Conrad Gesner, the miracle of learning, whom we have already mentioned, devoted great attention to gynæcology, and wrote learnedly and without prejudice upon medicine.
Dr. Henry Alkins (born 1558) was one of the principal physicians of James I. While president of the Royal College, the first London Pharmacopœia was published in 1618.
John Bannister was a voluminous writer on surgery who practised in London, and wrote a treatise on surgery in 1575.
Thomas Gale (1507-1586), the “English Paré,” was a military surgeon, under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, who taught that gun-shot wounds were not poisoned as was commonly supposed, but were to be treated as ordinary wounds.
William Bulleyn (died 1576) was a famous physician and botanist in the reigns of the later Tudors. He wrote The Government of Health (1548), Book of Simples, and other works.
Frescatorius (1483-1553) was the first to publish a description of typhus fever. Dr. Mead says[848] that he knew that “consumption is contagious, and is contracted by living with a phthisical person, by the gliding of the corrupted and putrified juices [of the sick] into the lungs of the sound man.” He inferred the microbes which we see.
G. Baillou (1536-1614) was the first to describe clearly the diseases whooping cough and croup.
Alexander Benedetti (died 1525) was an anatomist, who made important observations on gall-stones.
Felix Platter (1536-1614), a professor at Basle, must ever be gratefully remembered for his humane and wise opposition to the cruel treatment of the insane by coercive measures, which unhappily were in fashion up to recent times. He suggested the division of diseases into three classes: (1) Mental disorders; (2) Pains, fevers, etc.; (3) Deformities and defects of secretion.
A book which contains directions for identifying simples and preparing compound medicines is called a Pharmacopœia. The first work of this character, which was published under Government authority, was that of Nuremberg, in 1512. A student, Valerius Cordus, passing through the city, exhibited a recipe book, which he had compiled from the writings of the most eminent physicians of the town. He was urged to print it for the benefit of the apothecaries. The College of Medicine at Florence issued the Antidotarium Florentinum, somewhat earlier, but merely on its own authority. Dr. A. Foes used the term pharmacopœia first as a distinct title for his work published at Basle, in 1561.[849]