valves in the 

 veins, the vena lacteae, the lymphatic vessels, the 

 Copernican hypothesis, the satellites of Jupiter, 

 the oval shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, 

 the spots on the sun and its turning on its own 

 axis, the inequalities and selenography of the 

 moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, 

 the improvement of telescopes and grinding of 

 lenses for that purpose, the weight of air, the 

 possibility or impossibility of vacuities and na- 

 ture's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experi- 

 ment in quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies 

 and the degree of acceleration therein, with divers 

 other things of like nature. 



The work and publications of the small 

 groiip of physicians and men of- science 

 composing the Accademia del Cimento, 

 which was established in Florence in 1657 

 and flourished unfortunately for only ten 

 years, exemplify in an equally striking 

 manner the combination of medical with 

 other scientific pursuits and the wide range 

 of study. 



Borelli, the most important member of 

 this academy, founded the so-called iatro- 

 physieal school of medicine, which eon- 

 tested the field for supremacy with the 

 iatro-chemical, to which I have already re- 

 feri'ed, during the greater part of the 

 seventeenth century. The story of these 

 two schools is epochal and occupies the 

 larger part of the history of physic during 

 this century. Medicine owes to adherents 

 of each school a large debt for important 

 contributions to knowledge and fresh direc- 

 tions of thought. Where physical methods 

 and knowledge, as they then existed, were 

 applicable, as in investigation of the circu- 

 lation and of the action of muscles, the 

 iatro-physicists carried ofi' the palm, 

 Borelli 's "De motu animalium" being one 

 of the medical classics. But notwith- 

 standing the great inferiority of chemistry 

 to physics at this time the paths of dis- 

 covery opened, although not traveled far, 

 by the iatro-chemists have led to more im- 



