Montpelier. From them Guy received every encouragement in his
scientific work. He insisted that no one could practice surgery with
any hope of success unless he devoted himself to careful dissection of
the human body. If we were to believe some of the things that have
been said with regard to the Popes forbidding dissection, this should
have been enough to keep the French surgeon from the favor of the
Popes, but it did not. On the contrary, he was the intimate friend and
consultant medical attendant of two of the Avignon Popes, and was the
chamberlain to one of them. The good influence of Chauliac on the
minds of the Popes is reflected in their interest in the medical
department of the University of Montpelier. About this time Pope Urban
VI. founded the College of Twelve Physicians at Montpelier. He was an
alumnus of the university, and had been appealed to to enlarge the
opportunities of his Alma Mater. He did so in the manner just related.
One of the Papal Physicians of the Avignon times was unfortunate. This
was the ill-fated Cecco di Ascolo, who was distinguished as a poet and
a philosopher as well as a physician. But for his sad end, one might
be tempted to say, that he had so many irons in the fire {212} that it
was scarce to be wondered at that he suffered the fate of many another
tender of too many irons, and eventually got his fingers burnt. He was
body physician of Pope John XXII. during a good part of the long
pontificate of that strenuous old man, who became Pope when over
seventy, lived to be ninety, yet accomplished important work in every
year of his career. After leaving Avignon Cecco went to Italy and
became the Professor of Astrology at Bologna. The term astrology had
none of the unfortunate or derisory signification that it has at the
present time. It was, as the etymology of the word implies, the
science of the stars, though it was cultivated with due reference to
the influence of these heavenly bodies on human fate and human
constitutions. Hence a physician's interest in it. This continued to
be a characteristic of astrology down to the time of Tycho-Brahe, the
Danish astronomer, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Cecco
and another distinguished physician of the time, Dino de Garbo, became
involved in a public controversy, as the result of which Cecco was
denounced to the public authorities as undermining the basis of
government and virtually teaching anarchy, though it was called
heresy, and as a result of the bitter feud he suffered the penalty of
death by fire.
The last of the Papal Physicians connected with the Pontifical Court
at Avignon was almost as illustrious as any of his predecessors. He
was the well-known Joannes de Tornamira, who was the body physician to
Gregory XI. until that Pontiff brought the Papal Court back to Rome.
Then Tornamira became the chancellor of the University of Montpelier.
He wrote an introduction to the study of medicine, meant for the use
of students and young physicians, called a Clarificatorium, which,
{213} according to Puschmann's History of Medicine, was the most used
text-book of medicine during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Besides this he wrote a long and important work On Fevers and the
Accidents of Fevers, in which he sums up all the medical knowledge of
the time on these subjects.
That the policy of the Popes did not change as regards the selection
of their physicians on their return from Avignon to Rome, is to be
seen from the physician of the Popes whose See was in both places.
This was the famous Francis of Siena, who is known best in history as
the intimate friend of Petrarch, and who was physician to Pope Gregory
XI. and to his successor, Urban VI. He had been a professor of
medicine at the University of Pisa, and by special invitation went to
fill the same position in the University of the Papal City, and became
at the same time the medical adviser of the Popes. His influence on
medicine was not very important, but he occupied a very prominent
position among the learned men of the time, and his personal prestige
did much to add to the dignity of the profession. In our own time, the
medical men who have been best known and whose membership in the
profession has added greatly to its popular estimation, have at times
not been distinguished for great things in medicine. Francis of Siena
was such a man, and the fact that he was medical adviser to the Popes
at the same time must be counted as an important factor in the
evolution of medical dignity.
One of the first writers on medical cases who did not indulge much in
theory was Baverius de Baveriis, of Imola, who died about 1480, and
who was the physician to Pope Nicholas V. shortly before and after the
middle of the fifteenth century. In the light of the fact that a {214}
recent Papal physician, Dr. Lapponi, has written a book on hypnotism
and spiritism, it is interesting to find that his predecessor in the
post of Papal Physician four centuries and a half ago, discussed the
differential diagnosis of hysteria, catalepsy, epilepsy and syncope.
