14 HARVEY AND GALEN
nothing original, and the above constitutes the life’s work of this ardent and indefatigable scholar. We need not ask what the value of his positive achievement was, for it was curtailed by external circumstances and also by his fastidious accuracy, which made it difficult for him ever to think any work perfect enough to be published. But it may be asked, Was the aim which Linacre and his fellow-humanists set before them sufficiently important ? Was it anything more than a matter of philological interest to revive and translate the Greek medical and philosophical classics ? I think it was a worthy aim, and was justified by the event, for out of this work of the scholars grew the scientific movement, and out of this movement, in anatomy and botany more especially, was developed the first possibility of a scientific medicine. To show how these things happened would take a long time; I can only give a brief sketch of the position of the Greek fathers of medicine in Europe during the Middle Ages.
During what are called the Dark Ages the tradition of ancient medicine and science had been in the Western Empire completely broken. Galen and Hippocrates may have been known by name, but were quite inaccessible to physicians, as Greek had been forgotten even as a learned language, and Latin versions, if such had existed, were quite lost. When the medical classics came back to Europe it was by a circuitous route and through the medium of
being influenced by private friendship or a spirit of flattery, by a very competent scholar, Leonhart Fuchs, disposes of this criticism. Fuchs, in bringing out a new edition of Linacre’s translation of Galen De Sanitate (Tubingen, 1541), refers to the warm eulogium passed on Linacre’s grammatical works by a still greater scholar, Melanchthon, and says to add more in his praise would be only bringing water to the ocean. He places Linacre for his
knowledge, both of Latin and of Greek, above all the other translators : — ‘ Hoc dixisse satis est, Lina - crurn diligentia et orationis puritate omnes post se reliquisse interpretes Many other testimonies might be quoted. I have given the above to show that Linacre is placed in the front rank of the ‘Medical Humanists,’ not only on the strength of our collegiate loyalty or patriotic senti- ment, but by the verdict of European scholarship.
