[16] _Ibid._, pp. 27-28.

[17] _Ibid._, p. 45.

[18] _Ibid._, Pp. 90-91.

[19] William Harvey, _Opera omnia: a Collegio Medicorum Londinensi
edita_, Londini, 1766, p. 136.

[20] William Harvey, _Anatomical Excercises on the Generation of
Animals_, trans. Robert Willis, London, 1847, p. 462.

[21] _Ibid._, pp. 336-339.

[22] _Works of William Harvey_, trans. Robert Willis, London, 1847, pp.
lxx-lxxi.

[23] Harvey, _op. cit._, pp. 462-463.

[24] _Ibid._, p. 457.

[25] F. J. Cole, _Early Theories of Sexual Generation_, Oxford, 1930, p.
140.

[26] Thomas Browne, _The Works_, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, Chicago, 1964, I,
261-262.

[27] _Ibid._, II, 265.

[28] _Ibid._, III, 442.

[29] _Ibid._, III, 442-452.

[30] _Ibid._, I, 50.

[31] _Ibid._, I, 14.

[32] Walter Needham, _Disquisitio anatomica de formato foetu_, London,
1667.

[33] John Mayow, "De Respiratione foetus in utero et ovo," in _Tractatus
Quinque Medico-Physici_, Oxonii, 1674, p. 311.

[34] _Ibid._, pp. 319-320.

[35] Robert Boyle, _The Works_, London, 1772, I, 548-549.

[36] Browne, _op. cit._, II, 261.

II

_Robert Boyle as an Amateur Physician_

LESTER S. KING

Robert Boyle was not a physician. To be sure, he had engaged in some
casual anatomical studies,[37] but he had not formally studied medicine
and did not have a medical degree. Nevertheless, he engaged in what we
would call medical practice as well as medical research and exerted a
strong influence on the course of medicine during the latter seventeenth
century, an influence prolonged well into the eighteenth. He lived
during the period of exciting yet painful transition when medical theory
and practice were undergoing a complete transformation towards what we
may call the "early modern" form. The transition, naturally gradual,
extended over three centuries, but I wish to examine only a very small
fragment of this period, namely, the third quarter of the seventeenth
century.

Boyle's first major work which dealt extensively with medical problems
was the _Usefulness of Experimental Philosophy_. This work, although
published in 1663, had been written in two parts, the first much earlier
than the second. Fulton[38] indicates it had been drafted around 1650,
while Hall[39] ascribes it to the period 1647-1648. This first part has
relatively little to do with medicine; the references are few and rather
incidental, and have significance only for the light they throw on
"