<h1>V <br/> POST-GRADUATE WORK AT THE UNIVERSITIES.</h1>
<p>In modern times it has often been said that no university can be
considered to be doing its proper work unless, besides teaching, it is
also adding to the existing body of knowledge by original research.
Because of unfortunate educational traditions, probably the last thing
in the world that would enter into the minds of most people to
conceive as likely to be found in the history of the universities of
the Thirteenth Century, would be original research in any form. In
spite of this almost universal false impression, original work of the
most valuable kind, for much of which workers would be considered as
amply deserving of their doctorates in the various faculties of the
post-graduate departments of the most up-to-date of modern
universities, was constantly being accomplished during this wonderful
century. It is, as a matter of fact, with this phase of university
activity that the modern educator is sure to have more sympathy than
with any other, once the significant details of the work become clear.</p>
<p>All surprise that surpassing original work was accomplished will cease
when it is recalled that, besides creating the universities
themselves, this century gave us the great Cathedrals—a well-spring
of originality, and a literature in every civilized country of Europe
that has been an inspiration to many subsequent generations. At last
men had the time to devote to the things of the mind. During what are
called the Dark Ages, a term that must ever be used with the
realization that there are many bright points of light in them, men
had been occupied with wars and civic and political dissensions of all
kinds, and had been gradually climbing back to the heights of interest
in intellectual matters which had been theirs before the invasion of
the barbarians and the migration of nations. With the rebirth of
intellectual interests there came an intense curiosity to know
everything and to investigate every manifestation. Everything
that men touched was novel, and the wonderful advances they made can
only be realized from actual consultation of their works, while the
reader puts himself as far as possible at the same mental point of
view from which they surveyed the world and their relations to it.</p>
<p>The modern university prides itself on the number of volumes written
by its professors and makes it a special feature of its announcements
to call attention to its at least supposed additions to knowledge in
this mode. It must have been immensely more difficult to preserve the
writings of the professors of the medieval universities for they had
to be copied out laboriously by hand, yet we have an enormous number
of large volumes of their works, on nearly every intellectual topic,
that have been carefully preserved. There are some twenty closely
printed large folio volumes of the writings of Albertus Magnus that
have come down to us. For two centuries, until the time of printing,
ardent students must have been satisfied to spend much time in
preserving these. While mainly devoted to theology, they treat of
nearly everything else, and at least one of the folio volumes is taken
up almost exclusively with physical science. St. Thomas Aquinas has as
many volumes to his credit and his work is even of more importance.
Duns Scotus died at a very early age, scarcely more than forty, yet
his writings are voluminously extensive and have been carefully
preserved, for few men had as enthusiastic students as he. Alas! that
his name should be preserved for most people only in the familiar
satiric appellation 'dunce.' The modern educator will most rejoice at
the fact that the students of the time must have indeed been devoted
to their masters to set themselves to the task of copying out their
work so faithfully for, as Cardinal Newman has pointed out, it is the
personal influence of the master, rather than the greatness of the
institution, that makes education effective.</p>
<p>First with regard to philosophy, the mistress of all studies, whose
throne has been shaken but not shattered in these ultimate times.
After all it must not be forgotten that this was the great century of
the development of scholastic philosophy. While this scholastic
philosophy is supposed by many students of modern philosophy to be a
thing of the past, it still continues to be the basis of the
philosophical teaching in the Catholic seminaries and universities
throughout the world. Catholic philosophers are well known as
conservative thinkers and writers, and yet are perfectly free to
confess that they consider themselves the nearer to truth the nearer
they are to the great scholastic thinkers of the Thirteenth Century.
Even in the circle of students of philosophy who are outside the
influence of scholasticism, there is no doubt that in recent years an
opinion much more favorable to the Schoolmen has gradually arisen.
