W. Sedgwick Saunders

“ But it is not we alone who have sustained a loss. The name of Barlow will live for ages to come as the type of the scientific physician of the nineteenth century. A man of cultivated intellect, of elegant mind and blameless life, of calm judgment and exalted feeling, I look upon his death as nothing less than a calamity to the whole medical profession. ”

“ Constituted as our cherished society is, as a friendly gathering of kindred spirits, actuated by mutual necessities, meeting as brothers, knowing no rivalry but the desire to impart, each to other, the results of our matured experience, it is with more than ordinary grief that we bow submissively when Providence sees fit to lessen our numbers by death. ”

“ Rome, in its decadence, was too much occupied with the intrigues and villainies of the factions by which it was ultimately destroyed, to spare any time for the culture of science. It was not until after the total disappearance of the Eastern Empire, and the hollow tranquillity which succeeded the triumphs of Mahomet, and the subsequent subjugation of Spain by the Moors, that learning reared its head in Alexandria, and the Arabian physicians came into view. ”

“ The state of war in which Greece lived, required a knowledge in the healing of wounds, and this might make him breed his princes, Achilles, Patroclus, Podalirius and Machaon, to the science; what Homer thus attributes to others he himself knew, and he has given us reason to believe, not slightly, for if we consider his insight into the structure of the human body, it is so nice, that he has been judged by some to have wounded his heroes with too much science ”

“ To many of the men, into whose labours we have here entered, the civilised world is indebted for their contributions to general literature, as well as to the science of medicine; and in our endeavour to chronicle their importance, we can never cease to admire the fertility of their talents, and the extent of their industry in bringing to light so much useful knowledge out of the scanty materials by which their enquiries were aided:—Akenside, Bacon, Boyle, Blackmore, Cheselden, Darwin, Petty, Ray, among others, may be noted as examples. ”

“ New born babes of leprous parents are often as pretty and healthy in appearance as other children, but the ‘scab’ comes on by degrees, the hair falls off, joint after joint of the fingers and toes shrink up, the gums are absorbed, and the teeth fall out and disappear; the nose, the eyes, the palate are slowly consumed, and finally the wretched victim sinks into the earth under a disease beyond the control of medicine, which cannot even mitigate its tortures. ”

“ It has been urged by way of apology for the mystery in which the philosophers shrouded their wisdom, that “science, like modesty, should cover itself with a veil to increase the charms of the treasure it conceals;” ”

“ In our blind adoration of classical heathenism we undervalue the sublime and not less poetical incidents which mark the rise, progress, culmination, and decay of that people with whom our highest interests are identified. ”

“ In dismissing Moses and his times, I crave your particular attention to the manner in which the characters of priest and physician met in the same person. As we proceed we shall find that this junction of attributes continues through all the variations of time and circumstances. The terrors of the unseen, overawing the ignorant, placed them at the mercy of those daring minds which in every age have assumed the office of 28interpreters of the will of the demon, or the behests of the benign Deity. ”

“ An inquiry into the origin of medicine must begin with the history of man himself, since pain and death are the inevitable conditions of his existence; and the desire to mitigate the former, and postpone the triumphs of the latter arose from, and has kept pace with, the development of the various diseases to which time and circumstances have subjected him. ”

“ We must suppose that every surgeon who attended Charles the Second was a man of high repute for skill; and more than one of the surgeons who attended Charles the Second, has left us a solemn profession of faith in the King’s miraculous power.... We cannot wonder that, when men of science gravely repeated such nonsense, the vulgar should believe it. Still less can we wonder that wretches tortured by a disease over which natural remedies had no power should eagerly drink in tales of preternatural cures: for nothing is so 77credulous as misery. ”

“ No treatises on disease existed anterior to his time to aid him in his investigations of the phenomena of nature, although it is true that in the Asclepion or temple of Esculapius at Cos, records were kept and votive tablets preserved commemorative of cures performed, and of the remedies by which they were effected. But if the physician admires his talents, the moralist does honour to the qualities of his mind and the goodness of his heart. ”

“ Copernicus was born in Westphalia in 1473, he studied at Cracow, where he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine; at Bologna his piercing genius discovered that the sun was the centre of the planetary system, that the earth was a planet and revolved round the sun like other planets, and thus was first made known the true system of the universe. These discoveries being distasteful to the church, the Pope issued a sentence of excommunication; and the great astronomer died with a heart oppressed by such unmerited persecution. ”

“ Bigotry, however, is not confined to any one creed, since we know that Calvin the reformer, a man who had suffered persecution without learning mercy, no sooner found himself invested with the power to punish the freedom of thought in which he had himself indulged, than he persecuted to death the learned physician, Michael Servetus, not for any immoral proclivity, but because he believed him to be unsound on the doctrine of the Trinity. Servetus took the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the University of Paris about the year 1535. ”

“ Who can ever forget his pure and simple nature, his spotless life, and those endearing virtues which attached him so closely to all whose privilege it was to enjoy his friendship—one of Nature’s gentlemen, delicate and considerate of the feelings of others, generous to the poor at the sacrifice of his valuable life, ready at all seasons to give his time for the promotion of any and every benevolent scheme in connexion with our calling; we shall long mourn over the good old man. ”

“ As for Medicine, something of it must have been understood in that age, though it was so far from perfection, that, according to Celsus, (book i.) what concerned diet was invented long after by Hippocrates. The accidents of life make the search after remedies too indispensable a duty to be neglected at any time; accordingly, he tells us, that the Egyptians, who had many medicinal plants in their country, were all Physicians, and perhaps he might have learnt his own skill from his acquaintance with that nation. ”

