Page:The rise of physiology in England - the Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th, 1895 (IA b24974778).pdf/40

 year 1559 Dr. Geynes was refused the Fellow- ship because he had ventured to doubt the infallibility of Galen; and in our annals it is stated that Dr. Hook was not granted admit- tance to the examination for the licence because he had the honesty to say that he had not read Galen. The revival of anatomy had by Harvey's time somewhat undermined the authority of Galen, which was still further impaired by Har- vey's own discoveries. Nine years after Harvey's death appeared Sydenham's Methodus curandi Febres Propriis Observationibus Superstructa, &c., and the world became aware that one had arison who brought independent thought, un biassed by the traditions and views of the various schools of medicine, to bear on the study of disease.

Our ignorance of the details of Sydenham's life renders it difficult to express an opinion as to the position he occupied in society or among his professional brethren in the year 1666, when the Methodus first appeared. He had then been settled in Westminster for ten years, (w) and his intimacy during his Oxford life with Locke and Boyle (to whom he dedicates the work) makes it probable that from his first