uld be thought, however, that my
interest in the Popes and the Papal Medical School has led me to
exaggerate the claims of {237} Caesalpinus as a great naturalist and
medical scientist, I prefer to quote the description of him given by
Professor Michael Foster in his lectures on the History of Physiology,
delivered in this country as the Lane Lectures, at the Cooper Medical
College in San Francisco, and published by the Cambridge University
Press, 1901. Professor Foster was not one to exaggerate the claims of
any Italian, and least of all of any Italian who might be supposed to
have a claim that would stand against Harvey's. The soupcon of
Chauvinism in his treatment of Servetus and Columbus in this regard is
indeed rather amusing. He said:--

"Of a very different stamp to Columbus was Andreas Caesalpinus. Born
at Arezzo in 1519, he was for many years Professor of Medicine at
Pisa, namely, from 1567 to 1592, when he passed to Rome, where he
became Professor at the Sapienza University and Physician to Pope
Clement VIII., and where at a ripe old age he died in 1603.

"If Columbus lacked general culture, Caesalpinus was drowned in it.
Learned in all the learning of the ancients and an enthusiastic
Aristotelian, he also early laid hold of all the new learning of the
time. Naturalist as well as physician, he taught at Pisa botany as
well as medicine, being from 1555 to 1575 Professor of Botany, with
charge of the Botanic garden founded there in 1543, the first of its
kind--one remaining until the present day."

Professor Foster admits that Caesalpinus had a wonderful power of
synthetising knowledge already in hand and anticipating conclusions in
science that were to be confirmed subsequently. In his Medical
Questions, though the work is written in rambling, discursive vein, he
enunciated views which, however he arrived at them, certainly
foreshadowed or even anticipated those which {238} were later to be
established on a sound basis. Foster quotes a passage in which
Caesalpinus made it very clear that he thoroughly understood the
mechanism of the circulation and grasped every detail essential to it.
After quoting this passage, which it must be confessed is rambling,
Foster thus sums up what Caesalpinus has to say with regard to the
circulation:--

"He thus appears to have grasped the important truth, hidden, it
would seem, from all before him, that the heart, at its systole,
discharges its