Concise History of Medicine

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Some good foundations have been laid, it is true, in the century previous, and men were at work in the true scientific spirit. Great masters had stimulated their successors to study in the essential preliminary subjects, the constitution and functions of the body. The mighty Boer-haave of Holland (1668-1738) had revolutionized clinical observation; Morgagni of Italy (1682-1771) had introduced anatomical thinking into medicine (Virchow), and had done something, the same service for pathology which Haller of Germany (1708-77) did a generation later for physiology; while John Hunter (1728-93) had not only introduced capital improvements into operative surgery, but had set the pace in research into anatomical and physiological problems.