This has been due to a study of scholastic sources. Only those despise
and talk slightingly of scholasticism who either do not know it at all
or know it only at second hand. With regard to the system of thought,
as such, ever is it true, that the more close the acquaintanceship the
more respect there is for it.</p>
<p>With regard to theology the case is even stronger than with regard to
philosophy. Practically all of the great authorities in theology
belong to the Thirteenth Century. It is true that men like Saint
Anselm lived before this time and were leaders in the great movement
that culminated in our century. Saint Anselm's book, <i>Cur Deus Homo</i>,
is indeed one of the best examples of the combination of scholastic
philosophy and theology that could well be cited. It is a triumph of
logical reasoning, applied to religious belief. Besides, it is a great
classic and any one who can read it unmoved by admiration for the
thinker who, so many centuries ago, could so trenchantly lay down his
thesis and develop it, must be lacking in some of the qualities of
human admiration. The writers of the Thirteenth Century in theology
are beyond even Anselm in their marvelous powers of systematizing
thought. One need only mention such names as Albertus Magnus, Thomas
Aquinas, Bonaventure. Duns Scotus, and Raymond Lully to make those who
are at all acquainted with the history of the time realize, that this
is not an idle expression of the enthusiasm of a special votary of the
Thirteenth Century.</p>
<p>As we shall see in discussing the career of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the
Catholic Church still continues to teach scholastic theology on
exactly the same lines as were laid down by this great doctor of the
church in his teaching at the University of Paris. Amid the crumbling
of many Christian systems of thought, as upheld by the various
protestant sects, there has been a very general realization that the
Catholic Church has built up the only edifice of Christian
apologetics, which will stand the storms of time and the development
of human knowledge. Confessedly this edifice is founded on Thirteenth
Century scholasticism. Pope Leo XIII., than whom, even in the
estimation of those who are least sympathetic toward his high office,
there was no man of more supremely practical intelligence in our
generation, insisted that St. Thomas Aquinas must in general principle
at least, be the groundwork of the teaching of philosophy and theology
as they are to form the minds of future Catholic apologists.</p>
<p>The scholastic theology and philosophy of the Thirteenth Century have
come to us in absolute purity. The huge tomes which represent the
indefatigable labors of these ardent scholars were well preserved by
the subsequent generation which thought so much of them, and in spite
of the absence of printing have come down to us in perfectly clear
texts. It is easy to neglect them and to say that a study of them is
not worth while. They represent, however, the post-graduate work and
the research in the department of philosophy and theology of these
days, and any university of modern time would consider itself honored
by having their authors among its professors and alumni. Any one who
does not think so need only turn to the volumes themselves and read
them with understanding and sympathy, and there will be another
convert to the ranks of that growing multitude of scholars, who have
learned to appreciate the marvelous works of our university colleagues
of the Thirteenth Century.</p>
<p>With regard to law, not much need be said here, since it is well
understood that the foundations of our modern jurisprudence (see
chapters on Legal Origins), as well as the methods of teaching law,
were laid in the Thirteenth Century and the universities were the most
active factors, direct and indirect, in this work. The University of
Bologna developed from a law school. Toward the end of the Twelfth
Century Irnerius revived the study of the old Roman law and put the
curriculum of modern Civil Law on a firm basis. A little later Gratian
made his famous collection of decretals, which are the basis of Canon
Law. Great popes, during the Thirteenth Century, beginning with
Innocent III., and continuing through such worthy emulators as Gregory
IX. and Boniface VIII., made it the special glory of their
pontificates to collect the decrees of their predecessors and arrange
and publish them, so that they might be readily available for
consultation.</p>
<p>French law assumed its modern form, and the basis of French
jurisprudence was laid, under Louis IX., who called to his assistance,
in this matter, the Professors of Law at the University of Paris, with
many of whom he was on the most intimate terms. His cousin, Ferdinand
of Castile, laid the foundation of the Spanish law about the same time
under almost similar circumstances, and with corresponding help. The
study of law in the English universities helped to the formulation of
the principles of the English Common Law in such simple connected form
as made them readily accessible for consultation. Just before the
beginning of the last quarter of the Thirteenth Century, Bracton, of
whose work much more will be said in a subsequent chapter, drew up the
digest of the English Common Law, which has been the basis of English
jurisprudence ever since. It took just about a century for these
countries, previously without proper codification of the principles of
their laws, to complete the fundamental work to such a degree, that it
is still the firm substructure on which rests all our modern laws.
