The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

We have some two score of books attributed to him, but probably less than a score are really his. Probably no one has ever had a higher view of medicine. He bases it on the relationship which man bears to nature as a whole and anticipates the very modern idea that disease is not a negation, but itself a phase of life. Magnetism represents a great force for him and some form of it is supposed to emanate from all bodies and place them in relation with each other. The influence of the stars on human constitutions is only one phase of this magnetism which binds all the world together. The superabundance of vitality in certain men gave them a magnetic influence over other men and this magnetic influence might even persist after death. Hence mummies were supposed to contain a certain astral balsam and the consumption of mummy substance gave wonderful vitality to ailing persons. Like scientists at all times, Paracelsus had to have his explanation for miracles. He suggested that saints were people with an abundance of vitality and some of this remained in their bodies after their deaths just in the same way as it remained in the bodies of mummies. It was sufficient, then, to come within the sphere of the influence of these bodies to be affected by it. Miracles, then, were not exceptions to the laws of nature but merely [{391}] fulfilment of laws that men were only just getting to understand. That has been the favorite mode of explanation for miracles ever since, though a new set of facts has always been adduced as the basis of the explanation.

Of course Paracelsus believed in many absurdities. He suggests, for instance, that it is possible to transplant toothache into a tree after the following fashion. Having taken away a portion of the bark, a piece of the wood is cut and with it the gum is pricked until the blood flows. Then the piece of wood stained with blood is set again in its place in the tree and the bark is also replaced. He believed also in the vulnerary ointment, which could cure wounds, not by application to the wound itself but to the weapon. It was important, however, that the weapon should be stained with the blood from the wound. He had the feeling that the morbid elements of an affection or a wound were contained in the blood and might be neutralized even outside the body. The vulnerary ointment was composed of moss from the head of a dead person, preferably one who had been put to death for murder, mummy, human fat and human blood. It all seems so absurd to us now, but behind such prescriptions was the theory that some of the vital force of these human beings could be made over to the diseased person in order to add to his vitality. Many absurd prescriptions have been made on theories not nearly so reasonable as this of Paracelsus.

To this period also belongs the name of Basil Valentine, who has been called the last of the alchemists and the first of the chemists. Just now we are passing through a phase of historical criticism which throws doubt on his real existence, though we have a series of books under his name published at the end of the sixteenth century. Tradition declares that he was a Benedictine monk living about the middle of the fifteenth century, who tested many forms of drugs with the idea of securing materials for the cure of human diseases. To him is attributed the discovery of hydrochloric acid, which he called the spirit of salt, sugar of lead, and a method of preparing sulphuric acid and probably ammonia. He is best known for his work on antimony and his book, "The Triumphant Chariot of Antimony," put that metal and its salts into medical practice [{392}] for centuries. The indication for it was that disease was largely due to a toxaemia or accumulation of poisons in the system, the modern idea of auto-toxaemia, and that these could be best removed by brisk purgation. The use of calomel subsequently, the theory underlying venesection and a great many of our modern surgical fads for the improvement of man's condition by taking something out of him have the same notion for basis.

Basil Valentine's works are precious because they insist that physicians must know the drugs they use and their effects, not merely by reading about them, but by studying them on patients and on animals. He himself is said to have tried the effect of antimony on the swine belonging to the monastery in which he did his work, and other materials are said to have been tested in the same way. He is thus really a father of experimental medicine. He cannot say too much in deprecation of physicians who give medicines which they know little about for diseases about which they know less. In my sketch of him in "Catholic Churchmen in Science" (Dolphin Press, Philadelphia, 1907) I quote a passage from his "Triumphant Chariot of Antimony," in which he bitterly condemns the practice of physicians who give remedies knowing practically nothing about them, only that they have been recommended by someone else. It read like a diatribe of the modern time against allowing the manufacturing chemist to suggest drugs for medical practice. The passage makes very clear what is the secret of the mystery by which remedies come and go in medicine because of insufficient testing. Valentine said:

"And whensoever I shall have occasion to contend in the school with such a Doctor, who knows not how himself to prepare his own medicines, but commits that business to another, I am sure I shall obtain the palm from him; for indeed, that good man knows not what medicines he prescribes to the sick; whether the color of them be white, black, grey or blew, he cannot tell; nor doth this wretched man know whether the medicine he gives be dry or hot, cold or humid; but he only knows that he found it so written in his Books, and thence pretends knowledge (or as it were, Possession) by Prescription of a very long time; yet he desires to further information. [{393}] Here again let it be lawful to exclaim, Good God, to what a state is the matter brought! what goodness of minde is in these men! what care do they take of the sick! Wo, wo to them! in the day of judgment they will find the fruit of their ignorance and rashness, then they will see Him Whom they pierced, when they neglected their Neighbor, sought after money and nothing else; whereas, were they cordial in their profession, they would spend Nights and Days in Labour that they might become more learned in their Art, whence more certain health would accrew to the sick with their Estimation and greater Glory to themselves. But since Labour is tedious to them, they commit the matter to Chance, and being secure of their Honour and content with their Fame, they (like Brawlers) defend themselves with a certain Garrulity, without any respect to Confidence or Truth."

