Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 29th, 1867 (IA b22315263).pdf/10

 dant, and the cause which called for them is obvious. When Linacre obtained from Henry VIII. the first charter to incorporate this College of Physicians, the very existence of medicine as a separate calling was altogether new; for, until then, medicine had been studied in the cloister and practised almost exclusively in the murky den of the empiric, more sorcerer than professor of the healing art. The ancient literature of medicine had only just been brought to light by Linacre himself, at the epoch which we designate the revival of letters; and the stores of keen observation recorded by Hippocrates,, and Galen, as well as by the Latin Celsus and the Arabian , were new and rare helps to medical students. Yet the knowledge of those times could hardly be termed philosophy; and the practice, though displaying much acuteness, was no better than empirical.

When Harvey first entered the profession, though medical philosophy had made enormous progress, and though vigorous thinkers, not only in this country but in the schools of Italy, were already working at the important