Legal origins, in our modern sense, came not long before the
Thirteenth Century; at its end the work was finished, to all intents
and purposes. Of the influence of the universities and of the
university law departments, in all this there can be no doubt. The
incentive, undoubtedly, came from their teachings. The men who did so
much for legal origins of such far-reaching importance, were mainly
students of the universities of the time, whose enthusiasm for work
had not subsided with the obtaining of their degrees.</p>
<p>It is in medicine, however, much more than in law or theology, that
the eminently practical character of university teaching during the
Thirteenth Century can be seen, at least in the form in which it will
appeal to a scientific generation. We are so accustomed to think that
anything like real progress in medicine, and especially in surgery,
has only come in very recent years, that it is a source of great
surprise to find how much these earnest students of a long distant
century anticipated the answers to problems, the solutions of which
are usually supposed to be among the most modern advances. Professor
Allbutt, the Regius professor of Physic in the University of
Cambridge, a position, the occupant of which is always a leader in
English medical thought, the present professor being one of the
world's best authorities in the history of medicine, recently pointed
out some of these marvels of old-time medicine and surgery. In an
address On the Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery to the end
of the Sixteenth Century, delivered at the Congress of Arts and
Sciences at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, he (Prof. Allbutt) spoke
with regard to one of the great university medical teachers of the
Thirteenth Century as follows:</p>
<p class="cite">
"Both for his own great merits, as an original and independent
observer, and as the master of Lanfranc, William Salicet (Guglielmo
Salicetti of Piacenza, in Latin G. Placentinus de Saliceto—now
Cadeo), was eminent among the great Italian physicians of the latter
half of the Thirteenth Century. Now these great Italians were as
distinguished in surgery as in medicine, and William was one of the
protestants of the period against the division of surgery from inner
medicine; a division which he regarded as a separation of medicine
from intimate touch with nature. Like Lanfranc and the other great
surgeons of the Italian tradition, and unlike Franco and Ambroise
Paré, he had the advantage of the liberal university education of
Italy; but, like Paré and Wurtz, he had large practical experience
in hospital and on the battlefield. He practised first at Bologna,
afterward in Verona. William fully recognised that surgery cannot be
learned from books only. His Surgery contains many case histories,
for he rightly opined that good notes of cases are the soundest
foundation of good practice; and in this opinion and method Lanfranc
followed him. William discovered that dropsy may be due to a
'<i>durities renum</i>'; he substituted the knife for the Arabist abuse
of the cautery; he investigated the causes of the failure of healing
by first intention; he described the danger of wounds of the neck;
he sutured divided nerves; he forwarded the diagnosis of
suppurative disease of the hip, and he referred chancre and
phagedaena to their real causes."</p>
<p>This paragraph sets forth some almost incredible anticipations of what
are usually considered among the most modern phases of medicine and
surgery. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the simple statement
that Salicet recognized that surgery cannot be learned from books
alone. His case histories are instructive even to the modern surgeon
who reads them. His insistence on his students making careful notes of
their cases as the soundest foundation of progress in surgery, is a
direct contradiction of nearly everything that has been said in recent
years about medieval medicine and especially the teaching of medicine.
