It is very probable that the spermatic portions of the uterus and its carunculae are naturally suited for separating aerial particles from arterial blood.These observations premised, we maintain that the blood of the embryo, conveyed by the umbilical arteries to the placenta or uterine carunculae transports to the foetus not only nutritious juice, but also a portion of the nitro-aerial particles: so that the blood of the infant seems to be impregnated with nitro-aerial particles by its circulation through the umbilical vessels in the same manner as in the pulmonary vessels. Therefore, I think that the placenta should no longer be called a uterine liver, but rather a uterine lung.[34]
It is very probable that the spermatic portions of the uterus and its carunculae are naturally suited for separating aerial particles from arterial blood.
These observations premised, we maintain that the blood of the embryo, conveyed by the umbilical arteries to the placenta or uterine carunculae transports to the foetus not only nutritious juice, but also a portion of the nitro-aerial particles: so that the blood of the infant seems to be impregnated with nitro-aerial particles by its circulation through the umbilical vessels in the same manner as in the pulmonary vessels. Therefore, I think that the placenta should no longer be called a uterine liver, but rather a uterine lung.[34]
Although Mayow's attempted analysis of respiration of the chick embryoin ovois less than successful, his views on fetal respiration were soon accepted by many, and his tract stands as a great contribution to physiological embryology.
The studies of such individuals as John Standard reporting the weight of various parts of the hen's egg, e.g., the shell, the yolk, the white, reveal the wing of embryological investigation that was increasingly obsessed with quantification and the physicochemical analysis of the embryo and its vital functions. In this they were following the injunction of Boyle, who used the developing embryo as a vehicle in an attack upon the idea that mixed bodies are compounded of three principles, the obscurities of which operated to discourage quantification:
How will this hypothesis teach us, how a chick is formed in the egg, or how the seminal principles of mint, pompions, and other vegetables ... can fashion water into various plants, each of them endowed with its peculiar and determinate shape, and with divers specifick and discriminating qualities? How does this hypothesis shew us, how much salt, how much sulphur, and how much mercury must be taken to make a chick or a pompion? And if we know that, what principle it is, that manages these ingredients, and contrives, for instance, such liquors, as the white and yolk of an egg into such a variety of textures, as is requisite to fashion the bones, veins, arteries, nerves, tendons, feathers, blood, and other parts of a chick? and not only to fashion each limb, but to connect them all together, after that manner, that is most congruous to the perfection of the animal, which is to consist of them?[35]
How will this hypothesis teach us, how a chick is formed in the egg, or how the seminal principles of mint, pompions, and other vegetables ... can fashion water into various plants, each of them endowed with its peculiar and determinate shape, and with divers specifick and discriminating qualities? How does this hypothesis shew us, how much salt, how much sulphur, and how much mercury must be taken to make a chick or a pompion? And if we know that, what principle it is, that manages these ingredients, and contrives, for instance, such liquors, as the white and yolk of an egg into such a variety of textures, as is requisite to fashion the bones, veins, arteries, nerves, tendons, feathers, blood, and other parts of a chick? and not only to fashion each limb, but to connect them all together, after that manner, that is most congruous to the perfection of the animal, which is to consist of them?[35]
The emphasis upon quantification and the physicochemical analysis of vital processes was to continue into the eighteenth century and to contribute to the great stress upon precision in that period. It was not, however, destined to become immediately the main stream of embryological investigation. For even as the studies of Mayow were in progress, embryology was embarked upon a course leading to preformationism. By the end of the seventeenth century, the idea that the embryo was encased in miniature in either egg or sperm was elevated to a position of Doctrine, and thereafter there was little encouragement to quantitative study of development. Many embryological investigations were performed during the eighteenth century, but most relate to the controversy regarding epigenesis and preformationism as the true expression of embryonic development. Withal, the seventeenth-century embryologists, and particularly the embryologists of seventeenth-century England, had contributed much to the progress of the discipline. They had introduced new ideas, applied new techniques, and created new knowledge; they had effectively advanced the study of development beyond the stage of macro-iconography; they had freed the discipline frommuch of its traditional baggage of causes, virtues, and faculties. Various English embryologists had varying success with developmental theory, but as a group they had made great impact upon the development of embryology. In the course of their century, they had, in the words of one of them, "called tradition unto experiment."[36]
Notes
[1]Charles Dickens,A Tale of Two Cities, London, 1859, p. 1.
[2]Kenelm Digby,Private Memoirs of Sir Kenelm Digby, Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King Charles the First, London, 1827, Preface, p. i.
[3]Kenelm Digby,Two Treatises, in the One of Which, The Nature of Bodies; in the Other, the Nature of Mans Soule; is Looked into, Paris, 1644, p. 213.
[4]Ibid., p. 220.
[5]Ibid., pp. 220-221.
[6]Ibid., p. 222.
[7]Ibid., p. 215.
[8]Ibid., p. 219.
[9]Ibid., p. 213.
[10]Ibid., pp. 217-219.
[11]Ibid., p. 231.
[12]Alexander Ross,The Philosphicall Touch-Stone; or Observations upon Sir Kenelm Digbie's Discourses of the nature of Bodies, and of the reasonable Soule, London, 1645.
