In their treatment and application of the exact sciences, and

especially in the development of the higher branches of mathematics,

the Spanish Mohammedans exhibited pre-eminent ability. The Arabs were

the first to ascertain with accuracy the length of the year. They

tabulated the movements of the stars. They discovered the third lunar

inequality of 45´ six hundred and fifty years before Tycho Brahe. They

determined the eccentricity of the sun’s orbit; the movement of its

apogee; the progressive diminution of the obliquity of the ecliptic;

the amount of the precession of the equinoxes. To them is due the

credit of having introduced to the knowledge of Europe many ingenious

devices and processes of calculation which diminished labor, and,

at the same time, opened new fields of investigation that otherwise

might have remained unknown and unexplored. The grand work of Ptolemy,

the Syntaxis, had, under the name of the Almagest, been translated

before the ninth century, and been revised by Isaac-ben-Honein in

827. In the tenth century, the famous Abul-Wefa, of Bagdad, wrote

an astronomical treatise to which he gave the same name, which

caused the two to be long confounded by scholars. Both of these

compositions, equally wonderful for their learning, were early known

to the Spanish Arabs. The numerals of India, which they adopted, at

once superseded the cumbersome Roman characters hitherto in use. The

decimal system was also introduced by them. They greatly advanced the

study of algebra, whose scope and possibilities had previously been

imperfectly understood, and applied it to geometry. They substituted

sines for chords, invented modern trigonometry, proposed a formula

for the solution of cubic equations. They understood the principles

of the calculus. Geber, of Seville, published rules for one of the

most important demonstrations of spherical trigonometry. Al-Zarkal, of

Toledo, was the first to suggest the substitution of the elliptical

orbit to correct the errors of the generally accepted Ptolemaic system,

thus anticipating Copernicus and Kepler. In his attempts to determine

the movement of the sun’s apogee alone, he made four hundred and two

observations; and the result he obtained was within a fraction of a

second of the amount declared to be correct by modern astronomers.

Abul-Hassan-Ali, by a series of observations extending over a distance

of nine hundred leagues to establish the elevation of the pole,

estimated with precision the dimensions of the Mediterranean. The

catalogue made by Ibn-Sina contains a thousand and twenty-two stars.

