26
HARVEY AND GALEN
of side-stream or back-water, no part of the great river of scientific progress which took its rise from the revival of learning. European medicine passed, in fact, through the same three stages which we now think necessary in medical education, of general, of scientific, and of practical training. First it was disciplined by Linacre and the humanists in accurate knowledge of the medical classics ; next by the anatomists and botanists in the revived Greek sciences ; and thus it was prepared for the right appreciation and study of practical medicine. We cannot wish that the order of progress should have been different.
If Harvey’s discovery grew, though not immediately, out of the Renaissance or Greek revival, it will be interesting to compare his work with that of the Greeks, and more especially with that of Galen. The intervening generations of anatomists — Vesalius, Colombo, Fabricius, and the rest — added much to the older knowledge of the structure of the body, but, except in the explanation of the pulmonary circulation, little to the knowledge of physiology. On this field Harvey stands face to face with Galen, nor is there any third figure that can be compared with them except that of the founder of biological science, Aristotle himself. Galen and Harvey seem at first sight such different per- sonalities that it might be easier to find in them features of diversity than of likeness, but there was between them at least one point of contact — their love for anatomy, including what neither of them ever conceived of as a distinct science, the study of function which we now call physiology. If Galen had written nothing else than his works treating of these subjects he might not have received almost divine honours, as he did for a thousand years ; but he would still be one of the greatest anatomists and physiologists of the world.
In speaking of Galen we are impressed with a sense of the immensity of the subject. His works form one vast encyclopaedia of ancient medicine, comprising anatomy, physiology, practical medicine and surgery, therapeutics with the knowledge of drugs, and practical hygiene and professional ethics, Then we have materials towards the
