fifteenth century,
who many years afterwards referred with pardonable pride to the fact
that he had been Linacre's teacher in medicine.

It may seem strange to many that Linacre, with all his knowledge of
the classics, should have devoted himself for so many years to the
study of medicine in addition to his humanistic studies. It must not
be forgotten, however, that the revival of the classics of Latin and
Greek brought with it a renewed knowledge of the great Latin and Greek
fathers of medicine, Hippocrates and Galen. This had a wonderful
effect in inspiring the medical students of the time with renewed
enthusiasm for the work in which they were engaged. A knowledge of the
classics led to the restoration of the study of anatomy, botany, and
of clinical medicine, which had been neglected in the midst of
application to the Arabian writers in medicine during the preceding
centuries. The restoration of the classics made of medicine a
progressive science in which every student felt the possibility of
making great discoveries that would endure not only for his own
reputation but for the benefit of humanity.

These thoughts seem to have attracted many promising young men to the
study of medicine. The result was a period of writing and active
observation in medicine that undoubtedly makes this one of the most
important of literary medical eras. Some idea of the activity of the
writers of the time can be gathered from the important {94} medical
books--most of them large folios which were printed during the last
half of the sixteenth century in Italy. There is a series of these
books to be seen in one of the cases of the library of the
Surgeon-General at Washington, which, though by no means complete,
must be a source of never-ending surprise to those who are apt to
think of this period as a _saison morte_ in medical literature.

There must have been an extremely great interest in medicine to
justify all this printing. Some of the books are among the real
incunabula of the art of printing. For instance, in 1474 there was
published at Bologna De Manfredi's "Liber de Homine;" at Venice, in
1476, Petrus de Albano's work on medicine; and in the next twenty
years from the same home of printing there came large tomes by
Angelata, a translation of Celsus, and Aurelius Cornelius and
Articellus's "Thesaurus Medicorum Veterum," besides several
translations of Avicenna and Platina's work "De Honesta Voluptate et
Valetudine." At Ferrara