appeared in 1648, when Petty's age was twenty-five, and its aim was
to suggest a wider view of the whole field of education than had
been possible in the Middle Ages, of which schools and colleges were
then preserving the traditions, as they do still here and there to
some extent. This pamphlet has been reprinted in the sixth volume
of the "Harleian Miscellany." William Petty wished the training of
the young to be in several respects more practical.

His own activity of mind caused him to settle at Oxford, where he
taught anatomy and chemistry, which he had been studying abroad. He
had read with Hobbes the writings of Vesalius, the great founder of
modern practical anatomy. In 1649 William Petty graduated at Oxford
as Doctor of Medicine, obtained a fellowship at Brasenose, and
practised. In 1650 he surprised the public by restoring the action
of the lungs in a woman who had been hanged for infanticide, and so
restoring her to life.

Dr. Petty now took his place at Oxford among the energetic men of
science who had been inspired by the teaching of Francis Bacon to
seek knowledge by direct experiment, and to value knowledge above
all things for its power of advancing the welfare of man. The
headquarters of these workers were at Oxford, and in London at
Gresham College.

In 1650 Petty was made Professor of Anatomy at Oxford, and it is a
characteristic illustration of his great activity of mind that he
was at the same time Professor of Music at Gresham College. Music
had then a high place in the Seven Sciences, as that use of
regulated numbers which expressed the harmonies of the created
world. The Seven Sciences were divided into three of the Trivium,