APPENDIX I ST. LUKE THE PHYSICIAN[32]
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, Cæsalpinus, Eustachius, Varolius,
Sylvius are men whose names are attached to great discoveries with
which even those who are without any pretence to knowledge of medical
history are not unacquainted. In spite of nearly four centuries of
distance in time these men seem very close to us. Their lives will be
reserved for a subsequent volume, "Our Forefathers in Medicine."It
is usually the custom to contemn the Middle Ages for their lack of
interest in culture, in education, in literature, in a word, in
intellectual accomplishment of any and every kind, but especially in
science. There is no doubt about the occurrence of marked decadence
in the intellectual life of the first half of this period. This has
sometimes been attributed to what has been called the inhibitory
effect of Christianity on worldly interests. Religion is said to have
occupied people so much with thoughts of the other world that the
beauties and wonders, as well as much of the significance, of the
world around them were missed. Those who talk thus, however, forget
entirely the circumstances which brought about the serious decadence
of interest in culture and science at this time. The Roman Empire had
been the guardian of letters and education and science. While the
Romans were not original in themselves, at least they had shown
intense interest in what was accomplished by the Greeks and their
imitation had often risen to heights that made them worthy of
consideration for themselves. They were liberal patrons of Greek art
and of Greek literature, and did not neglect Greek science and Greek
medicine. Galen's influence was due much more to the prominence
secured by him as the result of his stay in Rome than would have been
possible had he stayed in Asia. There are many other examples of
Roman patronage of literature and science that might be mentioned. As
we shall see, Rome drained Greece and Asia Minor of their best, and
appropriated to herself the genius products of the Spanish Peninsula.
Rome had a way of absorbing what was best in the provinces for
herself.Just
as soon as Rome was cut off from intimate relations with the
provinces by the inwandering of barbarians, intellectual decadence
began. The imperial city itself had never been the source of great
intellectual achievement, and the men whom we think of as important
contributors to Rome's literature and philosophy were usually not
born within the confines of the city. It is surprising to take a list
of the names of the Latin writers whom we are accustomed to set down
simply as Romans and note their birthplaces. Rome herself gave birth
to but a very small percentage of them. Virgil was born at Mantua,
Cicero at Arpinum, Horace out on the Sabine farm, the Plinys out of
the city, Terence in Africa, Persius up in Central Italy somewhere,
Livy at Padua, Martial, Quintilian, the Senecas, and Lucan in Spain.
When the government of the city ceased to be such as assured
opportunity for those from outside who wanted to make their way,
decadence came to Roman literature. Large cities have never in
history been the fruitful mothers of men who did great things.
Genius, and even talent, has always been born out of the cities in
which it did its work. It is easy to understand, then, the decadence
of the intellectual life that took place as the Empire degenerated.For
the sake of all that it meant in the Roman Empire to look towards
Rome at this time, however, it seemed better to the early Christians
to establish the centre of their jurisdiction there. Necessarily,
then, in all that related to the purely intellectual life, they came
under the influences that were at work at Rome at this time. During
the first centuries they suffered besides from the persecutions
directed against them by the Emperors at various times, and these
effectually prevented any external manifestations of the intellectual
life on the part of Christians. It took much to overcome this serious
handicap, but noteworthy progress was made in spite of obstacles, and
by the time of Constantine many important officials of the Empire,
the educated thinking classes of Rome, had become Christians. After
the conversion of the Emperor opportunities began to be afforded, but
political disturbances consequent upon barbarian influences still
further weakened the old civilization until much of the intellectual
life of it almost disappeared.Gradually
the barbarians, finding the Roman Empire decadent, crept in on it,
and though much more of the invasion was peaceful than we have been
accustomed to think, the Romans simply disappearing because family
life had been destroyed, children had become infrequent, and divorce
had become extremely common, it was not long before they replaced the
Romans almost entirely. These new peoples had no heritage of culture,
no interest in the intellectual life, no traditions of literature or
science, and they had to be gradually lifted up out of their
barbarism. This was the task that Christianity had to perform. That
it succeeded in accomplishing it is one of the marvels of history.The
Church's first grave duty was the preservation of the old records of
literature and of science. Fortunately the monasteries accomplished
this task, which would have been extremely perilous for the precious
treasures involved but for the favorable conditions thus afforded.