[13]Alexander Ross,Arcana Microcosmi: or, The hid secrets of Man's Body disclosed ... In an anatomical duel between Aristotle and Galen concerning the parts thereof, London, 1652, p. 87.
[14]Nathaniel Highmore,The History of Generation, Examining the several Opinions of divers Authors, expecially that of Sir Kenelm Digby, in his Discourse of Bodies, London, 1651, p. 4.
[15]Ibid., pp. 26-27.
[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," inTractatus 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 asan Amateur Physician
LESTER S. KING
Robert Boylewas 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 theUsefulness 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 "natural philosophy" and "natural religion." The second part, however, written apparently not too long before publication, has a great deal todo with medicine and constitutes one of the important medical documents of the century.
Deserving of mention is an earlier and minor work of Boyle, indeed, his first published writing, only recently identified. This work, apparently written in 1649, bore the title "An Invitation to a free and generous communication of Secrets and Receits in Physick," and appeared anonymously in 1655 as part of a volume entitledChymical, Medicinal and Chirurgical Addresses Made to Samuel Hartlib, Esquire.[40]For our purposes, it is significant as emphasizing his early interest in medicine.
Boyle seems to have acquired most of his medical knowledge between, say, 1649 and 1662. It is worth recalling some of the trends and conflicts that formed the medical environment during this period. Among the major trends, first place, perhaps, must be given to Galenic doctrine, which had come under progressively severe attack. Molière, who lived from 1622 to 1673, showed in his comedies the popular reaction to a system which, although dominant, was clearly crumbling. The cracks in the edifice even the layman could readily see. Nevertheless, Galenism had its strong supporters. Riverius, who lived from 1589 to 1655, was a staunch Galenist. An edition of his basic and clinical works[41]was translated into English in 1657, and Latin editions continued to be published well into the eighteenth century.[42]
Galenism, of course, had to withstand the great new discoveries in anatomy and physiology made by Vesalius, Aselli, Sanctonius, Harvey, and others, not to mention the host of great investigators who were more strictly contemporaries of Boyle.
Galenism also faced the rivalry of chemistry. The so-called "antimony war" in the earlier part of the century marked an important assault on Galenism, and the letters of the arch-conservative Guy Patin (who died in 1672) help us appreciate this period.[43]However, even more important was the work of van Helmont, who developed and extended the doctrines of Paracelsus and represented a major force in seventeenth-centurythought. Boyle was well acquainted with the writings of van Helmont, who, although his works fell into disrepute as the mechanical philosophy gradually took over, nevertheless in the middle of the seventeenth century was a highly significant figure. In 1662 there appeared the English translation of hisOriatrike,[44]while Latin editions continued to be published later in the century.
In this connection I might also mention the subject of "natural magic," which had considerable significance for medicine. The best-known name is, perhaps, Giovanni Battista della Porta (1545-1615), whose books[45]continued to be published, in Latin and English, during this period when Boyle was achieving maturity.
Profound developments, of course, arose from the new mechanics and physics and their metaphysical background, for which I need only mention the names of Descartes, who died in 1650, and Gassendi, who died in 1655. And then there was also the new methodological approach, that critical empiricism whose most vocal exponent was Francis Bacon, which led directly to the founding of the Royal Society in 1660 and its subsequent incorporation. These phases of seventeenth-century thought and activity I do not intend to take up.
In this turbulent riptide of intellectual currents, Robert Boyle, without formal medical education, performed many medical functions, as a sometime practitioner, consultant, and researcher. Repeatedly he speaks of the patients whom he treated, and repeatedly he refers to practitioners who consulted him, or to whom he gave advice. In addition, through his interest in chemistry, he became an important experimental as well as clinical pharmacologist, and his researches in physiology indicate great stature in this field. If we were to draw a present-day comparison, we might point to investigators who had both the M.D. and the Ph.D. degrees, who had both clinical and laboratory training, and who practiced medicine partly in the clinical wards, partlyin the experimental laboratories. Boyle, of course, did not have either degree, but he did have a status as the leading virtuoso of his day.
The virtuoso has been the subject of a most extensive literature.[46]He aroused considerable contemporary hostility and satire and his overall significance for medical science is probably slight, with a few striking exceptions. Robert Boyle is one of the great exceptions.
First of all, the virtuoso was an amateur. In the literal sense the amateur loves the activities in which he engages, and in the figurative sense he remains independent of any Establishment. Not trained in any rigorous, prescribed discipline, he was not committed to any set doctrine. Furthermore, he was not restricted by the regulations which all Establishments employed to preserve their status, block opposition, and prevent competition. In many fields the Establishment took the form of a guild organization—in medicine, the Royal College of Physicians.[47]
Boyle was a wealthy and highly talented man who could pursue his own bent without needing to make concessions merely to earn a living. He remained quite independent of the cares which oppressed those less well endowed inworldlygoods or native talent. Sometimes, of course, necessity can impose a discipline and rigor which ultimately may serve as a disguised benefit, but in the seventeenth century, when Boyle was active, the lack of systematic training and rigorous background seemed actually an advantage. Clinical chemistry and the broad areas which we can call experimental medicine had no tradition. Work in clinical chemistry, clinical pharmacology, and experimental physiology was essentially innovation. And since innovations are often made by those who are outside the Establishment and not bound by tradition, we need feel no surprise that the experimental approach could make great progress under the aegis of amateurs. Necessarily the work was rather unsystematic and undisciplined, but system and discipline could ariseonly when the new approach had already achieved some measure of success. Through the casual approach of amateurs this necessary foundation could be built.
