VII. SIR ASTLEY COOPER AND ABERNETHY: THE KNIFE _versus_ REGIMEN 202 VIII. SIR CHARLES BELL AND THE FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 242 IX. MARSHALL HALL AND THE DISCOVERY OF REFLEX ACTION 264 X. SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE AND SIR WILLIAM LAWRENCE, TWO GREAT PRACTICAL SURGEONS 286 EMINENT DOCTORS. CHAPTER I. _LINACRE, CAIUS, AND THE FOUNDATION OF BRITISH MEDICINE._ The name of THOMAS LINACRE must stand at the head of any account of the history of British medicine, for before his accession to the office of tutor and physician to Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII., in 1501, no physician of such ability as to have left works of permanent value had arisen in this country. To him belongs the honour of having founded the Royal College of Physicians of London, the earliest of the British medical corporations; and by that one act he may be said to have constituted medicine a distinct profession. The slightness of the emphasis which can be laid upon the medical profession up to Linacre’s time may be recognised from the fact that he was both tutor and medical attendant to a prince, and that he subsequently became a not undistinguished ecclesiastic. Canterbury gave birth to this founder of British medicine about 1460. He derived his descent, however, from a Derbyshire family of Saxon blood flourishing before the Conquest at Linacre, near Chesterfield. His school-days were passed under the superintendence of William Selling, at the monastic school of Christchurch in Canterbury. Selling was an enlightened man for his time, and had travelled in Italy, where he studied Greek with one of the most eager students of the time, Politian, and had brought home with him numerous valuable manuscripts. A fellow of All Souls’ himself, he doubtless had some influence in securing the election of his pupil to a fellowship there at an early age, in 1484. At Oxford Linacre was a pupil of Cornelio Vitelli, an Italian, one of the earliest teachers who brought Greek learning into this country.