Anatomy; Fallopius. 39. Few sciences were so successfully pursued in this period as that of anatomy. If it was impossible to snatch from Vesalius the pre-eminent glory that belongs to him as almost its creator, it might still be said that two men now appeared who, had they lived earlier, would probably have gone as far, and who, by coming later, were enabled to go beyond him. These were Fallopius and Eustachius, both Italians. The former is indeed placed by Sprengel even above Vesalius, and reckoned the first anatomist of the sixteenth century. No one had understood that delicate part of the human structure, the organ of hearing, so well as Fallopius, though even he left much for others. He added several to the list of muscles, and made some discoveries in the intestinal and generative organs.[1405]
[1405] Portal. Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine.
Eustachius. 40. Eustachius, though on the whole inferior to Fallopius, went beyond him in the anatomy of the ear, in which a canal, as is well known, bears his name. One of his biographers has gone so far as to place him above every anatomist for the number of his discoveries. He has treated very well of the teeth, a subject little understood before, and was the first to trace the vena azygos through all its ramifications. No one before had exhibited the structure of the human kidneys, Vesalius having examined them only in dogs.[1406] The scarcity of human subjects was in fact an irresistible temptation to take upon trust the identity between quadrupeds and man, which misled the great anatomists of the sixteenth century.[1407] Comparative anatomy was therefore not yet promoted to its real dignity, both as an indispensable part of natural history, and as opening the most conclusive and magnificent views of teleology. |Coiter.| Coiter, an anatomist born in Holland, but who passed his life in Italy, Germany, and France, was perhaps the first to describe the skeletons of several animals; though Belon, as we have seen, had views far beyond his age in what is strictly comparative anatomy. Coiter’s work bears the date of 1575; in 1566 he had published one on human osteology, where that of the fœtus is said to be first described, though some attribute this merit to Fallopius. Coiter is called in the Biographie Universelle one of the creators of pathological anatomy.
[1406] Portal.
[1407] The church had a repugnance to permit the dissection of dead bodies, but Fallopius tells us that the Duke of Tuscany was sometimes obliging enough to send a living criminal to the anatomists, quem interficimus nostro modo et anatomisamus. Sprengel suggests that “nostro modo” meant by opium; but this seems to be merely a conjecture. Hist. de la Médecine, iv. 11.
Columbus. 41. Columbus (De Re Anatomica, Venice, 1559), the successor of Vesalius at Padua, and afterwards professor at Pisa and Rome, has announced the discovery of several muscles, and given the name of vomer to the small bone which sustains the cartilage of the nose, and which Vesalius had taken for a mere process of the sphenoid. Columbus, though too arrogant in censuring his great predecessor, generally follows him.[1408] Arrantius, in 1571, is among the first who made known the anatomy of the gravid uterus, and the structure of the fœtus.[1409] He was also conversant, as Vidius, a professor at Paris of Italian birth, as early as 1542, had already been, with the anatomy of the brain. But this was much improved by Varoli in his Anatomia, published in 1573, who traced the origin of the optic nerves, and gave a better account than any one before him of the eye and of the voice. Piccolomini (Anatomiæ Prælectiones, 1586) is one of the first who described the cellular tissue, and in other respects has made valuable observations. Ambrose Paré, a French surgeon, is deemed the founder of chirurgic science, at least in that country. His works were first collected in 1561; but his treatise on gunshot wounds is as old as 1545. Several other names are mentioned with respect by the historians of medicine and anatomy; such as those of Alberti, Benivieni, Donatus, and Schank. Never, says Portal, were anatomy and surgery better cultivated, with more emulation or more encouragement, than about the end of the sixteenth century. A long list of minor discoveries in the human frame are recorded by this writer and by Sprengel. It will be readily understood that we give these names, which of itself it is rather an irksome labour to enumerate, with no other object than that none of those who by their ability and diligence carried forward the landmarks of human knowledge, should miss, in a history of general literature, of their meed of remembrance. |Circulation of the blood.| We reserve to a later chapter those passages in the anatomists of this age, which have seemed to anticipate the great discovery that immortalizes the name of Harvey.
[1408] Portal, i. 541.
[1409] Portal, vol. ii. p. 3.
Medicinal science. 42. These continual discoveries in the anatomical structure of man tended to guide and correct the theory of medicine. The observations of this period became more acute and accurate. Those of Plater and Foresti, especially the latter, are still reputed classical in medical literature. Prosper Alpinus may be deemed the father in modern times of diagnostic science.[1410] Plater, in his Praxis Medica, made the first, though an imperfect attempt, at a classification of diseases. Yet the observations made in this age, and the whole practical system, are not exempt from considerable faults; the remedies were too topical, the symptoms of disease were more regarded than its cause; the theory was too simple and general; above all, a great deal of credulity and superstition prevailed in the art.[1411] Many among the first in science believed in demoniacal possessions and sorcery, or in astrology. This was most common in Germany, where the school of Paracelsus, discreditably to the national understanding, exerted much influence. The best physicians of the century were either Italian or French.
[1410] Sprengel, iii. 173.