Boyle, as a clinician, remained on excellent terms with medical practitioners. For one thing, he took great care not to compete with them. As stated,[48]he "was careful to decline the occasions of entrenching upon their profession." Physicians would consult him freely. As a chemist and experimental pharmacologist, he prepared various remedies. Some of these he tried out on patients himself, others he gave to practitioners who might use them. Boyle seems to have abundantly provided what we today call "curbstone consultations."
In no way bound by guild rules and conventions or by rigid educational standards, Boyle was free to learn from whatever sources appealed to him. Repeatedly he emphasized the importance of learning from experience, both his own and that of others, and by "others" he included not only physicians and learned gentlemen, but even the meanest of society, provided they had experience in treating disease. This experience need not be restricted to treatment of humans but should include animals as well. Thus, in speaking of even the "skilfullest physicians," he indicated that many of them "might, without disparagement to their profession, do it an useful piece of service, if they would be pleased to collect and digest all the approved experiments and practices of the farriers, graziers, butchers, and the like, which the ancients did not despise...; and ... which might serve to illustrate themethodus medendi."[49]He was quite critical of physicians who were too conservative even to examine the claims of the nonprofessionals, especially those who were relatively low in the social or intellectual scale. This casts an interesting sidelight on the snobbishness of the medical profession.
Boyle's willingness and ability to ignore the restrictions of an Establishment represent the full flowering of what I might call the Renaissance spirit—the drive to go outside acceptedbounds, to explore, totry, to avoid commitment, and to investigate for oneself.
What internal and external factors permit a successful breakaway from tradition? Rebels there have always been, yet successful rebels are relatively infrequent. The late seventeenth century was a period of successful rebellion, and the virtuosi were one of the factors which contributed to the success. Robert Boyle played a significant part in introducing new methods into science and new science into medicine.
We must realize that Boyle was primarily a chemist and not a biologist. He thought in chemical terms, drawing his examples from physics and chemistry; he did not think in terms of the living creature or the organism, and as a mechanist he passed quite lightly over the concept or organismic behavior. His basic anti-Aristotelianism prevented his appreciating the biologically oriented thought of Aristotle. Instead, Boyle talked about the inorganic world, of water, of metals and elements, of physical properties. He ignored that inner drive which Spinoza called theconatus; or theseedsof Paracelsus or van Helmont; or the persistence over a time course of any "essence" or "form." Since he dealt with phenomena relatively simple when compared with living phenomena, he could, for this very reason, make progress, up to a point. As a chemist, he could seek fairly specific and precise correlations of various concrete environmental factors, and then assume that living beings behaved as did the inorganic objects which he investigated. However, he always excepted the soul of man, as outside his investigations.
But while Boyle was a skillful chemist, judged by the standards of his time, we cannot call him a skillful medical investigator. This represents, however, the fault of the era in which he lived rather than any fault peculiar to him. Boyle's medical studies fall into at least two categories. These were the purely physiological experiments, such as those on respiration or on blood, and the more clinical experiments, concerned withpharmaceuticals, clinical pharmacology, and clinical medicine. The purely physiological experiments have great merit and were profoundly influential in shaping modern physiology. The clinical experiments throw great light on the development of critical judgment in medical history, and the relations of judgment and faith.
In 1775, John Hunter wrote a letter to Jenner that has become quite famous. Hunter had just thanked Jenner for an "experiment on the hedgehog." But, continued Hunter, "Why do you ask me a question by way of solving it? I think your solution is just, but why think? Why not try the experiment?"[50]The word "just," of course, in its eighteenth-century sense, means exact or proper, precise or correct. A "just solution" is one that is logically correct. The "think" refers to Hunter's own uncertainty. He is not content with a verbal or logical solution to a problem, he wants empirical demonstration. Why, he is asking, should we be content with merely a logically correct solution when we can have an experiential demonstration.Try the experiment.Put the logical inference to the test of experience.
This empirical attitude, not at all infrequent in the latter eighteenth-century medicine, was quite unusual in the seventeenth-century medicine. This was precisely the attitude that Robert Boyle exhibited in his clinical contacts.
Medicine, at least textbook medicine, was rationalistic. Textbooks started with definitions and assertions regarding the fundamentals of health. This we see particularly in a Galenic writer such as Riverius. Medicine, he said, "stands upon the basis of its own principles, axioms and demonstrations, repeated by the demonstration of nature."[51]In his text, Riverius first expounded a groundwork concerning the elements, temperaments and humors, spirits and innate heat, the faculties and functions; then the nature of the diseases which resulted from disturbances of these; and finally the signs of disease and the treatment that was appropriate. All were beautifully interdigitated in a logicalfashion, and for any recommended therapy a good reason could be found. There was, however, a serious difficulty. If anyone were so bold as to ask,But how do you know?only a rather lame answer would come forth. The exposition rested in large part on authority or else largely on reasoning from accepted premises—a "just" reasoning. And while much keen observation was duly recorded and a considerable mass of fact underlay the theoretical superstructure, the idea of empirical proof was not current. Riverius chopped logic vigorously and drew conclusions from unsupported assertions in a way that strikes us as reckless.
