1894.] The Scope of Modern Physiology. 383 
ing them. * * * The fact that the Galenic physiology, where- 
ever it was known, prevailed for fifteen hundred years is due to 
its two-sided development. For physicians accepted it because 
of its materialism, and the clergy because of its teleology. 
Since Galen was an extraordinarily sagacious thinker, an 
uncommonly learned man, an industrious, systematic, truth- 
loving worker and skillful physician, never neglecting prac- 
tice for research nor research for practice, of all the medical 
fraternity he seemed best fitted to lay the corner-stone of phys- 
iology asa science in itself. And it testifies to his genius that, 
in the whole thousand years following him, Galen’s physiolog- 
ical system, constructed through his originality and the power 
of his logic, endured as law, seriously opposed by no one. The 
history of no science can show the like. Faith in the author- 
ity of Galen’s name finds its equal only in the history of 
religions.” It is to Galen’s influence, doubtless, more than to 
that of any other, that the intimate union of physiology and 
medicine, continuing even to the present day, is due. And to 
him likewise we must ascribe the present prevailing idea, 
already spoken of, of the essentially human character of the 
science. Galen’s physiology was in essence a human physi- 
ology; and the newscience fully born became the handmaid of 
medicine. Galen’s authority was supreme until the age of the 
Renaissance, and throughout the long mediaeval period ani- 
mal physiology was at a standstill. Toward its close the Ital- 
ian universities were established and men began to think for 
themselves, to read nature in addition to the books, and gradu- 
ally to learn that nature and Galen did not always agree. The 
elaborate and ill-founded hypotheses of the spirits, the ele- 
ments, the qualities, and the humours did not accord with the 
progressive, investigating spirit of the Renaissance and rebel- 
lion against the master gradually grew in strength. Paracel- 
sus burned in public at Basel the works of Galen. More 
destructive than fire were the anatomical investigations of 
Vesalius and Fallopius. And in physiology Colombo and 
Caesalpinus prepared the way for the most important single 
discovery of the times. This event, which more than all else 
demonstrated the ineffectiveness of pure speculation and the 
