Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle AgesWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Medicine, Medieval; Physicians
Humboldt's expression that he found some exceedingly acute remarks on
the organic structure and physiology of plants in Albert the Great's
writings will prove a great surprise to many people. Meyer, the German
historian of botany, however, has re-echoed Humboldt's praise with
emphasis. The extraordinary erudition and originality of Albert's
treatise on plants drew from Meyer the comment:
No botanist who lived before Albert can be compared with him
unless Theophrastus, with whom he was not acquainted; and
after him none has painted nature in such living colors or
studied it so profoundly until the time of Conrad Gessner and
Caesalpino.
These men, it may be remarked, come three centuries after Albert's time.
A ready idea of Albert's contributions to physical science can be
obtained from his life by Sighart, which has been translated into
English by Dixon and was published in London in 1870. Pagel, in
Puschmann's "History of Medicine," already referred to, gives a list of
the books written by Albert on scientific matters with some comments
which are eminently suggestive, and furnish solid basis for the remark
that I have made, that men's minds were occupied with nearly the same
problems in science in the thirteenth century as we are now, while the
conclusions they came to were not very different from ours, though
reached so long before us.
This catalogue of Albertus Magnus' works shows very well his own
interest and that of his generation in physical science of all kinds.
There were eight treatises on Aristotle's physics and on the underlying
principles of natural philosophy and of energy and of movement; four
treatises concerning the heavens and the earth, one on physical
geography which also contains, according to Pagel, numerous suggestions
on ethnography and physiology. There are two treatises on generation and
corruption, six books on meteors, five books on minerals, three books on
the soul, two books on the intellect, a treatise on nutritives, and then
a treatise on the senses and another on the memory and on the
imagination. All the phases of the biological sciences were especially
favorite subjects of his study. There is a treatise on the motion of
animals, a treatise in six books on vegetables and plants, a treatise on
breathing things, a treatise on sleep and waking, a treatise on youth
and old age, and a treatise on life and death. His treatise on minerals
contains, according to Pagel, a description of ninety-five different
kinds of precious stones. Albert's volumes on plants were reproduced
with Meyer, the German botanist, as editor (Berlin, 1867). All of
Albert's books are available in modern editions.
Pagel says of Albertus that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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