Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/450

 surgery were of very slight value. He despised the study of anatomy, claiming that a knowledge of this branch of medical science was not essential to a proper acquaintance with the human body. "To dissect," he once remarked, "was a peasant's manner of procedure." (Cabanès.) His surgery, as one may imagine, showed clearly the bad effects of such beliefs.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century there developed among the leading men of the medical profession a sentiment in favor of honoring the memory of Paracelsus by the erection of a suitable monument at Basel, Switzerland, the city in which he made his first public appearance. The project met with a favorable reception and the statue is now an accomplished fact. This is a remarkable instance of tardy justice being rendered to the memory of a physician who, for three hundred years, was almost universally looked upon as a vain, half-crazy man.

The next advances of any special importance in the department of chemistry were made in Great Britain by Robert Boyle, who was born at Lismore, County of Cork, Ireland, on January 25, 1626. He was the fourteenth child of the Earl of Cork. His early training was obtained at Eton, and then afterward he spent two years at Geneva, Switzerland, in prosecuting his scientific studies. In 1654 he entered Oxford University and became intimately acquainted with some of the most learned men of that day. While he was a student at the university he became a member of what was known as "The Invisible College," a society which was influential in bringing about the founding of "The Royal Society," of which organization he was president from the year 1680 to the time of his death in 1691.

Boyle was endowed with a noble character—modest, religious and generous. He gained distinction as a chemist in several departments. Applied chemistry is indebted to him for a number of important contributions; he added to our knowledge of chemical combinations and to the methods of analyzing them; he enriched the chemistry of gases and also pharmacology; and he gave a clear and easily intelli