Schultheisz Emil: Traditio Renovata. Tanulmányok a középkor és a reneszánsz orvostudományáról / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 21. (Budapest, 1997)
10. The beginning of quantification in physiology
68 the water as a measure of time. By such a technique one might, come to the diversity of the pulse in a young man, and an old man, in a sick man, and a sound man; and so by consequent, to the truer knowledge of the disease. 1 4 In a similar manner the rate of breathing might be measured at various ages and during diverse infirmities. Other studies might be made on men from different parts of the world. Then the subject shifts to specific gravities of various substances, woods, oils, liquors, metals, and precious stones, and to the measurement of the power of attraction of the magnet. Later the Orator asks: There is a Saying that no pure Element is to be given, how is this prov'd by the Ba lance? The Idiot replies: II a man should put an hundred weight of earth into a great earthen pot, and then should take some Herbs, and Seeds, and weigh them, and then plant or sow them in that pot, and then should let them grow there so long, untill hee had succesively by little and little, gotten an hundred weight of them, hee would finde the earth but ver> little diminished, when he came to weigh it againe: by which he might gather, that all the aforesaid herbs, had iheir weight from the water. Therefore the waters being engrossed (or impregnated) in the earth, attracted a terrestreity, and by the operation of the Sunne, upon the Herb were condensed (or were condensed into an Herb). If those Herbs bee then burn't to ashes, mayest not thou guesse by the diversity of the weights of all; How much earth thou Soundest more then the hundred weight, and then conclude that the water brought all that? For the Elements are convertible one into another by parts, as wee finde by a glass put into the snow, where wee shall see te aire condensed into water, and flowing in the glass. So wee finde by experience, that some water is turned into stones, as some is into Ice; and that there is in some fountaines a hardening and petrifying vertue, which turnes the things that are put into them, into stone. For so say they, there is a certaine water found in Hungary, which through the power of the vitriall which is in it, turnetĥ Iron into Copper; for by such powers and vertųes, it is manifest that the waters are not purely elementary, but elementated 1 5 Finally the Idiot says: Experimental knowledge requiereth longe writings, for the more they are, so much the more easily may wee come from the experiments to the Art which is drawn from them. 1 6 After the 13th century there was a pause in the intellectual development of western Europe as written by Garrison 1 7. Nevertheless, Dampier 1 8 reported that there was a continual process of change in the intellectual concepts and throughout this period of transition we can trace the various systems of thought, which in full vigour, formed the great flood of Renaissance. The Renaissance was very far from being exclusively literary. Renaissance medicine has its roots in logical analysis, as well as in certain empiric studies. As soon as they had thrown away the shackles of scholastic authority, the men of Renaissance used the lessons which scholastic method had taught them. They began observing in the conviction that nature was consistent and intelligible, and when they had framed hypotheses by induction to explain their observations, they deduced by logical reasoning consequences which could be tested by experiment. Scholasticism had trained them to destroy itself. 1 4 Ibid. , 1 5 Ibid., pp. 188—190. 1 6 Ibid., p. 191. 1 7 Garrison, F. H., History of Medicine. New York, 1924, 197. 1 8 Dampier, W. C., A History of Science. Cambridge, 1966, 97.
