Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/437

 relating to plants which might be utilized in the treatment of different diseases. Then, in the early part of the present era, Galen contributed not a little to our further knowledge on this subject; but from that time forward, until the sixteenth century, pharmacology practically remained unchanged. The beginnings of a systematic study of all plants—in other words, modern botany—may be traced to the establishment of botanical gardens, first in Italy and afterward in Holland and France. According to Berendes the very earliest attempt in relatively modern times to cultivate such a garden was made at Salerno by Matthaeus Silvaticus. Then Master Gualterus, in 1333, was permitted by the Governing Council of Venice to make use of a certain plot of ground for the cultivation of the plants in which he was specially interested. So far as one may judge, however, both of these were private under-*takings. In 1545, at the request of Francesco Buonafrede, Professor of Therapeutics at the University of Padua, the Senate of that city laid out a garden for his uses in teaching. This appears to be the earliest instance of the establishment of a botanical garden in connection with a regularly organized medical school. Then, in fairly quick succession, similar gardens were established at Pisa (1547), Bologna (1567), Leyden, Holland (by Boerhaave in 1577), and Heidelberg (1593). In France the University of Montpellier received its first botanical garden in the year last named. Thus it appears that about the middle of the sixteenth century botany began to receive attention as a branch of knowledge which, as was then believed, it was important for physicians to study; and from that time forward, for more than two centuries, it formed a regular part of the curriculum in all the leading medical schools. The two chairs of botany and anatomy were not infrequently combined. Fallopius, for example, held the Chair of Anatomy, Surgery and Botany in the University of Padua, and so also did Vesling in the same university at a somewhat later date. The first systematic works on botany were also published in the sixteenth century. They were all written by German or Swiss authors, the most note