Libraries up to this time were situated mainly in cities, and were
subject to all the vicissitudes of fire and war and other modes of
destruction that came to cities in this disturbed period.
Monasteries, however, were usually situated in the country, were
built very substantially and very simply, and the life in them formed
the best possible safeguard against fire, which worked so much havoc
in cities. As we shall see, however, not only were the old records
preserved, but excerpts from them were collated and discussed and
applied by means of direct observation. This led the generations to
realize more and more the value of the old Greek medicine and made
them take further precautions for its preservation.The
decadence of the early Middle Ages was due to the natural shifting of
masses of population of this time, while the salvation of scientific
and literary traditions was due to the one stable element in all
these centuries—the Church. Far from Christianity inhibiting
culture, it was the most important factor for its preservation, and
it provided the best stimulus and incentive for its renewed
development just as soon as the barbarous peoples were brought to a
state of mind to appreciate it.Bearing
this in mind, it is easier to understand the course of medical
traditions through the Middle Ages, and especially in the earlier
period, with regard to which our documents are comparatively scanty,
and during which the disturbed conditions made medical developments
impossible, and anything more than the preservation of the old
authors out of the question. The torch of medical illumination
lighted at the great Greek fires passes from people to people, never
quenched, though often burning low because of unfavorable conditions,
but sometimes with new fuel added to its flame by the contributions
of genius. The early Christians took it up and kept it lighted, and,
with the Jewish physicians, carried it through the troublous times of
the end of the old order, and then passed it on for a while to the
Arabs. Then, when favorable conditions had developed again, Christian
schools and scholars gave it the opportunity to burn brightly for
several centuries at the end of the Middle Ages. This medieval age is
probably the most difficult period of medical history to understand
properly, but it is worth while taking the trouble to follow out the
thread of medical tradition from the Greeks to the Renaissance
medical writers, who practically begin modern medicine for us.It
is easy to understand that Christianity's influence on medicine,
instead of hampering, was most favorable. The Founder of Christianity
Himself had gone about healing the sick, and care for the ailing
became a prominent feature of Christian work. One of the Evangelists,
St. Luke, was a physician. It was the custom a generation ago, and
even later, when the Higher Criticism became popular, to impugn the
tradition as to St. Luke having been a physician, but this has all
been undone, and Harnack's recent book, "Luke the Physician,"
makes it very clear that not only the Third Gospel, but also the
Acts, could only have been written by a man thoroughly familiar with
the Greek medical terms of his time, and who had surely had the
advantage of a training in the medical sciences at Alexandria. This
makes such an important link in medical traditions that a special
chapter has been devoted to it in the Appendix.Very
early in Christianity care for the ailing poor was taken up, and
hospitals in our modern sense of the term became common in Christian
communities. There had been military hospitals before this, and
places where those who could afford to pay for service were kept
during illness. Our modern city hospital, however, is a Christian
institution. Besides, deformed and ailing children were cared for and
homes for foundlings were established. Before Christianity the power
even of life and death of the parents over their children was
recognized, and deformed or ailing children, or those that for some
reason were not wanted, were exposed until they died. Christianity
put an end to this, and in two classes of institutions, the hospitals
and the asylums, abundant opportunity for observation of illness was
afforded. Just as soon as Christianity came to be free to establish
its institutions publicly, hospitals became very common. The Emperor
Julian, usually known as the Apostate, who hoped to re-establish the
old Roman Olympian religion, wrote to Oribasius, one of the great
physicians of this time, who was also an important official of his
household, that these Christians had established everywhere hospitals
in which not only their own people, but also those who were not
Christians, were received and cared for, and that it would be idle to
hope to counteract the influence of Christianity until corresponding
institutions could be erected by the government.From
the very beginning, or, at least, just as soon as reasonable freedom
from persecution gave opportunity for study, Christian interest in
the medical sciences began to manifest itself. Nemesius, for
instance, a Bishop of Edessa in Syria, wrote toward the end of the
fourth century a little work in Greek on the nature of man, which is
a striking illustration of this. Nemesius was what in modern times
would be called a philosopher, that is, a speculative thinker and
writer, with regard to man's nature, rather than a physical
scientist. He was convinced, however, that true philosophy ought to
be based on a complete knowledge of man, body and soul, and that the
