Gilbert shall live till
load-stones cease to draw
Or British fleets the
boundless ocean awe.
And the verse is true, for by the publication in 1600
of the “De Magnete” the science of electricity
was founded. William Gilbert was a fine type
of the sixteenth-century physician, a Colchester man,
educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge.
Silvanus Thompson says: “He is beyond question
rightfully regarded as the Father of Electric Science.
He founded the entire subject of Terrestrial Magnetism.
He also made notable contributions to Astronomy, being
the earliest English expounder of Copernicus.
In an age given over to metaphysical obscurities and
dogmatic sophistry, he cultivated the method of experiment
and of reasoning from observation, with an insight
and success which entitles him to be regarded as the
father of the inductive method. That method,
so often accredited to Bacon, Gilbert was practicing
years before him."(40)
(40) Silvanus P. Thompson:
Gilbert of Colchester, Father of
Electrical Science,
London, Chiswick Press, 1903, p. 3.
The middle of the seventeenth century saw the
profession thus far on its way—certain
objective features of disease were known, the art of
careful observation had been cultivated, many empirical
remedies had been discovered, the coarser structure
of man’s body had been well worked out, and
a good beginning had been made in the knowledge of
how the machinery worked—nothing more.
What disease really was, where it was, how it was
caused, had not even begun to be discussed intelligently.
An empirical discovery of the first importance marks
the middle of the century. The story of cinchona
is of special interest, as it was the first great
specific in disease to be discovered. In 1638,
the wife of the Viceroy of Peru, the Countess of Chinchon,
lay sick of an intermittent fever in the Palace of
Lima. A friend of her husband’s, who had
become acquainted with the virtues, in fever, of the
bark of a certain tree, sent a parcel of it to the
Viceroy, and the remedy administered by her physician,
Don Juan del Vego, rapidly effected a cure. In
1640, the Countess returned to Spain, bringing with
her a supply of quina bark, which thus became known
in Europe as “the Countess’s Powder”
(pulvis Comitissae). A little later, her doctor
followed, bringing additional quantities. Later
in the century, the Jesuit Fathers sent parcels of
the bark to Rome, whence it was distributed to the
priests of the community and used for the cure of
ague; hence the name of “Jesuits’ bark.”
Its value was early recognized by Sydenham and by
Locke. At first there was a great deal of opposition,
and the Protestants did not like it because of its
introduction by the Jesuits. The famous quack,
Robert Talbor, sold the secret of preparing quinquina
