15
after the brilliant period of the 17th Century (in some respects the greatest of our history and certainly the most fruitful in great men) experimental science made slow and uncertain progress, so that between Harvey and Newton, Hook and Grew, Mayow and Boyle on the one hand, and Cavendish, Black and Priestley, Hunter and Hewson on the other, there was nearly a hundred years of stagnation or even retrogression. Hypotheses and dogmas, misapplied mathematics, imperfect chemistry, and an affected literary style (made more conventional by the practice of writing in a foreign language better fitted for rhetoric than science) contributed to make the 18th Century comparatively barren, in so far as science generally, and physiology and medicine in particular are concerned.