(See Appendix.)</p>
<p>William's great pupil, Lanfranc, followed him in this, and Lanfranc
encouraged the practise at the University of Paris. There is a
note-book of a student at the University of Paris, made toward the end
of the Thirteenth Century, carefully preserved in the Museum of the
University of Berlin. This notebook was kept during Lanfranc's
teaching and contains some sketches of dissections, as well as some
illustrations of operative procedures, as studied with that celebrated
surgeon. The tradition of case histories continued at the University
of Paris down to the beginning of modern surgery.</p>
<p>Some of the doctrines in medicine that William of Salicet stated so
clearly, sound surprisingly modern. The connection, for instance,
between dropsy and <i>durities renum</i> (hardening of the kidneys) shows
how wonderfully observant the old master was. At the present time we
know very little more about the dropsical condition associated with
chronic Bright's disease than the fact that it constantly occurs where
there is a sclerosis or contraction of the kidney. Bright in his study
of albuminuria and contracted kidney practically taught us no more
than this, except that he added the further symptom of the presence of
albumin in the urine. It must have been only as the result of many
carefully studied cases, followed by autopsies, that any such doctrine
could have come into existence. There is a dropsy that occurs with
heart disease; there is also a dropsy in connection with certain
affections of the liver, and yet the most frequent cause is just this
hardening of the kidneys spoken of by this
middle-of-the-Thirteenth Century Italian professor of medicine, who,
if we would believe so many of the historians of medicine, was not
supposed to occupy himself at all with ante and post-mortem studies of
patients, but with the old-time medical authorities.</p>
<p>Almost more surprising than the question of dropsy is the
investigation as to the causes of the failure of healing by first
intention. The modern surgeon is very apt to think that he is the only
one who ever occupied himself with the thought, that wounds might be
made to heal by first intention and without the occurrence of
suppuration or granulation. Certainly no one would suspect any
interest in the matter as far back as the Thirteenth Century. William
of Salicet, however, and Lanfranc, both of them occupied themselves
much with this question and evidently looked at it from a very
practical standpoint. Many careful observations must have been made
and many sources of observational error eliminated to enable these men
to realize the possibilities of primary union, especially, knowing as
they did, nothing at all about the external causes of suppuration and
considering, as did surgeons for nearly seven centuries afterward,
that it was because of something within the patient's tissues that the
cases of suppuration had their rise.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the pioneer work done by William and his great disciple
did not have that effect upon succeeding generations which it should
have had. There was a question in men's minds as to whether nature
worked better by primary union or by means of the suppurative process.
In the next century surgeons took the wrong horn of the dilemma and
even so distinguished a surgeon as Guy de Chauliac, who has been
called, not without good cause, the father of surgery, came to the
conclusion that suppuration was practically a necessary process in the
healing of large wounds at least, and that it must be encouraged
rather than discouraged. This doctrine did not have its first set-back
until the famous incident in Ambroise Paré's career, when one morning
after a battle, coming to his patients expecting to find many of them
very severely ill, he found them on the contrary in better condition
than the others for whom he had no forebodings. In accord with old
custom he poured boiling oil into the wounds of all patients, but
the great surgeon's supply of oil had failed the day before and he
used plain water to cleanse the wounds of a number, fearing the worst
for them, however, because of the poison that must necessarily stay in
their wounds and then had the agreeable disappointment of finding
these patients in much better condition than those whom he had treated
with all the rules of his art, as they then were. Even this incident,
however, did not serve to correct entirely the old idea as to the
value of suppuration and down to Lister's time, that is almost the
last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, there is still question of the
value of suppuration in expediting the healing of wounds, and we hear
of laudable pus and of the proper inflammatory reaction that is
expected to bring about wound repair.</p>
<p>The danger of wounds of the neck is, of course, not a modern doctrine,
and yet very few people would think for a moment that it could be
traced back to the middle of the Thirteenth Century and to a practical
teacher of surgery in a medieval Italian university. Here once more
there is evidence of the work of a careful observer who has seen
patients expire in a few minutes as the result of some serious
incident during the course of operations upon the neck. He did not
realize that the danger was due, in many cases, to the sucking in of
air into the large veins, but even at the present time this question
is not wholly settled and the problem as to the danger of the presence
of air is still the subject of investigation.</p>