For a body of knowledge to be a science, it must indicate a logical connection between first principles, which were "universal," and the particular case. The well-educated physician could always give a logical reason for what he did. The empiric, however, was one who carried out his remedies or procedures without being able to tellwhy. That is, he could not trace out the logical connection between first principles and the particular case.
Galenism suffered especially from logical systematization, and the system of van Helmont, while far less orderly, also had its own basic principles on which all else depended. Boyle, however, practiced medicine on a thoroughly different basis. He did not depend on system or logic. In the words that Hunter used to Jenner over a hundred years later, other physicians wouldthinkthe answers to their problems. Boyle, however, preferred totry the experiment. He wantedfacts.
But this attitude, which sounds so modern, so praiseworthy and enlightened, had one serious flaw. Whatwasa fact? And how did you know? This important problem, so significant for the growth of scientific medicine, we can study quite readily in the works of Robert Boyle.
The problem, in a sense, resolves around the notion of credulity. What shall we believe? Boyle makes some distinctions between what he has seen with his own eyes and what other peoplereport to have seen. Thus, he mentions "a very experienced and sober gentleman, who is much talked of" who cured cancer of the female breast "by the outward application of an indolent powder, some of which he also gave me." But, he adds cautiously, he has not yet "had the opportunity to make trial of it."[52]Clearly, since he cannot make the trial himself, Boyle withholds judgment, even though the material came from a "very experienced" gentleman. Or again, he talks about "sober travelers" who made certain claims regarding the treatment of poisons. But, he says, "having not yet made any trial of this my self, I dare not build upon it."[53]
There are numerous such instances, scattered throughout his works, where he reports an alleged cure but specifically indicates his own mental reservations. Clearly, he is quite cautious in accepting the statements of others, even though they were "sober" or "experienced" or even "judicious." On the other hand, he is extremely uncritical when he himself uses the term "cure" and when he attributes cures to particular medicines.
His skepticism he indicates in references, for example, to Paracelsus and van Helmont. Their specific remedy against "the stone," he says, and their claims that they can reduce stones to "insipid water, is so strange (not to say incredible) that their followers must pardon me, if I be not forward to believe such unlikely things, til sufficient experience hath convinced me of their truth."[54]Here, of course, we see further a feature of critical acumen. A claim is made, but if this claim runs counter to Boyle's own accepted body of knowledge, or to logical doctrines derived from other directions, mere assertion cannot carry conviction. "Sufficient experience" must play its part, and just what constitutes "sufficient" we are not quite sure.
In judging the effectiveness of a remedy or the credibility of a statement, one of the most important weapons wasanalogy. Direct observation of a phenomenon was good. Next best was direct observation of someanalogousphenomenon whereby onebody acted upon another to alter its properties or induce significant changes. Boyle drew his analogies largely from chemistry, but he had no hesitation in applying them to medicine.
Claims that medicines swallowed by mouth could dissolve stones in the bladder seemed a priori unlikely. Yet there was considerable authority that this took place; many persons had reported that this was afact. Boyle kept an open mind. He might be highly skeptical in regard to the claims for any particular medication, but he did not deny the principle involved. The possibility that some fluid, when swallowed, could have a particular specific action on stones in the bladder, without affecting the rest of the body, he considered quite plausible through the analogy that quicksilver has an affinity with gold but has no effect upon iron. Furthermore, a substance than can corrode a solid body may nevertheless be unable to "fret" a different body which is considerably softer and thinner, if the "texture" does not admit the small particles.[55]Reasoning by analogy served to explain the logical plausibility. In other words, he was very open-minded. He refused to dismiss all such claims, and provided analogy as a reason for keeping his mind open; yet he refused to accept particular claims of medicine that dissolved stones, because the evidence was not convincing. We could scarcely ask for more.
An important seventeenth-century medical document was the report of Sir Kenelm Digby, regarding the so-called "weapon salve." The essay describing this famous powder was written in 1657, and I have discussed it at some length elsewhere.[56]Here again Boyle keeps an open mind, saying, "and if there be any truth in what hath been affirmed to me by several eye-witnesses, as well physicians as others, concerning theweapon-salve, andpowder of sympathy, we may well conclude, that nature may perform divers cures, for which the help of chirurgery is wont to be implored, with much less pain to the patient, than the chirurgeon is wont to put him to."[57]
One great advantage of chemistry, thought Boyle, lay in thehelp it provided in investigating themateria medica. Chemistry, he thought, could help to purify many of the inorganic medicines and make them safer, without impairing their medicinal properties. Furthermore, chemistry could help investigate various medications customarily employed in medicine, where "there hath not yet been sufficient proof given of their having any medical virtues at all."[58]Boyle believed that by proper chemical analysis he could isolate active components, or, contrariwise, by failing to extract any valuable component, he could eliminate that medicine from use. While a major interest, perhaps, was a desire to provide inexpensive medicines, he was well aware that much of what went into prescriptions probably had no value. Furthermore, he felt that his chemical analysis could indicate whether value and merit were present or not.
