Page:The Harveian oration 1896.djvu/24

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HARVEY AND GALEN These were extravagancies. The scholars, however, had more serious views, so that in about one generation, or say, roughly, by the middle of the sixteenth century, a large number of physicians had adopted the revived Greek medicine in preference to the Arabian, though the older school was not at all superseded.

Now it is noticeable that the name which the new school adopted and was called by was Galenical or the Galenists. A small society of young physicians in Florence called themselves, in imitation of the well-known Platonic Academy, the Galenical Academy of Florence. Our own College, one of the first-fruits of the Renaissance, was, as might be expected from its history, strongly Galenical. This revival of Galenical medicine, then, was the work accomplished by the school and generation to which Linacre belonged, the first stage of the Hellenic revival. We may conveniently connect it with the name of Linacre, but of course there were many others associated in the work, as Copus of Paris, Winter of Andernach, Leoniceno in Italy, and Cornarius (Hagenbut) in Germany. It was assisted also by such men as Michael Servetus, the theologian, and Francis Rabelais, the great humorist. I have called this school elsewhere the Medical Humanists.

Now it might be thought that the only result of this change would be to confirm the rule of Galen more strongly than ever. New Galenism would only be mediaeval Galenism ‘writ large.’ To a certain extent and for a short time this was the case. Galen was still thought infallible. If any error was detected in his anatomy it was said either that the text was corrupt or that the structure of the body had changed since his time. The history of our own College shows that Galenical orthodoxy could rival the

tiores, ac synceriores in lucem pro- dierint, et ut tanta generi humano commoda accesserint, ut qui olim Arabs medicus unum aut alterum sanitati restituisset, nunc veritate patefacta, decern posset.’

(p. 46.) ( Lector amice, abducito te

quantum potes ab Arabum lectione, qui omnia depravarunt. Viros autem doctos in colloquium ascisce, inprimis autem Hippocratem et Galenum facito tibi familiares. Hi tibi habendi sunt semper in sinu nocturna manu ver- sandi, versandi diurna.’