<p>As to the suture of divided nerves, it would ordinarily and as a
matter of course be claimed by most modern historians of surgery and
by practically all surgeons, as an affair entirely of the last half
century. William of Salicet, however, neglected none of the ordinary
surgical procedures that could be undertaken under the discouraging
surgical circumstances in which he lived. The limitations of
anesthesia, though there was much more of this aid than there has
commonly been any idea of, and the frequent occurrence of suppuration
must have been constant sources of disheartenment. His insistence on
the use of the knife rather than on the cautery shows how much he
appreciated the value of proper healing. It is from such a man that we
might expect the advance by careful investigation as to just what
tissues had been injured, with the idea of bringing them together in
such juxtaposition as would prevent loss of function and encourage
rapid and perfect union.</p>
<SPAN name="opp87">{opp87}</SPAN>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i_opp087a.jpg" border=1><br/>
SCREEN (HEREFORD)</p>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i_opp087b.jpg" border=1><br/>
DOORWAY OF SACRISTY (BOURGES)</p>
<p>Perhaps to the ordinary individual William's reference of certain
known venereal affections to their proper cause, will be the most
astonishing in this marvelous list of anticipations of what is
supposed to be very modern. The whole subject of venereal disease in
anything like a scientific treatment of it is supposed to date from
the early part of the Sixteenth Century. There is even question in
certain minds as to whether the venereal diseases did not come into
existence, or at least were not introduced from America or from some
other distant country that the Europeans had been exploring about this
time. William's studies in this subject, however, serve to show that
nothing escaped his watchful eye and that he was in the best sense of
the word a careful observer and must have been an eminently suggestive
and helpful teacher.</p>
<p>What has thus been learned about him will serve of itself and without
more ado, to stamp all that has been said about the unpractical
character of the medical teaching of the medieval universities as
utterly unfounded. Because men have not taken the trouble to look up
the teaching of these times, and because their works were until recent
years buried in old folios, difficult to obtain and still more
difficult to read when obtained, it has been easy to ignore their
merit and even to impugn the value of their teaching completely.
William of Salicet was destined, moreover, to be surpassed in some
ways by his most distinguished pupil, Lanfranc, who taught at the
University of Paris at the end of the Thirteenth Century. Of Lanfranc,
in the address already quoted from, Professor Allbutt has one very
striking paragraph that shows how progressive was the work of this
great French surgeon, and how fruitful had been the suggestive
teaching of his great master. He says:</p>
<p class="cite">
"Lanfranc's 'Chirurgia Magna' was a great work, written by a
reverent but independent follower of Salicet. He distinguished
between venous and arterial hemorrhage, and used styptics (rabbit's
fur, aloes, and white of egg was a popular styptic in elder
surgery), digital compression for an hour, or in severe cases
ligature. His chapter on injuries of the head is one of the
classics of medieval surgery. Clerk (cleric) as he was, Lanfranc
nevertheless saw but the more clearly the danger of separating
surgery from medicine."</p>
<p>Certain assertions in this paragraph deserve, as in the case of
Lanfranc's master, to be discussed, because of their anticipations of
what is sometimes thought to be very modern in surgery. The older
surgeons are supposed to have feared hemorrhage very much. It is often
asserted that they knew little or nothing about the ligature and that
their control of hemorrhage was very inadequate. As a matter of fact,
however, it was not primary hemorrhage that the old surgeons feared,
but secondary hemorrhage. Suppuration often led to the opening of an
important artery, and this accident, as can well be understood, was
very much dreaded. Surgeons would lose their patients before they
could come to their relief. How thoroughly Lanfranc knew how to
control primary hemorrhage can be appreciated from the quotation just
made from Dr. Allbutt's address. The ligature is sometimes said to
have been an invention of Ambroise Paré, but, as a matter of fact, it
had been in use for at least three centuries before his time, and
perhaps even longer.</p>
<p>Usually it is considered that the difficult chapter of head injuries,
with all the problems that it involves in diagnosis and treatment, is
a product of the Nineteenth Century. Hence do we read, with all the
more interest, Allbutt's declaration that Lanfranc wrote what is
practically a classical monograph, on the subject. It is not so
surprising, then, to find that the great French surgeon was far ahead
of his generation in other matters, or that he should even have
realized the danger of separating surgery from medicine. Both the
Regius professors of medicine at the two great English universities,
Cambridge and Oxford, have, since the beginning of the Twentieth
Century, made public expression of their opinion that the physician
should see more of the work of the surgeon, and should not depend on
the autopsy room for his knowledge of the results of internal disease.
