2
718 Thomas Linacre himself came to Italy in 1488, with William of Selling whose pupil he had been at Oxford. After visiting Florence, he moved to Padua to study medicine, and took his degree in 1492. Besides the anatomist Benedetti, his masters at Padua included Nicolo Leoniceno, a famous Greek scholar; and he was also a friend of the great editor, Aldo Manuzio. When he returned to England he lectured at Oxford and Cam- bridge ; he became a personal physician to Henry VIII ; and he was also tutor to Princess Mary. Yet he still found time to edit the first English translations of Galen. Somewhere about the year 1540 another student of medicine who has achieved fame came to Padua—:7o/ Caius. He was the faithful pupil of Giovan Battista da Monte, who was the first teacher to bring students into the hospital wards, so as to talk to the patients and to study their illnesses. Caius, in proof of his devotion and esteem for his master, quoted him immediately after Galen in the titles of his books. Thomas Phayer, also came to Padua, but it is not known whether he studied medicine or law, but he later practised both professions. He was the author of the first English treatise on paediatrics and of the first translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Between 1521 and 1525, as part of his peregrination, John Clement visited Padua. He, too, was a physician to Henry VIII, he translated Greek classics, and he married the daughter of Sir Thomas More. Edward Jorden, who took his medical degree at Padua towards the end of the 16th century, was the author of the first English psychiatric study, which includes the case- history of a woman with laryngeal spasm of hysterical origin. And now, at the end of this glorious century, we meet William Harvey, who’ came to Padua to study under Fabricius d’Acquapendente, in the new anatomy theatre, the first in the world, which had been built in 1595. Near by, from a roughly made professorial chair, erected in the open to satisfy the numerous students, Galileo Galilei demonstrated his universal laws. Harvey received his degree on April 25, 1602, from the hands of a Palatine count, Sigismondo Capodolista ; for he was not a Catholic and the Venetian Republic had obtained leave that non-catholic students should receive their degrees from some Paduan counts of imperial title rather than from the bishop. Fabricius, who had deeply studied the venous system, had probably a big influence on Harvey’s work on the circulation. Moreover, both the idea of the circulation, and the term itself, were known before this work was done. But Harvey’s achievement was to demonstrate the phenomenon, both qualitatively and quantitatively, so that his inquiry into the circulation of the blood can be regarded as the first really modern work in experi- mental physiology. In his method we can properly recognise Galileo’s teaching ; for Galileo was the father of experimental research and exercised a profound influence also in medicine, which he had studied as a young man. * * * Those I have named here are only the most eminent figures of this period. How numerous were their less famous colleagues is shown by the fact that the roll of the Royal College of Physicians between 1502 and 1671 includes at least 57 men who had taken their degrees at Padua. To these we must add the greater number of students who frequented this university for a brief time ; and equally we must take note of the continuous exchange of news and ideas so fervid among the scholars of that epoch-a reciprocal influence evident, for example, in the support which Ramazzini, of this university, gave to Sydenham’s theories of the genius epidemicus. Our meeting today prolongs the community of spirit and culture which is the solid basis of friendship between our countries. Public Health Random Reflections " " I thought it might be useful to try to convey some- thing of my. own faith in the value of our work and my confidence in our future," said Dr. Charles White in his presidential address to the Society of Medical Officers of Health on Sept. 22. It is, he thinks, no good complaining that the curative services attract most attention : " of course they do and will continue to do so." He hoped that those engaged in the treatment of disease would become more generous in their ack. nowledgement of public-health work and more anxious to cooperate in it. For their part, those engaged in public health should be generous in acknowledging the achievements of curative medicine but should at the same time have faith in themselves, in the value of what they have done, and in the possibility of doing even greater things. Medical officers of health had been heard to complain that the National Health Service Act had left them only environmental hygiene and epidemiology ; but such a complaint, he felt, implied too narrow a view of the meaning of these words : " Environmental hygiene in its restricted sense has been limited to the hygiene of man’s physical surroundings. It is a branch of public-health work which I think some medical officers of health have in recent years tended to hand over to non-medical staff or to other departments of the local authority, but I agree with Sir William Savage that medical officers should retain a close interest and association with it. In the first place their medical training and experience has developed their powers of observation and their capacity to weigh the relative importance of the conditions they observe. They expect to have to use their discretion in prescribing treatment and not to be bound by hard and fast rules and standards which are so beloved by the lay staff. In the second place it has been my experience that sanitary inspectors welcome the interest of the medical officer of health in their work and the opportunity of discussing their problems with him. They realise that the M.o.H. cannot be as familiar as they are with all the detail of the practical work in which they are engaged day by day, but they know that he understands the underlying principles and can bring a trained mind to the consideration of such principles in particular cases. I think sanitary inspectors generally are quite happy to be members of a team of which the M.o.H. is captain, but if the M.o.H. does not play then they not unnaturally want to be independent." . But environmental hygiene meant much more than the physical surroundings which affect health; it included the personal and social relationships which can have a profound effect on the individual, and thus not only on his mental but on his physical health. As regards mental ill health, there was scope for much more preventive work at all ages, which in his opinion could be developed only by the public-health service, in cooperation with general practitioners and certain voluntary organisations. The tendency had been to regard epidemiology as the study only of communicable diseases ; but Dr. White thought the M.o.H. should accept J. N. Morris’s broader definition of epidemiology as " the study of health and disease of populations in relation to their environment and ways of living." In discussing the advances that the M.O.H. might make into new territory with the aid of allies, Dr. White numbered among those allies the voluntary societies. In one respect these had a great advantage over official bodies : they could take action in individual cases, so far as their funds permit, without committing themselves to similar action in all the similar cases that might present themselves ; and this made it easier for them to do pioneer work on a small scale. Many people were still anxious to give personal service to those in misfortune or distress, but on the other hand it’was nowadays far harder to collect money for charitable purposes. " While