The same skepticism applies to remedies that, far from being expensive, were common and yet rather disgusting. The use of feces and urine as medication was widespread. The medical virtues of human urine represent, he believed, a topic far too great to be considered in a brief compass. But he declared that he knew an "ancient gentlewoman" suffering from various "chronical distempers" who every morning drank her own urine, "by the use of which she strangely recovered."[59]Boyle was quite skeptical of the reports of others, which he had not had opportunity to try himself. But in therapeutic trials that he himself had witnessed, he seemed utterly convinced that the medication in question was responsible for the cure and was quite content to accept the evidence of a single case.
He discussed the "efficacy" of millepedes, which he found to be "very diuretical and aperitive." And he indicated, on the evidence of a single patient whom he knew, that the millepedes had great medicinal value in suffusions of the eyes.[60]
Many remedies of this type, the so-called old wives' remedies, were those of empirics. As mentioned previously, Boyle felt deeply concerned because physicians tended to ignore the alleged remedies of those who had not had formal training in medicine. He believed that great specific virtue probably lurked in many of these remedies, and he maintained that the chemists should investigate them without the prejudice that the medical professions exhibited. As part of this view, he felt that "simples" should be more carefully studied, because medicinal virtues inhered in single substances and that complicated combinations were unnecessary.
We find innumerable examples scattered through Boyle's writings regarding the relations between chemistry and medication, numerous descriptions of cures, and skepticism regarding other alleged cures. As an important example, I would indicate Boyle's discussion of one of van Helmont's alleged cures.[61]
Van Helmont described the remarkable cures brought about by a man identified only by the name of Butler. Apart from van Helmont's discussion, we can find no trace of him in medical annals, and van Helmont's own account is extremely skimpy. There are no dates given, and the only temporal clue is that Butler apparently knew King James—King James I, naturally. Butler was an Irishman who suddenly came into world view while in jail. A fellow prisoner was a Franciscan monk who had a severe erysipelas of the arm. Butler took pity on him, and to cure him took a very special stone which he had and dipped it briefly in a spoonful of "almond milk." This he gave to the jailer, bidding him convey a small quantity of it into the food of the monk. Almost immediately thereafter, the monk, not aware of the medicine, noted an extremely rapid improvement.
Van Helmont related other cures. For example, a laundress who had a "megrim" [migraine] for sixteen years was cured by partaking of some olive oil, into a spoonful of which Butler dipped the stone. Other cures for which van Helmont vouched included a man who was exceedingly fat; he touched the stone every morning with the tip of his tongue and very speedily lost weight. Van Helmont's own wife was cured of a marked edemaof the leg. Similarly, a servant maid who had had severe attacks of erysipelas which were "badly cured," and the leg leaden colored and swollen, was cured almost immediately. An abbess, whose arm had been swollen for eighteen years, partly paralyzed, was also cured. Van Helmont, however, indicates that he himself, when he thought he was being poisoned by an enemy, did not secure any benefit from the use of the stone. Later, however, it turned out that, because of the nature of the illness, he should have touched the stone with his tongue, to take its virtue internally, rather than merely anointing the skin with oil into which the stone had been dipped.
Van Helmont makes it very clear that this is not magic or sorcery; there is no diabolic influence, no necromancy. He drew attention to the overwhelming effects which might result from a cause which was so minute that it could not be perceived by the senses. We cannot here go into the theoretical background which underlay van Helmont's conceptions, but we must mention at least briefly his idea of a basic mechanism. Van Helmont considered the action to be that of a ferment, where an extremely minute quantity can produce a tremendous effect. He gives the analogy of the tooth of a mad dog, which, although any saliva has been carefully wiped off, can nevertheless sometimes induce madness. The effect of the stone seems to be comparable. Its power becomes manifest even in enormous dilution and can multiply, for it can import its remedial virtue to a vast quantity of oil. Moreover, the stone had a sort of universal power against all diseases. Such a virtue could not be vegetable in its nature, but was, he thought, connected with metals. He pointed to the well-accepted medicinal virtues which inhered in gems. Metals also had great medicinal potency. Antimony, lead, iron, mercury, were well known, and of special importance was copper, theVenusof the early chemists.