He also discusses certain interesting cases of vertigo due to stomach
trouble, and in general anticipates very unexpectedly neurotic
conditions that are supposed to have been recognized in medicine much
later than his time. Perhaps the most startling thing to be found in
his works is his recommendation of iron for chlorosis, which he
claimed to have treated with the greatest success by means of this
remedy. Of course, there was no idea at the time that chlorosis was
due in any sense to a lack of iron in the system, and its value as a
therapeutic agent must have come entirely from empiric considerations;
but then most of our advances in drug therapeutics have come by no
better way.
Another of the distinguished Papal Physicians of the fifteenth century
was John of Vigo (1460-1520), who, as Professor Allbutt notes, was
attached to the court of the fighting Pontiff, Julius II., and as a
consequence saw much of field surgery. His text-book of surgery,
printed at Rome in the early part of the sixteenth century, went
through an enormous number of editions. No standard surgical treatise
had appeared since that of Guy de Chauliac, and Vigo's continued to be
the standard for the next full century. He was a shrewd and skilful as
well as a learned physician. His surgical acumen deserves to be noted.
He recognized that fracture of the inner table of the skull might take
place without that of the outer, and made some very practical remarks
with regard to gangrene and its causes. He attributed {215} gangrene
in certain cases to faulty bandaging in fractures, and discussed its
origin also as the result of severe cold. He treated syphilis with
mercurial inunctions, a practice still followed by the best
specialists in this line. His greatest claim to fame, however, is
founded on the fact that he was the first to write a surgical treatise
on wounds made by firearms.
At this time, during the first half of the sixteenth century, the
Papal Medical School begins to assume an importance in the history of
medicine which it was to continue to hold for the next two centuries.
After the refoundation of the Sapienza by Pope Alexander VI., and its
development under Pope Leo X., special care was taken and no expense
spared by their successors, to secure the greatest teachers in anatomy
in the world for the medical department of the Papal University. At
this time all the great physicians were distinguished for their
attainments in anatomy, somewhat as in the nineteenth century great
physicians obtained their prestige by original work in pathology. The
situations in the two centuries had much more in common than the
casual reader of history or even the ordinary student of medicine
would appreciate. The list of Papal Physicians, then, becomes to a
great extent the roll of the professors of anatomy at the Papal
University Medical School. The Popes of this period were wise enough
in their generation to realize that the men who devoted themselves to
original research in increasing the knowledge of the human body, were
also those likely to know most about the diseases of the body and
their treatment. These scientific anatomists, with the chastening
knowledge of the complexity of the human body before them, probably
made less claims to power to cure diseases than many an {216}
enthusiastic therapeutist of the time, who thought, as have
representatives of this specialty in every generation, that he has
many infallible remedies for the cure of disease, though subsequent
generations have not agreed with him.
The true significance of the lives of the men who occupied the post of
Papal Physician after this time will be best appreciated from our
treatment of them in the chapter on The Papal Medical School. It will
be sufficient here simply to recall the names of the distinguished men
who, besides being professors in the Papal Medical School, were the
medical advisers of the Popes.
The first and most important of the great Renaissance professors of
anatomy of the Roman Medical School who were also Papal Physicians was
Columbus. He had been Vesalius's assistant at Padua and later his
successor. He had lectured also at Bologna. When a special effort was
made to give prestige to the University of Pisa, he was tempted by
particularly liberal offers to become the professor of anatomy in that
city. It was from here, by still more generous patronage, that the
Popes obtained him for their medical school. On treating of the Papal
Medical School, we shall have more to say of him and his successor in
the professorship of anatomy and medicine as well as in the post of
Papal Physician, who was the third of the first anatomists of the
time--Eustachius. He with Columbus and Vesalius constitute the trinity
of great original investigators in anatomy about the middle of the
sixteenth century. It is extremely interesting, with the traditions
that exist in the matter, to find that the Popes secured two of these
great anatomists for their personal physicians as well as for their
medical school. The third one, Vesalius, became the body {217}
physician first to the Emperor Charles V. and then to his son Philip
II., whom many would declare to be as Catholic as the Popes themselves
in religious tendencies.
