While the most important contributions to the science of botany during that period came from the Germans, Italy did not lag far behind in this subject, and France, Spain and Portugal supplied their quota to the science. Above all, it is to the Italians that we owe editions of Theophrastus, Dioscorides and the elder Pliny, works which contained so much of information with regard to the science of botany in ancient times and the modern publication of which brought about a reawakening of interest in that subject corresponding to what was noted in connection with every other republication of classical thought in the various departments of the intellectual life. The most important of the botanists of Italy was Caesalpinus, professor of botany at Padua and director of the botanic garden there at the close of the Columbus' Century, but who was afterwards physician to Pope Clement VIII. To him, as we have seen in discussing the physiology of the time, we owe a complete description of the circulation of the blood in the century before Harvey. Caesalpinus is called by Linnaeus primus verus systematicus, the first true systematic botanist. His work, "De Plantis," contains an immense amount of information and a complete classification of all the then known plants, some 1520 in number, into fifteen classes. The distinguishing characters of this classification are taken from the fruit and show careful observation and thoroughly scientific attention to details.
Caesalpinus' place in the history of botany can be best appreciated from the praise of his colleagues in this department of science. John Ray, the English botanist of the end of the seventeenth century, in his history of plants declared that [{379}] Caesalpinus' book "On Plants" was indeed a work from which much might be learned. Fabrucci and Carl Fuchs declare Caesalpinus' treatise to be of first rank. Thomas Garzon, Pona of Verona and Balthazar and Michael Campi in the eighteenth century praised his work as thoroughly scientific. We have already quoted Linnaeus' opinion of him and the modern father of botany gladly accepted the suggestion of Plumier that a newly discovered plant should be given the name of Caesalpinus, in order that that name might be forever memorable in botany. Boerhaave, whom we think of much more as a physician than a botanist, but some of whose greatest work was done with regard to medical botany in the University garden of Leyden, advised a friend and disciple if he could buy any of Caesalpinus' works, to do so, for they were among the best on the subject.
In France Ruellius, whose life is about equally divided between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was the physician to Francis I and a distinguished botanist. He wrote scientific descriptions of a large number of plants and put beside them the ordinary names which they were called in various countries as he had obtained them from peasants, farmers and country-people generally in his travels. His work was an important contribution to the science of botany. Toward the end of his life Ruellius, like his distinguished contemporary and colleague, Linacre in England, became a priest. Another important French contributor to the science is Pierre Belon of the first half of the sixteenth century, though he had an interest in many other biological sciences. He wrote a valuable treatise on coniferous plants and a monograph on birds. This has attracted particular attention, because in it "he compared the skeletons of birds and man in the same posture and nearly as possible, bone for bone." As Garrison in his "History of Medicine" (New York, 1913) says: "this was the first of these serial arrangements of homologies which Owen and Haeckel made famous." Belon travelled in Greece, Egypt and the Orient as well as widely in Europe, mainly in the interests of materia medica, but everywhere picking up scientific information.
In Spain and Portugal writers in botany are the medical [{380}] scientists and especially those who searched the Indies, West and East, for plants with medicinal virtues. They did much both for pure science and for medicine and some account of their work will be found in the chapter on "Medicine" and "America in Columbus' Century." As accumulators of information the biological scientists of all the countries of Europe during Columbus' Century probably contributed more to their various departments than their colleagues of any other corresponding period in the history of science, even our own. They had, of course, the advantage of fields ripe for the harvest, but they undoubtedly took full advantage of their opportunities. Of all of them might be said what Oliver Wendell Holmes said of the anatomists of the Renaissance. They gathered in the rich harvest of discovery like the harvesters in a grain field. After them in the next century came the gleaners, who found many scattered precious grains of knowledge that their predecessors with their rich harvest to care for had neglected. Finally, in the later time, came into the field the geese, who found here and there a grain of knowledge missed even by the gleaners and who made a great cackling whenever they found one. The kindly satirist was himself an anatomist, and we may take the exaggeration of his picture with proper discount, yet with a recognition that it has much more of truth than we always like to confess even to ourselves.
CHAPTER XII
MEDICINE
It is not surprising that there should have been a magnificent century of achievement in medicine at this time because their standards of medical education were at a high level and were well maintained. The medieval requirements for medical education had been three years of preliminary work at the university, four years in the medical schools, special courses in surgery if practice was to be in that department, and a year's experience with a physician before personal practice on one's own responsibility was allowed. The laws of the Emperor Frederick for the Two Sicilies in the thirteenth century were very strict in this matter and they constituted the standard which came to be very generally adopted. In the Italian universities the Papal charters explicitly demanded these requirements. [Footnote 34]
[Footnote 34: For full details of this surprising, too little known formal development of medicine, see Walsh, "The Popes and Science," Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1907, where all the documents will be found.]
We have a series of re-enactments on this subject just about the middle of the fifteenth century. Above all, clinical experience was required before the license to practise would be issued. In 1449 the medical Faculty of Paris required that graduates in medicine should diligently visit the hospitals or accompany a skilful practitioner in his visits to patients and refused to grant the license when this rule was not observed. In Ingolstadt graduates in medicine, according to the statutes of 1472, were obliged to take an oath that they would practise only as the representatives of their teacher, or of some other doctor of the faculty of that place, until they were considered skilful enough to receive the license for practice on their own responsibility.
In the hospitals of this time, which were large and well arranged, thoroughly ventilated and capable of being well cleansed, [{382}] there was ample opportunity for clinical teaching and we know that it was taken. A manuscript of Galen of the fifteenth century which is preserved at Dresden has a number of initial miniatures, in which groups engaged in clinical instruction are noteworthy. In his "History of Medical Education," [Footnote 35] Puschmann notes the details of some of these. There is a picture of a patient suffering from some wasting disease, near whose bed stand a doctor and two nurses, while the doctor dictates a prescription to his pupils. There is a demonstration of leg ulcers by a physician to a pupil and a surgical operation on the leg performed by the pupil in the presence of his teacher, as well as the opening of an abscess in the axilla. There were hospitals in every town of 5,000 and this gave ample opportunities for clinical experience. When hospitals are numerous and well managed there must be physicians to attend on them and this provides opportunities for thorough study of patients.