Abstract
WHEN Harvey was entering on his career as an investigator, in the early years of the seventeenth century, the great movement of the Renaissance had produced its full effects. Starting in Italy in the fourteenth century, it spread during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and permeated the rising nationalities of Western Europe. It was through the zeal engendered by this movement that the priceless literary and artistic treasures of Greece and Rome were rescued from oblivion and made the secure heritage of all time. The study of these monuments of ancient genius, and the inspiration communicated by them, saved mediæval Europe from barbarism, and created a new civilisation not inferior in polish to that of the classical ages. Upon literature and the fine arts the spirit of the Renaissance reacted with the happiest possible effects.
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Science and Modern Civilisation1. Nature 56, 621–624 (1897). https://doi.org/10.1038/056621a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/056621a0