anatomy of his body ought to be a fundamental principle. It is in
this little volume that some enthusiastic students have found a
description that is to them at least much more than a hint of
knowledge of the circulation of the blood. Hyrtl doubts that the
passage in question should be made to signify as much as has been
suggested, but the occurrence of any even distant reference to such a
subject at this time shows that, far from there being neglect of
physical scientific questions, men were thinking seriously about
them.Just
as soon as Christianity brought in a more peaceful state of affairs
and had so influenced the mass of the people that its place in the
intellectual life could be felt, there comes a period of cultural
development represented in philosophy by the Fathers of the Church,
and during which we have a series of important contributors to
medical literature. The first of these was Aëtius, whose career and
works are treated more fully in the chapter on "Great Physicians
in Early Christian Times." He was followed by Alexander of
Tralles, probably a Christian, for his brother was the architect of
Santa Sophia, and by Paul of Ægina, with regard to whom we know only
what is contained in his medical writings, but whose contemporaries
were nearly all Christians. Their books are valuable to us, partly
because they contain quotations from great Greek writers on medicine,
not always otherwise available, but also because they were men who
evidently knew the subject of medicine broadly and thoroughly, made
observations for themselves, and controlled what they learned from
the Greek forefathers in medicine by their own experience. Just at
the beginning of the Middle Ages, then, under the fostering care of
Christianity there is a period of considerable importance in the
history of medical literature. It is one of the best proofs that we
have not only that Christianity did not hamper medical development,
but that, directly and indirectly, by the place that it gave to the
care of the ailing in life as well as the encouragement afforded to
the intellectual life, it favored medical study and writing.A
very interesting chapter in the story of the early Christian
physician is to be found in what we know of the existence of women
physicians in the fourth and fifth centuries. Theodosia, the mother
of St. Procopius the martyr, was, according to Carptzovius, looked
upon as an excellent physician in Rome in the early part of the
fourth century. She suffered martyrdom under Diocletian. There was
also a Nicerata who practised at Constantinople under the Emperor
Arcadius. It is said that to her St. John Chrysostom owed the cure of
a serious illness. From the very beginning Christian women acted as
nurses, and deaconesses were put in charge of hospitals. Fabiola, at
Rome, is the foundress of the first important hospital in that city.
The story of these early Christian women physicians has been touched
upon in the chapter on "Medieval Women Physicians," as an
introduction to this interesting feature of Salernitan medical
education.During
the early Christian centuries much was owed to the genius and the
devotion to medicine of distinguished Jewish physicians. Their sacred
and rabbinical writers always concerned themselves closely with
medicine, and both the Old Testament and the Talmud must be
considered as containing chapters important for the medical history
of the periods in which they were written. At all times the Jews have
been distinguished for their knowledge of medicine, and all during
the Middle Ages they are to be found prominent as physicians. They
were among the teachers of the Arabs in the East and of the Moors in
Spain. They were probably among the first professors at Salerno as
well as at Montpellier. Many prominent rulers and ecclesiastics
selected Jewish physicians. Some of these made distinct contributions
to medicine, and a number of them deserve a place in any account of
medicine in the making during the Middle Ages. One of them,
Maimonides, to whom a special chapter is devoted, deserves a place
among the great makers of medicine of all time, because of the
influence that he exerted on his own and succeeding generations. Any
story of the preservation and development of medical teaching and
medical practice during the Middle Ages would be decidedly incomplete
without due consideration of the work of Jewish physicians.Western
medical literature followed Roman literature in other departments,
and had only the Greek traditions at second hand. During the
disturbance occasioned by the invasion of the barbarians there was
little opportunity for such leisure as would enable men to devote
themselves with tranquillity to medical study and writing. Medical
traditions were mainly preserved in the monasteries. Cassiodorus,
who, after having been Imperial Prime Minister, became a monk,
recommended particularly the study of medicine to the monastic
brethren. With the foundation of the Benedictines, medicine became
one of the favorite studies of the monks, partly for the sake of the
health of the brethren themselves, and partly in order that they
might be helpful to the villages that so often gathered round their
monasteries. There is a well-grounded tradition that at Monte Cassino
medical teaching was one of the features of the education provided
there by the monks. It is generally conceded that the Benedictines
had much to do with the foundation of Salerno. In the convents for
women as well as the monasteries for men serious attention was given
