Theories connected with the origin of the soul have continued to occupy the attention of theologians, philosophers, and physicians from the time of Pythagoras to our own day. Up to the ninth century their speculations were entirely idle, when Theophilus made his discovery of the capillary vessels of the male organs—a discovery which was further developed when in the fifteenth century Mattheus de Gradibus first enunciated the idea that these organs and the ovaria of birds are homologous structures; and thus originated the knowledge of the germ cells known as the ova of De Graaf.[820]
The fame of the University of Oxford was so high in the early part of the fifteenth century (1420) that a MS. in the Bodleian, quoted by Anthony à Wood,[821] says that other universities were but little stars in comparison with this sun. “Other studies excel in some particular science, as Parys, in divinity; Bologna, law; Salerno, physick; and Toulouse, mathematics; but Oxford as a true well of wisdom doth goe beyond them in all these. The bright beams of its wisdom spread over the whole world.”
The practice of medicine became daily more honourable.
Holinshed says,[822] in his description of the people in the Commonwealth of England, that “Who soeur studieth the lawes of the realme, who so abideth in the vniuersitie giuing his mind to his booke, or professeth physicke and the liberall sciences—and can liue without manuell labour, and thereto is able and will beare the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman, he shall for monie haue a cote and armes bestowed vpon him by heralds—and reputed for a gentleman euer after.”
Medicine was a flourishing study at Cambridge, especially at Merton College, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.[823]
The origin of syphilis in Europe has been the subject of much learned discussion. It appeared with such violence and frequency in the year 1490 in France, Italy, and Spain, that the scourge was considered to have only then been introduced into Europe from America.
“Its enormous prevalence in modern times,” says Dr. Creighton,[824] “dates, without doubt, from the European libertinism of the latter part of the fifteenth century.” It is pretty certain that syphilis had existed in Europe from ancient times. What appeared with so much virulence and such wide distribution in 1490 was simply a redevelopment of the malady on a scale hitherto unknown.