Ibn-Abi-Thalta studied the movements of the heavenly bodies without

intermission for thirty years. Averroes, while computing the motion

of the planet Mercury, discovered spots upon the sun. The far greater

portion of the results of the labors of the Moorish astronomical

observers of the Peninsula, having shared the general fate of the

monuments of Moslem learning, are lost. No complete copy of the works

of any Arab astronomer who lived since the ninth century is known

to exist. The extent of this calamity may be inferred from the fact

that in the royal library of Cairo there were six thousand works on

mathematics, copies of many of which must have been in the hands of

the Moslems of Spain, and none of which have survived. They made

constant use of the formulas of Ibn-Junis for tangents and secants, of

whose existence Europe was ignorant for six hundred years after their

publication. As the duty of pilgrimage promoted the study of geography,

so an acquaintance with astronomy was rendered necessary to Mohammedans

by the requirements of their religion. In order to determine the

direction of Mecca, an exact knowledge of the points of the compass was

indispensable. It was equally important to establish, without error,

the hours of prayer and of diurnal ablution, and the dates of festivals

which began with the rising of the moon. These considerations, which

invested astronomical pursuits with a semi-religious character, greatly

promoted their popularity. The study of mathematics was, independently

of this influence, an occupation especially congenial to the Arab

mind. In all the schools were globes, both terrestrial and celestial,

of wood and metal, planispheres, and astrolabes. The construction of

these latter instruments, the precursors of the sextant, as perfected

by the Arabs, was very complicated, and demanded the exercise of

the highest degree of scientific ingenuity. They were used for the

measurement of angles, and for ascertaining the hour either of the day

or night. Some had as many as five tables, were engraved on both sides,

and were provided at the bottom with eleven different projections

for as many horizons. On them were represented the movement of the

celestial sphere, the signs of the zodiac, and the position of the

principal stars and constellations. Interchangeable plates, calculated

for different latitudes, facilitated observations wherever made. It

was not unusual for an astrolabe to give the latitudes of nearly a

hundred cities. The invention of the pierced gnomon by Ibn-Junis

greatly simplified observations made to determine the altitude of

the sun. The passage of time was usually marked by sundials, and by

clepsydras of complex and elaborate mechanism. The oscillatory property

of suspended bodies, represented by the isochronism of the pendulum,

was familiar to the Arabs, who had adapted it to a contrivance whose

construction resembled that of the modern clock, an invention generally

attributed to Galileo. Many of the instruments used by them in their

astronomical observations were of enormous dimensions. Some of their

armillary spheres were twenty-five feet in diameter, and quadrants

with a radius of fifteen feet were not uncommon. The bronze sextant,

employed in the tenth century for the determination of the obliquity

of the ecliptic and described by Abul-Hassan, of Morocco, had a radius

of fifty-eight feet, and its arc was divided into seconds. At that

time astronomy, especially among the Spanish Moslems, had advanced as

far as was possible without the use of the telescope. It was through

the influence of the Arabs that knowledge of that science, as well

as of all other branches of mathematics, was universally diffused.

The modern almanac, as its name denotes, is their invention, and the

signs by which it designates the seven planets have been transmitted

through their agency. As with all pastoral nations, their attention

was early directed to the phenomena of the heavens. They noted the

rising and setting of certain stars which seemed intended to mark the

advent of the seasons; they divided the most prominent groups into

constellations, and assigned to them, as did the Greeks, a fanciful and

legendary origin and nomenclature. With the practice of astral worship,

incident to every race at a certain stage of its intellectual progress,

was associated the study of astrology, whose principles, based upon

the imaginary effect of benign or malignant planetary influence, has

still in educated as well as in ignorant communities its enthusiastic

votaries. The practice of this false but attractive science was,

however, in no age confined to impostors. Some of the greatest minds

of mediæval or modern times believed in its delusions, which were

especially popular with the most eminent astronomers of the Middle

Ages. Tycho Brahe, who gravely interpreted dreams, drew the horoscope

of the Emperor Rudolph. Even the ability of Kepler did not preserve him

from the prevalent superstition; he also cast horoscopes and published

prophetic almanacs. Its pursuit led to the cultivation of other and

more debased superstitions,--the chimerical follies of geomancy and

oneiromancy, the profane rites of divination and magic, the belief

in the occult virtues of talismans and amulets. The persistence of

those practices, through unnumbered centuries to the present time,

is a singular commentary on human credulity in enlightened as well

as in unlettered ages. In many parts of Germany the horoscope of an

infant is cast at its nativity, and is religiously preserved, with

its baptismal certificate, until the hour of dissolution. Our farmers

sow and reap and perform the various duties incident to rural economy

with diligent attention to the phases of the moon. Confidence in the

efficacy of talismans is even in our generation far from extinct. It

is unconsciously manifested in the cruciform plan of our majestic

cathedrals; in the gilded emblem which points heavenward on the summits

of their loftiest towers; in the curves of their painted windows,

glowing with all the hues of the rainbow; in the armorial bearings of

some of the proudest royal houses of Europe; in the carvings of our

furniture; in the horseshoe suspended over doorways; in the Teraphim

and the phylacteries of the Jew; in the holy symbols embroidered

upon the vestments of the Catholic clergy; in the badges of our

secret societies; in the settings of the jewels which rise and fall

on the voluptuous bosom of Beauty. The superstition of the evil-eye,

universally prevalent in the Orient, is largely responsible for the

employment of charms. It is not improbable that this belief may have

been originally derived from the peculiar influence exercised by

some person endowed with an extraordinary degree of hypnotic power.