to medicine. Women studied medicine and were professors in the
medical department of Salerno. Other Italian universities followed
the example thus set, and so there is abundant material for the
chapter on "Medieval Women Physicians."The
next phase of medical history in the medieval period brings us to the
Arabs. Utterly uninterested in culture, education, or science before
the time of Mohammed, with the growth of their political power and
the foundation of their capitals, the Arab Caliphs took up the
patronage of education. They were the rulers of the cities of Asia
Minor in which Greek culture had taken so firm a hold, and captive
Greece has always led its captors captive. With the leisure that came
for study, Arabians took up the cultivation of the Greek
philosophers, especially Aristotle, and soon turned their attention
also to the Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen. For some four
hundred years then they were in the best position to carry on medical
traditions. Their teachers were the Christian and Jewish physicians
of the cities of Asia Minor, but soon they themselves became
distinguished for their attainments, and for their medical writings.
Interestingly enough, more of their distinguished men flourished in
Spain than in Asia Minor. We have suggested an explanation for this
in the fact that Spain had been one of the most cultured provinces of
the Roman Empire, providing practically all the writers of the Silver
Age of Latin literature, and evidently possessing a widely cultured
people. It was into this province, not yet utterly decadent from the
presence of the northern Goths, that the Moors came and readily built
up a magnificent structure of culture and education on what had been
the highest development of Roman civilization.The
influence of the Arabs on Western civilization, and especially on the
development of science in Europe, has been much exaggerated by
certain writers. Closely in touch with Greek thought and Greek
literature during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, it is easy
to understand that the Arabian writers were far ahead of the
Christian scholars of Europe of the same period, who were struggling
up out of the practical chaos that had been created by the coming of
the barbarians, and who, besides, had the chance for whatever Greek
learning came to them only through the secondary channels of the
Latin writers. Rome had been too occupied with politics and
aggrandizement ever to become cultured. In spite of this heritage
from the Greeks, decadence took place among the Arabs, and, as the
centuries go on, what they do becomes more and more trivial, and
their writing has less significance. Just the opposite happened in
Europe. There, there was noteworthy progressive development until the
magnificent climax of thirteenth century accomplishment was reached.
It is often said that Europe owed much to the Arabs for this, but
careful analysis of the factors in that progress shows that very
little came from the Arabs that was good, while not a little that was
unfortunate in its influence was borrowed from them with the
translations of the Greek authors from that language, which
constituted the main, indeed often the only, reason why Arabian
writers were consulted.With
the foundation of the medical school of Salerno in the tenth century,
the modern history of medical education may be said to begin, for it
had many of the features that distinguish our modern university
medical schools. Its professors often came from a distance and had
travelled extensively for purposes of study; they attracted patients
of high rank from nearly every part of Europe, and these were
generous in their patronage of the school. Students came from all
over, from Africa and Asia, as well as Europe, and when abuses of
medical practice began to creep in, a series of laws were made
creating a standard of medical education and regulating the practice
of medicine, that are interesting anticipations of modern movements
of the same kind. Finally a law was passed requiring three years of
preliminary work in logic and philosophy before medicine might be
taken up, and then four years at medicine, with a subsequent year of
practice with a physician before a license to practise for one's self
was issued. In addition to this there was a still more surprising
feature in the handing over of the department of women's diseases to
women professors, and the consequent opening up of licensure to
practise medicine to a great many women in the southern part of
Italy. The surprise that all this should have taken place in the
south of Italy is lessened by recalling the fact that the lower end
of the Italian peninsula had been early colonized by Greeks, that its
name in later times was Magna Græcia, and that the stimulus of Greek
tradition has always been especially favorable to the development of
scientific medicine.Salerno's
influence on Bologna is not difficult to trace, and the precious
tradition of surgery particularly, which was carried to the northern
university, served to initiate a period of surgery lasting nearly two
centuries, during which we have some of the greatest contributions to
this branch of medical science that were ever made. The development
of the medical school at Bologna anticipated by but a short time that
of a series of schools in the north Italian universities. Padua,
Piacenza, Pisa, and Vicenza had medical schools in the later Middle
Ages, the works of some of whose professors have attracted attention.
