ude such distinguished men as Eustachius and
Varolius, whose names are forever enshrined in the history of anatomy;
Columbus, who discovered and described the lesser or pulmonary
circulation half a century before Harvey's publication with regard to
the general circulation; Caesalpinus, to whom the Italians attribute
the discovery of the greater circulation before Harvey. In the next
century Malpighi was tempted to come to Rome to teach at the Papal
University, and the great Father of Comparative Anatomy {19} ended his
days in the Papal capital, amidst the friendship of all the high
ecclesiastics and with the social intimacy of the Pope. From the
beginning of the sixteenth century Bologna is a Papal city, but its
medical school, far from declining after it came under Papal
jurisdiction, was even more brilliant than before, and soon came even
to outshine its previously successful rival, Padua.

What we would say then, is that the story of the supposed opposition
of the Church and the Popes and the ecclesiastical authorities to
science in any of its branches, is founded entirely on mistaken
notions. Most of it is quite imaginary. Much of it is due to the
exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo incident. Only those
who know nothing about the history of medicine and of science continue
to harbor it. That Dr. White's book, contradicted as it is so directly
by all our serious histories of medicine and of science, should have
been read by so many thousands in this country, and should have been
taken seriously by educated men, physicians, teachers, and even
professors of science who want to know the history of their own
sciences, only shows how easily even supposedly educated men may be
led to follow their prejudices rather than their mental faculties, and
emphasizes the fact that the tradition that there is no good that can
possibly come out of the Nazareth of the times before the reformation,
still dominates the intellects of many educated people who think that
they are far from prejudice and have minds perfectly open to
conviction.

We would not leave the impression, moreover, that it was in medicine
alone that the misunderstood Middle Ages made distinct progress in
science. This is true in every department of what we now call natural
science. {20} The reason for the false impression that science was not
studied in the Middle Ages at the universities, is that the supposed
historians of education and of science who h