nt instruments for
aiding and intensifying the perceptions of the senses, by means of which
was gained a much deeper insight into the phenomena than had hitherto
been possible. Such instruments as the earlier ages possessed were
little more than primitive hand-made tools. Now we find a considerable
number of scientifically made instruments deliberately planned for
purposes of special research, and as it were, on the threshold of the
period stand two of the most important, the compound microscope and
the telescope. The former was invented about 1590 and the latter about
1608."(34) It was a fellow professor of the great genius Galileo who
attempted to put into practice the experimental science of his friend.
With Sanctorius began the studies of temperature, respiration and the
physics of the circulation. The memory of this great investigator has
not been helped by the English edition of his "De Statica Medicina," not
his best work, with a frontispiece showing the author in his dietetic
balance. Full justice has been done to him by Dr. Weir Mitchell in
an address as president of the Congress of Physicians and Surgeons,
1891.(35) Sanctorius worked with a pulsilogue devised for him by
Galileo, with which he made observations on the pulse. He is said
to have been the first to put in use the clinical thermometer. His
experiments on insensible perspiration mark him as one of the first
modern physiologists.

(34) Dannemann: Die Naturwissenschaften in ihrer
Entwickelung..., Vol. II, p. 7, Leipzig, 1911.

(35) See Transactions Congress Physicians and Surgeons, 1891, New
Haven, 1892, II, 159-181.

But neither Sanctorius nor Harvey had the immediate influence upon their
contemporaries which the novel and stimulating character of their work
justified. Harvey's great contemporary, Bacon, although he lost his
life in making a cold storage experiment, did not really appreciate the
enormous importance of experimental science. He looked very coldly upon
Harvey's work. It was a philosopher of another kidney, Rene Descartes,
who did more than anyone else to help men to realize the value of the
better way which Harvey had pointed out. That the beginning of wisdom
was in doubt, not in authority, was a novel doctrine in the world,
but Descartes was no armchair philosopher, and his strong advocacy and
practice of experimentation had a profound influence in directing men to
"la nouvelle methode." He brought the human body