Page:The Harveian oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians June 26, 1889 (IA b22361285).pdf/17

 than the ravages of the Goths and Vandals.’ And yet how powerful was the impress produced! The whole thinking world was fascinated, and it was not till the commencement of the seventeenth century that philosophers became freed from the thraldom of hypothetical propositions and syllogistic quibbles.

What an epoch was that seventeenth century Springing from darkness, the mind seems suddenly to have become animated with an intelligence new to the earth. We have but to look to the century preceding Harvey, to be both surprised and amused at the state of science. It is scarcely agreeable to hear from the chronicler how medicine stood in those days. When that century was near its end, in 1595, when we here in England were greater than we had ever been, when Shakspeare wrote, when great men flourished, and the noble Elizabeth had good reason to be proud of the vessel of the State—whose helm she had handled with so much dexterity and courage what was then the state of the mind medical?

We may judge of it from an instructive tale which we have on record. A golden tooth appeared in the jaw of a child in Silesia. This was