In addition to his famous general treatise on anatomy, of which, in the course of 38 years, no fewer than 17 editions were printed, Hyrtl published in 1845 a memoir on the organ of hearing, and in 1860 a “Manual for the Use of Dissectors.”
His death occurred in 1884.
BOOK IV
MEDICINE IN ITALY
CHAPTER XI
BAGLIVI, MORGAGNI, SCARPA, SPALLANZANI, TISSOT AND GALVANI; ITALY’S MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PHYSICIANS DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Giorgio Baglivi, the most distinguished Italian physician of the seventeenth century (1669–1707), was probably the first medical author in that country to lay stress upon the importance of studying disease through direct observation rather than from books. In his treatise on the practice of medicine, which was first published in Latin at Rome in 1696 and afterward translated into several modern languages (London, 1704; Paris, 1757), he makes the following remarks:—
There are several obstacles which have hitherto stood in the way of a more general adoption of the maxim that direct observation constitutes the best method of studying disease. They are the following: the widespread contempt for the authority of the physicians of antiquity; the false opinions and prejudices to which men became attached as if they were idols; the habit of making erroneous comparisons and of drawing hasty conclusions, as well as the formulating of analogies that are based upon untrustworthy reports; reading books which have been unwisely chosen or reading without exercising a discerning judgment; incorrect interpretation of the author’s meaning; the craze for reducing everything to a system; and the abandonment, by authors, of the habit of expressing their thoughts in the form of maxims.