the Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus, and
Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine's very
oracles, Phoebus, Chiron, Aesculapius, and his sons Podalinus and
Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Praxagoras, who invented the arteries,
and Dioctes, 'qui primus urinae animum dedit.' All these taught orally.
Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from Aesculapius, and of him we
have manuscripts; to him we owe 'the vital principle.' He also invented
the bandage, and tapped for water on the chest; and above all he
dissected; yet only quadrupeds, for the brutal prejudices of the pagan
vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him followed
Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in the human
body."

"Surely, sir, the Almighty gave us all that is in our bodies, and not
Aristotle, nor any Grecian man," objected Gerard humbly.

"Child! of course He gave us the thing; but Aristotle did more, he gave
us the name of the thing. But young men will still be talking. The
next great light was Galen; he studied at Alexandria, then the home
of science. He, justly malcontent with quadrupeds, dissected apes, as
coming nearer to man, and bled like a Trojan. Then came Theophilus, who
gave us the nerves, the lacteal vessels, and the pia mater."

This worried Gerard. "I cannot lie still and hear it said that mortal
man bestowed the parts which Adam our father took from Him, who made him
of the clay, and us his sons."

"Was ever such perversity?" said the doctor, his colour rising. "Who is
the real donor of a thing to man? he who plants it secretly in the
dark recesses of man's body, or the learned wight who reveals it to
his intelligence, and so enriches his mind with the knowledge of it?
Comprehension is your only true possession. Are you answered?"

"I am put to silence, sir."

"And that is better still; for garrulous patients are ill to cure,
especially in fever; I say, then, that Eristratus gave us the cerebral
nerves and the milk vessels; nay, more, he was the inventor of
lithotomy, whatever you may say. Then came another whom I forget; you do
somewhat perturb me with your petty exceptions. Then came Ammonius, the
author of lithotrity, and here comes Hans with the basin-to stay your
volubility. Blow thy chafer, boy, and hand me the basin; 'tis well.
Arabians, quotha! What are they but a sect of yesterday who about the
year 1000 did fall in with the writings of t