138 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1074 



titioner of his time, chief physician to 

 Charles IX., advising venesection to the 

 limit, regardless of the nature of disease, 

 the age or condition of the patient. Blood- 

 lettings of three to four pounds each re- 

 peated as often as four or five times were 

 advised, says Haeser, and this historian 

 adds that the explanation of this "Vam- 

 pyrismus" is probably to be found in the 

 circumstance that Botallo lived in northern 

 Italy, where diseases of an inflammatory 

 character were prevalent and more espe- 

 cially that in his experience as an army sur- 

 geon he encountered only patients of the 

 most robust type. Botallo, in defending 

 his practise said, 



the more foul water is drawn from a well, the more 

 good water can flow in to replace it.^ 



An ardent follower of Botallo was Riolan 

 the younger, who falls back upon Hippoc- 

 rates and Galen and lays down the rule 

 that one must take away as much blood as 

 possible in every disease. As an adult is 

 judged to have about thirty ( !) pounds of 

 blood,* the tapping of half this amount, or 

 fifteen pounds, in the course of fourteen 

 days would be about the right amount to 

 take, saj^s Eiolan. Guy Patin ( 1602-1672) , 

 himself an ardent bleeder and purger, in- 

 forms us that Bovard, body physician of 

 Louis XIII., bled that monarch forty-seven 

 times, gave him 312 clysters and prescribed 

 emetics and purges, 215 times, all in one 

 year. 



A little later, that able and credulous 

 Belgian mystic and follower of Paracelsus, 

 J. B. Van Helmont (1578-1644), an icon- 

 oclast in general, called by his admirer 

 Haeser "the fist of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury" went so far as to condemn venesec- 

 tion entirely. To him is attributed the 



f Bauer, GescMcJite der Aderlasse, Gekronte 

 Preisschrift, Munich, 1870, p. 139. 

 8 Bauer, loc. cit. 



often-quoted phrase ' ' a Bloody Moloch pre- 

 sides in the chair of medicine. ' ' 



Also as holding that in place of excessive 

 blood-letting should be substituted thera- 

 peutic procedures ("alterantia") and 

 change of diet, stands the genial and 

 talented Franciscus de le Boe (Sylvius) 

 (1614^1672), one of the leading medical 

 authorities of the seventeenth century and 

 one of the earliest defenders of Harvey's 

 doctrine of the circulation, who taught at 

 Leyden that abnormal fermentations in the 

 fluids of the body cause disease, a variant 

 of the ancient humoral doctrine. In Chap- 

 ter XX. of his "New Idea" (translated by 

 Richard Gower, London, 1675), entitled 

 "On the Motion of Blood through the 

 Lungs Affected," he shows his good sense 

 and his caution when he says 



A Plethora of Blood is soon and safely our'd, 

 by a sufficient Emptying of it by opening a Vein; 

 whether it be together and at once, or by repeted 

 turns, according to the peculiar nature and strength 

 of the SicJc. For there are many who can not bear 

 to have much taken away together, but soon fall 

 into a Swouning; by which feeling none can at 

 any time receive any good, I had rather that it 

 should be prevented, as often as may be, and 

 every Cure be done securely rather than rashly, 

 seeing it often happens to those rash Blood-Let- 

 ters, that they educe Life together with Blood. 



An instance of lavish blood-letting in a 

 medical crisis may be found in the experi- 

 ence of that adventurous spirit, Thomas 

 Dover, to whom we owe the much used 

 "Dover's powdei'." In 1708, Dover, then 

 forty-eight years old, set out on a privateer- 

 ing expedition and was given command of 

 a ship, the Dxike, while his superior, Cap- 

 tain Woodes-Rogers took command of the 

 other ship of the squadron, the Duchess. 

 The three years ' voyage of these buccaneers 

 is of interest historically because, 



touching at the island of Juan Fernandez, they 

 took on board Alaxander Selkirk, who had lived 

 alone on the island for four years and four months, 

 and whose story was to develop in the skilful hands 



