] made those six
hundred dissections of which Tertullian accused him, and the sagacious
Erasistratus introduced his mild antiphlogistic treatment in opposition
to the polypharmacy and antidotal practice of his time. It is significant
that the large-minded Galen should have been the physician and friend of
the imperial philosopher Marcus Aurelius. The Arabs gave laws in various
branches of knowledge to those whom their arms had invaded, or the terror
of their spreading dominion had reached, and the point from which they
started was, as Humboldt acknowledges, "the study of medicine, by which
they long ruled the Christian Schools," and to which they added the
department of chemical pharmacy.
Look at Vesalius, the contemporary of Luther. Who can fail to see one
common spirit in the radical ecclesiastic and the reforming
court-physician? Both still to some extent under the dominion of the
letter: Luther holding to the real presence; Vesalius actually causing to
be drawn and engraved two muscles which he knew were not found in the
human subject, because they had been described by Galen, from dissections
of the lower animals. Both breaking through old traditions in the search
of truth; one, knife in hand, at the risk of life and reputation, the
other at the risk of fire and fagot, with that mightier weapon which all
the devils could not silence, though they had been thicker than the tiles
on the house-tops.
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