The medicinal virtue which inhered in Butler's stone and in other powerful fermental remedies, van Helmont designatedas "drif," which he said means, in the vernacular, virgin sand or earth. This virtue requires a metallic body in which to inhere. The general concept is not unfamiliar, of a virtue or power or ferment which was attached to a material object, and it is this type of explanation which was so preponderant in, for example, Porta'sNatural Magick. Van Helmont speaks of the "first being," which translates the LatinEns, of Venus or copper. Vitriol is the basic substance, and for purification of the virtue we require a "sequestration of its Venus from the dregs of the vitriol."[62]
This was the background from which Boyle set about to secure a potent remedy. Van Helmont had discussed his experiments whereby he tried to create a medicine which would have the virtues of Butler's stone. Boyle attempted to improve on van Helmont's technique. Copper—Venus—was the basic metal, and Boyle started with vitriol or copper sulfate. He gave fairly explicit directions for the preparation, including calcination, boiling, drying, adding sal armoniack, subliming twice. The resulting chemical represented a purified medicine which he prescribed in variable dosage, from two or three grains, up to twenty or thirty at the maximum. He declared it to be a "potent specifick for the rickets," since he, and others to whom he had given it for use, had "cured" a hundred or more children of that disease. The medicine he also prescribed in fevers and headache, and he thought it "hath done wonders" in obstinate suppressions of the menses. It also improved the appetite. It worked, he declared, through the sweat and, to some extent, the urine.[63]It is noteworthy that Boyle did not claim to have cured the same illnesses than van Helmont reports as having been cured by Butler's stone.
As another example, he gave directions for preparing essence of hartshorn—prepared, literally, from the horn itself. The preparation, strongly alkaline, he prescribed in small doses of eight to ten drops. The medicine "resists malignity, putrefaction,and acid humours," for it destroys the acidity. He used it "in fevers, coughs, pleurisies, obstructions of the spleen, liver, or womb, and principally in affections of the brain...."[64]
While Boyle was a far more skillful chemist than van Helmont, he did not have any greater diagnostic acumen. And clearly, from the standpoint of scientific method, he lacked any sharp criterion of cure. Various patients were ill with various diseases; he gave them one or another preparation; the patients recovered. Controls there were none. Boyle, with great enthusiasm, believed that through natural philosophy we would eventually discover "the true causes and seats of diseases" and also find out effective remedies which would quickly free the patient from the disease.[65]But faith and enthusiasm did not compensate for thepost hoc propter hocattitude.
According to Galenic concepts, if diseases are due to alterations of humors either in their quality or in their proportions, then the suitable remedy will restore the appropriate quality or proportion. In Galenic doctrine, the disturbance of the humors should be perceptible, and a sound Galenic remedy should work by perceptibly changing the nature and proportion of the humors back to normal. However, side by side with the Galenic medical doctrines, there were the other prevalent doctrines, among which I can mention the idea of "specifics." I can emphasize three features: the specific remedy was active against a particular disease, in a quite specific fashion, in the same way that an antidote acted against a specific poison; second, the effectiveness was a matter of direct experience, based on empirical observation; and third, the mode of action remained relatively obscure, but nevertheless the medicines did not seem to behave as did the so-called "Galenicals." Thus, whether they acted by "sympathy," or by a special hidden virtue, or by a peculiar microcosmic energy, we cannot say. But thefactremains that many people asserted the specific effectiveness[66]of this or that remedyagainst a specific disease—e.g., that snakeweed was an effective cure for the bite of a serpent.
Learned physicians, unfortunately, refused in large part to accept the validity of these alleged cures. Their hesitancy rested not on statistical evidence or on niceties of scientific method, but on the grounds that the alleged mode of operation was quite unintelligible and not at all in accord with accepted doctrine.
Boyle, as a chemist, insisted on keeping an open mind in regard to so-called specifics. He objected strongly to the argument that simply because we cannot account for their mode of action, we should conclude that they were not effective. In a passage of great importance, he declared, "Why should we hastily conclude against the efficacy of specificks, taken into the body, upon the bare account of their not operating by any obvious quality, if they be recommended unto us upon their own experience by sober and faithful persons?" Thus, his chain of reasoning is, first of all, these remedies work, as attested by direct experience; we are not able to explain why or how they work; we must not, however, fly in the face of experience and deny their effectiveness simply because of our inability to explain the workings. He gives the example of a "leaven," which in minute amounts is able to "turn the greatest lump of dow [dough] into leaven."[67]
Boyle strongly supported the well-known quotation of Celsus, that the important thing is not what causes the disease but what removes it. In strong terms he criticized "many learned physicians" who rejected specifics on the ground "that they cannot clearly conceive the distinct manner of the specificks working; and think it utterly improbable, that such a medicine, which must pass through digestions in the body, and be whirled about with the mass of blood to all the parts, should, neglecting the rest, shew it self friendly to the brain (for instance) or the kidneys, and fall upon this or that juice or humour rather than any other."[68]Boyle then went into considerable detail to show howthis can take place through the action of ferments, combined with a theoretical exposition of atomistic philosophy, which we do not have time to go into at present. He gave in great detail an exposition of how these specificsmayoperate, but did not in any way produce cogent evidence that they do in fact operate in such fashion.
As a physician, Boyle insisted on facts over theory. He was constantly pleading for physicians to enlarge their experience, to try new medicines, even though these were not based on traditional doctrine. Where observed fact conflicts with theory, the fact cannot be ignored. Credulity of physicians, he indicated, may do the world "more mischief" than any other profession, but nevertheless he condemned those who would try to "circumscribe, or confine the operations of nature, and not so much as allow themselves or others to try, whether it be possible for nature, excited and managed by art, to perform divers things, which they never yet saw done, or work by divers ways, differing from any, which by the common principles, that are taught in the schools, they are able to give a satisfactory account of."[69]Surely, this is not a model of elegant English style, but the message is clear. Boyle was emphasizing the message taught earlier in the century by Francis Bacon, that we must judge the theory by the fact, and not the facts by the theory. It is the same philosophy that Hamlet expounded, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
We see, thus, that Boyle had taken a mighty step toward modern scientific medicine, but he covered only a small part of the total distance. He insisted that we should accept facts, but he did not realize the difficulties attendant on defining a fact and making it credible. He indicated that when strange results are alleged, "these need good proof to make a wary man believe so strange a thing,"[70]but what constitutes proof was a problem which he was not able to wrestle with and, indeed, a problem which he did not clearly perceive.
