ignorant persons, the foundation of the College effected another equally
important reform which may possibly have been foreseen and intended by
its founders, although the intention was not avowed. This was nothing
else than the liberation of medicine and the medical profession from
the control of the Church. The Bishops, it is said, notwithstanding the
formal abolition of their privileges, continued to license physicians
for 180 years after the foundation of the College, but never since has
any ecclesiastical authority controlled the status or the practice of
the medical profession in England. This liberty could hardly have been
so complete had medicine been as completely as in other countries a
department of University teaching. Linacre’s foundation must have the
credit of preserving medicine both from the immediate domination of
clerics and from future subjection to the leaden rule of orthodoxy, which
swayed for several centuries the English Universities. The conditions of
the new College and the mode of admission into it were clearly designed,
and were calculated to give a very definite stamp to the English
physician. He was to be in the first place a man of learning, and in this
respect the standard of the College was certainly higher than that of the
Universities, as is clear from the history of certain controversies that
arose between these authorities. Considering too that it was scarcely
possible to obtain in this country the particular kind of learning
required, a strong inducement was held out to physicians to study at the
Universities of the Continent, especially in Italy. Hence physicians
were not only learned but very often travelled persons; and the names of
foreigners are found rather frequently in the early rolls of the College.
Moreover as the number of physicians practising in London was not large,
and the difficulties of obtaining a licence were so considerable, a
physician had no doubt a social position very much above that of the
surgeon, and perhaps relatively higher than at the present day. It must
be admitted also that the standing of an English physician has been made
more definite and further removed from any association with trade than in
any other European country. We see then pretty clearly what was the ideal
that Linacre had framed;—a grave and learned person, well read in Galen,
respecting, but not bowing down to, the prestige of the Universities,
claiming for his own science a dignity apart from, but not conflicting
with, that of theology, looking upon surgeons and apothecaries with
charity, but not without a sense of his own superiority.
Such was to be the English Physician, and Linacre succeeded, if such was
his object, in moulding a definite type of character which lasted for two
centuries at least. But the physician of Linacre’s school is no more;—his
epitaph was written nearly a hundred years ago by no less a person than
Samuel Johnson. The great lexicographer was asked upon his death-bed
for what physician he had sent. “I have sent,” he said, “for Heberden,
_ultimum Romanorum_, the last of our learned physicians.”
The further history of the College of Physicians need not be written
here; but something must be said of two other foundations also due to
the public spirit and far-seeing benevolence of Linacre. These were his
readerships at Oxford and Cambridge. In order to provide for the public
teaching of medicine in the University and more especially for the
reading of the works of Hippocrates and Galen, Linacre shortly before his
death transferred to trustees considerable landed estates producing about
£30 a year, which it was no doubt intended should be conveyed directly
to the Universities for the foundation of Readerships. But the manner in
which his purpose was carried out was unsatisfactory, and the subsequent
history of the foundations is a melancholy chapter in University
annals. The four trustees were Sir Thomas More, Tunstall, Bishop of
London, Stokesley, himself afterwards a bishop and a certain Sheriff, a
lawyer. For reasons which it is difficult to understand, unless simply
negligence and procrastination were responsible, nothing was done with
these funds till the reign of Edward VI., when Tunstall, the surviving
trustee, transferred part of the estate to Merton College, Oxford, for
the foundation of two Readers, and another part to St John’s College,
Cambridge, for the establishment of a Readership there. It is quite clear
that Linacre intended these to be University and not college foundations.
His intention is sufficiently established by a letter addressed to him
by the University of Oxford which has been published by Dr Johnson. The
University acknowledges “that peculiar affection towards our commonwealth
by which you have rendered yourself specially eminent,” and speaks of
the splendid lectures “which you have appointed to be read here at your
expense as wisely devoted to the study of medicine.” This might seem to
refer to a foundation already established, but for the concluding words
of the letter, “Lastly, we earnestly and again and again implore you not
to abandon the resolution you have undertaken, and that your intentions
may never be so many and varied as to divert or overcrowd this project.
Let us certainly hope that the restoration of these, as well as all other
studies to their pristine dignity may be effected during your life, and
if aught in our power can promote this most excellent design, believe
us prepared to second your wishes. Farewell, and may you long enjoy
life, chief patron of learning!” According to Anthony Wood, Linacre’s
foundation was settled in Merton College instead of in the University,
on account of the great decay of the University in the reign of Edward
VI., and through the persuasion of Dr Reynolds, warden of Merton College.
