The writings of Paulus seem to be the last of any written in the Greek language, which had been the language of medical science for more than a thousand years. At about this time the Arabian school was beginning to rise into notice. The earliest Arabian writers on medicine of whom we have any notice or certain account, is Ahrum, who was contemporary with Paulus. The most celebrated physicians of this school were Rhazes, (who flourished in the ninth century, and was the first to describe small-pox) and Avicenna who flourished early in the eleventh century, and whose ‘Canon Medicina’ may be regarded as a cyclopaedia of all that was known of medicine at that time (as well as collateral sciences). This was a compilation from Greek writers, whose writings had been translated into Arabic, (for Avicenna was not a Greek scholar himself). Avenzoar, and Averrhoes flourished in the twelfth century. The last was a celebrated philosopher as well as physician. The works of Hippocrates and Galen, which, together with the works of Aristotle, Plato and Euclid, were translated into Arabic in the ninth century, formed the basis of their medical knowledge; but the Arabian physicians did good service to medicine, introducing new articles from the East into European materia medica, as for example, rhubarb, cassia, senna, camphor, and in making known what may be termed the first elements of pharmaceutical chemistry, such as a knowledge of distillation, and of the means of obtaining various metallic oxides and salts.
Upon the decline of the Saracenic universities in Spain, which was about the time of the death of Averrhoes, the only medical knowledge that remained was to be found in Italy, where the School of Salerno acquired considerable celebrity, which it maintained for some time, till it was gradually eclipsed by the rising fame of other medical schools at Bologna—where Mondino or Mundinus de Leozza publicly dissected two human bodies in 1315.
Contemporary with Mondini, lived Gilbert, the first English writer on medicine who acquired any repute; and the next century gave birth to Linacre, who after studying at Oxford spent a considerable time at Bologna, Florence, Rome, Venice and Padua, and subsequently became the founder of the London College of Physicians. It was in this fifteenth century that the sect of chemical physicians arose, who claimed that all the phenomena of the living body could be explained by the same chemical laws as those that rule inorganic matters. Although the illustrations and proofs which they adduced were completely unsatisfactory, yet the tendency at the present time is in the same direction, since chemistry and physiology are better known.
This seems to be a period prolific of new diseases. In the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we hear most of leprosy, and of the visitation of the plague in Europe. Whooping-cough and scurvy were never described by any writer anterior to the fifteenth century. Syphilis was first recognized in Italy in the fifteenth century, from which country it spread rapidly over the whole of Europe.
In the sixteenth century the study of human anatomy may be said to have been fairly established by the zeal and labors of Vesalius, and in this and the succeeding centuries we meet with the names of many physicians whose anatomical and physiological investigations tended either directly or indirectly to advance the science of medicine. This was the epoch of Eustachius, Fallopius, Asellius, Harvey, Rudbeck, Bartholini, Malpighi, Glisson, Sylvius, Willis, Bellini, etc., names preserved in anatomy.
Chemistry was now being separated from alchemy, and advancing to a science, and a combination formed between its principles and those of physiology, which gave rise to a new sect of chemical physicians, quite distinct from the sect represented two centuries before by Paracelsus. The chemical school was succeeded by the mathematical school, of which Borelli, Sauvages, Heill, Jurin, Mead and Freind were amongst the most celebrated. While at the same time the old Galenists were fast disappearing. To the rival sects of this period must be added the Vitalists, which originated with Von Helmont, and with some modifications was adopted by Stahl and Hoffman. The greatest physician of the seventeenth century was, however, Sydenham, who, though inclining to the chemical school, did not allow his speculative opinions regarding the nature of disease to interfere with a careful consideration of the indications for treatment, as derived from the symptoms, and from experience.
Boerhaave, a Dutch physician and philosopher, occupied special prominence in last part of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth centuries. He engaged in the practice of medicine at Leyden in 1693, and became professor of theory and practice of medicine in the university of that city in 1701. He was erudite, exact, simple and eloquent, and hence as a lecturer very popular. He specially advocated simplicity in practice of medicine. Professor of botany was added to his duties in 1709. He wrote a treatise in 1703 (in Latin) advocating mechanical and chemical hypotheses in medicine. In 1708 his institutes of medicine extended his reputation; and in 1709 appeared his famous ‘Aphorisms’ on the diagnosis and cure of disease. In this was a well defined classification of diseases, including their causes, nature and treatment, which was adopted by his contemporaries. He was distinguished as a botanist and chemist. He published a description of plants at Leyden in 1710, and became professor of chemistry in 1718 in addition to his other duties. He made chemistry popular by presenting it in a clear and attractive style, in his lectures and in his ‘Elements of Chemistry’ (1724).
On account of his attack of gout he was constrained to give up the teaching of botany and chemistry in 1727. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1730. His fame extended over the world. A Chinese mandarin hearing of his fame addressed a letter to Boerhaave, physician in Europe, which reached him in due time. His practice was lucrative, and he spent money freely in the interest of science and benevolence, yet such was his success that it is said that at his death (in 1738) he left an estate of nearly a million dollars.
Cullen, who was born in 1710 and died in 1790, was undoubtedly the greatest medical man of his age. It is especially interesting to read the biographies of such men as Cullen and of Hunter his contemporary, and of Jenner of the last half of the eighteenth century, and of John Brown the quack—though much quoted.
The present century may be considered as the epoch of physiological experiment and clinical observation. The efficient laborers of the last eighty years in the field of medicine have been so numerous that it would be impossible to notice at this time even those deemed most celebrated, while it would be invidious to attempt such a selection.