Another of the great physicians of the time was Cornelius Agrippa, born in 1486, of the old family of Nettesheim. Cornelius was at first the secretary of the Emperor Maximilian, then a warrior and finally a student of both law and medicine, yet all was accomplished so expeditiously that when he was but twenty-four the Parliament of Dole came in a body to hear his lectures on the Cabalistic Books of Reuchlin. He practised for a while as a physician at Geneva after having been an advocate at Metz and, with the tendency to wander that so many of the men of this time had, we find him afterwards at Freiburg, at Lyons, then for a time the physician of Louise of Savoy, but jealousy drove him from the Court and a little later we find him starving in Antwerp, and then in prison at Brussels. He passed through Cologne, was at Bonn for a time and is heard from in prison at Lyons. He seems to have run the whole gamut of human suffering. It is hard to know what he was imprisoned for, but he seems to have been a man who easily made enemies, refused to think that anyone else knew much and probably his necessities led him into the doing of things that were suspicious at least, if not actually criminal.

Agrippa was very much interested in magnetism, quite taken with the idea of human magnetism and above all very much persuaded of the influence of the mind on the body. He felt [{394}] the place that autosuggestion or strong persuasion has in enabling men to accomplish anything and he said: "We must therefore in every work and application of things affect vehemently, imagine, hope and believe strongly, for that will be a great help." He was quite sure that the mind could influence the body strongly for healing purposes and would doubtless have been looked upon as an advocate of New Thought or Psychic Healing or some of the other schools of mental therapeutics in our time, though he believed also in the use of medicines and remedial measures. Another phase of his anticipation of some modern ideas may be still more interesting for our generation, though it only shows how prone human thought is to run in cycles and how hard it is to find anything new under the sun: it may be rather surprising to many to learn that Agrippa seems to have had a definite persuasion that woman was superior to man. He was what the French would have called "a feminist of the most modern." A book of his on the subject recently appeared as a bibliographic treasure in the London bookseller, Tregaskis' catalogue (No. 736). The title was: "Female Pre-Eminence: or The Dignity and Excellence of that Sex Above the Male." An Ingenious Discourse: Written originally in Latine, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of Physick, Doctor of Both Laws, and Privy-Counsellor to the Emperour Charles V. Done into English with additional advantages. By H. (Enry) C. (are) Printed by T. R. and M. D. and are to be sold by Henry Milion, 1670. The catalogue contains the note: "Strong arguments in favor of women's superiority. It is rendered into English, well embroidered with poetic imagery and rich in furiously entertaining passages."

The most important scientific development for medicine came from pathological anatomy. This science is supposed as a rule to be of much later origin than the period we are occupied with, but the interest in the history of medicine in recent years has shown us how much of attention there was given to pathology and how many observations were accumulating in the published books of the Renaissance time. There was much more of such scientific observation in the Middle Ages than is usually thought. Three men at the beginning of [{395}] Columbus' Century, Professor Montagnana of Padua, Professor Savonarola of Ferrara, the grandfather of the martyred Dominican, and Professor Arcolani of Bologna, described a number of different lesions which they had noted in the many bodies that were being dissected at this time. In the next few years these observations multiply. Benedetti, the Professor of Anatomy at Padua and the founder of the anatomical theatre at that university, made reports on gall-stones and apoplexies. Benivieni, a simple practising physician at Florence, was probably the first to describe gall-stones and he has a very large number of pathological observations. He is the first that we know who made a number of autopsies with the definite idea of finding out the cause of death and he has come deservedly to be called, as a consequence, the Father of Pathological Anatomy. Allbutt, the Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, says of him: "Before Vesalius, before Eustachius, he opened the bodies of the dead as deliberately and clear-sightedly as any pathologist in the spacious times of Baillie, Bright and Addison," and Malgaigne has described his book as "the only work on pathology which owes nothing to anyone."

It became the custom then to collect observations of this kind and Berengar of Carpi, the discoverer of the appendix, who had dissected a great many bodies, described a number of pathological changes. Aranzi, the professor of medicine and of anatomy in Bologna, has many observations of pathological finds in his book and paid special attention to tumors. Ingrassias, professor of anatomy at Naples, was also interested in pathology and, as specializing had become the fashion, his observations were mainly with regard to bones. Eustachius, the professor of anatomy in Rome, declares in the preface to his anatomical tables that he was the first to make autopsies for pathological purposes in Rome, and that he had collected an abundant amount of material. The publication of Eustachius' anatomy was delayed until long after his death and his pathological observations were never published. Columbus in Rome made a series of autopsies even on high ecclesiastics for the purpose of determining the cause of death and evidently the science of pathology was gradually coming into existence. Vesalius made a large number of pathological observations [{396}] and promised in his book on normal anatomy to publish them. Unfortunately he never did so, and his notes seem lost, though it is not impossible that the manuscript or some portion of it may yet be found in Spain.

In many other countries besides Italy, however, pathological anatomy attracted much attention. Joost van Lom, often known by his Latin name of Jodocus Lommius, a physician in Brussels, who was royal physician to King Philip II, published three books of medical observations at Antwerp just after the close of Columbus' Century (1560) in which notes of all diseases and problems of prognosis are set forth. Johann Kentmann, a physician of Torgau, devoted a great deal of attention to the study of the formation of all kinds of calculi in human beings, biliary, salivary and intestinal. Francisco Valles, Professor of Medicine at the University of Alcalá in Spain, published a volume of Galen's "De Locis Affectis," in which he incorporated many notes of his own pathological observations. Jacques Houillier (Hollerius) published about the same time at Paris, where he was professor of medicine, a book on "Internal Diseases" with many pathological notes. Johann Weyer (Wierus) also added valuable pathological annotations to his writings.