Old-Time Makers of Medicine | Page 2

medical practice as in every other department of human effort. It does not seem possible that mankind should ever lose sight of the progress in medicine and surgery that has been made in recent years, yet the history of the past would seem to indicate that, in spite of its unlikelihood, it might well come about. Whether this is the lesson of the book or not, I shall leave readers to judge, for it was not intentionally put into it.
OUR LADY'S DAY IN HARVEST, 1911.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. GREAT PHYSICIANS IN EARLY CHRISTIAN TIMES 23
III. GREAT JEWISH PHYSICIANS 61
IV. MAIMONIDES 90
V. GREAT ARABIAN PHYSICIANS 109
VI. THE MEDICAL SCHOOL AT SALERNO 141
VII. CONSTANTINE AFRICANUS 163
VIII. MEDIEVAL WOMEN PHYSICIANS 177
IX. MONDINO AND THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF BOLOGNA 202
X. GREAT SURGEONS OF THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 234
XI. GUY DE CHAULIAC 282
XII. MEDIEVAL DENTISTRY--GIOVANNI OF ARCOLI 313
XIII. CUSANUS AND THE FIRST SUGGESTION OF LABORATORY METHODS IN MEDICINE 336
XIV. BASIL VALENTINE, LAST OF THE ALCHEMISTS, FIRST OF THE CHEMISTS 349
APPENDICES
I. ST. LUKE THE PHYSICIAN 381
II. SCIENCE AT THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 400
III. MEDIEVAL POPULARIZATION OF SCIENCE 427
"Of making many books there is no end."--Eccles. xii, 12 (circa 1000 B.C.).
"The little by-play between Socrates and Euthydemus suggests an advanced condition of medical literature: 'Of course, you who have so many books are going in for being a doctor,' says Socrates, and then he adds, 'there are so many books on medicine, you know.' As Dyer remarks, whatever the quality of these books may have been, their number must have been great to give point to this chaff."--Aequanimitas, WILLIAM OSLER, M.D., F.R.S., Blakistons, Philadelphia, 1906.
"Augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur; Inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum, Et, quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt." --OVID.
One nation rises to supreme power in the world, while another declines, and, in a brief space of time, the sovereign people change, transmitting, like racers, the lamp of life to some other that is to succeed them.
"There is one Science of Medicine which is concerned with the inspection of health equally in all times, present, past and future."
--PLATO.

I
INTRODUCTION
Under the term Old-Time Medicine most people probably think at once of Greek medicine, since that developed in what we have called ancient history, and is farthest away from us in date. As a matter of fact, however, much more is known about Greek medical writers than those of any other period except the last century or two. Our histories of medicine discuss Greek medicine at considerable length and practically all of the great makers of medicine in subsequent generations have been influenced by the Greeks. Greek physicians whose works have come down to us seem nearer to us than the medical writers of any but the last few centuries. As a consequence we know and appreciate very well as a rule how much Greek medicine accomplished, but in our admiration for the diligent observation and breadth of view of the Greeks, we are sometimes prone to think that most of the intervening generations down to comparatively recent times made very little progress and, indeed, scarcely retained what the Greeks had done. The Romans certainly justify this assumption of non-accomplishment in medicine, but then in everything intellectual Rome was never much better than a weak copy of Greek thought. In science the Romans did nothing at all worth while talking about. All their medicine they borrowed from the Greeks, adding nothing of their own. What food for thought there is in the fact, that in spite of all Rome's material greatness and wide empire, her world dominance and vaunted prosperity, we have not a single great original scientific thought from a Roman.
Though so much nearer in time medieval medicine seems much farther away from us than is Greek medicine. Most of us are quite sure that the impression of distance is due to its almost total lack of significance. It is with the idea of showing that the medieval generations, as far as was possible in their conditions, not only preserved the old Greek medicine for us in spite of the most untoward circumstances, but also tried to do whatever they could for its development, and actually did much more than is usually thought, that this story of "Old-Time Makers of Medicine" is written. It represents a period--that of the Middle Ages--that is, or was until recently, probably more misunderstood than any other in human history. The purpose of the book is to show at least the important headlands that lie along the stream of medical thought during the somewhat more than a thousand years from the fall of the Roman Empire under Augustulus (476) until the discovery of America. After that comes modern medicine, for with the sixteenth century the names and achievements of the workers in medicine are familiar--Paracelsus, Vesalius, Columbus, Servetus, C?salpinus, Eustachius, Varolius, Sylvius are men