is interest predominates.

Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into graver topics,
we should have a copious chapter to write of the opposition to new
discoveries. Medical history supplies no unimportant number. On the
improvements in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior
professors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that
they attempted to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by
the graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the principles and
conclusions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which had been approved
of so many ages, to be overturned by any person. In phlebotomy we have a
curious instance. In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that
when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed on the other. A
great physician insisted on a contrary practice; a civil war of opinion
divided Spain; at length, they had recourse to courts of law; the
novelists were condemned; they appealed to the emperor, Charles the Fifth;
he was on the point of confirming the decree of the court, when the Duke
of Savoy died of a pleurisy, having been legitimately bled. This puzzled
the emperor, who did not venture on a decision.

The introduction of antimony and the jesuits' bark also provoked
legislative interference; decrees and ordinances were issued, and a civil
war raged among the medical faculty, of which Guy Patin is the copious
historian. Vesalius was incessantly persecuted by the public prejudices
against dissection; Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood led
to so protracted a controversy, that the great discovery was hardly
admitted even in the latter days of the old man; Lady Wortley Montague's
introduction of the practice of inoculation met the same obstinate
resistance as, more recently, that of vaccination startled the people.
Thus objects of the highest importance to mankind, on their first
appearance, are slighted and contemned. Posterity smiles at the ineptitude
of the preceding age, while it becomes familiar with those objects which
that age has so eagerly rejected. Time is a tardy patron of true
knowledge.

A nobler theme is connected with the principle we have here but touched
on--the gradual changes in public opinion--the utter annihilation of false
notions, like those of witchcraft, astrology, spectres, and many other
superstitions of no remote date, the hideous progeny of imposture got on
ignorance, and audacit