CHAPTER IV. Large proportion of Physicians amongst the early Members of the Society-Profession of Medicine much cultivated at that period-Account of College of Physicians-Harvey's Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood supported by the Royal Society-Gresham College chosen as a place of meeting-Sir Thomas Gresham's Will-Gresham Professors-Description of College-Manner of holding the Meetings-Superstitions still believed in-Witchcraft-Touching for the Evil-Greatrix the Stroker-Believed in by Boyle-May-Dew-Virgula Divina— Happy effect exercised on these Superstitions by the labours of the Society. A 1660-65. MONG the names of persons recorded as likely to promote the objects of the Society, a large proportion, as may have been observed, were attached to the profession of Medicine. Biology, or the Science of Life, more particularly as applied to man, was cultivated with considerable diligence at the period of the foundation of the Royal Society; having received an extraordinary impetus by Harvey's immortal discovery of the circulation of the blood. This went far towards destroying those extraordinary hypotheses of Paracelsus and others, described in Sprengel's History of Medicine, where spirits, good and evil, are made to work within man'. The science of medicine was honoured by having had, long antecedently to this period, a College spe 1 Paracelsus affirmed that digestion was carried on by the Demon Archæus, who lived in the stomach. See Spr. m. 468. It is remarkable that this doctrine was subsequently received and expanded by Van Helmont. cially devoted to its high purposes; and as a great number of the members of this institution assisted materially in founding, and promoting the objects of the Royal Society, it will be desirable to give a brief account in this place of the Institution. On the 23rd September, 1518, the College was incorporated by letters patent, granted to Thomas Linacre and others, who were constituted a perpetual "Commonalty or Fellowship of the Faculty of Physic." To Linacre is due the merit of establishing the College. He was born at Canterbury about 1460. He studied at Oxford, Bologna, and Florence, and is said to have been the first Englishman who read Aristotle and Galen in the originals. He studied natural philosophy and medicine at Rome, graduated in physic at Padua, and on his return home received the degree of M. D. at Oxford, where he gained great reputation by his medical lectures and classical knowledge. "He acquired," says Dr. Elliotson, “immense practice, and stood without a rival at the head of his profession; becoming physician to Henry VII., and VIII., and to Edward VI.; and not through interest, accident, caprice, or subserviency, which have raised so many without the education of the scholar and man of science, or more than a scanty amount of professional knowledge and skill, to such posts, but through the force of his attainments. To him it could not be said, as it was to Piso by Cicero, Obrepsisti ad honores errore hominum. He was perfectly straightforward, a faithful friend, the ready promoter of all the meritorious young, and kind to every one. To such a man the spectacle of brutally-ignorant pretenders treating the sick all over the kingdom without restraint, must have been distressing; and the duty of exerting his great influence with the government to reform the practice of his profession, must have been felt by him overwhelming." It was when the sweating sickness, as it was called, raged with such fearful violence as not only to alarm the people generally, but even the carefully protected court, that Linacre brought his plan of a College of Physicians before Cardinal Wolsey, who, at the time, exercised almost unlimited power. He regarded the scheme favourably, and its establishment followed as a matter of course. The first meeting of the new Society took place at Linacre's house, No. 5, Knight Rider Street, a building known as the Storehouse, which he gave to the College, and which still remains in their possession. But the science of Medicine was not advanced by Linacre. "We are indebted to him," says Dr. Elliotson in his interesting Oration, "for no original observation, no improvement in practice." Caius, who flourished fifty years after Linacre, was a great benefactor to the College, increasing its reputation by his scientific attainments. He studied anatomy at Padua under Vesalius of Brussels, whose great work De Humani Corporis Fabrica, is yet considered a splendid monument of art, as well as science3. Caius erected a statue to Linacre's memory in St. Paul's, and endowed Gonville College at Cambridge with estates for the maintenance of three fellows and twenty scholars; two of the former were required to be physicians, and three of the latter medical students. The heal 2 Harveian Oration for 1846, p. 39. The figures in this work are stated to have been designed by Titian. See Cuvier's Leçons sur l'Hist. des Sci. Nat. 4 Caius is the original of the ridiculous French doctor in the Merry Wives of Windsor. ing art, however, advanced but slowly. The extreme clumsiness and cruelty with which operations were performed, even subsequently to the above period, would scarcely be credited, had we not authentic descriptions of them by the operators, still in our possession. Thus Fabricius of Acquapendente, the eminent professor at Padua, and preceptor to the immortal Harvey, describes what he considered an improved and easy operation in the following terms: "If it be a moveable tumour, I cut it away with a red-hot knife, that sears as it cuts; but if it be adhered to the chest, I cut it without bleeding or pain, (!) with a wooden or horn knife soaked in aqua-fortis, with which, having cut the skin, I dig out the rest with my fingers"!! When the surgeons of Edinburgh were incorporated, it was required as a pre-requisite that they should be able to read and write, "to know the anatomie, nature, and complexion of everie member of humanis body, and lykewayes to know all vaynes of the same, that he may make flew bothemie in dew time." These were all the professional qualifications considered necessary at that period, so that we must not feel any surprise at the low state of medicine and surgery. Sir William Petty informs us, that even in his time the proportion of deaths to cures in the Hospitals of St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas was 1 to 7; whilst we know by subsequent documents, that in the latter establishment, during 1741, the mortality had diminished to 1 in 10; during 1780 to 1 in 14; during 1813 to 1 in 16; and in 1827, out of 12,494 patients under treatment, only 259 died, or 1 in 48. His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex justly said, in one of his addresses from the chair of the Royal Society, "Such is the advantage which has already been derived from the improvement of medical science, that comparing the value of life as it is now calculated, to what it was a hundred years ago, it has absolutely doubled." And Sir Astley Cooper asserted that the human frame was better understood in his time by students, than it had been previously by pro fessors. The great Harvey was born in 1578, at Folkestone in Kent. After studying at Cambridge, he went to Padua, where the fame of Fabricius attracted medical students from all parts of Europe. There, "excited by the discovery of the valves of the veins, which his master had recently made, and reflecting on the direction of the valves, which are at the entrance of the veins into the heart, and at the exit of the arteries from it, he conceived the idea of making experiments in order to determine what is the course of the blood in its vessels. He found that when he tied up veins in various animals, they swelled below the ligature, or in the part furthest from the heart; while arteries, with a like ligature, swelled on the side next the heart. Combining these facts with the direction of the valves, he came to the conclusion, that the blood is impelled by the left side of the heart in the arteries to the extremities, and thence returns by the veins into the right side of the heart. He showed, too, how this was confirmed by the phenomena of the pulse, and by the results of opening the vessels. He proved, also, that the circulation of the lungs is a continuation of the larger circulation; and thus the whole doctrine of the double circulation was established. Harvey made his experiments in 1616 and 1618. It is commonly said that he first promulgated his opinion in 1619, but the manuscript of his lecture, which he |