Ebook Medical History From the Earliest Times

Our third period dates from the rise of a physiology founded no longer on speculation but on fact, and begins with that great discovery which has given the name of Harvey an immortality of reputation. But it was the betrothal rather than the marriage of Medicine and Science which was then celebrated. Chemistry, physics, physiology were still too young to take their proper position as help mates to the healing art, and the attempt to hasten the union by seizing upon isolated sciences or scientific theories gave birth to a new set of schools and systems, chemical, mechani cal, vitalistic, presenting many curious analogies to the old Greek ones. Happily their duration was shorter; great men continued the work of Harvey, and, at the beginning of the present century, medicine under Bichat and Laennec became, at least in some of its departments, scientific; systems, with one exception — homoeopathy — disappeared, and medicine, like all other sciences, entered upon a period of unparalleled progress.