After Eustachius came Varolius, whose name is engraved in the history
of medicine because the Pons Varolii or bridge of Varolius, an
important structure in the brain now often simply called the pons, was
named after him. To Varolius we owe one of the earliest detailed
descriptions of the anatomy of the brain. He was the Papal Physician
to Gregory XIII., who will be remembered as the Pope under whom the
reform of the calendar was made by the great Jesuit mathematician and
astronomer, Father Clavius. Pope Gregory's enlightened patronage of
medicine in the person of Varolius will be better appreciated if we
add that he was chosen as Papal Physician when he was not yet thirty
years of age, though he had already given abundant evidence of his
talent for original investigation in anatomy. He died at the early age
of thirty-two, but not until after he had accomplished a life's work
sufficient to give him an enduring place in the history of anatomy.
After Varolius as Papal Physician came Piccolomini and then
Caesalpinus, whom the Italians hail as the discoverer of the
circulation of the blood before Harvey, and of whom we shall have much
to say in the next chapter. Piccolomini was not as great an original
thinker and worker as many of his predecessors and successors, but he
was a man whose prestige in medicine was scarcely less than theirs.
That this same liberal patronage of distinguished physicians was
continued in the next century may be realized from the fact that
Malpighi, the great founder of comparative anatomy, became one of the
Papal Physicians. His intimate friend, Borelli, to whom we owe the
{218} introduction of physics into medicine, had spent some years in
Rome, where, having been robbed by his servants, with the consent of
the Pope he took up his abode with the Society of the Pious Schools of
San Pantaleone. Here he finished his important work De Motu Animalium,
in which the principles of mechanics were first definitely introduced
into anatomy and physiology. The preface to this book was written by
an ecclesiastic, who praises the piety of Borelli during his stay in
Rome and chronicles his encouragement by the Popes in his medical
work. Malpighi was succeeded as Papal Physician by Tozzi, who is
famous for his commentaries on the ancients rather than for original
observation, but who was looked upon in his time as one of the most
prominent physicians in Italy, and at this period that meant one of
the most prominent physicians in the world. At the beginning of the
next century, the eighteenth, Lancisi, by many considered the Father
of Modern Clinical Medicine, became the Papal Physician.
Among the consultant physicians to the Popes of the eighteenth
century, though he never occupied the post of regular medical
attendant, was Morgagni. His advice was often sought by a succession
of Popes not only with regard to their personal health, but also with
regard to the teaching of medicine and other questions of like nature.
Virchow has called Morgagni the Father of Modern Pathology, because he
was the first to point out, that for a knowledge of disease it is
quite as important to know where the disease has been as to try to
learn what it has been. All of the Popes, five in number, of the
latter part of Morgagni's life were on terms of intimacy with him.
Pope Benedict XIV., one of the very great Popes of the century, a
native of Bologna, was {219} an intimate friend of Morgagni. His
scarcely less famous successor, Pope Clement XIII., had known Morgagni
before his elevation to the Papacy, and after his election he wrote
assuring Morgagni of his continued esteem and friendship, and asks him
to consider the Papal palace always open to him on his visits to Rome.
In an extant letter Clement praises his wisdom, his culture, his
courtesy, his piety toward God, his charity toward men, and holds him
up as an example to all others for the special reason that,
notwithstanding all his qualities, he had not aroused the enmity or
envy of those around him, thus showing what a depth of humanity there
was in him in addition to his scientific attainments.