Professor Osler, particularly, has emphasized his colleague, Professor
Allbutt's opinion in this matter. That a surgical professor at the
University of Paris, in the Thirteenth Century, should have
anticipated these two leaders of medical thought in the Twentieth
Century, would not be so surprising, only that unfortunately the
history of medieval teaching has, because of prejudice and a
lamentable tradition, not been read aright.</p>
<p>Occasionally one finds a startling bit of anticipation of what is most
modern, in medicine as well as in surgery. For instance, toward the
end of the Thirteenth Century, a distinguished English professor of
medicine, known as Gilbert, the Englishman, was teaching at
Montpelier, and among other things, was insisting that the rooms of
patients suffering from smallpox should be hung entirely with red
curtains, and that the doors and the windows should be covered with
heavy red hangings. He claimed that this made the disease run a
lighter course, with lessened mortality, and with very much less
disfigurement. Smallpox was an extremely common disease in the
Thirteenth Century, and he probably had many chances for observation.
It is interesting to realize that one of the most important
observations made at the end of the Nineteenth Century by Dr. Finsen,
the Danish investigator whose studies in light and its employment in
therapeutics, drew to him the attention of the world, and eventually
the Nobel prize of $40,000 for the greatest advance in medicine was,
that the admission of only red light to the room of smallpox patients
modified the disease very materially, shortened its course, often
prevented the secondary fever, and almost did away completely with the
subsequent disfigurement.</p>
<p>It is evident that these men were searching and investigating for
themselves, and not following blindly in the footsteps of any master.
It has often been said that during the Middle Ages it was a heresy to
depart, ever so little, from the teaching of Galen. Usually it is
customary to add that the first writer to break away from Galen,
effectually, was Vesalius, in his De Fabrica Corporis Humani,
published toward the end of the second quarter of the Sixteenth
Century. It may be said, in passing, that, as a matter of fact,
Vesalius, though he accomplished much by original investigation, did
not break so effectually with Galen as would have been for the best in
his own work, and, especially, for its influence on his successors. He
certainly did not set an example of independent research and
personal observation, any more fully, than did the medical teachers of
the Thirteenth Century already mentioned, and some others, like
Mondaville and Arnold of Villanova, whose names well deserve to be
associated with them.</p>
<p>One reason why it is such a surprise to find how thoroughly practical
was the teaching of the Thirteenth Century university medical schools,
is because it has somehow come to be a very general impression that
medicine was taught mainly by disputations, and by the consultation of
authorities, and that it was always more important to have a passage
of Galen to support a medical notion, than, to have an original
observation. This false impression is due to the fact that the writers
of the history of medical education have, until recent years, drawn
largely on their imaginations, and have not consulted the old-time
medical books. In spite of the fact that printing was not discovered
for more than two centuries later, there are many treatises on
medicine that have come down to us from this early time, and the
historians of medicine now have the opportunity, and are taking the
trouble, to read them with a consequent alteration of old-time views,
as to the lack of encouragement for original observation, in the later
Middle Ages. These old tomes are not easy reading, but nothing daunts
a German investigator bound to get to the bottom of his subject, and
such men as Pagel and Puschmann have done much to rediscover for us
medieval medicine. The French medical historians have not been behind
their German colleagues and magnificent work has been accomplished,
especially by the republication of old texts. William of Salicet's
surgery was republished by Pifteau at Toulouse in 1898. Mondaville's
Surgery was republished under the auspices of the Society for the
Publication of old French Texts in 1897 and 1898. These republications
have made the works of the old-time surgeons readily available for
study by all interested in our great predecessors in medicine, all
over the world. Before this, it has always been necessary to get to
some of the libraries in which the old texts were preserved, and this,
of course, made it extremely difficult for the ordinary teacher of the
history of medicine to know anything about them. Besides, old texts
are such difficult reading that few, except the most earnest of
students, have patience for them, and they are so time-taking as
to be practically impossible for modern, hurried students.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, writers of the history of medicine filled up this gap
in their knowledge, only too frequently, either out of their
imaginations, or out of their inadequate authorities, with the
consequence of inveterating the old-time false impression with regard
to the absence of anything of medical or surgical interest, even in
