as young as 12. The universities provided a broad-based education
in the classics, logic and rhetoric, history, theology, and modern
languages for gentlemen and gave a homogenous national culture to
the ruling class. There was a humanist ideal of a gentleman
scholar. The method of study based largely on lectures and
disputations. Each fellow had about five students to tutor. In
many cases, he took charge of the finances of his students, paying
his bills to tradesmen and the college. His reimbursement by the
students' fathers put them into friendly contact with the family.
The students slept in trundle beds around his bed and had an
adjacent room for study. Scholasticism was only starting to give
way to modern studies. Aristotle, whose authority was paramount,
remained the lynch pin of university studies, especially for logic
and dialectic. The study of rhetoric was based on Quintilian, the
Latin writer, and the Greek treatise of Hermogenes of Tarsus. Also
studied was Cicero's orations as models of style. Examination for
degrees was by disputation over a thesis of the student. The B.A.
degree was given after four years of study, and the M.A. after
three more. There were advanced degrees in civil law (after seven
more years of study), medicine (after seven years), divinity
(required more than seven years), and music. Many of the men who
continued for advanced degrees became fellows and took part in the
teaching. Most fellowships were restricted to clerics. Oxford and
Cambridge Universities operated under a tutorial system. Access to
grammar schools and universities was closed to girls of whatever
class. Oxford University now had the Bodleian Library. In the
universities, there were three types of students: poor scholars,
who received scholarships and also performed various kinds of
service such as kitchen work and did errands for fellows such as
carrying water and waiting on tables; commoners, who paid low fees
and were often the sons of economical gentlemen or businessmen;
and the Fellow Commoners (a privileged and well-to-do minority,
usually sons of noblemen or great country gentlemen). The Fellow
Commoners paid high fees, had large rooms, sometimes had a
personal tutor or servant, and had the right to eat with the
Fellows at High Table. Here, gentlemen made friends with their
social equals from all over the country. Students wore new-
fashioned gowns of any colors and colored stockings. They put on
stage plays in Latin and English. The students played at running,
jumping, and pitching the bar, and at the forbidden swimming and
football. They were not to have irreligious books or dogs. Cards
and dice could be played only at Christmas time. Students still
drank, swore, and rioted, but they were disallowed from going into
town without special permission. Those below a B.A. had to be
accompanied by a tutor or an M.A. They were forbidden from
taverns, boxing matches, dances, cock fights, and loitering in the
street or market. Sometimes a disputation between two colleges
turned into a street brawl. Punishment was by flogging. Each
university had a chancellor, usually a great nobleman or
statesman, who represented the university in dealings with the
government and initiated policies. The vice-chancellor was
appointed for a year from the group of heads of college. He looked
out for the government of halls, enforced the rules of the
university, kept its courts, licensed wine shops, and shared
control of the town with the mayor.
Tutors were common. They resided at the boy's house or took boys
to board with them at their houses in England or on the continent.
The tutor sometimes accompanied his student to grammar school or
university. Puritans frequently sent their sons to board in the
house of some Frenchman or Swiss Protestant to learn the Calvinist
doctrines or on tour with a tutor. Certain halls in the
universities were predominately Puritan. Catholics were required
to have their children taught in a home of a Protestant, a
relative if possible.
The Inns of Court were known as "the third university". It served
the profession of law, and was a training ground for the sons of
nobility and the gentry and for those entering the service of the
commonwealth. The Inns were self-governing and ruled by custom.
Students were to live within the Inn, two to a room, but often
there were not enough rooms, so some students lived outside the
quadrangles. Every student was supposed to partake of Commons or
meals for a certain fraction of the year - from eight weeks to
three months and there to argue issues in cases brought up by
their seniors. In hall the students were not allowed to wear hats,
though caps were permitted, nor were they to appear booted or
spurred or carrying swords. For the first two years, they would
read and talk much of the law, and were called Clerks Commoners.
After two years they became Mootmen or Inner Barristers. In five
or six years they might be selected to be called to the bar as
Utter Barristers, whose number was fixed. There was no formal
examination. The Utter Barrister spent at least three more years
performing exercises and assisting in directing the studies of the
younger men. After this time, he could plead in the general courts
at Westminster, but usually carried on law work in the offices of
other men and prepared cases for them. Participating in moots
(practice courts) was an important part of their education.
