The Evolution of Modern Medicine: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation in April, 1913Osler, William, Sir
History
The Evolution of Modern Medicine: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation in April, 1913
Osler, William, Sir
Medicine -- History
A school of a more rational kind followed directly upon the work of
Paracelsus, in which the first man of any importance was Van Helmont.
The Paracelsian Archeus was the presiding spirit in living creatures,
and worked through special local ferments, by which the functions of the
organs are controlled. Disease of any part represents a strike on the
part of the local Archeus, who refuses to work. Though full of fanciful
ideas, Van Helmont had the experimental spirit and was the first chemist
to discover the diversity of gases. Like his teacher, he was in revolt
against the faculty, and he has bitter things to say of physicians. He
got into trouble with the Church about the magnetic cure of wounds, as
no fewer than twenty-seven propositions incompatible with the Catholic
faith were found in his pamphlet (Ferguson). The Philosophus per ignem,
Toparcha in Merode, Royenborch, as he is styled in certain of his
writings, is not an easy man to tackle. I show the title-page of the
"Ortus Medicinae," the collection of his works by his son. As with the
pages of Paracelsus, there are many gems to be dug out. The counterblast
against bleeding was a useful protest, and to deny in toto its utility
in fever required courage--a quality never lacking in the Father of
Modern Chemistry, as he has been called.
A man of a very different type, a learned academic, a professor
of European renown, was Daniel Sennert of Wittenberg, the first to
introduce the systematic teaching of chemistry into the curriculum,
and who tried to harmonize the Galenists and Paracelsians. Franciscus
Sylvius, a disciple of Van Helmont, established the first chemical
laboratory in Europe at Leyden, and to him is due the introduction of
modern clinical teaching. In 1664 he writes: "I have led my pupils
by the hand to medical practice, using a method unknown at Leyden, or
perhaps elsewhere, i.e., taking them daily to visit the sick at the
public hospital. There I have put the symptoms of disease before their
eyes; have let them hear the complaints of the patients, and have asked
them their opinions as to the causes and rational treatment of each
case, and the reasons for those opinions. Then I have given my own
judgment on every point. Together with me they have seen the happy
results of treatment when God has granted to our cares a restoration of
health; or they have assisted in examining the body when the patient has
paid the inevitable tribute to death."(39)
(39) Withington: Medical History from the Earliest Times,
London, 1894, pp. 312-313.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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