uld
include animals as well. Thus, in speaking of even the "skilfullest
physicians," he indicated that many of them "might, without
disparagement to their profession, do it an useful piece of service, if
they would be pleased to collect and digest all the approved experiments
and practices of the farriers, graziers, butchers, and the like, which
the ancients did not despise...; and ... which might serve to
illustrate the _methodus medendi_."[49] He was quite critical of
physicians who were too conservative even to examine the claims of the
nonprofessionals, especially those who were relatively low in the social
or intellectual scale. This casts an interesting sidelight on the
snobbishness of the medical profession.

Boyle's willingness and ability to ignore the restrictions of an
Establishment represent the full flowering of what I might call the
Renaissance spirit--the drive to go outside accepted bounds, to
explore, to _try_, to avoid commitment, and to investigate for oneself.

What internal and external factors permit a successful breakaway from
tradition? Rebels there have always been, yet successful rebels are
relatively infrequent. The late seventeenth century was a period of
successful rebellion, and the virtuosi were one of the factors which
contributed to the success. Robert Boyle played a significant part in
introducing new methods into science and new science into medicine.

We must realize that Boyle was primarily a chemist and not a biologist.
He thought in chemical terms, drawing his examples from physics and
chemistry; he did not think in terms of the living creature or the
organism, and as a mechanist he passed quite lightly over the concept or
organismic behavior. His basic anti-Aristotelianism prevented his
appreciating the biologically oriented thought of Aristotle. Instead,
Boyle talked about the inorganic world, of water, of metals and
elements, of physical properties. He ignored that inner drive which
Spinoza called the _conatus_; or the _seeds_ of Paracelsus or van
Helmont; or the persistence over a time course of any "essence" or
"form." Since he dealt with phenomena relatively simple when compared
with living phenomena, he could, for this very reason, make progress, up
to a point. As a chemist, he could seek fairly specific and precise
correlations of various concrete environmental factors, and then assume
that living beings behaved as did the inorganic objects which he
investigated. However