Lectures on statutes and their histories were given by Readers.
Physicians were licensed by universities, by the local bishop, or
in London, by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Most were
university graduates, and because of the expense of the education,
from well-to-do families. For the B.A., they emphasized Greek. For
the M.A., they studied the works of Greek physicians Galen and
Hippocrates, Roman physician Claudius, and perhaps some medieval
authorities. After the M.A., they listened to lectures by the
Regius Professor of Medicine and saw a few dissections. Three
years of study gave them a M.B., and four more years beyond this
the M.D. degree. A physician's examination of a patient cost 10s.
The physician asked about his symptoms and feelings of pain, looked
at his eyes, looked at his body for spots indicative of certain
diseases, guessed whether he had a fever, felt his pulse, and
examined his urine and stool. There were no laboratory tests.
Smallpox was quickly recognized. Wrapping red cloth around the
person and covering the windows with red cloth being promoted
healing without scarring. Gout was frequent. Syphilis was common
in London and other large centers, especially in Court circles. It
was ameliorated by mercury. An imbalance of the four humors:
blood, phlegm, choler, bile was redressed by bloodletting,
searing, draining, and/or purging. Heart trouble was not easily
diagnosed and cancer was not recognized as a life-threatening
disease. Childbirth was attended by physicians if the patient was
well-to-do or the case was serious. Otherwise women were attended
only by midwives. They often died in childbirth, many in their
twenties.
The theory of nutrition was still based on the four humors and
deficiency diseases were not understood as such. Physician William
Harvey, son of a yeoman, discovered the circulation of the blood from
heart to lungs to heart to body about 1617. He had studied anatomy at
Padua on the continent and received an M.D. there and later at
Cambridge. Then he accepted a position at the hospital of
St. Bartholomew to treat the poor who came there at least once a week
for a year. He agreed to give the poor full benefit of his knowledge, to
prescribe only such medicines as should do the poor good without regard
to the pecuniary interest of the apothecary accompanying him, to take no
reward from patients, and to render account for any negligence on his
part. He also dissected animals. One day he noted when stroking
downward on the back of one hand with the finger of the other, that a
vein seemed to disappear, but that it reappeared when he released his
finger. He surmised that there was a valve preventing the bloods
immediate return to the vein. Then he ascertained that the heart was a
pump that caused pulses, which had been thought to be caused by
throbbing of the veins. He tied the arteries and found that the arterial
blood flowed away from the heart. He tied the veins and found that venal
blood flowed into the heart. He found that the blood flowed from the
lungs to the left side of the heart, and from thence was pumped out to
the body. Blood also flowed from the body to the right side of the
heart, from which it was pumped to the lungs. The two contractions
closely followed one another, rather than occurring at the same
time. The valves in the veins prevented backflow. It was now clear why
all the blood could be drained away by a single opening in a vein. It
was also clear why a tight ligature, which blocked the arteries, made a
limb bloodless and pale and why a looser ligature, which pressed only on
the veins, made a limb swell turgid with blood. Multiplying an estimate
of the amount of blood per beat with the number of beats, he concluded
that the amount of blood did not change as it circulated. He concluded
that the only purpose of the heart was to circulate the blood. This
diminished the religious concept that the heart was the seat of the soul
and that blood had a spiritual significance and was sacred.
A visit by a physician cost 13s.4d. Melancholia, which made one
always fearful and full of dread, and mania, which made one think
he could do supernatural things, were considered to be types of
madness different from infirmities of the body. Despite a belief
held by some that anatomical investigation of the human body was a
sin against the holy ghost, physicians were allowed to dissect
corpses. So there were anatomy textbooks and anatomy was related
to surgery. Barber-surgeons extracted teeth and performed surgery.
The white and red striped barber pole initially indicated a place
of surgery; The red represented blood and the white bandages.
The physicians turned surgery over to the surgeons, who received a
charter in 1605 by which barbers were excluded from all surgical
work except bloodletting and the drawing of teeth. Surgeons dealt
with skin disease, ulcers, hernia, bladder stones, and broken
bones, which they had some skill in setting. They performed
amputations, which were without antiseptics or anesthesia.
