The hydropathic encyclopedia : a system of hydropathy and hygiene ... / By R.T. Trall, M.D.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hydropathic encyclopedia : a system of hydropathy and hygiene ... / By R.T. Trall, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    was attentively studied by dissections. The first English physiciaa of note was (Lnglicanus, who published a work in the early part of ths fourteenth centur; entitled, Medicinae Compendium, made up of trifling disnnisitions on insignificant topics. The European feudal system now began to be shaken by the cro- sades; Constantinople was captured by Mahomet the Second, about the middle of the fifteenth century; about thirty years after the ruin of the Byzantine empire the Reformation occurred; and about the same period the art of printing was invented; all of which cents tended to give a powerful impulse to the world of mind, and re-awaken investigation in all the departments of science, literature, and the Bits. Still, the great body of medical writers, for want of philosophical prern ises by which to direct scientific researches, and in utter destitution of all ascertained principles to which they could refer the facts developed by anatomical, pathological, and chemical knowledge, busied themselves in collecting, arranging, republishing, expounding, and commenting on the multitudinous works of Hippocrates and Galen. Their labors only tended to multiply books already too numerous, and mystify ideas al- ready too confused. The alchemic art was at length transferred from Arabia into the Eu- ropean countries, where it was pursued with as much assiduity as by the Arabs themselves. Medical chairs were established in varioua universities in Europe during the thirteenth century; medical lectures were given in the universities of Vienna and Paris, and schools were established in Padua, Pavia, Milan, Rome, and Naples. Linacre, who was educated at Oxford, spent some time in Italy and at the court of Florence, and on returning to England succeeded in establishing medi- cal professorships at Oxford and Cambridge, and laid the foundation of the London College of Physicians. The Chemical Physicians.—The next important event in medical history was the formation of the chemical sect. Chemistry, after hav- ing been employed in various pharmaceutical processes, was applied to physiology, pathology, and therapeutics; hence the origi.. of chemical doctors. The chemical physicians advanced their theories, which were us wild and extravagant as any preceding ones, with great boldness and ussurance, and for a long time the Galenists and Chemists were the rival sects of the medical world. But the Galenists had an ever-pres- ent champion in the very name of Galen, who may well be called the Prince of Medical Philosophers. He was a philosopher a natural philosopher; for he studied nature closely, deeply, profoundly, and de- duced his principal indications of cure from an accurate observation of