[Illustration: Illuminated capital]
The intelligent student of medical history has at his command an
unfailing source of pleasure. To learn the successive steps by which
Medicine has advanced from a priest-ridden and secret art practiced with
mysterious rites in the Greek temples, passing through the schools of
Greek philosophy into the light of publicity, is his privilege. To hunt
through musty and worm-eaten volumes for facts regarding the great
physicians of antiquity is his delight; and to communicate the knowledge
thus obtained to others, who have not the time or the facilities for
such research, is his duty. In every period are events and incidents of
interest, but to the Middle Ages a peculiar fascination attaches; for it
was during this period that Europe, emerging from an intellectual
darkness of ten centuries’ duration, awoke to the Renaissance, and
Medicine, as ever has been the case, kept pace with the general advance
of knowledge.
The present book deals with the life of a master whose work was an
essential factor in the evolution of the Anatomical Renaissance. In
order to understand the New Birth of Anatomy it is necessary to know
something of the scope and influence of the General Renaissance.