I would emphasize that Boyle was in essence a man of great faith. He had great faith in religion, and was a deeply religious man. He was a great supporter of so-called "natural religion" and tried to reconcile the doctrines of natural philosophy with those of traditional religion. Westfall[71]has considered in detail the religious attitudes of late seventeenth-century writers, Robert Boyle in particular. The "proofs" alleged by the proponents of natural religion have, of course, little cogency. As Westfall points out, they examined nature in order to find what they already believed.
Nevertheless, religious faith was only one part of the total faith which Boyle exhibited. He had as much faith in the capabilities, the future progress, and the promise of science as he did in traditional religion. Throughout all his works we see great evidence of his religious piety. But his faith in science, particularly as it affected medicine, we see with utmost clarity in the essay "The Usefulness of Natural Philosophy." He had great vision of the benefits that science would eventually bring to the healing arts. Unlike many of his contemporaries, particularly persons such as Glanvill or Spratt, he realized that many anatomical discoveries, for example, were of little practical value, but he felt that such discoveries would, "in process of time (when thehistoria factishall be fully and indisputably made out, and the theories thereby suggested clearly established) highly conduce to the improvement of the therapeutical part of physick...."[72]And with extraordinary perceptiveness he indicated the different ways in which he expected progress to be made through the proper application of mechanical philosophy. He was clear-sighted enough to realize that the discoveries made hitherto were not of great practical value but that the future was indeed bright, and he provided a remarkable blueprint of progress to come.
The measure of progress is, perhaps, the quantity of faith which moves mankind. The study of Robert Boyle emphasizessome divisions among mankind. Some are content to look backward, to be satisfied with the achievements of the past, to rely on accepted systematization, doctrine, and explanation. Others, while dissatisfied with the past, have no guide to lead them anywhere. Still others, however, have a strong faith in the new course which they are pursuing, a faith which can guide them over great difficulties. Boyle was such a man of faith—a word which is really synonymous with "attitude." He marked the transition between the old and the new, and pointed up the difficulties which transition always involves.
Notes
[37]Thomas Birch,The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle, in Robert Boyle,The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. Thomas Birch, London; 1772, I, liv, reprinted Hildesheim, 1965, I, Introduction, viii-ix; Marie Boas Hall,Robert Boyle on Natural Philosophy: An Essay with Selections from His Writings, Bloomington, Indiana, 1965, p. 16.
[38]John F. Fulton,A Bibliography of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1961, p. 37.
[39]Hall,op. cit., p. 47.
[40]Margaret E. Rowbottom, "The Earliest Published Writing of Robert Boyle,"Annals of Science, VI (1950), 376-389; R. E. W. Maddison, "The Earliest Published Writing of Robert Boyle,"Annals of Science, XVII (1961), 165-173.
[41]Lazarus Riverius,The Universal Body of Physick, in five books,... Exactly translated into English by William Carr, London, 1657.
[42]Lazari Riverii,Opera Medica Universa, Geneva, 1727.
[43]J.-H. Reveillé-Parise, ed.,Lettres de Gui Patin, Paris, 1846.
[44]Jean Baptiste van Helmont,Oriatrike or Physick Refined ... faithfully rendered into English by J. C., London, 1662, andOrtus Medicinae, Editio Quarta, Lugduni, 1667.
[45]Giovanni Battista della Porta,Natural Magick, London, 1658, reprinted New York, 1957, andMagiae Naturalis Libri Viginti, Rothomagi, 1650.
[46]Richard F. Jones,Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth-Century England, 2nd ed., St. Louis, 1961; Richard S. Westfall,Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England, New Haven, 1958; Marjorie Hope Nicolson,Pepys' Diary and the New Science, Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1965; Walter E. Houghton, "The English Virtuoso in the Seventeenth Century,"Journal of the History of Ideas, III (1942), 51-73, 190-219; and Dorothy Stimson,Scientists and Amateurs: A History of the Royal Society, New York, 1948. See also, for an entertaining primary source, Thomas Shadwell,The Virtuoso, ed., Marjorie Hope Nicolson and David Stuart Rodes, London, 1966.
[47]Sir George Clark,A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Oxford, Volume I, 1964, Volume II, 1966.
[48]Boyle, "Memoirs for the Natural History of Human Blood,"Works, IV, 637.
[49]Boyle, "On the Usefulness of Natural Philosophy,"Works, II, 169.
[50]Stephen Paget,John Hunter, London, 1897, p. 126.
[51]Riverius,Opera, trans. Lester S. King, p. 1.
[52]Boyle, "Usefulness," pp. 74-75. See also pp. 115-116.