At this time Morgagni was looked upon by all the medical world as
probably the greatest of living medical scientists. Visitors who came
to Italy who were at all interested in science, always considered that
their journey had not been quite complete unless they had had an
opportunity of meeting Morgagni. He had more personal friends among
the scientists of all the countries of Europe than any other man of
his time. The fact that this leader in science should be at the same
time a great personal friend of the Popes of his time is the best
possible evidence of the more than amicable relations which existed
between the Church and medicine during this century. Morgagni's life
of nearly ninety years indeed, covers most of the eighteenth century,
and is of itself, without more ado, an absolute proof that there was
not only no friction between religion and medicine, but shows on the
contrary that medical science encountered patronage and encouragement
as far as ecclesiastics were concerned, while success in it brought
honor and emolument. {220} Morgagni's personal relations to the Church
are best brought out by the fact that, of his fifteen children, ten of
whom lived to adult life, eight daughters became members of religious
orders and one of his two surviving sons became a Jesuit. The great
physician was very proud and very glad that his children should have
chosen what he did not hesitate to call the better part.
After Morgagni's time, the days of the French Revolution bring a cloud
over the Papacy. There were political disturbances in Italy and the
Popes were shorn of their temporal power. As a consequence their
medical school loses in prestige and finally disappears. The Papal
Physicians after this, while distinguished among their fellow members
of the Roman medical profession, were no longer the world-known
discoverers in medicine that had so often been the case before. So
long as the Popes had the power and possessed the means, they used
both to encourage medicine in every way, as the list of Papal
Physicians shows better than anything else, and a study of this
chapter of their history will undo all the false assertions with
regard to the supposed opposition between the Church and science.
We have already said, and it seems to deserve repetition here, that
during most of these centuries in which the Papal Physicians were
among the most distinguished discoverers in medicine, the term
medicine included within itself most of what we now know as physical
science. Botany was studied as a branch of medicine, and as we have
seen, one of the Papal Physicians, Simon Januensis, compiled a
dictionary that a modern German Historian of Botany finds excellent.
Astrology, under which term astronomy was included, was studied for
the sake of the supposed influence of the stars on {221} men's
constitutions.--Chemistry was a branch of medical study. Mineralogy
was considered a science allied to medicine, and the use of antimony
and other metals in medicine originated with physicians trying to
extend the domain of knowledge to minerals. Comparative anatomy was
founded by a Papal Physician. These were the principal physical
sciences. To talk of opposition between science and religion, then,
with the most distinguished scientists of these centuries in friendly
personal and official relations with the Popes, is to indulge in one
of those absurdities common enough among those who must find matter
for their condemnation of the Popes and the Church, but that every
advance in modern history has pushed farther back into the rubbish
chamber of outlived traditions.
{222}
THE POPES AND MEDICAL EDUCATION AND
THE PAPAL MEDICAL SCHOOL.
After the story of the Papal Physicians, the most important phase of
the relations of the Popes to the medical sciences is to be found in
the story of the Papal Medical School. While it seems to be generally
ignored by those who are not especially familiar with the history of
medical education, a medical school existed in connection with the
Papal University at Rome during many centuries--according to excellent
authorities, from the beginning of the fourteenth century--and this
medical school had, as we have said elsewhere, during nearly two
centuries some of the most distinguished professors of medicine in its
ranks, and boasts among its faculty some of the greatest discoverers
in the medical sciences, and especially in anatomy. For these two
centuries it had but two important rivals, Padua and Bologna. Both of
these were in Italy, and one, that of the University of Bologna, was
in a Papal city, that is, was under the political dominion of the
Popes. The best medical teaching, then, was to be found in the Papal
States and under conditions such, that if there had been the slightest
opposition, or indeed anything but the most cordial encouragement for
medical study, the medical schools of Rome and Bologna would surely
have languished instead of flourishing beyond all others.
