The Renaissance brought with it the same renewal of activity and dissemination of knowledge in medicine that it did in other sciences, and schools were founded throughout Europe. Salerno, Naples, Montpellier, Venice, Bologna, Prague, Vienna, and Oxford all shared in this awakening ; and students travelled from one university to another in order to acquire all the knowledge they could give. The great names of this period begin to be more familiar to modern ears, and their work to seem more imme diately connected with modern thought. Sonic of these names are : Lisfranc (1295) ; INIondino de Luzzi (1275-1327), who was the author of the first anatomy written since the time of Galen ; Linacre (14o1-1524), to whom Oxford and Cambridge were indebted in a large measure for their early share in the results of the Renaissance ; and Sylvius or Jacques Dubois of France, who was the first to arrange all the muscles of the human body, and who assigned them names which are largely in use at the present time. It was, however, his pupil, Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) who " brought into anatomy the new spirit of the time." Whereas Dubois, even making dissections, had followed the treatises of Galen with almost servile devotion, Vesalius accepted no tradition, but went straight to Nature herself for his facts, thus justifying the description which has been applied to him of " founder of modern biological science." Among Vesalius's contempo raries were many almost equally notable physicians, among them Mustachio, who pointed out the value of embryology in the interpretation of gross anatomy, and made some important contributions to the knowledge of the ear, as did also Fallopio. Discoveries in the field of anatomy were the order of the clay. Servetus, a Spaniard, made out some new facts concern ing the pulmonary circulation ; Cesalpino wrote on the circulation of the blood ; Varoli contributed to the knowledge of the nervous system ; and Spigelius to that of the liver. Realdo Colombo, who succeeded Vesali as professor of anatomy at Padua, and later held the same position at Pisa, correctly described the pulmonary circulation, although, as some maintain, without an adequate realisation of the bearing and interpretation of his discoveries.
It was at Padua that Fabricius (1537-1619) built an anatomical amphi theatre, where William Harvey became one of his pupils. Thus at last we come to the man who could correlate the new discoveries in the structure of the human body with new and illuminating ideas as to function, linking anatomy and physiology in a workable union. It was in 1615 that Harvey demonstrated the action of the heart, and correctly interpreted the history of the circulation of the blood. His work was supplemented, four years after his death, by Malpighi, one of the first to employ the microscope in his investigations, who, in 1661, successfully observed not only the capillaries, but the capillary circulation, in the lung of a frog.
The seventeenth century was also signalised by marked advances in the physiology of nutrition and secretion, made by Van Helmont, \Virsung, Wharton, Peyer, Brunner, Glisson, Malpighi, Bellini, Aselli, Pecquet, Rudbeck, Van Horne, and De Peiresc, a list of names which gives some idea of the activity of the time, although space is lacking to note the distribution of their various discoveries. In 1614, the Italian physician Sanctorius published his " Ars de Statica Medici," in which appear the beginnings of the study of general metabolism. Borelli (1608-1679) turned
his attention to the mechanics of bodily movements, and the physiology of respiration was ably contributed to by Boyle (1626-1691), Van Helmont, \iayow (1645-1679), and Hooke (1635-1703). In the latter half of the century the anatomy of the eye was carefully studied by Ruysch and Leenwenhoek ; and the results of their studies, together with those of Keppler, Scheirer, Descarte, and Mariotte, concerning the function of that organ, resulted in establishing the fundamental principles of physiological optics. Vieussens, Duverney, Schnellhammer, Glaser, Manfredi, Perrault, and others, did as much for the structure of the ear.
The physiology of generation also came in for investigation, the observers being divided into two opposing parties—the " ovists," who followed Harvey and Fabricnis ; amt the " animalculists," who adopted the theory constructed by Leeuwenhoek after the discovery of the spermatozoa termed by him " animalcules "—by his pupil Von Mammen. The structure of the generative organs was studied also by Highmore, De Graaf, Swammerdam, Needham, Drelincourt, and Hoboken.
In the nineteenth century the progress of medicine was so marked and striking that what went immediately before seems of small moment in com parison. Yet real advances had been made previous to that date, and in some cases later and more considerable achievements had been fore shadowed. Early in the eighteenth century, Boerhaave of Holland had wrought a revolution in clinical observation, and a little later the Italian Morgagni, who, in the Nvords of Virchow, " introduced anatomical thinking into medicine," did a service to pathology, which was duplicated in the field of physiology some years later by Haller of Germany. John Hunter, too, had brought forward improvements in operative surgery, and turned the attention of the profession to research in anatomical and physiological fields.
Yet, in spite of the great names of that period, the eighteenth century remained under the sway of strange theories, born of guesswork and mis understood or careless observations. William Cullen (1710 -r7oo), whose life extended practically over the century, discarded the antiquated theory of " humours," and made the nervous system the seat of disease ; while his pupil, John Brown, classified all diseases as either sthenic or asthenic, the former to be treated by depletion, as due to over-excitation, and the latter to be treated by stimulation, as clue to under-excitation. Hahnemann, in his turn, scouted all theories, and averred that beyond symptoms our knowledge cannot go, that hidden pathological changes are quite beyond its ken, and that the best we can do is to remove the symptoms, a process which, to his belief, implied also the removal of the disease. This exaltation of empiricism was an obvious reaction against the baseless theorising which had preceded it, and a further reaction against the enormous and often injurious closes which had been wont to he administered was evidenced in Hahnemann's insistence that, in order to possess healing-power, the dose must be too small for recognition by the senses or by chemical analysis. These ideas, together with Hippocrates's " law of similars," constitute the beginnings of homeopathy, although what is known by that name to-day differs in many details from what its founder intended the word to convey. See HOMEOPATHY.