“ One of the great obstacles to the advancement of anatomy and physiology was the universal reverence for the dead which the Greeks and Romans shared in common with all the people of antiquity. Among the Jews, to touch a dead body exposed the offender to a 36penance of seven days’ exclusion and privation from the ordinary comforts of life; and it is almost superfluous to add, that the Egyptians made this reverence a part of their religion. ”

“ We pass over three centuries to come to the time of Celsus, who, in the reign of Tiberius and the first century of our Lord, was established at Rome; where he acquired great honour and renown. To these he was fairly entitled by the extent of his learning and the especial attention he paid to surgery and medicine. His principles governed the medical world without a rival until the time of Galen, who divided the empire with him for centuries. ”

“ Blackmore was a poet, and Sydenham saw that the man who consulted him did not possess the stuff of which doctors are made, he therefore referred him to the most lively piece of writing then in existence, as furnishing fitter pabulum for a poet, than the dry discussions of medical subjects could afford. To describe the character of Sydenham, it would be necessary to call to our aid the highest forms of panegyric; a good and honourable man, living in harmony with his brethren, and as far as the troubled state of the country would allow, in peace with all men. ”

“ The pride of enlightenment is indeed checked by the reflection that A.D. 1867 we hear of believers in “Spiritual Manifestation” not only among the vulgar but in classes of society where the yearning after the mysterious sets both reason and philosophy at defiance. ”

“ Fallopius succeeded Vesalius in the chair of anatomy and surgery at Padua in 1557. His career was brilliant but short, and he died in 1562. It should be mentioned that Fallopius shared the usual fate of great discoverers; his originality was disputed, and his learning questioned; but it has been always so, and in appreciating the works of our predecessors, we must keep in view the enormous difficulties by which every onward step, whether in art or science, is beset:
“Envy doth merit, as its shade pursue.” ”

“ The character of Hippocrates is at once a study for the physician and the moralist; the former will appreciate the astonishing evidences which his works afford, of a deep acquaintance with the whole subject of medicine, and his admiration will be increased by the remembrance that all the principles laid down by this 34great and good man, were the results of his own experience. ”

“ According to popular belief, the Noahic flood destroyed the whole human race, with the exception of Noah and his family; who were therefore the sole depositories of the traditions of the events which had occurred between the time of Adam and themselves. The great longevity of these antediluvian fathers made this oral transmission easy; and we know, that the sons of Noah lived to see the birth of Abraham, whom, as the founder of circumcision, we claim as the first operative surgeon on record. ”

“ Aristotle, the pupil and friend of the venerable Plato, whose doctrines he adopted and developed, lectured at Athens 370 years before Christ. As a physician and naturalist he was far in advance of his contemporaries, and as a mathematician and moral philosopher, his transcendent learning was, for ages, the theme of every scholar ”

“ Shakespeare was 14 years old when Harvey was born, and the garrulous but erudite Burton was about the same age, yet strange to say, the great poet seems to have been unknown to the men of his own generation: scholars knew nothing of poor players, and he who was born to delight and instruct the future of mankind shone with but small lustre then.
The history of medicine in England now begins, although for some time subsequently medical instruction was sought for in the schools of Italy, France and Holland. ”

“ The intrigues of the father of the gods, the 27artifices by which he eludes the jealousy of his wife Juno, his incestuous, and, if they were not classical, we should call them filthy debaucheries, draw largely upon our faith in the beauties of these records of high Olympus; and our admiration for the poet is sadly tinctured with disgust for the images in which his creative powers are developed. ”

“ Galen was born at Pergamos, in Asia, in the second century; his learning was great, and his literary labours enormous. Having traversed Egypt and Greece, and acquired a knowledge of every science taught in the schools there, he settled in Rome. His works have been estimated at over 300 volumes—medical, 45physical, and metaphysical. He practised bleeding more frequently than his predecessors, but he gave very careful directions as to the conditions under which venesection should be resorted to, as well as to the quantity of blood to be taken. ”

“ The Reformation had swept away the monastic institutions; but during the depressing middle ages, all the learning that barbarism had spared took refuge in the cloister. The monks practised physic very extensively, and considering the ignorance and superstition of the period, it was natural that the vulgar should prefer the medical assistance of those who arrogated to themselves the immediate assistance of Heaven in the preparation of their remedies. ”

“ Doubtless, the so-called circumcision of women, as it is practised in some countries, is a modification of what we understand by the term, and involves structures other than the clitoris or nymphæ; and it is equally true that the custom is adopted by many races totally irrespective of any religious significance. ”

“ Although Greece had disappeared, even in the 46noonday of its glory, its literature never possessed more devoted admirers, nor more faithful exponents than are to be found among the Arabian philosophers, and yet what a striking contrast is exhibited in the characters of the two people. Whilst making the philosophy of Greece their own, they by no means lost their distinctiveness and individuality. ”

“ The five books of Moses were written 1500 years before Christ. Hesiod, the father of Greek literature, flourished 500 years later; and Homer, the next in succession, nearly a century after Hesiod.
Herodotus places Homer 400 years before himself; thus bringing the “father of history,” as he is termed by Cicero, to about 500 years before the advent of our Saviour, so that the difference of date between the author of the Pentateuch and the oldest Greek historian cannot be much less than 1000 years. ”