It was from these north Italian medical schools that the tradition of
close observation in medicine and of thoroughly scientific surgery
found its way to Paris. Lanfranc was the carrier of surgery, and many
French students who went to Italy came back with Italian methods. In
the fourteenth century Guy de Chauliac made the grand tour in Italy,
and then came back to write a text-book of surgery that is one of the
monuments in this department of medical science. Before his time,
Montpellier had attracted attention, but now it came to be looked
upon as a recognized centre of great medical teaching. The absence of
the Popes from Italy and the influence of their presence at Avignon
made itself felt. While culture and education declined in Italy in
the midst of political disturbances, they advanced materially at the
south of France.For
our generation undoubtedly the most interesting chapter in the
history of medieval medicine is that which tells of the marvellous
development of surgery that took place in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. Considerable space has been devoted to this,
because it represents not only an important phase of the history of
medicine, and recalls the names and careers of great makers of
medicine, but also because it illustrates exquisitely the possibility
of important discoveries in medicine being made, applied successfully
for years, and then being lost or completely forgotten, though
contained in important medical books that were always available for
study. The more we know of this great period in the history of
surgery, the more is the surprise at how much was accomplished, and
how many details of our modern surgery were anticipated. Most of us
have had some inkling of the fact that anæsthesia is not new, and
that at various times in the world's history men have invented
methods of producing states of sensibility in which more or less
painless operations were possible. Very few of us have realized,
however, the perfection to which anæsthesia was developed, and the
possibility this provided for the great surgeons of the later
medieval centuries to do operations in all the great cavities of the
body, the skull, the thorax, and the abdomen, quite as they are done
in our own time and apparently with no little degree of success.Of
course, any such extensive surgical intervention even for serious
affections would have been worse than useless under the septic
conditions that would surely have prevailed if certain principles of
antisepsis were not applied. Until comparatively recent years we have
been quite confident in our assurance that antisepsis and asepsis
were entirely modern developments of surgery. More knowledge,
however, of the history of surgery has given a serious set-back to
this self-complacency, and now we know that the later medieval
surgeons understood practical antisepsis very well, and applied it
successfully. They used strong wine as a dressing for their wounds,
insisted on keeping them clean, and not allowing any extraneous
material of any kind, ointments or the like, to be used on them. As a
consequence they were able to secure excellent results in the healing
of wounds, and they were inclined to boast of the fact that their
incisions healed by first intention and that, indeed, the scar left
after them was scarcely noticeable. We know that wine would make a
good antiseptic dressing, but until we actually read the reports of
the results obtained by these old surgeons, we had no idea that it
could be used to such excellent purpose. Antisepsis, like anæsthesia,
was marvellously anticipated by the surgical forefathers of the
medieval period.It
has always seemed to me that the story of Medieval Dentistry
presented an even better illustration of a great anticipatory
development of surgery. This department represents only a small
surgical specialty, but one which even at that period was given over
to specialists, who were called dentatores. Guy de Chauliac's review
of the dentistry of his time and the state of the specialty, as
pictured by John of Arcoli, is likely to be particularly interesting,
because if there is any department of medical practice that we are
sure is comparatively recent in origin, it is dentistry. Here,
however, we find that practically all our dental manipulations, the
filling of teeth, artificial dentures, even orthodontia, were
anticipated by the dentists of the Middle Ages. We have only the
compressed account of it which is to be found in text-books of
general surgery, and while in this they give mainly a heritage from
the past, yet even this suffices to give us a picture very surprising
in its detailed anticipation of much that we have been inclined to
think of as quite modern in invention and discovery.Medicine
developed much more slowly than surgery, or, rather, lagged behind
it, as it seems nearly always prone to do. Surgical problems are
simple, and their solution belongs to a great extent to a handicraft.