Internal operations usually resulted in death. Caesarian section
was attempted, but did not save the life of the mother.
Apprenticeship was the route to becoming a surgeon. A College of
Surgeons was founded. Students learned anatomy, for which they
received the corpses of four executed felons a year.
The apothecaries and grocers received a charter in 1607, but in
1618, the apothecaries were given the sole right to purchase and
sell potions, and to search the shops of grocers and stop the sale
by them of any potions. In London, the apothecaries were looked
over by the College of Physicians to see that they were not
selling evil potions or poisons. In 1618 was the first pharmacy
book.
There were three hospitals in London, two for the poor, and Bedlam
[Bethlehem] Hospital for the insane. Others were treated at home
or in the physician's home.
Theaters were shut down in times of plague to prevent spread of
disease there. Towndwellers who could afford it left to live in
the country.
Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in this period. Most popular
reading was still Bibles, prayer books, psalm books, and devotional
works. Also popular were almanacs, which started with a single
sheet of paper. An almanac usually had a calendar; information on
fairs, roads, and posts; farming hints; popularized scientific
knowledge; historical information; sensational news; astrological
predictions; and later, social, political, and religious comment.
Many households had an almanac. Books tried to reconcile religion
and science and religion and passion or sensuality. Walter
Ralegh's "History of the World", written while he was in prison,
was popular. Ben Johnson wrote poetry and satiric comedies.
Gentlemen read books of manners such as James Cleland's
"Institution of a Young Noble Man" (1607). In 1622, the first
regular weekly newspaper was started.
Although there was a large advance in the quality of boys'
education and in literacy, the great majority of the people were
unable to read fluently. Since writing was taught after one could
read fluently, literacy was indicated by the ability to sign one's
name. Almost all gentlemen and professional men were literate.
About half the yeomen and tradesmen and craftsmen were. Only about
15% of husbandmen, laborers, servants, and women were literate.
The royal postal system carried private as well as royal letters,
to increase income to the Crown. Postmasters got regular pay for
handling without charge the mail of letters that came from or went
to the letter office in London. The postmaster kept horses which
he let, with horn and guide, to persons riding "in post" at 3d.
per mile. The post was to travel 7 mph in summer and 5 mph in
winter and sound his horn four times in every mile or whenever he
met travelers.
Wool and animals for butchering were sold in London with the
sellers' agent in London taking the proceeds and paying out to
their order, the origin of check writing.
Scriveners drew up legal documents, arranged mortgages, handled
property transactions, and put borrowers in touch with lenders.
They and the goldsmiths and merchants developed promissory notes,
checks, and private paper money.
The influx of silver from the New World was a major factor in the
second great inflation in England and in the devaluation of money
to about one third of what it had been. Also contributing to the
inflation was an outracing of demand over supply, and a debasement
of the coinage. This inflation benefited tenants to the detriment
of their lords because their rents could not be adjusted upward.
There was an increase in bankruptcies. Houses of Correction
were built.
The Elizabethan love of madrigal playing gradually gave way to a
taste for instrumental music, including organs and flutes. The
violin was introduced and popular with all classes. Ballads were
sung, such as "Barbary Allen", about a young man who died for love
of her, after which she died of sorrow. When they were buried next
to each other, a rose from his grave grew around a briar from her
grave. The ballad "Geordie" relates a story of a man hanged for
stealing and selling sixteen of the king's royal deer. The ballad
"Matty Groves" is about a great Lord's fair young bride seducing a
lad, who was then killed by the Lord. In the ballad "Henry
Martin", the youngest man of three brothers is chosen by lot to
turn pirate to support his brothers. When his pirate ship tries to
take a merchant ship, there is sea fight in which the merchant
ship sinks and her men drown. The ballad "The Trees They Do Grow
High" tells of an arranged marriage between a 24 year old woman
and the 14 year old son of a great lord. She tied blue ribbons on
his head when he went to college to let the maidens know that he
was married. But he died at age 16, after having sired a son.
May Day was a holiday with dancing around a Maypole and people
dressed up as characters such as Queen of the May, Robin Hood,
Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marion, the fool, and the piper. New
Year's Day was changed to January 1st.
Golf was played in Scotland, and James introduced it into England.