This College was moreover for some reason specially frequented by the
students of medicine. The appointment of readers, originally the duty of
the trustees, was now transferred to the College. Members of the College
had a preference for the appointment; though if none were found properly
qualified, a member of another College or Hall might be appointed. The
appointment was for three years only. With our present experience of
University history, it is easy to see that no system could have been
better calculated to reduce Linacre’s great foundation to uselessness and
obscurity.
The names of a few of the earlier readers are given by Wood; that of one
only, Dr Robert Barnes, emerges from total obscurity. The Readerships
soon became sinecures, and their stipends were regarded as nothing more
than an agreeable addition to the incomes of two of the Fellows. Among
the many similar instances of the misapplication of endowments we shall
not easily find a grosser abuse. Twenty years ago, as is well known,
the Oxford Commissioners revived the name of the Founder in the present
flourishing Linacre Professorship of Anatomy so ably filled, so important
in the history of science in Oxford, and provided for its endowment by
Merton College, as an equivalent for the income which the College still
derives from Linacre’s estates.
At Cambridge the history of the corresponding Readership was even more
unfortunate. The appointment was given to St John’s College, and though
it was at first provided that the lectures of Linacre’s Reader should
be delivered in the Schools of the University, the office soon came to
be regarded as nothing more than a college sinecure. Moreover, through
bad management of the funds, or chiefly, I believe, through an imprudent
exchange of the estate originally settled by Linacre for one which has
turned out to be of less value, the income originally intended for the
Readership seems to have been lost. But for the sake of other than
Cambridge men it ought to be here stated that the present Linacre Reader
of Pathology fills with credit a chair most inadequately endowed, and has
revived in Cambridge the public teachings of a study perfectly congruous
with, though different from that which was intended by the founder. It
is impossible to doubt that Linacre looked forward to founding what
should essentially be a school of medicine in each University. And it is
a strange instance of the irony of fate, that Cambridge at the present
day comes far nearer to carrying out the plans of the great scholar than
his own University of Oxford, to which he always shewed the loyalty of
an affectionate son, and on which he conferred the largest share of his
munificent bounty.
In the year 1524 it became evident to Linacre that his health was
breaking, and in June of that year he executed his will. He appears
to have suffered much from the painful disease, stone in the bladder,
which finally carried him off on the 20th October, 1524, at the age, as
is supposed, of sixty-four. His death was a great loss to the cause of
learning in England, and many passages in the letters of contemporary
scholars will shew that it was not less felt in all learned circles
throughout Europe. He was buried in the Old Cathedral of St Paul, but for
more than thirty years no memorial appears to have marked his grave. This
strange neglect was only supplied in the year 1557 by the great physician
John Caius, a name memorable in Cambridge annals, who if not personally
a pupil of Linacre was in the most complete sense the inheritor of his
spirit, and the most perfect type of a physician, such as the founder of
our College wished to see. The Latin epitaph, written no doubt by Caius
himself, perished in the great fire of London, but has been preserved by
Dugdale. After an enumeration of the learned works and public services of
Linacre it sketches in a few words a fine character, “Fraudes dolosque
mire perosus; fidus amicis; omnibus ordinibus juxta carus.”
It will hardly be necessary to supplement the terse eulogium pronounced
by Caius, by any attempt to sum up Linacre’s moral excellences.
But it may be worth while to form some estimate of the talents
and accomplishments which gave him so high a reputation among his
contemporaries. No original writing of Linacre’s has been preserved,
except his grammatical works and a few dedications and letters, on
the strength of which it would be absurd to hazard any generalization
as to his intellectual power. His reputation rested and still rests
upon his translations; together with the undefined, but unmistakably
strong impression which he produced upon his friends and literary
contemporaries. From them we should gather that it was to the
multifariousness of Linacre’s attainments as well as his excellence in
each, that he owed his renown. To his literary faculty there are many
testimonies. His Latin writing was thought to be so good that according
to the friendly eulogium of Erasmus, the works of Galen as interpreted
by Linacre, spoke better Latin than they had before spoken Greek. Other
opinions not less laudatory were expressed both by Erasmus himself in
other places and by other scholars not less sensitive in the matter
of style. Linacre was not, however, a slavish imitator of any master.