To animal magnetism--as a mysterious force--is certainly due a large

proportion of the magic fascinations of ancient times; and the power of

the serpent over birds and animals probably gave rise to the popular

fable of the basilisk. The virtues of amulets were derived, according

to common opinion, not from the substance of which they were composed,

but from the portion of the Universal Intelligence by which they were

supposed to be tenanted.

Thus a desire to penetrate the secrets of futurity and avert impending

misfortune gave rise to the spurious science of astrology, itself the

parent of astronomy. The European Arabs cultivated both with almost

equal assiduity. The mind of the philosopher, disciplined by the daily

habit of mathematical calculation, was yet unable to discard the

delusions of the horoscope or to forget the visionary and fictitious

properties of talismans. In the mental constitution of the ablest

Arabian scholars, the fascination of the occult and the forbidden

predominated over the experience of centuries, the influence of

letters, and the dictates of reason.

The discoveries of Al-Hazen in optics, communicated to Europe by the

Spanish and Sicilian Mohammedans, have had a marked effect on the

development of that science, and are the basis of all that we know

on the subject. He understood the cause of the twilight; estimated

the density and calculated the height of the atmosphere. He explained

by the principle of refraction why celestial bodies are visible when

they are actually below the horizon. He discussed the effect upon

vision of the varying transparency of the air, and suggested that

beyond our atmosphere there was nothing but ether, a proposition which

modern astronomy accepts. First of all investigators, he corrected

the prevalent fallacy that the rays of light proceed from the eye to

the object seen, an error which had hitherto deceived all who had

written on the science of optics. The works of Al-Hazen were used

as text-books in the Andalusian colleges, and they were first made

known to Christendom through the foreigners who came to study Arabic

learning in the schools of Toledo. Among such literary pilgrims of the

twelfth century were the Englishmen Adelard of Bath, Robert of Reading,

Daniel Morley, William Shelley, and the Italian Gerard of Cremona.

The translations of Arabic works into Latin introduced by the labors

of these and subsequent scholars in the department of medicine alone

amount to nearly four hundred.

Great as was the reputation of these ambitious ecclesiastics among

the ignorant masses of their countrymen, it did not approach that

of the famous Gerbert, whose genius had unsuccessfully attempted

the enlightenment of Europe nearly two hundred years before. The

attainments of that accomplished scholar, respectable in any age,

were so superior to those of his contemporaries that, as has been

previously stated, they procured for him the unenviable and dangerous

title of magician. A native of Aquitaine, of obscure birth and without

resources, his talents early attracted the notice of the Count of

Barcelona, who provided for his education in that city. Thence,

after a time, he visited the principal Moorish cities of Andalusia.

It was the tenth century, the epoch of the highest prosperity and

magnificence of the Ommeyade Khalifate. Everywhere were visible the

effects of that civilization which had no rival in the world. The

thorough agricultural development of the country; the busy seaports;

