Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/149

 LINKAGE WITH THE MODERN TIME they left untouched much that was best in the Greek medical legacy. At a later time, say in the sixteenth century, the spirit of scientific observation was stirring more actively, and the epoch-making people of the age worked somewhat in the old Greek way, making ready a period of palpable scien- tific progress. Such men were fitted to receive the best that the great and ancient past con- tained, which it now seemed to offer these brighter minds as with a new disclosure. But in respect to medicine and anatomy there were obstacles to any such acceptance. The men given to actual observation were im- patient of the past's authority; they chose to see for themselves. Vesalius was not like those who in his own and prior generations could see in the actual human body what Mundinus or Galen said was there. He was looking for himself, and was vehemently moved at the dis- crepancy between Galen and the human fact. For him, Galen had ceased to reign. Thus from the times of Paracelsus, Vesalius and Pare, and then of Harvey, two general factors tended to end the reign of the once dominant Galen. The one was the active scientific spirit — quite like the Greek — im- [ 127]