Erasmus among others has preserved the tradition of his slight regard
for Cicero. He would rather have been thought to write like Quinctilian.
The only complaint however which Erasmus makes against his friend is for
his excessive elaboration in polishing and correcting his writings, from
which it resulted that much of his work was reserved as not sufficiently
perfect to be published: and in many cases ultimately lost[14]. It is
disappointing to hear that Linacre had translated Aristotle in such a way
that Erasmus says ‘_sic Latine legitur Aristoteles ut, licet Atticus, vix
in suo sermone parem habeat gratiam_’: and of his other versions ‘_sunt
illi permulta in scriniis, magno usui futura studiosis_.’
Beside the excellence of his style, Linacre was famed for his critical
judgment, ‘_vir non exacti tantum sed severi judicii_’, says Erasmus,
while in Grammar and Rhetoric, as shewn in the curious little fable of
Richard Pacey formerly quoted, he was regarded as no less a master.
Moreover he was what was called in those days an eminent ‘philosopher,’
that is, profoundly read in the works of the ancient naturalists and
philosophers, such as Aristotle, Plato and Pliny.
It is not easy to form any distinct notion of Linacre’s skill in his own
profession. Little more was expected of a physician in those days than
to apply with proper care the maxims of the books. We do not even know
whether in his practice Linacre made more use of the ancient medical
classics whom he was endeavouring to rescue from neglect than of the
‘Neoterics’ who were the ruling spirits of the day, and whose doctrines
were derived from the Arab physicians or from European schools sprung out
of the Arab learning. Some have taken for granted that a man so great in
book learning could not be good in practice. But the few notices which
remain give no countenance to this assumption. Erasmus commemorates
in two or three places his friend’s medical skill. In one he deplores
Linacre’s absence, and laments (with curious modernism) that his servant
had left the physician’s last prescription at the druggist’s, and begs
for another copy. In one instance a record of Linacre’s treatment of
Erasmus’s complaint remains, and appears to have been as sensible and
practical, as if the physician had known not a word of Greek, and had
passed his life as a country apothecary. He is also recorded to have
advised his friend William Lily not to consent to an operation for the
removal of a tumour of the hip; but the operation undertaken against
Linacre’s advice, unfortunately proved fatal.
It was not Linacre’s fortune to contribute anything to the science of
medicine, or to any of its collateral sciences. His age was not one
of research as now understood. The first original work on medicine
produced in England was done by his successor Caius, whose treatise on
the sweating sickness published twenty years after Linacre’s death is
still esteemed. This and other great epidemics must have passed before
the eyes of Linacre, but no record remains to shew us in what light
he regarded them. Nor is there any evidence that he appreciated the
importance of the revival of Anatomy and Botany; sciences on which the
subsequent development of medicine in Europe has so largely been based.
Though evidently eagerly desirous to assist in the renovation of medical
science, he looked to other means to accomplish this end. What these
means were it may be worth while to state somewhat more in detail.
The aim which Linacre and other scholars set before them in translating
or publishing the works of Galen can only be understood by a
consideration of the state of medical learning and scholarship at the
time. The student of medicine in those days, like the student of theology
or philosophy, had to derive his knowledge almost entirely from books.