That is, after all, what chirurgy, the old form of our word surgery,
means. Medical problems are more complex and involve both art and
science, so that solutions of them are often merely temporary and
lack finality. During the Middle Ages, however, and especially
towards the end of them, the most important branches of medicine,
diagnosis and therapeutics, took definite shape on the foundations
that lie at the basis of our modern medical science. We hear of
percussion for abdominal conditions, and of the most careful study of
the pulse and the respiration. There are charts for the varying color
of the urine, and of the tints of the skin. With Nicholas of Cusa
there came the definite suggestion of the need of exact methods of
diagnosis. A mathematician himself, he wished to introduce
mathematical methods into medical diagnosis, and suggested that the
pulse should be counted in connection with the water clock, the water
that passed being weighed, in order to get very definite comparative
values for the pulse rate under varying conditions, and also that the
specific gravity of fluids from the body should be ascertained in
order to get another definite datum in the knowledge of disease. It
was long before these suggestions were to bear much fruit, but it is
interesting to find them so clearly expressed.At
the very end of the Middle Ages came the father of modern
pharmaceutical chemistry, Basil Valentine. Already the spirit that
was to mean so much for scientific investigation in the Renaissance
period was abroad. Valentine, however, owes little to anything except
his own investigations, and they were surprisingly successful,
considering the circumstances of time and place. His practical
suggestions so far as drugs were concerned did not prove to have
enduring value, but then this has been a fate shared by many of the
masters of medicine. There were many phases of medical practice,
however, that he insisted on in his works. He believed that the best
agent for the cure of the disease was nature, and that the
physician's main business must be to find out how nature worked, and
then foster her efforts or endeavor to imitate them. He insisted,
also that personal observation, both of patients and drugs, was more
important than book knowledge. Indeed, he has some rather strong
expressions with regard to the utter valuelessness of book
information in subjects where actual experience and observation are
necessary. It gives a conceit of knowledge quite unjustified by what
is really known.What
is interesting about all these men is that they faced the same
problems in medicine that we have to, in much the same temper of mind
that we do ourselves, and that, indeed, they succeeded in solving
them almost as well as we have done, in spite of all that might be
looked for from the accumulation of knowledge ever since.It
was very fortunate for the after time that in the period now known as
the Renaissance, after the invention of printing, there were a number
of serious, unselfish scholars who devoted themselves to the
publication in fine printed editions of the works of these old-time
makers of medicine. If the neglect of them that characterized the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had been the rule at the
end of the fifteenth and during the sixteenth century, we would
almost surely have been without the possibility of ever knowing that
so many serious physicians lived and studied and wrote large
important tomes during the Middle Ages. For our forefathers of a few
generations ago had very little knowledge, and almost less interest,
as to the Middle Ages, which they dismissed simply as the Dark Ages,
quite sure that nothing worth while could possibly have come out of
the Nazareth of that time. What they knew about the people who had
lived during the thousand years before 1500 only seemed to them to
prove the ignorance and the depths of superstition in which they were
sunk. That medieval scholars should have written books not only well
worth preservation, but containing anticipations of modern knowledge,
and, though of course they could not have known that, even
significant advances over their own scientific conditions, would have
seemed to them quite absurd.Fortunately
for us, then, the editions of the early printed books, so many of
them monuments of learning and masterpieces of editorial work with
regard to medieval masters of medicine, were lying in libraries
waiting to be unearthed and restudied during the nineteenth century.
German and French scholars, especially during the last generation,
have recovered the knowledge of this thousand years of human
activity, and we know now and can sympathetically study how the men
of these times faced their problems, which were very much those of
our own time, in almost precisely the same spirit as we do ours at
the present time, and that their solutions of them are always
interesting, often thorough and practical, and more frequently than
we would like to think possible, resemble our own in many ways. For
the possibility of this we are largely indebted originally to the
scholars of the Renaissance. Without their work that of our
investigators would have been quite unavailing. It is to be hoped,
however, that our recovery of this period will not be followed by any
further eclipse, though that seems to be almost the rule of human
history, but that we shall continue to broaden our sympathetic
knowledge of this wonderful medieval period, the study of which has
had so many surprises in store for us.