there for all learned men who came
into his neighborhood. Gesner was not only the best naturalist among the
scholars of his day, but of all men of that century he was the pattern
man of letters. He was faultless in private life, assiduous in study,
diligent in maintaining correspondence and good-will with learned men in
all countries, hospitable--though his means were small--to every scholar
that came into Zurich. Prompt to serve all, he was an editor of other
men's volumes, a writer of prefaces for friends, a suggestor to young
writers of books on which they might engage themselves, and a great
helper to them in the progress of their work. But still, while finding
time for services to other men, he could produce as much out of his own
study as though he had no part in the life beyond its walls."

A large majority of these early naturalists and botanists were
physicians.(3) The Greek art of observation was revived in a study of
the scientific writings of Aristotle, Theophrastus and Dioscorides and
in medicine, of Hippocrates and of Galen, all in the Greek originals.
That progress was at first slow was due in part to the fact that the
leaders were too busy scraping the Arabian tarnish from the pure gold of
Greek medicine and correcting the anatomical mistakes of Galen to bother
much about his physiology or pathology. Here and there among the great
anatomists of the period we read of an experiment, but it was the art of
observation, the art of Hippocrates, not the science of Galen, not the
carefully devised experiment to determine function, that characterized
their work. There was indeed every reason why men should have been
content with the physiology and pathology of that day, as, from a
theoretical standpoint, it was excellent. The doctrine of the four
humors and of the natural, animal and vital spirits afforded a ready
explanation for the symptoms of all diseases, and the practice of the
day was admirably adapted to the theories. There was no thought of, no
desire for, change. But the revival of learning awakened in men at
first a suspicion and at last a conviction that the ancients had left
something which could be reached by independent research, and gradually
the paralytic-like torpor passed away.

(3) Miall: The Early Naturalists, London, 1912.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did three things in
medicine--shattered authority, laid the foundation of an accurate
knowledge of the structure of the hum