the luxurious palaces; the populous cities; the well-paved streets,

filled by day with surging multitudes, and lighted at night by tens

of thousands of twinkling lamps; the illimitable expanse of verdure

which marked the environs of the great Moorish capital, broken only

by occasional watch-towers and gilded minarets; the gorgeous splendor

of the court; the prodigious libraries; the innumerable schools and

colleges, equipped with every scientific appliance known to Moslem

culture--colored maps, armils, sundials, clepsydras, hydrometers,

parallactic rules, quadrants, astrolabes, planispheres, globes; the

mosque with its throngs of pilgrims gay with the costumes of every

land acknowledging the creed of Islam,--these scenes did not fail to

profoundly impress the young French ecclesiastic, already imbued with

prohibited ideas and fresh from the intolerance, the barbarism, the

credulity, and the intellectual debasement of Christian Europe. The

mind of Gerbert was prompt to recognize the manifold advantages to be

derived from familiarity with Moslem institutions and erudition. He

became a student of the University of Cordova. During the few years he

remained in that city, his talents and perseverance procured for him

a fund of scientific information unexampled for that period. On his

return he established schools in both Italy and France. He imported

books from every quarter of the world, and especially from Spain. His

pupils, reckoned by thousands, diffused throughout Europe the fame

of their teacher and the precepts of his works. The instruction he

imparted embodied the forbidden learning taught beyond the Pyrenees. He

was the first to explain to Europeans the abacus, the Indian numerals,

the science of arithmetic. He taught geography and astronomy from

globes constructed at Cordova. He observed the motions of the planets

and determined the elevation of the pole through diopters. The results

of the mechanical ingenuity which amused his leisure moments awakened

the horror of his ignorant and pious contemporaries. He invented a

steam or hydraulic organ; a clock whose mechanism was largely composed

of wheels and pinions; and automatons whose mysterious movements

suggested to the vulgar a diabolical agency. He improved the science

of music. His system of imparting knowledge, based upon experiment

and demonstration, exhibited a radical difference from the prevalent

methods of an epoch whose instruction was limited to Scriptural texts

and ecclesiastical admonition. The renown of the great scholar excited

the envy of the monks, to whom the popular imputation of infernal

communion afforded a pretext for persecution. They instigated marauders

to plunder his abbey at Bobbio, in Italy. His library was burned, his

instruments were destroyed, his students dispersed. This ill-treatment,

so far from being, as intended, prejudicial to the fortunes of Gerbert,

ultimately promoted them. His reputation was everywhere known, and

the awe his wisdom excited was increased by the supernatural means he

was believed to employ. He was patronized by the King of France and

the Emperor of Germany; he became successively Bishop of Rheims and

of Ravenna; and, through the influence of the latter sovereign, he

was, in the year 999, raised to the pontifical dignity, under the name

of Sylvester II. Even in that exalted position, the relentless spirit

of ecclesiastical malice did not permit him to rest. His attempts to

reform clerical abuses brought down upon him the vengeance of the

corrupt and rapacious ministers of the papal court. The most absurd

fables were invented to account for the results of his scientific

experiments, otherwise incomprehensible by mediæval ignorance. He was

accused of gross immorality, blasphemy, magical incantations, the

invocation of demons. It was whispered that goblins of fantastic dress

and repulsive aspect attended him at midnight during the celebration

of impious orgies and profane sacrifices. The diligent propagation of

these scandals prepared the way for the punishment meted out in that

age to all daring reformers, and especially to those who presumed

to interfere with the prerogatives and emoluments of the clergy. A

victim of slow poison, Sylvester II. survived his elevation to the

Papacy less than four years. His name was anathematized, his doctrines

condemned as heretical, and the perusal of his writings prohibited as

contrary to the canons of the Church and prejudicial to the interests

of religion. After his decease, a long period of darkness again clouded

the Christian world. The dawning spirit of inquiry thus suppressed, men

once more turned to the priest for counsel, for assistance, for the

explanation of natural phenomena, for the cure of disease. Such was the

inauspicious and apparently futile result of the first introduction of

Arabian learning into Roman Catholic Europe.

The unrivalled excellence of the agricultural methods employed by

the Spanish Mohammedans was, in large measure, due to their profound

botanical knowledge. That science, practically unknown in the desert

wastes of Arabia, to which nature has begrudged the wealth of her

vegetable kingdom, was early pursued with great energy and success by

the conquering Moslems. In no other part of their empire, however,

was such progress made in its study or such beneficial results

obtained from the culture of plants as in Andalusia. Their analysis

and classification, and the determination of their properties, were

sedulously encouraged by the government. The scientific expeditions

of the khalifs collected specimens and seeds from every quarter of

the world. Gardens for the propagation of both native plants and

exotics were established in the environs of all the great cities, and

the results of intelligent observation and experiment were regularly

tabulated for the public benefit. In the oases of the Desert, along

the banks of the Nile, on the fertile plains of Mesopototamia, on the

arid plateaus of Central Asia, in the pestilent delta of the Ganges,

the botanists of Cordova added to the stock of ideas and principles to

be subsequently developed and advantageously applied in the valley of

the far distant Guadalquivir. Nor were their efforts confined to the

mere collection and examination of products of the vegetable kingdom.

