60 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XIKVII. No. 680 



After the seventeenth century in Europe 

 the natural sciences, though often culti- 

 vated by those educated in medicine and 

 practising it, were independent and fol- 

 lowed their own paths, which, however, 

 conununicated by many by-ways with the 

 road of medicine and with each other. 



Botany and zoology acquired their inde- 

 pendent position probably more through 

 the work of Ray and Willughby than by 

 that of any other naturalist. Botany, how- 

 ever, remained for over a century still 

 mainly in the hands of physicians. An 

 interesting chapter in its history is the 

 story of the various apothecaries ' and other 

 botanical gardens established through the 

 efforts of physicians and conducted by 

 them primarily for the study of the vege- 

 table materia medica. From such begin- 

 nings has grown the Jardin des Plantes in 

 Paris, started by two physicians, Herouard 

 and la Brosse, in 1633, into the great mu- 

 seum of natural history made by Buffon, 

 Cuvier and others as famous for the study 

 of zoology as by Brongiart and his suc- 

 cessors for botany. Less humble was the 

 foundation of the British Museum and its 

 appanage, the great Museum of Natural 

 History in South Kensington, the gift to 

 the nation of his valuable collections in 

 natural history and other departments by 

 Sir Hans Sloane, a leading London physi- 

 cian in the first half of the eighteenth 

 century. 



Boyle's name is associated especially 

 with th^ foundation of chemistry as a 

 separate science. William Cullen deserves 

 to be remembered in the history of this 

 science, who, although not an important 

 contributor to chemistry as he was to medi- 

 cine, was in the second half of the eigh- 

 teenth century the first to raise the teach- 

 ing and study of chemistry to their true 

 dignity in the universities of Great Britain, 

 and imparted the first stimulus to his pupil 

 and successor in the Edinburgh chair of 

 chemistry, William Black. 



Mechanics, never really dependent upon 

 medicine, was lifted by Newton to analyt- 

 ical heights, rarely scaled by disciples of 

 ^sculapius, although, as Thomas Young 

 and Helmholtz have exemplified, not wholly 

 beyond their reach. But not all of physics 

 stands on the lofty plane of abstract dy- 

 namics constructed by Newton, Lagrange, 

 Laplace and Gauss, the highest probably 

 hitherto attained by the human intellect. 

 There have been many educated in medi- 

 cine who have made notable contributions 

 to the physics of sound, heat, light, mag- 

 netism, electricity and the general proper- 

 ties of matter and energy. I have collected, 

 without any pretence to exhaustiveness, the 

 names of over a hundred physicians or men 

 trained for the practise of medicine or 

 pharmacy who have made contributions to 

 physics suiBeiently notable to secure them 

 a place in the history and records of this 

 •science. A few of the more important are 

 Gilbert, van Musschenbroek, Sir William 

 Watson, Black, Galvani, Berthollet, J. W. 

 Ritter, Olbers, WoUaston, Thomas Young, 

 Oersted, Dulong, Mayer, Thomas Andrews, 

 Sainte-Clair Deville, the Drapers, Pou- 

 cault, Helmholtz. Sir Humphry Davy 

 literally sprang out of the lap of medicine 

 into the Royal Institution, just founded by 

 Count Rumford, who himself had begun 

 the study of medicine before he left his 

 native country. If the surgeons of Eng- 

 land at that time had only heeded what 

 Davy told them concerning the anesthetic 

 properties of nitrous oxide gas, America 

 would have been deprived of the greatest 

 service which she has rendered to medi- 

 cine. 



In the long line of important physiolo- 

 gists of the past century who represent 

 especially the physical direction of investi- 

 gation in their important branch of medi- 

 cine and biology, there are not a few whose 

 names find a place in the histories of mod- 

 ern physics, as E. H. Weber, Du Bois Rey- 

 mond, von Briicke, Ludwig, Fick, Vierordt, 



