34 HEROES OF THOUGHT.

way the personal influence of our KING has been used to

secure a better comprehension of English aims by the worldat large. The outcome of all this must be the placing ofour profession upon a securer basis, for as the different

nations rise in the scale of civilisation and obtain a more

just acquaintance with their neighbours they must come toperceive how universal are. the laws ot scientific medicine.

They find themselves confronted with the same problems,sanitary or pathological, as their friends abroad, and theylearn to appreciate the labours of medical men by applyingto their own use the fruit of these labours.

We have endeavoured, particularly during the last three orfour years, to illustrate the truth of this movement by placingbefore our readers regular correspondence from all parts ofthe world. The mere size of such a programme makes it in-

evitable that the communications should be brief, but we are

happy to know that they prove of considerable service to

our readers, while it is interesting to observe how the samescientific and professional difficulties present themselves

in every quarter. We hope and believe that in the newercountries scientific medicine will be able to develop fasterthan it has done in Europe in bygone days, for these

countries will be unhampered by traditions having their

origin in restricted knowledge and sociological mis-

conception. In particular their authorities and importantpersons, both medical and lay, are able to work at

once from a position to which we in this countryare now only beginning to attain. They follow

the reasons for scientific proceedings in a way which

they could not possibly have done had it not been

for the past labours of the medical profession, and

the medical profession will be invited to call uponthe assistance of laymen for the advancement of scientificmedicine, a fact which is of great importance now

that medicine touches the borders or passes over into the

territory of so many other sciences. Great advances in

medical knowledge are inevitably coming of the growingrecognition of medicine by the world as a science com-

pounded of sciences ; while the disappearance from thepopular mind of the conception of the practitioner as a sortof magician is being replaced in every direction by amore reasonable estimate of his services. We know

-none better-that the practitioner has many draw-

backs in his hard and anxious life, and we grieve to

think that many of these could easily be set right in ourown country by a more complete understanding of profes-sional aims and responsibilities than yet exists, but despitethis the story of medicine is one of progress. The publicsympathy with medicine increases, and it will continue to doso in proportion to the advancement of education and of

that wide spread of sound medical doctrine to which we are

proud to be able in some measure to contribute.

.

Heroes of Thought."HELLE1BISTS, professors of Roman law, and enthusiasts of

Romantic or Christian medievalism are not to be easily con-vinced that an intelligible stream of progress can be shownin the long, broken, stormy course of evolution from SOLONand THALES to the nineteenth century of CAVOUR andDARWIN. But a true philosophy of history can trace a real

and consistent sequence." Thus writes Mr. FREDERIC

HARRISON in an introduction to a volume of " Essays andAddresses by the late JOHN HENRY BRIDGES. 1 The first

half of this book is devoted to essays in Positivist

doctrine, of which, as is well known, Dr. BRIDGES.

was one of the most distinguished exponents in this

country. One of these essays, entitled "The Philo-

sophy of History," might well serve as a text for

the whole book, for in it an attempt is made to

sustain one of the central tenets of the Positivist school-

that of the principle of historical growth or of continuityin progress.

In tracing the course of Western civilisation duringthe 25 centuries since its dawn in the times of the

great Greek thinkers, it is claimed that the state of the

speculative faculties of mankind is the prime agent in socialadvance and progress, and further that the social changeof each successive period resulted not from the practical lifeof that period but from the previous state of belief and

thought, and that therefore the order of human progressiondepends mainly, or at any rate largely, upon the order of

progression in the intellectual convictions of mankind. Whenwe remember the importance assigned by COMTE to mathe-matics as the basis of systematic thought, it is not surprisingto find that Dr. BRIDGES maintained that the most originalachievement of Greece was neither her poetry nor her

metaphysical philosophy but her separation of mathematics,the humblest and yet the most fundamental of the abstract

sciences, from the confused collection or inchoate mass of

empirical knowledge which mankind had previously accumu-lated. Dr. BRIDGES complained that history as commonlytaught does not include the history of science and that evennow the sociological importance of its great discoveries i&

only just beginning to be recognised. In illustration of the lawof continuity he shows how the discoveries in geometry andmathematical astronomy made by the Greeks were adopted .

