Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/596

 Cambridge in 1676, under the title of "Ophthalmographia," a most important contribution to the anatomy and physiology of the eye; and there were four other English anatomists who, during the seventeenth century, gained well-merited credit by the original work which they did in the fields of anatomy and physiology—viz., Thomas Willis (1622-1675), Francis Glisson (1597-1677), Thomas Wharton (1610-1673), and Nathaniel Highmore (1613-1684). The part played by Germany in these gains in anatomy and physiology, during the period now under consideration, was chiefly that of a sympathetic recipient; for the political conditions at that time were entirely unfavorable to any active participation on the part of the physicians of that country. Early in the eighteenth century, however, they began in earnest to do their share of work in advancing the science of medicine.

The relationship of the physical sciences to the theory and practice of medicine is not of an intimate nature, and it will therefore not be necessary for me to do more than briefly to enumerate the more important of the discoveries of this character which occurred during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Galileo (1564-1642), a native of Pisa, Italy, was the creator of the science of motion, and he gave the first satisfactory demonstration of equilibrium on an inclined plane. He devised an imperfect species of thermometer, a proportional compass, and the refracting telescope, by means of which latter instrument he made a number of other important discoveries in the domain of astronomy. His pupil, Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647), also a native of Italy, discovered the barometer, and in addition arrived at many fundamental truths in mechanics and hydrostatics. Otto von Guericke (1602-1686), a native of Magdeburg, Germany, invented the air pump. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, one of the world's greatest authorities in natural philosophy, was the first to formulate clearly the law of gravitation. Edme Mariotte (1620-1684), a native of Burgundy, France, was the discoverer of what is commonly known as "Mariotte's