James I was the last monarch to engage in falconry.
Francis Bacon wrote the "Advancement of Learning" and "Novum
Organum" (New Learning) in which he encouraged the use of the
inductive method to find out scientific truths and also truths in
general, that is reasoning from a sample to the whole. According
to him, the only way to arrive at the truth was to observe and
determine the correlations of facts. He advocated a process of
elimination of hypothesized ideas. First, experiments were made,
then general conclusions were drawn from them, and then these
generalizations were tested in further experiments. His "New
Learning" showed the way out of the scholastic method and
reverence for dogma into the experimental method. He wrote
"Natural and Experimental History". He studied the effect of cold
in preventing animal putrefaction.
By this time, what was known about mathematics included
fractional exponents, trigonometry in terms of arcs of angles,
long division, square root symbol, decimal fractions, methods
for solving cubic equations, trigonometry in terms of ratios of
sides of a right triangle, equal sign, plus and minus signs, and
a consistent theory imaginary numbers.
Galileo Galilei was a professor of mathematics at the University
of Padua in Italy and was later a protege of the powerful Medici
family. He conducted experiments, e.g. throwing objects off the
tower of Pisa in 1590 to show that all, whether light or heavy,
fall at the same rate. This disproved the widely held belief that
heavier objects fall faster than light objects. He reasoned by
induction from experiments that the force of gravity has the same
effect on all objects regardless of their size or weight. His law
stated that the speed of their descent increases uniformly with
the time of the fall, i.e. speed [velocity] = gravity's
acceleration multiplied by time. This was a pioneering
mathematization of a physical phenomenon.
From his observation that an object sliding along a plane travels
increasingly farther and slows down at a decreasing rate as the surfaces
become smoother and more lubricated, he opined that the natural state of
a body in motion is to stay in motion, and that it is slowed down by a
resistant force (friction). He conceived of the air giving a
frictional force to an object moving through the air. >From his
experiments showing that a rolling ball rolls up a plane farther the
lesser the slope of the plane, he intuited that if the plane were
horizontal, the ball would never stop rolling except for friction. He
opined that bodies that are at rest stay at rest and bodies that are in
motion stay in uniform motion (inertia), unless and until acted
upon by some force. This was a radical departure from Aristotle's theory
that any horizontal motion requires a prime mover. Galileo drew a graph
of distance versus time for the rolling ball, which indicated that the
distance traveled was proportional to the square of the time elapsed.
He put his ideas of vertical and horizontal motion together to explain
the movement of projectiles, which travel horizontally, but also fall
downward vertically. He realized that the movement of a projectile
involved a horizontal impetus of projection and a vertical force of
gravity, each being independent of the other, but acting simultaneously,
instead of sequentially. He demonstrated that a projectile follows the
path of a parabola, instead of a straight line, and that it descends a
vertical distance which is proportional to the square of the time taken
to fall. That is, a thrown object will strike the ground in the same
amount of time as an object simply dropped from the same height. This
suggested that gravity was a constant force.
Galilieo described mathematically the motion of a lever such as a seesaw
in which the weight on one side multiplied by its distance from the
fulcrum is equal to the weight on the other side multiplied by its
distance from the fulcrum.
Galileo determined that a pendulum, such as a hanging lamp, swings back
and forth in equal intervals of time. He measured this time with water
running through a tube; the weight of the water was proportional to the
time elapsed. Also, pendulums with equal cord length swing at the same
rate, regardless of the substance, weight, or shape of the material at
the end. So a pendulum could be a mechanical clock.
Galileo knew that ice floated on water because ice is less dense and
therefore lighter than water. It had formerly been thought that ice was
heavier than water, but floated on water because of its shape,
especially broad, flat-bottomed pieces of ice.