[53]Ibid., p. 87.
[54]Ibid., p. 97.
[55]Ibid., p. 98. See also "Of the Reconcileableness of Specific Medicines to the Corpuscular Philosophy,"Works, V, 85-86.
[56]Lester S. King, "The Road to Scientific Therapy: 'Signatures,' 'Sympathy,' and Controlled Experiment,"Journal of the American Medical Association, CXCVII (1966), 250-256.
[57]Boyle, "Usefulness," p. 115.
[58]Ibid., p. 127.
[59]Ibid., p. 130.
[60]Ibid., p. 131.
[61]Van Helmont, "Butler,"Ortus Medicinae, pp. 358-365, andOriatrike, pp. 585-596. See also Boyle, "Usefulness," p. 102.
[62]Van Helmont,Ortus, p. 365;Oriatrike, p. 596.
[63]Boyle, "Usefulness," pp. 135-136.
[64]Ibid., p. 138.
[65]Ibid., p. 144.
[66]Boyle, "Reconcileableness of Specific Medicines," pp. 80-81.
[67]Boyle, "Usefulness," p. 183.
[68]Ibid., p. 190.
[69]Ibid., p. 194.
[70]Ibid., p. 195.
[71]Westfall,op. cit.
[72]Boyle, "Usefulness," pp. 163-164.
Members of the Seminar
William Andrews ClarkMemorial LibrarySeminar Papers
Editing Donne and Pope.1952.
Problems in the Editing of Donne's Sermons, by George R. Potter.
Editorial Problems in Eighteenth-Century Poetry, by John Butt.
Music and Literature in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.1953.
Poetry and Music in the Seventeenth Century, by James E. Phillips.
Some Aspects of Music and Literature in the Eighteenth Century, by Bertrand H. Bronson.
Restoration and Augustan Prose.1956.
Restoration Prose, by James R. Sutherland.
The Ironic Tradition in Augustan Prose from Swift to Johnson, by Ian Watt.
Anglo-American Cultural Relations in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.1958.
The Puritans in Old and New England, by Leon Howard.
William Byrd: Citizen of the Enlightenment, by Louis B. Wright.
The Beginnings of Autobiography in England, by James M. Osborn. 1959.
Scientific Literature in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England.1961.
English Medical Literature in the Sixteenth Century, by C. D. O'Malley.
English Scientific Literature in the Seventeenth Century, by Rupert Hall.
Francis Bacon's Intellectual Milieu.A Paper delivered by Virgil K. Whitaker at a meeting at the Clark Library, 18 November 1961, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Bacon's birth.
Methods of Textual Editing, by Vinton A. Dearing. 1962.
The Dolphin in History.1963.
The History of the Dolphin, by Ashley Montagu.
Modern Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises, as Challenges to Our Intelligence, by John C. Lilly.
Thomas Willis as a Physician, by Kenneth Dewhurst. 1964.
History of Botany.1965.
Herbals, Their History and Significance, by George H. M. Lawrence.
A Plant Pathogen Views History, by Kenneth F. Baker.
Neo-Latin Poetry of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.1965.
Daniel Rogers: A Neo-Latin Link between the Pléiade and Sidney's 'Areopagus,' by James E. Phillips.
Milton as a Latin Poet, by Don Cameron Allen.
Milton and Clarendon: Papers on Seventeenth-Century English Historiography.1965.
Milton as Historian, by French R. Fogle.
Clarendon and the Practice of History, by H. R. Trevor-Roper.
Some Aspects of Seventeenth Century English Printing with Special Reference to Joseph Moxon, by Carey S. Bliss. 1965.
Homage to Yeats, 1865-1965.1966.
Yeats and the Abbey Theatre, by Walter Starkie.
Women in Yeats's Poetry, by A. Norman Jeffares.
Alchemy and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century.1966.
Renaissance Chemistry and the Work of Robert Fludd, by Allen G. Debus.
Some Nonexistent Chemists of the Seventeenth Century, by Robert P. Multhauf.
The Uses of Irony.1966.
Daniel Defoe, by Maximillian E. Novak.
Jonathan Swift, by Herbert J. Davis.
Bibliography.1966.
Bibliography and Restoration Drama, by Fredson Bowers.
In Pursuit of American Fiction, by Lyle Wright.
Words to Music.1967.
English Song and the Challenge of Italian Monody, by Vincent Duckles.
Sound and Sense in Purcell's 'Single Songs,' by Franklin B. Zimmerman.
John Dryden.1967.
Challenges to Dryden's Biographer, by Charles E. Ward.
Challenges to Dryden's Editor, by H. T. Swedenberg.
Atoms, Blacksmiths, and Crystals.1967.
The Texture of Matter as Viewed by Artisan, Philosopher, and Scientist in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, by Cyril Stanley Smith.
Snowflakes and the Constitution of Crystalline Matter, by John G. Burke.
Laplace as a Newtonian Scientist, by Roger Hahn. 1967.
Modern Fine Printing.1967.
The Private Press: Its Essence and Recrudescence, by H. Richard Archer.
Tradition and Southern California Printers, by Ward Ritchie.
Transcriber's Note:
Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.