Just about the beginning of the fourteenth century {223} Pope Boniface
VIII., who was himself one of the distinguished scholars of his time,
determined that, besides the university of the Papal Court, which had
existed for nearly a century at Rome, but which was mainly occupied
with philosophy and theology and mainly attended by ecclesiastics,
there should also be a university of the City of Rome for the people
of his capital. This determination was reached only a short time
before the culmination of the difficulty between Pope Boniface and the
King of France, which eventually resulted in what has been called the
outrage of Anagni and the subsequent death of the Pope within a short
time. It has usually been thought, then, that in spite of certain
extant Papal documents creating the University of the City of Rome,
this university had not been organized before Pope Boniface's death,
and as his successor did not take his seat at Rome, but at Avignon, it
has usually been assumed that the University of the City came into
existence at most only in an abortive form. Denifle, whose History of
the Universities of the Middle Ages is looked upon as the best
authority in such matters, however, insists that a complete university
of the City of Rome did come into existence as a result of Boniface's
decree.
All during the time when the Popes were at Avignon this university
continued to exist, and in spite of the fact that at one time, as a
consequence of a great earthquake followed by a pestilence, and then
serious political troubles because of the absence of the Popes, Rome
had only something less than ten thousand inhabitants, the university
continued its work. Denifle calls attention to the fact that there are
letters of Pope John XXII. which show that he paid out of the Papal
revenues {224} the salary of a teacher of physic at the University of
the City of Rome while the Papal Court was at Avignon. It is rather
interesting to find the names of the two Popes, Boniface VIII. and
John XXII., whose Papal decrees are supposed to have prevented the
study of anatomy and chemistry, thus cropping up on unquestionable
authority as the founder and the patron of medical teaching in the
City of Rome. Pope Boniface VIII. is now generally credited with
having been the founder of the Sapienza, the medical school of which,
at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was to develop into one of
the most important schools of its kind in Europe, and to have on its
faculty list the greatest teachers of their time, who had been tempted
to come to Rome because the Popes wished to enhance the prestige of
the medical school of their capital.
While it may be a surprise for those who have been accustomed to think
of the Popes as inalterably opposed to all science, and especially to
medical science, thus to find them encouraging and fostering medical
teaching, it will only be what would naturally be expected by those
who know anything of the real history of medicine in the earlier
Middle Ages. There is no doubt at all, that during the so-called "dark
ages," that is, when the invasion of the barbarians had put out the
lights of the older civilizations, it was mainly ecclesiastics who
preserved whatever traditions there were of the old medical learning
and carried on whatever serious teaching of medicine, in the sense of
medical science, that existed during this time. The monks were the
most prominent in this; and the Benedictines, after their foundation
in the sixth century, added to their duties of caring for the other
temporal needs of the poor, who so {225} often appealed to them, that
of helping them as far as they could in any bodily ailments with which
they might be afflicted. There are even definite traditions that a
certain amount of training in medicine, or at least in the care of the
sick, was one of the features of the Benedictine monasteries.
Dr. Payne in his article on the History of Medicine in the
Encyclopaedia Brittanica said: "In civil history there is no real
break. A continuous thread of learning and practice must have
connected the last period of Roman medicine with the dawn of science
in the Middle Ages. But the intellectual thread is naturally traced
with greater difficulty than that which is the theme of civil history;
and in periods such as that from the fifth to the tenth century in
Europe, it is almost lost. The chief homes of medical as of other
learning in these disturbed times were the monasteries. Though the
science was certainly not advanced by their labors, it was saved from
total oblivion, and many ancient medical works were preserved in Latin
or the vernacular versions. It was among the Benedictines that the
monastic studies of medicine first received a new direction and aimed
at a higher standard. The study of Hippocrates, Galen, and other
classics was recommended by Cassiodorus (sixth century), and in the
original mother abbey of Monte Cassino medicine was studied, though
there was probably not what could be called a medical school there;
nor had this foundation any connection (as has been supposed) with the
famous school of Salerno."