Dr Richard Bright (1789—1858)

atomizing of medicine into a series of separate problems, in which, as Jacopo frequently showed, equally opposed positions could be maintained with equal success. His successors faced with this impasse reverted to an ever closer scrutiny of the logical methods involved in reaching these conclusions. Dr Ottoson's conclusion goes far towards explaining the appeal in the sixteenth century of the call by Montanus and others for a proper medical method that would bring these discrete pieces of medicine back to its original (Galenic) unity. Second, the concepts used by these commentators, particularly that of temperament (complexio), were often beyond falsification by experience or experiment. If a drug failed to work, this was the result of an individual error of diagnosis or of prescribing, not of an inadequate general theory. Hence the discussions of the concepts could become more and more remote from the sick-bed, especially since, as every philosopher knew, experience was notoriously fallacious. Dr Ottoson makes out a strong case, in part following the lead of Nancy Siraisi, for the late thirteenth century as an age of medical progress, or at least of excitement, followed by a slow descent into dullness and pedantry as the possibilities for change were gradually closed. This may well be true for the universities of N. Italy, and Dr Ottoson is commendably cautious about extending his conclusions beyond the Alps or even to Naples, where the work of Michele Fuiano suggests that lively debate continued well into the fifteenth century. Only further tedious and possibly unrewarding work on the manuscripts of lecture courses elsewhere in Europe will confirm the validity of the conclusions of this useful study, whose lucidity is itself a defence against the charge of medieval obscurantism.