1647. Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iv. pp. 207, 405; Renouard, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. ii. p. 173.
464
Biog. Univ. vol. xxxviii. pp. 123, 124.
465
Some of the great steps taken by Joubert are concisely stated in Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. i. pp. 293, 294, vol. iii. p. 361. Compare Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iii. p. 210. Fernel, though enthusiastically praised by Patin, was probably hardly equal to Joubert. Lettres de Patin, vol. iii. pp. 59, 199, 648. At p. 106, Patin calls Fernel ‘le premier médecin de son temps, et peut-être le plus grand qui sera jamais.’
466
See a summary of them in Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iii. pp. 405, 406, vol. vii. pp. 14, 15. Sir Benjamin Brodie (Lectures on Surgery, p. 21) says, ‘Few greater benefits have been conferred on mankind than that for which we are indebted to Ambrose Parey – the application of a ligature to a bleeding artery.’
467
‘C'était là une vue très-ingénieuse et très-juste qu'Ambroise Paré donnait pour la première fois. C'était un commencement d'ostéologie comparée.’ Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part. ii. p. 42. To this I may add, that he is the first French writer on medical jurisprudence. See Paris and Fonblanque's Medical Jurisprudence, 1823, vol. i. p. xviii.
468
‘L'un des premiers auteurs à qui l'on doit des observations cadavériques sur les maladies, est le fameux Baillou.’ Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. ii. p. 218. See also vol. iii. p. 362; and Renouard, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. ii. p. 89. The value of his services is recognized in a recent able work, Phillips on Scrofula, 1846, p. 16.
469
‘The most celebrated surgeon of the sixteenth century was Ambroise Paré… From the time of Paré until the commencement of the eighteenth century, surgery was but little cultivated in France. Mauriceau, Saviard, and Belloste, were the only French surgeons of note who could be contrasted with so many eminent men of other nations. During the eighteenth century, France produced two surgeons of extraordinary genius; these are Petit and Desault.’ Bowman's Surgery, in Encyclop. of Medical Sciences, 1847, 4to. pp. 829, 830.
470
It is unnecessary to adduce evidence respecting the services rendered by Sydenham, as they are universally admitted; but what, perhaps, is less generally known, is, that Glisson anticipated those important views concerning irritability, which were afterwards developed by Haller and Gorter. Compare Renouard, Hist. de le Médecine, vol. ii. p. 192; Elliotson's Human Physiol. p. 471; Bordas Demoulin, Cartésianisme, vol. i. p. 170; In Wagner's Physiol. 1841, p. 655, the theory is too exclusively ascribed to Haller.
471
Of this we have numerous complaints from foreigners who visited France. I will quote the testimony of one celebrated man. In 1699, Addison writes from Blois: ‘I made use of one of the physicians of this place, who are as cheap as our English farriers, and generally as ignorant.’ Aikin's Life of Addison, vol. i. p. 74.
472
Indeed, France was the last great country in Europe in which a chair of clinical medicine was established. See Renouard, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. ii. p. 312; and Bouillaud, Philos. Médicale, p. 114.
473
M. Bouillaud, in his account of the state of medicine in the seventeenth century, does not mention a single Frenchman during this period. See Bouillaud, Philosophie Médicale, pp. 13 seq. During many years of the power of Louis XIV., the French Academy only possessed one anatomist; and of him, few students of physiology have ever heard: ‘M. du Verney fut assez long-temps le seul anatomiste de l'académie, et ce ne fut qu'en 1684 qu'on lui joignit M. Mery.’ Eloge de Du Verney, in Œuvres de Fontenelle, vol. vi. p. 392.
474
Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. pp. 64–73, 76–80.
475
After Belon, nothing was done in France for the natural history of animals until 1734, when there appeared the first volume of Reaumur's great work. See Swainson on the Study of Nat. Hist. pp. 24, 43.
476
On this remarkable man, who was the first philosophic chemist Europe produced, and who, so early as 1630, anticipated some of the generalizations made a hundred and fifty years later by Lavoisier, see Liebig's Letters on Chemistry, pp. 46, 47; Thomson's Hist. of Chemistry, vol. ii. pp. 95, 96; Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 729; Cuvier, Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. p. 30.
477
Cuvier (Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. p. 30) says of Rey, ‘son écrit était tombé dans l'oubli le plus profond;’ and, in another work, the same great authority writes (Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 333): ‘Il y avait plus de quarante ans que Becker avait présenté sa nouvelle théorie, développée par Stahl; il y avait encore plus long-temps que les expériences de Boyle sur la chimie pneumatique avaient été publiées, et cependant, rien de tout cela n'entrait encore dans l'enseignement général de la chimie, du moins en France.’
478
The highest present generalizations of the laws of nutrition are those by M. Chevreul; which are thus summed up by MM. Robin et Verdeil, in their admirable work, Chimie Anatomique, vol. i. p. 203, Paris, 1853: ‘En passant des plantes aux animaux, nous voyons que plus l'organisation de ces derniers est compliquée, plus les aliments dont ils se nourrissent sont complexes et analogues par leurs principes immédiats aux principes des organes qu'ils doivent entretenir.
‘En définitive, on voit que les végétaux se nourrissent d'eau, d'acide carbonique, d'autres gaz et de matières organiques à l'état d'engrais, ou en d'autres termes altérées, c'est-à-dire ramenées à l'état de principes plus simples, plus solubles. Au contraire, les animaux plus élevés dans l'échelle organique ont besoin de matières bien plus complexes quant aux principes immédiats qui les composent, et plus variées dans leurs propriétés.’
479
Brunfels in 1530, and Fuchs in 1542, were the two first writers who observed the vegetable kingdom for themselves, instead of copying what the ancients had said. Compare Whewell's Hist. of the Sciences, vol. iii. pp. 305, 306, with Pulteney's Hist. of Botany, vol. i. p. 38.
480
The microscope was exhibited in London, by Drebbel, about 1620; and this appears to be the earliest unquestionable notice of its use, though some writers assert that it was invented at the beginning of the seventeenth century, or even in 1590. Compare the different statements, in Pouillet, Elémens de Physique, vol. ii. p. 357; Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. pp. 699, 700; Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iv. p. 337; Winckler, Gesch. der Botanik, p. 136; Quekett's Treatise on the Microscope, 1848, p. 2; Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 470; Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. iii. p. 202; Leslie's Nat. Philos. p. 52. On the subsequent improvement of the microscope during the seventeenth century, see Brewster's Life of Newton, vol. i. pp. 29, 242, 243.
481
See Balfour's Botany, p. 15. In Pulteney's Progress of Botany in England, this beautiful discovery is, if I rightly remember, not even alluded to; but it appears, from a letter written in 1672, that it was then becoming generally known, and had been confirmed by Grew and Malpighi. Ray's Correspond.
