22 
PATHOLOGY. 
ftraight by the modern mode of drefs. He vindicated, in 
a fimilar manner, Galen’s neglect in defcribing the car¬ 
tilages of the extremities of the bones: ‘'In former 
times,” faid he, “ the bones were more folid, and confe- 
quently required no cartilages!” 
Thefe prejudices had not paffed away from among the 
French phyficians even in the following century; for we 
find Moliere, in his Medecin malgri lid (Mock DoCtor), 
alluding to the abfurdity we have juft mentioned, of fome 
parts of the vifcera having changed their places. 
“ Dodlor. Now thefe vapours of which I am fpeaking 
having palled from the left fide, which is the feat of the 
liver, to the right, where the heart is fituated, then the 
Jungs, which we call in Latin armyan, communicating 
with the brain, which in Greek we call nafrnus , by means 
of the vena cava, which is cubile in Hebrew, meets in its 
way with thefe vapours, which fill the ventricles of the 
omoplate ; and, fince thefe vapours pofiefs a certain ma¬ 
lignity caufed by the acridity of the humours engendered 
in the concavity of the diaphragm, it therefore happens 
that thefe vapours—in fiiort, this is precifely the reafon 
why your daughter is dumb. 
“ Father. Nothing in the world can be clearer than 
this reafoning. Only one difficulty occurs to me; 
namely the feat of the liver and of the heart. I always 
thought the heart to have been on the left fide, and the 
liver on the right. 
e ‘ Doflar. Yes ; it was fo formerly; but we have altered 
all that, and medicine is now adminijiered in a manner to¬ 
tally new." Mock Doftor, aft ii. 
Vefalius had great advantages over his predeceffors 
in being able to perpetuate his labours by means of the 
beautiful reprefentations which Titian and others painted 
for him. In 1561, Fallopius, in Italy, publifhed his Ob- 
fervationes Anatomicte ; he was an indefatigable anato- 
mift, and made great difcoveries. About the fame time, 
Euftachius made himfelf confpicuoufly eminent by pro¬ 
moting anatomical knowledge. He feemed calculated 
for fubtle inveftigations ; he drew many figures of the 
human body, and engraved his own plates, the accuracy 
of which cannot fail of exciting furprife in an anatomift 
of the prefent day. When the labours of thefe eminent 
men had, as it were, fmoothed the path, anatomy was 
taught with a moderate degree of correCinefs and mi- 
mitenefs in the different fchools of Europe. 
But the moft important difcovery of this fcience was 
that of the circulation of the blood. Berengar, who 
had paid great attention to the ftruCfure of the heart, 
conjeffured the right ufe of the femilunar valves. In 
1547, Cannani and Amatus obferved the valve at the ter¬ 
mination of the vena azygos; but they did not turn the 
difcovery to account; and it was referved for Fabricius 
of Aquapendente to prove the prefence of valves 
throughout the whole courfe of the veins. Five years 
afterwards, the circulation of the blood through the lungs 
was imperfeCHy defcribed by Servetus, who had availed 
himfelf of the refearches of Berengar and Vefalius. In 
the year 157-1, Csefalpinus had the merit of ftating it 
more clearly, and even of fuggefting the firft hint of the 
greater circulation ; but the full honour of the latter 
difcovery muft be afcribed to our countryman, Harvey. 
This improvement in anatomical knowledge was ne- 
ceffarily accompanied by a ccrrefponding one in forgery. 
The Italian furgeon, Maggi, corre&ed the abfurd no¬ 
tions that his predeceffors had inculcated, viz. that gun- 
fhot wounds were conneCled with combuftion, and that 
gunpowder poifoned the wound. He fhowed that, fince 
the balls did not fet the wadding on fire when they came 
firft from, the barrel of the gun, they could not be hot; 
nor could gunpowder poifon a wound, fince it was com- 
pofed of none but harmlefs materials. Maggi likewife 
left fome ufefnl directions concerning amputation. Am- 
brofe Pare introduced into France the treatment of gun- 
fliot wounds eftablifhed by Maggi. The fame praCfice 
v.as likewife adopted by John Baptift. Carcano Leone, 
profeffor at Pavia. Pare was, however, unqueftionably 
the moft celebrated furgeon of the 36th century. Be- 
fides the improved treatment of gun-fhot wounds, which 
he had the merit of introducing, together with many 
other peculiarmethods in operative furgery, he has ren¬ 
dered effential fervice to different branches of that fcience. 
