THE REVIVAL OF SCIENCE
21
theological in its rigour. But this was not for long. When the leaven had had time to work, and a second generation of Galenists had assimilated the new doctrines more com- pletely, a totally different spirit began to prevail. All over Europe this phenomenon presented itself, that the medical humanists and Galenists, especially those well skilled in Greek, were turning to the investigation of nature. The sciences of anatomy and botany were especially cultivated by them, and, it would seem, by them alone. Clinical medicine owed its revival to the Galenists. It was evident that the revived Hellenism, so far from perpetuating the reign of dogma, had an inspiring and vivifying influence. This spirit of independent investigation was the special note of the second generation of the medical humanists, who belonged to the second stage of the Greek revival, a period and school sufficiently denoted for us by the name of John Caius, but including other and greater names which must be briefly referred to.
Let us first trace the rise of anatomy. One of the earliest anatomists at this time was Jacobus Sylvius, professor at Paris, an ardent student in the original Greek of Galen’s works,, in which he would see no error, but also an independent dissector. Among his pupils were Servetus, a typical scholar of the Renaissance 1 ; Charles Etienne or Stephanus, belonging to the family of printers of that name, renowned for their learning ; and the celebrated Vesalius, who was an ardent Greek scholar. Caius has told us how, when he lived in the same house at Padua with Vesalius, the latter would bring out his Greek manuscripts to clear up some passage in Galen or some difficult point
1 Servetus, under the pseudonym of Villanovanus, wrote a little book called Syruporum universa ratio, ad Galeni censuram expolita, Paris, 1537. In the preface he thus speaks of Galen : ‘ (Galenus) renascitur vero felici nostro seculo, ut seipsum turpius deformatum in pristinum candorem restituens illustret ; ut ab
Arabum copiis occupatam arcem, velut postliminio reversus, eripiat ; et ea, quae corruptis barbarorum sordibus fuerant conspurcata, re- purget. Quae omnia, cum sint liquido a recentioribus demonstrata, non est quod ego, causis illorum me im- miscens, hie referam, aut eorum dictis sententiis calculum adiiciam.’