Every novel appliance, every useful invention, which might prove

beneficial to horticulture, to irrigation, to the various branches of

rural economy, were diligently noted and carefully preserved. As a

consequence of these laborious researches, the Andalusian Arabs became

more proficient in the kindred sciences of botany and agriculture than

any people who have ever existed. In their country were concentrated

all the fruits of the learning and experience of centuries then

extant in the world. It is said that they added to the herbals of the

ancients more than two thousand varieties of plants. They described the

circulation of the sap; they understood the offices of the bark and the

leaves. Every source of information was thoroughly explored. Already,

in the tenth century, the treatise of Dioscorides had been translated

into Arabic by a monk of Constantinople, sent by the Emperor at the

special request of the Khalif, because the subjects of the latter

were ignorant of Greek. The botanical works of the Hispano-Arabs were

enriched with drawings from nature, beautifully executed in colors.

When Ibn-Beithar, of Malaga, the most famous of Moslem botanists,

travelled in the Orient, he was accompanied by a corps of artists,

whose skill preserved the form and tints of unfamiliar flora in all

their beauty and perfection. His is the greatest name in the annals

of this important branch of learning from Dioscorides to Linnæus, an

interval of fifteen hundred years.

In the wide range of philosophical and experimental study, however,

no subject was so congenial to the taste of the Arab or appealed more

strongly to his imagination than the pursuit of the spurious science of

alchemy. That science originated in Egypt, the land of isolation, of

enchantment, of prodigy. Its investigation, confined to a privileged

class, had been protected by the double safeguard of religion and

secrecy. For innumerable centuries the Egyptian priesthood, the sole

depositaries of knowledge, had, in laboratories hidden in temples or

excavated in the rocky sides of mountains, eagerly devoted themselves

to the discovery of the universal panacea, of the elixir of life, of

the transmutation of inferior metals into gold. The Ptolemaic dynasty,

heir to these delusions so acceptable to human egotism and avarice,

had contributed to their universal dissemination over Europe and Asia.

The Arabs, from the first hour of their intellectual emancipation,

prosecuted with alacrity a study especially adapted to their national

inclination and genius. The fact that the Koran prohibits such

occupations made their association with religion, contrary to the

custom in Egypt, impracticable. At Toledo and Cordova, alchemy was not

designated, as at Memphis and Thebes, the “Sacred Art,” cultivated

in the precincts of temples, communicated only to royalty, screened

from the profanation of the vulgar by the delusive mummeries of

processions and sacrifices. Its close relations with thaumaturgy and

divination, with astrology and magic, were inevitable consequences of

the uncertainty of its results, and of the mystery that enveloped its

professors. Ancient Hebrew tradition, as disclosed by the apocryphal

books of the Bible, asserts that the occult arts and sciences were

the gift of evil spirits to the children of men. The Romans punished

such practices with death, probably for the reason that they came into

competition with the oracles, a fruitful source of revenue and prestige

to the state. Thus, in a measure, placed under the ban of religion

and law, a subject of suspicion and fear to the masses, the study of

alchemy was fraught with danger, even amidst the Pagan associations of

antiquity. In the Middle Ages, the endangered interests of priestcraft

added to legal prohibition and the prejudice of public opinion the

resistless force of their condemnation.

The Spanish Arabs, passionately fond of experiment and novelty, were

eminently proficient in the technicalities of the Hermetic Art. They

entertained the idea that the same elements, in different proportions,

were present in all metals, and that, by certain processes of

elimination, any metal,--as, for instance, gold,--could be obtained.