the later Middle Ages.</p>
<p>Another and much more serious reason for the false impression with
regard to the supposed blankness of the middle age in medical
progress, was the notion, quite generally accepted, and even yet not
entirely rejected, by many, that the Church was opposed to scientific
advance in the centuries before the reformation so-called, and that
even the sciences allied to medicine, fell under her ban. For
instance, there is not a history of medicine, so far as I know,
published in the English language, which does not assert that Pope
Boniface VIII., by a Bull promulgated at the end of the Thirteenth
Century, forbade the practise of dissection. To most people, it will,
at once, seem a natural conclusion, that if the feeling against the
study of the human body by dissection had reached such a pass as to
call forth a papal decree in the matter, at the end of the century,
all during the previous hundred years, there must have been enough
ecclesiastical hampering of anatomical work to prevent anything like
true progress, and to preclude the idea of any genuinely progressive
teaching of anatomy.</p>
<p>There is not the slightest basis for this bit of false history except
an unfortunate, it is to be hoped not intentional, misapprehension on
the part of historical writers as to the meaning of a papal decree
issued by Boniface VIII. in the year 1300. He forbade, under pain of
excommunication, the boiling of bodies and their dismemberment in
order that thus piecemeal they might be transported to long distances
for burial purposes. It is now well known that the Bull was aimed at
certain practises which had crept in, especially among the Crusaders
in the East. When a member of the nobility fell a victim to wounds or
to disease, his companions not infrequently dismembered the body,
boiled it so as to prevent putrefaction, or at least delay decay, and
then transported it long distances to his home, in order that he
might have Christian burial in some favorite graveyard, and that his
friends might have the consolation of knowing where his remains
rested. The body of the Emperor Frederick Barbarosa, who died in the
East, is said to have been thus treated. Boniface was one of the most
broadly educated men of his time, who had been a great professor of
canon and civil law at Paris when younger, and realized the dangers
involved in such a proceeding from a sanitary standpoint, and he
forbade it, requiring that the bodies should be buried where the
persons had died. He evidently considered that the ancient custom of
consecrating a portion of earth for the purpose of burial in order
that the full Christian rites might be performed, was quite sufficient
for noble as for common soldier.</p>
<p>For this very commendable sanitary regulation Boniface has been set
down by historians of medicine as striking a death blow at the
development of anatomy for the next two centuries. As a matter of
fact, however, anatomy continued to be studied in the universities
after this Bull as it had been before, and it is evident that never by
any misapprehension as to its meaning was the practise of dissection
lessened. Curiously enough the history of human dissection can only be
traced with absolute certainty from the time immediately after this
Bull. It is during the next twenty-five years at the University of
Bologna, which was always closely in touch with the ecclesiastical
authorities in Italy and especially with the Pope, that the
foundations of dissection, as the most important practical department
of medical teaching, were laid by Mondino, whose book on dissection
continued to be the text book used in most of the medical schools for
the next two centuries. Guy de Chauliac who studied there during the
first half of the Fourteenth Century says he saw many dissections made
there. It was at Montpellier, about the middle of the century, when
the Popes were at Avignon not far away, that Guy de Chauliac himself
made attendance at dissections obligatory for every student, and
obtained permission to use the bodies of criminals for dissection
purposes. At the time Chauliac occupied the post of chamberlain to the
Popes. All during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries constant
progress was making in anatomy, especially in Italy, and some of it
was accomplished at Rome by distinguished teachers of anatomy who
had been summoned by the popes to their capital in order to add
distinction to the teaching staff at the famous Papal School of
Science, the Sapienza, to which were attached during the next two
centuries many of the distinguished scientific professors of the time.</p>
<p>This story with regard to the papal prohibition of dissection has no
foundation in the history of the times. It has had not a little to do,
however, with making these times very much misunderstood and one still
continues to see printed references to the misfortune, which is more
usually called a crime, that prevented the development of a great
humanitarian science because of ecclesiastical prejudice. This story
with regard to anatomy, however, is not a whit worse than that which
is told of chemistry in almost the same terms. At the beginning of the
Fourteenth Century Pope John XXII. is said to have issued a Bull
forbidding chemistry under pain of excommunication, which according to
some writers in the matter is said to have included the death penalty.
