In every department of biological science, in anatomy and physiology, in pathology, in botany, in zoology, in palaeontology, in ethnology and linguistics, in anthropology, noteworthy advances were made. Magnificent applications of the knowledge acquired were made for the benefit of man and animals, new plants for medicine were sought in distant countries and a great new development of medicine took place. None of the anatomists and physiologists of the time failed to use their knowledge for the increase of information with regard to disease and its treatment. Vesalius besides being a great anatomist was almost as great a pathologist and one of the epoch-making diagnosticians of medical history. He was the first since the Greeks to describe an aneurism, that is the pathological dilatation of an artery through disease or accident, and the first in the history of medicine to demonstrate the presence of such a condition on the living subject. Paracelsus, { xxxviii} Ambroise Paré, Linacre, John Caius and a whole host of great teachers in Italy are names to conjure with in the history of medicine and of surgery. There is probably no period in the world's history that has so many names famous in medicine that the world will never willingly let die.
The supremely great accomplishments of this time however, the true, good and great deeds of the century, were what it did for men. This is the period when there was more organization for social help and uplift than at any other period that we know. Every social need was responded to by the guilds. There were old-age pensions, disability wages, insurance against fire, accident at sea, burglary, highway robbery, the destruction of crops, the death of animals and all the other developments of mutual protection against the unexpected which we have been inclined to think were developments of our time. There were 30,000 guilds in England, it is said, when they were suppressed by Henry VIII, and the money in the treasuries, many millions of pounds, confiscated on the plea that they were religious organizations. They maintained grammar schools, had burses at the universities, arranged for technical training and apprenticeships, cared for orphans, provided entertainments for the people of the town, brought the membership together in friendly meetings and banquets several times each year, held athletic contests, encouraged social life and innocent amusements in every way and represented an ever vital nucleus of fraternal interest among men. Our chapter on this shows too how seriously the moneyed men of the time took their duty of philanthropic care for their townsmen by various institutions.