and extended by the Arab schools of Bagdad and Cordova,to be continued by the Western thinkers of the thirteenth

century, men such as GROSSETESTE and ROGER BACON. In

his opinion there was no dark age, even in the apparentretrogression of mediaeval Europe before the Renaissance,for he maintained that whereas in ancient Greece there was

a great development of the intellectual aspects of human

faculties and in ancient Rome great practical activity in

political and warlike spheres, the third or spiritual part ofman’s threefold nature was but little advanced till these so-

called dark ages. In these times learning began to extendfrom the favoured few to the many through the medium ofthe monastic teachers, while the great social revolution

from servile to free labour began. Dr. BRIDGES illustrated

his views in some commemorative addresses which form the

second part of this book. These lectures were delivered on

certain days in the " Positivist Calendar of Great Menu

Among these, he treats of THALES, ROGER BACON, and

HARVEY as heroes of thought; DANTE, CALDEo;,

CoRNEiLLE, and DIDEROT as heroes of literature,

The account given of the importance to mankind of the

1 Essays and Addresses, by the late John Henry Bridges, M.B.,F.R.C.P. sometime Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford; late MedicalMetropolitan Inspector to the Local Government. Board. With anintroduction by Frederic Harrison. London; Chapman and HallLimited. 1907. Pp. 307. Price 12s. 6d. net.

35HEROES OF THOUGHT.

elementary mathematical abstractions of THALES and the c

other Greek geometers is exceedingly interesting. Starting c

from the practical problems involved in land measurement i

they laid the foundations of physics and astronomy and evolved 1

certain fundamental laws-indeed, the first laws of nature I

- two be grasped by man. It is hard for us now to conceive <

without careful thought of the great advance made in the-two apparently simple abstractions of the line and the angle, sand yet they form the basis of all measurement and without I

- them no calculation or accurate mensuration would be I

possible. The further conception of the triangle, the I

simplest possible figure, was the one in connexion with which’THALES made his greatest discoveries, among which the law"that the three angles of any triangle were equal together totwo right angles is one of the most familiar. Another greatlaw discovered by this master mind was that of the similarityof two figures of unequal sides and equal angles by means ofwhich he taught the Egyptians how to measure the heightof their pyramids. This was done by measuring the lengthof the shadow cast when the sun was halfway between the.zenith and the horizon, since at that moment the shadowof a stick placed upright in the ground was found to be equalto the length of the stick itself. Without these greatfundamental conceptions and the laws deduced therefrom-there could have been no astronomy, no mechanics, nonavigation, and no true conception of order which is in turn-the basis to which science endeavours to reduce the complexproblems met with in biological and sociological studies.

It is a long step from THALES to ROGER BACON, from theancient to the mediaeval, but BACON stands out from the-schoolmen as a great philosopher and a practical man ofscience, and Dr. BRIDGES’S long study and special knowledge-of the great Franciscan friar are here summarised in a most

illuminating essay. The influence upon his career of his

early association with GROSSETESTE at Oxford, who probablydirected his attention towards science, the importance ofhis introduction to the Arabian adaptations of Greek dis-overies through the agency of MICHAEL SCOTT, and theeffect of his whole-hearted attachment to the Franciscan

order are all clearly indicated. It is only in recent timesthat we have realised what we owe to Arabian philosophersand men of science who preserved what the Greeks haddiscovered in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, natural

history, and human anatomy. Moreover, the Arabian andMoorish schools in many instances made great advances,since their instruments of observation were more accurate

than those of the Greeks. They laid the foundations of

algebra and of optics. They adopted, if they did not dis--cover, the decimal system, and they promoted the study of

trigonometry, while their advances in chemistry and in

medical sciences were truly remarkable. ROGER BACON was

one of the first to render this great store of Eastern know-

ledge accessible to Western thinkers, his object being toshow the West superior to the East and to advance learningthrough religious agencies with a view to the reform of

education and the promotion of knowledge. His "OpusMajus" is one of the most remarkable surveys of knowledgeextant and shows him to be greatly in advance of

his contemporaries ; indeed, he has been described as

a man born some three centuries before his time. He I’devotes the earlier sections of his work to the four great