Like their masters, the Alexandrian Greeks, they concealed their

discoveries in the obscurities of a learned jargon. The principles

of their calling were indicated by mysterious symbols, enigmatical

phrases, mutilated formulas, capable of interpretation only by

themselves. With the advancement of learning, the operations of the

alchemist were practised with less concealment and mystery. His labors

were encouraged by the khalifs, of whom some were themselves adepts,

and prosecuted their investigations in well-equipped laboratories.

The prevalence of one delusion led to the propagation of others,

and the original objects of alchemical research became confounded

with astrology, mysticism, and all their chimerical relations and

incidents,--theories involving the seven planets and the seven

metals, the ceremonies of exorcism, the procuring of happiness by the

identification of the soul with the Universal Intellect. Attracted by

the profits to be obtained from human credulity, a swarm of charlatans

sprang up in every community,--prototypes of the impostors who infested

the society of Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Among these the Jews attained an unenviable notoriety, a reputation

destined in subsequent ages to produce most deplorable consequences.

Even under the Pharaohs, Hebrew astuteness had succeeded in penetrating

the well-guarded arcana of the Egyptian priesthood. It was mainly

through their traditional avarice that the precepts and formulas of

the Sacred Art, divulged to the Greeks and afterwards to the Arabs,

became the property of mediæval Europe. In Mohammedan Spain the Jews

excelled in this unpopular but lucrative profession, as they did

in every pursuit requiring intelligence, energy, craft, and skill.

From this confused medley of philosophy, magic, and imposture were

unconsciously obtained results of superlative value to the human

race. The adept, poring over his retorts and crucibles in vaulted

chambers far removed from inquisitive eyes, stumbled upon discoveries

more important than that of the philosopher’s stone. In attempts to

accomplish the transmutation of metals, processes were invented by

which the analysis, separation, and smelting of ores were, hundreds of

years afterwards, facilitated, and the visionary aim of the alchemist,

in a measure, accomplished. From these secret experiments came the

knowledge of the working of metals, of the composition of alloys, of

the fusing of glass, of the application of enamels. Alchemy was thus

the precursor of chemistry, and, so intimately are their principles and

relations connected, that it is impossible to determine where the false

science terminates and where the true science begins. The Hispano-Arabs

carried the operations of both to a point not hitherto attained by the

experimenters of the ancient world. While they profited largely by the

learning of the East, it would be unjust to deny them the merit of

conspicuous and striking originality. They practically invented modern

chemistry. Their writers describe with clearness and precision the

processes of crystallization, sublimation, distillation, filtration,

solution. They introduced nitric and sulphuric acids, those powerful

solvents, without whose agency chemical combinations could not be

effected. To them is due the discovery of alcohol, muriate of ammonia,

potassa, bichloride of mercury, nitrate of silver, and phosphorus. The

adaptation of these substances to the multifarious purposes of daily

existence has bestowed upon the inventor almost boundless resources for

the development of the industrial arts, and has provided the surgeon

with efficacious means of alleviating human suffering. The use of

caustics and acids produced a revolution in medicine, and the skill

of the physician, even in Christendom, was no longer classed with the

exorcisms of the necromancer or subordinated to the mummeries of the

priest. The Moslems of the Peninsula were aware that a calcined metal

gains instead of loses weight, a fact whose knowledge foreshadows an

acquaintance with gases and the discovery of oxygen; nor were they

ignorant of the existence and the properties of hydrogen. Processes

for the oxidation of metals and for the generation of gases are

first mentioned by Djabar-al-Kufi, or Geber, whose personal history

is unknown, and who is often confounded with the mathematician,

Djabar-Ibn-Aflah, of Spain. The greatest Arabian chemist of any age,

his abilities have been recognized and his name has been mentioned

with respect by every investigator of the exact and experimental

sciences down to the present day. It has been well said that he bears

the same relation to chemistry that Hippocrates does to medicine.

