ABSTRACT
The revival of ancient learning, the voyages of discovery, and the invention of printing gave a new stimulus to the biological sciences as well as to the mathematical and physical sciences. During the centuries immediately preceding the Renaissance the study of plants and animals had been almost entirely subordinated to medicinal interests. The whole atmosphere of the Middle Ages was unfavourable to an interest in Nature for its own sake. The progress of botany was particularly marked at the beginning of the modern period. It had been the custom to suppose that Theophrastus, Pliny, and Dioscorides had already exhausted the world of plants, and had said all there was to be said about them. William Harvey was born at Folkstone, and educated in Cambridge. In 1597 he went to the University of Padua, where he studied medicine under Fabricius until 1602.
