The Latin medical writers were necessarily unknown to the Arabs; and this was partly the cause that even in Europe Galenic medicine assumed such a preponderance, the methodic school and Celsus being forgotten or neglected.
The Hippocratic and also Galenic rule, to let blood from, or near to, the diseased organ, was revived by Pierre Brissot (1470-1522), a professor in the university of Paris.
The revival of Galenic and Hippocratic medicine, though ultimately it conferred the greatest benefits on medical sciences, did not immediately produce any important or salutary reform in practical medicine.
A good deal of it is taken up with a defence of chemical, or, they were called, "spagyric," medicines against the attacks of the supporters of the Galenic pharmacopoeia.
This led to the search for these, which were not to be found in the bewildering and untested mixtures of the Galenic prescriptions.