There was indeed one school of practical anatomy in Italy, that founded
by Mundinus at Bologna in the 14th century, and continued in Linacre’s
time by Berengarius Carpus, who is said to have dissected one hundred
bodies with his own hand, but in other parts of Europe only a literary
knowledge of anatomy was possible. There was no such thing as hospital
instruction, and what would be called in modern times Materia Medica
was represented only by the empirical knowledge of humble collectors
of simples, and by the works of scholars learned only in books who
gave descriptions borrowed at second or third hand from the Arabian
physicians, or at a still greater distance from Aristotle. Medical
learning, thus understood, received like all other learning the stimulus
of two great movements, the revival of Greek literature, with the
consequent higher estimation of the classical Latin writers, on the one
hand, and on the other hand the readier diffusion of books through the
invention of printing. How the classical revival affected letters in
general, theology and philosophy, is well known. Everywhere men became
aware more or less distinctly that there was a new world of knowledge
within their reach, but concealed from them by a mass of commentary and
compilation, barbarous in language, and corrupt in substance, though
professedly founded on the works of those great authors who were little
more than names to the mediæval scholars. Gradually the great figures
of antiquity became more distinct, as the followers of the new learning
tore off the barbarous wrappings which had so long hidden or distorted
them. It was in this spirit that the scholars set to work in their great
task of restoring antiquity. There were doubtless many other aims, and
some of them higher, which animated the more ardent spirits of the
Renaissance, but of these we cannot pretend to speak. What alone concerns
us here is their resolute endeavour to get at the real Aristotle, Plato
or Homer, instead of the reflections and shadows of them which had long
been reverenced. It was this spirit which made the printing of the
first edition of Homer by Chalcondylas and Demetrius Cretensis in 1488,
seem to them, as it has indeed seemed to later generations, an epoch
in literature. It was this which in the next generation led Erasmus to
devote years of labour to bringing out the Novum Testamentum, and it
was in this spirit too, that Linacre the pupil of Chalcondylas and the
teacher of Erasmus, standing between the literary and the religious
revival, conceived the two great projects of his life, the publication
of Aristotle and Galen in a form accessible to the whole learned world.
The first scheme indeed he scarcely commenced, of the latter he did but
little, though as he says “nihil magis in votis erat.”
To discover the genuine text of an ancient author and make it known
may seem to us a useful task, though not among the greatest, but to
the scholars of the Renaissance it was a matter of supreme importance.
Linacre and his fellow workers doubtless expected that medicine would
profit as much by the rediscovery of the Greek medical writings as
letters and philosophy had gained from the masterpieces of Greek
poetry and speculation; and it was with such hopes that they undertook
to revive and make known the works of Galen. Galen, like Aristotle,
had been very imperfectly known, even to those who most implicitly
acknowledged his authority. With regard to Aristotle Sir Alexander Grant
has pointed out that thousands of scholars who considered themselves
staunch Aristotelians, knew not a word of the master beyond the two first
treatises in the Organon; and in the same way, many who reverenced Galen
as the source of all medical knowledge, knew him only through imperfect
Latin versions, the compilations of mediæval scholars, or of the
Arabians, whose works were chiefly based on Galen, and who had in this
case as in that of Aristotle the credit of making a Greek author in large
measure known to the modern world.
The works of Avicenna, Mesua and others were the chief medical text-books
in Europe before, and even for a long time after, the revival of
learning. The Jewish teachers, who had founded schools of surgery in
many European cities, (among others in Oxford, before the rise of the
University) were versed in Arabian learning, and thus it came to pass
that medicine presented itself to the mediæval world in an Arabian dress.
From these sources and from the teachers of the school of Salerno, were
compiled the manuals of the “Arabistæ” or “Neoterici,” which under such
names as Articella, Practica, Lilium Medicinæ, Rosa Anglica were the
daily guides of the medical practitioner.
When the Arabian writers fell into disrepute, partly through being
condemned as heretical, and partly as being barbarous in style, it was
regarded, if one may say so, as a sort of indignity that Medical Science
should still be so much beholden to the infidel sages. Those physicians
who were also scholars felt this to be a reproach which must be wiped
out. This feeling, fantastic as it may seem, was apparently wide-spread
through the little world of scholars, and has been expressed by one of
them in a manner so strange that I cannot forbear to quote it both for
the sake of the grain of truth which it contains, and for its unconscious
reflection of the fantastic ideas of the age.
The author Symphorien Champier was a physician of Lyons, a voluminous
writer as well as a liberal and wealthy patron of letters. The extract
is from a short tract _Symphonia Galeni ad Hippocratem, Cornelii Celsi
ad Avicennam, una cum sectis antiquorum medicorum ac recentium_, forming
the introduction to a little work on Clysters, _Clysteriorum campi
contra Arabum opinionem pro Galeni sententiâ_, etc., which is known in
literature as the original of the “Treatise on Clysters, by S. C.”,
placed by Rabelais in the catalogue of books forming the library of St
Victor.
After lamenting that for so many centuries pure literature, that is
Greek and Roman, should have been neglected, and instead the mean ditties
(_neniæ_) of certain pretenders should have been cultivated. _Indignum
facinus_, says Champier, _(ita me deus amet) nullis bobus, nullisque
victimis expiandum_.