It has been felt in the same way as with regard to anatomy, that this
was only the culmination of a feeling in ecclesiastical circles
against chemistry which must have hampered its progress all during the
Thirteenth Century.</p>
<p>An examination of the so-called Bull with regard to chemistry, it is
really only a decree, shows even less reason for the slander of Pope
John XXII. than of Boniface VIII. John had been scarcely a year on the
papal throne when he issued this decree forbidding "alchemies" and
inflicting a punishment upon those who practised them. The first
sentence of the title of the document is: "Alchemies are here
prohibited and those who practise them or procure their being done are
punished." This is evidently all of the decree that those who quoted
it as a prohibition of chemistry seem ever to have read. Under the
name "alchemies," Pope John, as is clear from the rest of the
document, meant a particular kind of much-advertised chemical
manipulations. He forbade the supposed manufacture of gold and silver.
The first sentence of his decree shows how thoroughly he recognized
the falsity of the pretensions of the alchemists in this matter. "Poor
themselves," he says, "the alchemists promise riches which are not
forthcoming." He then forbids them further to impose upon the poor
people whose confidence they abuse and whose good money they take
to return them only base-metal or none at all.</p>
<p>The only punishment inflicted for the doing of these "alchemies" on
those who might transgress the decree was not death or imprisonment,
but that the pretended makers of gold and silver should be required to
turn into the public treasury as much gold and silver as had been paid
them for their alchemies, the money thus paid in to go to the poor. As
in the case of the Bull with regard to anatomy, it is very clear that
by no possible misunderstanding at the time was the development of the
science of chemistry hindered by this papal document. Chemistry had to
a certain extent been cultivated at the University of Paris, mainly by
ecclesiastics. Both Aquinas and his master Albertus wrote treatises on
chemical subjects. Roger Bacon devoted much time to it as is well
known, and for the next three centuries the history of chemistry has a
number of names of men who were not only unhampered by the
ecclesiastical authorities, but who were themselves usually either
ecclesiastics, or high in favor with the churchmen of their time and
place. This is true of Hollandus, of Arnold of Villanova, of Basil
Valentine, and finally of the many abbots and bishops to whom
Paracelsus in his time acknowledged his obligations for aid in his
chemical studies.</p>
<p>Almost needless to say it has been impossible, in a brief sketch of
this kind limited to a single chapter, to give anything like an
adequate idea of what the enthusiastic graduate students and
professors of the Thirteenth Century succeeded in accomplishing. It is
probably this department of University life, however, that has been
least understood, or rather we should say most persistently
misunderstood. The education of the time is usually supposed to be
eminently unpractical, and great advances in the departments of
knowledge that had important bearings on human life and its relations
were not therefore thought possible. It is just here, however, that
sympathetic interpretation and the pointing out of the coordination of
intellectual work often considered to be quite distinct from
university influences were needed. It is hoped then that this short
sketch will prove sufficient to call the attention of modern educators
to a field that has been neglected, or at least has received very
little cultivation compared to its importance, but which must be
sedulously worked, if our generation is to understand with any degree
of thoroughness the spirit manifested and the results attained by the
medieval universities.</p>
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DOUBLE FLYING BUTTRESS (RHEIMS)</p>
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