The telescope was invented in 1608. The next year, Galileo built a
greatly improved telescope to observe bodies in the skies. He
observed that the spots on the moon had shifting illumination and
that the moon's perimeter had a jagged outline. From this he
deduced that the surface of the moon had mountains, valleys, and
craters much like the earth, and was illuminated by reflected
light. He noticed that the planet Jupiter had moons orbiting it
in a manner similar to the orbit of the Earth's moon. He observed
that when the planet Venus was very small it had a round shape and
when it was very large (and therefore nearer the earth), it had a
crescent shape. Also, Venus progressed through periodic phases
of increasingly wide crescent shapes in a manner similar to the
phases of crescent shapes of the Earth's moon. He realized that
these features of Venus could be explained only if Venus revolved
around the sun, rather than around the earth. This finding added
credence to the Copernican theory that the earth and all planets
revolve around the sun. But church doctrine that the sun revolved
around the earth was supported by the Biblical story of God making
the sun stand still to give additional sunlight on a certain day
so a certain task could be completed that day. Galileo argued
against a literal interpretation of the Bible, so he was denounced
by the church. His finding of sunspots on the sun conflicted with
church doctrine that the celestial bodies such as the sun were
perfect and unblemished. His observation that certain sun spots
were on certain locations of the sun, but changed location over
time, suggested that the sun might be rotating. He observed that
when air was withdrawn by a suction pump from the top of a long
glass tube whose lower open end was submerged in a pan of water,
the water rose to a height of 34 feet and no higher. This result
indicated that the evacuated space above the water was a vacuum:
an empty space. The notion of a vacuum, a space where there is
nothing or void, was difficult for philosophers to accept. They
believed that nature abhored a vacuum and would prevent it. About
1600, Galileo invented the first thermometer by heating air at the
top of a tube whose open end was in a bowl of water; as the top
end cooled, the air contracted and water rose part way up the tube;
the column of water rose or fell with every change of temperature.
Galileo invented the compound refracting microscope, which used
more than one lens, about 1612.
Galileo's book on the arguments for and against the Copernican
theory was unexpectedly popular when published in 1632. The
general public was so persuaded by the arguments that the earth
revolved around the sun that Papal authority felt threatened. So
Galileo was tried and convicted of heresy and sentenced to prison
as an example to others who might question church doctrine, even
though the seventy year old Galileo recanted and some of the
inquisition judges who convicted him believed the Copernican
theory and their decision did not assert the contrary.
John Napier, a large Calvinist landholder in Scotland who had
built his own castle, did mathematics in his older years. He
explored imaginary numbers, which involve square roots of negative
numbers. By 1614, he had started and developed the theory of
logarithms: the relationships among positive and negative
exponents of numbers. This simplified calculations because the
multiplication and division of numbers with a common base could be
done by addition and subtraction of their exponents. His table of
logarithms, which took him twenty years to compile, was used in
trigonometry, navigation, and astronomy. It reduced the enormous
labor involved in trigonometric calculations. In 1622, Willliam
Oughtred invented the slide rule for calculations.
Johannes Kepler was a mathematician from Germany who made his
living as an astrologer. He was in contact with Galileo by letter,
as most scientists of Europe were with each other. Kepler was
fascinated with perfect geometric shapes, which he tried to relate
to celestial phenomenon. He discerned that the orbit of Mars was
not perfectly circular. He knew that the apparent path of the sun
with respect to the constellation of fixed stars differed in speed
at different times of the year. He opined that this showed that
the speed of the earth revolving around the sun varied according
to the time of year. Then he measured the angles between the earth
and the sun and the earth and Mars as they changed through the
Martian year. He noted when the earth, Mars, and the Sun were on
the same straight line. Then he deduced the earth's true orbit,
and from this the true orbits of the other planets. Then by trial
and error, he attempted to match this empirical data with regular
mathematically defined shapes, until he discovered in 1609 that
these paths were elliptical. Also, the planets each move faster
when they are nearer the sun and more slowly when they are farther
from the sun so that in equal time intervals, a line from the
planet to the sun will sweep out equal areas. This observation led
him to opine that there is a force between the sun and each
planet, and that this force is the same as that which keeps the
moon in its orbit around the earth. Thirdly, in 1619, he found
that the square of the time for each planet's orbit about the sun
is proportional to the cube of that planet's mean distance from
the sun, so that the farther planets orbit at a slower speed. He
connected the earth's tides with the gravitational pull of the
moon. Kepler also confirmed that the paths of comets were governed
by a law and were farther from the earth than the moon. This
contradicted the church's explanation that what lies within the
moon's orbit pertains to the earth and is essentially transitory
and evil, while what lies beyond belongs to the heavens and is
permanent and pure.