obstacles to wisdom-namely, undue deference to authority,custom, popular prejudice, and unwillingness to confess

ignorance. His instruments for advancing the studies of

Western Europe were philology, mathematics, and experi-mental research, and to these the second, third, fourth, andfifth sections of the " Opus Majus were devoted. To mathe-matics he attached the greatest possible importance, de-

scribing it as the key and entrance-gate of science. His

application of mathematics to geography led him to a careful

study of geography and to the compilation of a treatise

thereon. He pointed out the necessity for a reform of theJulian Calendar which was delayed for three centuries afterhis death before it was carried out. The seventh section of

the "Opus Majus," of which only part is preserved, dealt _

with practical reason and ethics and is the crowning of hiswork. This essay of Dr. BRIDGES is the most interestingshort study that we have read on this great philosopher, andas Mr. HARRISON writes in his introduction, makes onewonder "if we are right in putting FRANCIS BACON on a

pedestal higher than that occupied by ROGER."The third of these commemorative addresses, entitled

" Harvey and his Successors," was delivered as the HarveianOration before the Royal College of Physicians of London, in1892. Here again the importance of mathematics in rela-tion to science is emphasised. HARVEY was born at the

time when England gave birth to her greatest men in

literature, philosophy, and science, to quote Dr. BRIDGES," the greatest period of English history." At Padua he

studied under FABRICIUS and may well have come under the

influence of GALILEO, who was then attracting students fromall parts to Padua, and although there is no record of personalacquaintance between the two men there can be little

doubt that the influence of GALILEO’S physical advanceswas felt by HARVEY, who, as Dr. BRIDGES wrote, "came

back from Padua with the sense that Nature was not merelyto be observed but measured." HARVEY’S great work was the

application of scientific methods to the study of livingorganisms, and by this means the complex alchemistic orhumoral explanations of vital processes were at once dis-

proved. Dr. BRIDGES traced in this address the influence of

HARVEY’S work upon his contemporaries and successors.

The appreciation of his work by DESCARTES and the com-bined influence of his discoveries and the Cartesian philo-sophy in leading to the foundation of scientific medicine arediscussed. The origin of the iatro-matbematical or iatro-

physical and the chemiatric schools is traced and the subse-quent foundation of an animist school by STAHL it the endof the seventeenth century is outlined. It was not, however,until the eighteenth century that biology became recognisedas a distinct science with special methods, but the greatdiscoveries of HARVEY were the direct outcome of the

mathematical and physical discoveries made in his time.

It has been said that science is measurement and Dr.

BRIDGES’S interesting addresses afford a striking illustra-tion in support of the trite generalisation. The three

great men whom he has studied were all heroes of thoughtwho in face of obstacles applied accurate methods to the

practical study of the problems which they investigated. It

is highly instructive to follow the work of three such

striking philosophers as the Greek geometer, the mediaevalphysicist, and the first scientific biologist. We can

36 THE COORDINATION OF MEDICAL STUDIES.

cordially commend this interesting collection of thoughtfulessays to our readers as a stimulating and suggestive study.

The Co&ouml;rdination of MedicalStudies.

To consider the beginnings of medical study at the

beginning of the year seems to us appropriate, and wetherefore publish in this issue two interesting contributionson the study of anatomy and embryology contributed bywell-known teachers in different schools, feeling sure thatthey will afford abundant food for thought to the man whois at all concerned about the future of medical education

in this country. Dr. ARTHUR KEITH in his address to the

students of the London Hospital very clearly sets forth a

convincing case against the fashion of entirely divorcingthe study of anatomy from that of physiology with theresult that the average student starts on his profes-sional career with his knowledge of the structure and

the function of the human body stored away in two

watertight compartments in his mind. It is a useful cor-

rective to over-sanguine ideas as to the complete efficiency Iof the present state of medical education to be told byDr. KEITH how recently we have fallen away from

higher standards in our systematic teaching of anatomy.

