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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.

These terms, of course, were in the Galenic practice. In "The Queen's Closet" all the physic was found afield, with the exception of the precious metals and one compound, rubila, which was made of antimony and nitre, and which was in special favor in the Winthrop family as many of their letters show.

In contradistinction to Galenic medicines, which were largely derived from the vegetable kingdom, from this time on we find in the literature references to spagyric medicines and a "spagyrist" was a Paracelsian who regarded chemistry as the basis of all medical knowledge. One cannot speak very warmly of the practical medical writings of Paracelsus.

Sr Yr Sert WILL LOCHS Mr. Lockes Letter Recd from the Governor 13 Jane & acquainted ye Council with it but could not obtaine any thing to be sent in answer thereto. 13 June 1676 I have given some idea of the chief remedies used by our earlier physicians, which were both Galenic and chemical; that is, vegetable and mineral.

About the same time Galenic physiology, expressed also in numerous works in the vulgar tongue and rousing the curiosity of the physicians, became the clear parent of modern physiology and comparative anatomy. But, above all, the Aristotelian biological works were fertilizers of the mind. What an impressive contrast to the arid physics of the time based also on Aristotle!

He had come amongst them because the great metropolis of England had ever been infested by numerous quacks, whose arrogant confidence, backed by their ignorance, had enabled them to impose on the public; either by premeditated cheats in physic, chymical and galenic, in astrology, physiognomy, palmistry, mathematics, alchymy, and even government itself.

At the time he came into the field medicine was struggling against the dominating Galenic teachings and the theories of Paracelsus, but perhaps most of all against the superstitions of the time. In France human dissections were attended with such dangers that the young Vesalius transferred his field of labors to Italy, where such investigations were covertly permitted, if not openly countenanced.

Sr Yr Sert WILL LOCHS. Mr. Lockes Letter Recd from the Governor 13 Jane & acquainted ye Council with it but could not obtaine any thing to be sent in answer thereto. 13 June 1676. I have given some idea of the chief remedies used by our earlier physicians, which were both Galenic and chemical; that is, vegetable and mineral.

What is the secret of the vitality of these Galenic biological conceptions? The answer can be given in four words. Galen is a teleologist; and a teleologist of a kind whose views happened to fit in with the prevailing theological attitude of the Middle Ages, whether Christian, Moslem, or Jewish.

It is said to have been because of the study of Basil Valentine's work that Paracelsus broke away from the Galenic traditions, so supreme in medicine up to his time, and began our modern pharmaceutics.