Next, passing to the subjects of philosophy and medicine, he represents
a war as arising between the Arabians and the Classics, which might have
ended disastrously for the latter, but for the interposition of divine
providence.
“Jam eo insolentiæ ac temeritatis devenerant Arabi principes, ut nobis
medicam artem funditus auferre audacissime conarentur; quandoquidem
castra solventes in Græcos ac Latinos omnem belli impetum convertebant,
multaque millia processerant, cum deus Opt. Max. (cujus est hominum
repente et consilia et animos immutare) ut auguror sanctissimi Lucæ
precibus et orationibus flexus, auxiliarios milites demisit, qui
obsidione miseros, Hippocratem, Galenum, Dioscoridem, Paulum Aeginetam
et nostrum Celsum Cornelium, jam deditionem cogitantes eriperent et
liberarent; idque quantâ sit confectum diligentiâ, in confesso est.
Hippocrati non pauci auxilio fuere, Galeno ab Arabum principe oppresso
strennue [sic] adfuit Vicentinorum dux [Nicolaus Leonicenus], præterea ex
Galliâ Copus, ex Angliâ Linacrus, bone deus quo studio, quâ alacritate.
Porro Dioscoridi Gallorum virtus et ferocia, Venetorum prudentia,
Florentinorum divitiæ opem tulerunt.”
This passage only puts in an extravagant form the same ideas about the
value of ancient learning in relation to medicine which we have already
quoted from the letters of Leonicenus, and of Aldus.
A more serious scholar than Symphorien Champier, Janus Cornarius, has
left a very clear statement of the position which Galen and the ancient
medical writers were considered to occupy at this critical epoch in the
history of learning.
He says that medicine, like all good arts and disciplines, comes from
the Greeks, and is to be learnt from their works alone. As to the Arabs,
Avicenna, Rhazes and others, who now-a-days reign in nearly all our
schools, and the numerous Italian or French physicians, who have become
celebrated by writing so many of the books called ‘_Practica_,’ they
are physicians only in name. It were to be wished, he says, that all
public schools would acknowledge their errors and repudiate the barbarian
physicians, as the Florentine academy had done.
“At vero non penitus desperandum quando nuper adeo una Florentina
Academia resipiscendo aliquando etiam aliis spem nobis exhibuit, quæ
excusso Arabicæ et barbaræ servitutis medicæ jugo, ex professo se
Galenicam appellavit et profligato barbarorum exercitû, unum totum et
solum Galenum, ut optimum artis medicæ authorem, in omnibus se sequuturum
pollicita est[15].”
The above extracts will shew far more vividly than any generalized
statements in what light Galen and the ancients appeared to scholars
at the time of the revival of learning. Before considering what was
the actual effect of the revival of the ancient medicine on modern
science and practice, it may be well to clear away a certain amount of
misconception which has been prevalent on the subject.
It is often assumed that the study of Galen introduced the habit of
relying implicitly on authority and dogma, and thus retarded the progress
of medicine. But in reality the habits of submission to authority and
blind acceptance of tradition were already prevalent, and had been so
long before the revival of learning. Never were men more ready to bow
down to authority than in the middle ages; and, in name at least, they
reverenced even the ancient rulers of thought, Aristotle, Galen and
Hippocrates, though it was to distorted images of these heroic personages
that their homage was paid. The names of Galen and Hippocrates were
associated with corrupt and often spurious treatises, of which the
style was as barbarous as the matter was worthless. The aphorisms of
Hippocrates were known in Latin versions as the _Amphorismi_, a barbarism
perpetuated even by Symphorien Champier. Galen was chiefly known by a
little treatise, often copied and printed with the title _Liber Tegni
Galieni_, afterwards known as the _Ars Parva_ to distinguish it from the
great _Methodus Medendi_, translated by Linacre. The quaint title of
this work is a history and a commentary in itself; a scholar might well
be puzzled with the word _Tegni_, which seems to suggest an imaginary
author, Tegnus Galienus. But this word is simply a corruption of the
Greek τέχνη, handed down by a succession of scribes ignorant of Greek.
Moreover, as in the case of Aristotle, not only were the works ascribed
to Galen and Hippocrates corrupted and misunderstood; but their best
works were unknown. If men were to bow down to canonical authority it
was better they should have the best works of the writers regarded as
canonical, and have them unadulterated.