"Up to the end of the eighteenth century," he says,

" there was a strong school of British anatomists who

regarded dissecting as a means for obtaining not a

description but an understanding of the human body ; " and

surely this was the ideal of the great anatomists of all pastages as witness HEROPHILUS and GALEN amongst the

ancients, EUSTACHIUS, FALLOPIUS, STENO, and SYLVIUS

in succeeding centuries after the mediaeval revival of the

neglected science, and, greatest of all, WILLIAM HARVEYand the two HUNTERS at whose handiwork of dissection

we may still look with our own eyes. What would JOHN

HUNTER have thought, what would he have said, could

he have looked forward to see his methods of thinking andteaching entirely superseded by the brilliant categorical andpurely descriptive anatomy which the schools of Paris evenin HUNTER’S lifetime were setting up ? 7The British student sought Paris a hundred years ago I

because the difficulty of obtaining subjects for dissection

hampered his teachers at home and not because he had anyfault to find with their teaching. But Dr. KEITH is right in

pointing out that the method of anatomical instruction thusstarted soon became established in England as a custom, andeven the old concession made by authors to the cause ofthe solidarity of medicine in writing on "Anatomy,Descriptive and Surgical," is lacking in many more moderntreatises, excellent indeed after their sort, but composedof descriptive anatomy pure and simple. There is no doubt

that this divorce of structure from function is an

error. Save for the very rare student with an

inherent genius for aone or other of these studies the

sole aim of teaching a medical student anatomy and phy-siology is that he may become a scientific physician or arational surgeon who has built his professional house on thesolid rock of well-ascertained fact. What is required bymed.ca.1 students is instruction in theory and detail alikeof the kind which will make the pathological processes

which they are afterwards to study comprehensibleto them. Teachers are wanted who can clothe the

dry bones of their lectures on anatomy with the livingtissues of physiology and morphology and render them yetmore vital to the medical student by pressing into serviceillustrations from medicine and surgery, so that the warp

of structure and the woof of function may be woven into

a stout garment of knowledge to clothe the student’s mindin the place of the patchwotk cloak in which it must now toooften go forth, shivering on a stormy journey. Instances

arise of the need of teaching of this sort in the con-

sideration of every system in the body, for the circulation,the respiration, the digestion, and the functions of the braincan be much better grasped by the simultaneous teachingof their anatomy and physiology. The physiological teacheris occasionally obliged to sketch the rough outline of

the coarse anatomy of the subjects with which he deals, foroften, as in dealing with the brain, he must do so

to make himself understood at all, and he also either

in p’l’op’l’i&acirc; personal or through an assistant in histologydevotes much care to teaching the microscopical structureof the various tissues ; but it is to a much fuller extent that

we would have the physiologist invoke his anatomy ; mightnot he, for instance, occasionally direct more attention tothe ordinary functions of muscles illustrated from gross

anatomy instead of spending nearly all the time that he can

give to them in the demonstration of their chemical and

electrical niceties ? 2 Still more often does the anatomical

teacher appear to us to miss the true reasons of the lessons

which he is giving by avoiding the very mention of any-thing that savours of physiology, referring such subjectsto the other department of the medical school. We

would even suggest that examiners might rest contentwith a little less minute knowledge of ultimate divisions ofsmall nerves and arteries and markings on bones whenthe time saved might be employed by students in gain-

ing a good working idea of the human machine. How

many men on first entering on clinical work can look ata patient and form a clear mental picture of his organsas they lie inside him and at the same time even faintlyrealise the ceaseless and multiple activities of their vital

functions ? The average student sitting for an examination in

surgery knows the anatomy of hernia thoroughly, for he was

brought up on it, but there are many more anatomical

points the vital surgical importance of which might withequal advantage be impressed on the student of anatomywhen he first learns it ; whilst the physiological teacher

could take many more illustrations than is his wont from

the field of medicine. And in neither case need the student

be taken into the wards; the pathological deviation fromthe normal could be explained by consideration of the

normal.

Professor PETER THOMPSON’S lecture on the Study of

Embryology bears testimony to the truth of the contentionthat medical studies are not well coordinated despite theceaseless care that has been exercised in arranging thenumerous systems. Embryology is a study the importanceof which has been appreciated since the days of WILLIAMHARVEY at least ; a great deal is now known about

it which might profitably be the common knowledgeof every medical student, and yet how often does it