31.3 Europe: a.d. 1601 to 1700  (Page 19/30)

It will be noted that no credit has been given the medical profession for the disappearance of the plague. Nevertheless, some progress in this field continued to be made. Thomas Sydenham was a great clinical physician who recognized that each major disease had many varieties. Thomas Willis contributed the De Anatome Cerebi, a thorough study of the nervous system. A circle of arteries at the base of the brain and the 11th cranial nerve still bear his name. The Royal Society, with physicians as the major component, was formed in this century and still exists today. The battle between apothecaries and physicians over the practice of medicine was bitter. (Ref. 125 ) As the power of plague ebbed, that of typhus fever rose. That infection had first been described in 1643 by Willis, but it did not become a major problem in this century. Measles, in both the 1 6th and 17th centuries appears to have been closely associated with small-pox. A severe epidemic occurred in 1674, causing the extreme degree of contagion of the disease to be recognized. (Ref. 214 )

But we must return to the governmental scene. When James II, another devout Catholic, reached the English throne in 1685, he brought back to focus the old "King or Parliament" issue and the latter, continuing the revolt, promptly dethroned him, thus expelling the last Catholic king from the British Isles. After some intrigue, Parliament allowed William of Orange, the great Dutch leader, to arrive with an army and take over the English throne nearly bloodlessly. His royal claim was through his wife, Mary, sister of James, although a Protestant. William, a persistent hater of the French, as we have seen, and Mary made alliances with various European powers in an attempt to curtail the powers of France. Louis XIV was William's sole target. He had taken the English throne to acquire the wealth and land and sea forces to wage a European war. (Ref. 31 ) He was not interested in the domestic affairs of England and left those problems to ministers, the most influential of which was George Savile, Marquis of Halifax. John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, was virtually commander-in-chief of armies, leading 8,000 men against the French in Flanders. Later Churchill was dismissed because of royal family intrigues, regaining the king's confidence again only at the end of the century. William just barely lasted out the century, dying in 1702. He was father-less, childless, asthmatic, had a tubercular lung, was partly crippled, lived with a loveless wife (Ref. 31 ) and was considered a homosexual by most historians. (Ref. 147 ) During his reign, in spite of an expanding economy, there were constant political battles between landowning Tories (From "Tory", an Irish word for robber) and the money making Whigs (apparently a shortened form of Whiggamore, a band of Scots active in 1648 against Charles I). (Ref. 53 ) There were also battles between the English and the Scots and with William 's supporters and those who would assassinate him and restore James on the throne. In 1692 an army of 10,000 desperate Irishmen and 10,000 French regulars assembled around Cherbourg, ready to attack England and restore the Catholic James to the English throne. The subsequent invasion fleet was destroyed by the British navy's Admiral Russell, formerly a James backer. On land William's armies were not so successful, with the war finally grinding down to a truce in the Treaty of Ryswick in 1696.