He treated, for inftance, the hydrocele withafeton; as 
the dangerous confequences of incifion were in that age 
more frequently obferved than they are at prefent. He 
did not apply the aCtual cautery to wounded blood-vel- 
fels, according to the old practice, but fecured them by 
the ligature. The fraCture of the collum offis femoris, 
formerly confidered as a luxation of that bone, was firft 
afcertained by him wfith accuracy; he alfo reprobated the 
frequent dreffmg of ulcers, and the application of the 
trepan to the futures of the cranium and the temporal 
bones. He made very judicious remarks on concuflions 
of the brain, of which Henry II. died, and on fuppura- 
tions of the liver arifing from injuries of the head. 
Wounds of the throat, in which one of the jugular 
veins, and even the trachea, was cut through, he did not 
confideras mortal. He fuccefsfully treated an injury of 
the nervus medianus from venefeCtion, and thereby ac¬ 
quired theconfidence of Charles IX. who had been fubjeCt 
to that dangerous accident. A perfon who, from lofing 
a great part of his tongue, had been fpeechlefs for a con- 
fiderable time, accidentally recovered the power of fpaech, 
by thruftiiig a table-fpoon into his mouth. Pare ingeni- 
oufiy imitated this method, by contriving an appropriate 
inftrument. 
Amatus, or, according to fome, his mafter Aldaretti, 
had invented the ufe of bougies; and thofe inftruments 
now catne into very general ufe, both flmple and caufti- 
cated. 
The doCirine of lithotomy was confiderably improved 
in this century, by the invention of two different me¬ 
thods of operating, namely, the great and the high opera¬ 
tion. Germain Colot had undertaken a fuccefsful opera¬ 
tion for the ftone, in the fifteenth century, and proba¬ 
bly by the high operation : but it does not appear that 
learned furgcons had imitated this method, till an obfcure 
praCiitioner at Cremona, John de Romani, in 1525, be¬ 
gan to adopt what is commonly called the high opera¬ 
tion : he taught it to Mariano Santo de Berletta, a lur- 
geon at Naples, who defcribed the particulars of it in a 
feparate treatife, publifhed at Venice in 3543, wherein he 
profefies to have been a pupil of Romani. It is probable 
that previous to this time no other method of operating 
was praCtifed than that known under the name of the 
Jmailer apparatus, which can be employed only on children 
under fourteen years of age. In fome rare inftances 
which are related by Benivieni and Chrift. de Vega, par¬ 
ticularly in women, the ftone had been found in the ure¬ 
thra itlelf, in which cafes it could be more eafily ex¬ 
tracted. But, fince that period, the pafifage was cleared 
by the application of the gorget, by means of which the 
forceps could be introduced into the bladder. Mariano 
Santo made ufe of the following apparatus:' he firft em¬ 
ployed a curved found, which he introduced into the 
urethra fo as to direct the point to the left fide ; he ex- 
prefsly cautioned the operator againft the incifion into 
the perinaeum, and is therefore unjuftly cenfured for hav¬ 
ing attempted the incifion in the middle. His found was 
excavated, and he performed the incifion in the direction 
of the groove; then introduced the found, and along with 
it the conductors, and afterwards the gorget, which, ac¬ 
cording to its original conftruCtion, terminated in a blunt 
point; and laftly, he extracted the ftone with the forceps, 
and removed the remaining particles of it, as well as the 
gravel or fand, by means of the litbotomical fpoon. By 
the application of the blunt dilator, the parts were ne- 
ceffarily lacerated, and the wound occafioned by this la¬ 
ceration could not be healed without great difficulty. 
Hence Le Dran endeavoured to improve upon this me¬ 
thod, efpecially by making an incifion through the prof- 
tate 
