(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, the earthly machine,
as he calls it, into the sphere of mechanics and physics, and he wrote
the first text-book of physiology, "De l'Homme." Locke, too, became the
spokesman of the new questioning spirit, and before the close of the
seventeenth century, experimental research became all the mode.
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