Peter Turner, M.D. (died 1614), was physician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and one of the greatest botanists of his age.
Thomas Muffet, M.D., the learned friend of distinguished physicians and naturalists, was esteemed in his day the famous ornament of the body of physicians (died 1604).
Berenger of Capri (died 1527) flourished at Bologna (1518). He was a zealous anatomist, and declared that he had “dissected more than one hundred human bodies.” He was the first who recognised the larger proportional size of the male chest than the female, and the converse concerning the pelvis. He discovered the two arytenoid cartilages in the larynx, first accurately described the thymus, and gave a good description of the brain and the internal ear, in which he noticed the malleus and incus. He rectified some of the mistakes of Mondino, but was, like all other anatomists before Harvey, deeply perplexed about the heart and the circulation. He investigated the structure of the valves of the heart.
The art of midwifery, up to the middle of the sixteenth century, was in the lowest possible condition. In 1521, a doctor named Veites was condemned to the flames in Hamburg, for engaging in the business of midwifery. In the year 1500, the wife of one Jacob Nufer, of Thurgau, a Swiss sow-gelder, being in peril of her life in pregnancy, though thirteen midwives and several surgeons had attempted to deliver her in the ordinary way, it occurred to her husband to ask permission of the authorities, and the help of God, to deliver her “as he would a sow.” He was completely successful, and thus performed the first Cæsarian operation on the living patient, who lived to bear several other children in the natural way, and died at the age of seventy-seven. Another sow-gelder performed the operation of ovariotomy on his own daughter, in the sixteenth century.
François Rousset (about 1581), physician to the Duke of Savoy, was the first to write upon the Cæsarian operation. The improvement in printing and engraving caused the works of the Greek, Roman, and Arabian writers to be more widely known, and manuals were published for the instruction of midwives. The first book of this kind was by Eucharius Roslein, at Worms, called the Rose Garden for Midwives (1513). Vesalius (1543) rendered great services to the obstetric art by his anatomical teaching; and when Rousset published his treatise, the operation became popular, and was constantly performed on the living subject, sometimes even when it was not absolutely necessary. Pineau, a surgeon of Paris, in 1589, first suggested division of the pubes to facilitate difficult labour.
In the year 1535 (27 Henry VIII.), Wood says[847] that at Oxford “divers scholars, upon a foresight of the ruin of the clergy, had and did now betake themselves to physick, who as yet raw and inexpert would adventure to practise, to the utter undoing of many. The said visitors ordered, therefore, that none should practise or exercise that faculty unless he had been examined by the physick professor concerning his knowledge therein. Which order, being of great moment, was the year following confirmed by the king, and power by him granted to the professor and successors to examine those that were to practise according to the Visitor’s Order.”
Pierre Franco (c. 1560) was a Swiss or French surgeon, and a famous lithotomist, who performed the high operation for the first time in 1560, with success, on a child aged two years. Recognising the dangers of this method, he introduced a new method in the operation known as perineal lithotomy, which was called the lateral method. He preceded Paré in improvements in dealing with strangulated hernia by the operation known as herniotomy. He was one of the first to re-introduce into midwifery practice the operation known as “turning,” in difficult labour. The operation was a familiar one amongst the Hindus, and had been known to the later Græco-Roman school, but had fallen into disuse until Paré, Franco, and Guillemeau devoted themselves to the improvement of this neglected branch of the healing art with great success.
Andrew Libavius (1546-1616), physician at Coburg, is said by Sprengel to have been the person who began to cultivate chemistry; as distinct from all theosophical fancies of his predecessors.