Another physician in the service of Robert was Joannes Sylvaticus, styled Pandectarius, from his Pandects, or Medical Vocabulary. He was a Mantuan by birth, and educated in the school of Salernum; but his Pandects are written in so singular a style that they contribute little to their professed object, the explanation of the Greek and Arabian authors, and actually require a dictionary to explain them.

Nichol. Nicolus de Falconius, a Florentine, was nearly a century later, and must be distinguished from Ni-cholaus, a Florentine also, but of a later date, a celebrated patron of science. He appears to have been a physician of no common genius and learning; but his most distinguished work is his Sermones Medicinales, published at Venice, in four volumes, folio. The last author we shall mention is Valescus de Tarenta, who has given a compendious view of the doctrines of the Arabians, and of the physicians of the middle ages. He lived in the fifteenth century, and is one of the few authors who give opinions of their own. He appears to have been an able and experienced physician.

During this obscurity, Greece still retained her former treasures, and could boast of a few physicians to whom they were not unknown, and by whom they were not neglected. A warlike race, whose martial spirit was aided by enthusiasm, burst at once from its fastnesses, and soon overwhelmed the Roman empire in the east. The Turkish emperor, Amurath, in the year 1430, took by storm Thessalonica, from whence Theodore Gaza, a man of considerable learning, escaped, with some of his literary treasures to Italy. When Constantinople was taken, a few years afterwards, and the Byzantine kingdom wholly overturned, many others followed his example. All were warmly received by Lorenzo de Medicis, and the manuscripts, thus rescued from oblivion, soon disseminated the stores of Grecian poetry, history, philosophy, and medicine. The human mind was roused from its lethargy by many other events in this century. The invention of printing facilitated the communication of knowledge. Colon and De Gama discovered, or facilitated, the access to either India, from whence the materia medica gained new acquisitions. The Scurvy, first observed in Germany, in 1482; the Sudor Anglicanus, first noticed about the same time, followed by the Lues Venerea, and the Morbus Pete-chialis in Italy, equally animated the spirit of enquiry to prevent or relieve the effects of such afflicting scourges. During this era Fracastorius and Massa were the chief luminaries of the Italian schools; Sylvius and Fernelius of the Paris; Lommius, the excellent author of the Observationes Medicinales, was a disciple of Fernelius, and practised at Brussels. All these authors were warm admirers of the Hippocratic medicine, and with equal zeal and perseverance endeavoured to revive it. Botal-lus, a Piedmontese of this era, a disciple of Fernelius, archiater to Charles IX. and Henry II. of France, chiefly distinguished himself by his recommendation of profuse-bleeding. In this practice he might have found examples both in the medical authors of Greece and Arabia; but evacuations, so indiscriminate and profuse, must be often injurious. The fatal effects of his plans are even yet felt; for, in France, venesection, almost forgotten in England, is still freely and copiously practised. Duretus, N.. Piso, and Hollerius, were also French physicians, but with more correct views, under the guidance of Hippocrates, whom they admired and illustrated. De Gorris (Gorraeus) and Faesius of Dijon were equally able illustrators of the ancients in the Definitiones Medicae et Oeconomia Hippocratis; but the most striking features in the history of this era are the attention paid to prognostics, and the publication of select observations and consultations. For the latter we are indebted to Forestus and C. Piso.

As we approach nearer our own times, we shall pass more hastily on; and, as we have explained in distinct articles the prevailing systems of medicine, we shall connect only the historical links, except where we find any important fact omitted or misrepresented. The extravagant and erring spirit which we have in this history so often found expatiating beyond the sphere of sober investigation and patient observation, seems again to wander in the 17th century. In its commencement, indeed, Bellonius and Riverius still pursued the system of Hippocrates; and though Sennertus endeavoured to unite the doctrines of the Coan school with the more judicious parts of the chemical system which then began to prevail, it was reserved for Van Helmont to inundate the whole science with the mysticism of the alchemical doctrines and language. Paracelsus, who first introduced chemistry into medicine, was an ignorant boaster, the Jatronice of modern eras, professing to cure all diseases by chemical remedies. He burnt, in solemn state, the works of the ancients, as no longer necessary; and, in possession of the universal medicine to secure immortality, died himself in an hospital at the age of forty-seven. He lived near the. middle of the 16th century, but then appeared like a single transitory meteor, so that we reserved any notice of his extravagancies till we could combine the whole of the chemical sect. Van Helmont, the next in succession, was a man of superior talents, distinguished by sagacity and judgment, which might have been more advantageously directed, but which still render his works, collected by his son, not unworthy the attention of the modern physician. He is considered as the first discoverer of factitious air, to which he gave the name of gas; but Rey had published, somewhat earlier, essays on the cause of the increase of weight in lead when calcined. His son was more mystical than the father, but acute and ingenious, and the friend of Leibnitz. He was succeeded as a chemical pathologist by Sylvius de la Boe, whose doctrines of alkalis, acids, and effervescence, even to our own time, disgraced the science. The prevalence of the chemical system, in the school of Leyden, probably led Boerhaave to select some portion of Sylvius' doctrine to fill up his eclectic system; and Hoffman, amidst more judicious and scientific views, returns often with a partial fondness to acids, alkalis, and acrimony. In our own times the chemical doctrines infected Willis and the whole tribe of Boerhaavians; nor are we, at this moment, exempted from the mania, under the more fashionable names of oxygenation and deoxy-genation.