His writings--calm, judicious, eminently logical--are not obscured

or disfigured by the absurdity and charlatanism of the epoch. Aside

from his reference to the generation of gases by heat, and the radical

alterations undergone by the substances from which they are derived,

his fame would have been permanently established by his discovery of

nitric acid and aqua regia, products of the laboratory not previously

described by any author. Thus the philosophical methods of the Spanish

Moslems gradually developed the visionary operations of alchemy into

the science of chemistry. To the latter, however, still clung numerous

indications of an origin fraught with imposture. Important experiments

were deferred until the planetary influences were declared to be

auspicious. The elixir of life was sought for with undiminished ardor.

Monarchs were still deluded and plundered by means of fallacious

promises of wealth to be obtained by the transmutation of metals. But,

in many respects, notable changes were discernible, harbingers of

incalculable benefit to both the physical and intellectual condition

of humanity. Then was first effected the permanent separation between

experimental science and religious mysticism, a union fatal to mental

development and to the arts of civilization. From the earliest times,

every important undertaking had been invested with a sacred character,

and supplemented with ceremonies adopted to avoid publicity and to

enhance its mysterious significance. It was no longer accounted

sacrilege to explain the secrets of nature or necessary to enshroud the

discoveries of the philosopher with the terms of an allegorical jargon.

The scientific lectures of the Moorish universities of Spain were open

to all students; the analyses of the laboratory were daily performed in

the presence of thousands. Familiarity with its operations, experience

of its advantageous application, diminished in time the suspicion with

which chemistry was viewed by the populace. That science, necessarily

slow in its development, originally based upon erroneous principles,

profiting by the opportunities of accidental discovery, retarded by

innumerable failures, hated by the priesthood, feared by the ignorant,

classed as diabolical by the superstitious, was far from possessing

the capability for progressive advancement and permanence of which

mathematics was susceptible. Although practically its inventors,

the Arabs paid more attention to the adaptation of its discovery to

medicine than to the improvement of its processes or the purification

of its products. This predilection induced them to separate pharmacy

from chemistry as well as from medicine, thus creating a new and most

important branch of science, of universal application and of practical

benefit.

Europe is indebted to the Moslems of Spain and Sicily for the

introduction of such drugs as nux vomica, cassia, croton, tamarind,

myrrh, sandal, cubebs, ergot, senna, rhubarb, and camphor; for such

spices as cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon; for such compounds as

juleps, elixirs, syrups, and electuaries, still known to commerce by

their Arabic names. Under the khalifs, pharmacies were established in

all the principal towns of the empire, subordinated to great central

depôts at Toledo and Cordova. These were placed under government

supervision, were visited by inspectors, and their owners held

accountable for the purity of their commodities and the methods of

their preparation. In Sicily the laws were even more stringent: every

dispenser of drugs was subjected to a rigid examination as to his

qualifications, and the professional oath of the physician required

him to denounce to the proper authorities any pharmacist whose wares

were inferior in quality to the regular standard. In addition to these

salutary precautions against dishonesty and fraud, a scale of prices,

publicly displayed, prevented extortion; and violation of the law

subjected the offender to serious penalties. These regulations, adopted

in the thirteenth century by the Emperor Frederick II., contributed

greatly to the success attained by the medical schools of Salerno and

Naples, and made Sicily the most famous market for medicaments in the

world.

It is a remarkable circumstance that the science of the Saracens was

largely diffused among the nations of Northern Europe through the

agency of the ecclesiastical order, to whose faith, organization, and

traditions it had always evinced an implacable hostility. The general

dearth of educational facilities in the Middle Ages, the monopoly by

the clergy of such learning as existed, and the fact that, among the

latter, would be found, sooner or later, superior minds dissatisfied

with the ignorance and the absurdities of the Fathers, were conditions

that inevitably tended to this result despite the anathemas of pontiffs

and the decrees of synods. Many of these innovators came from the

monastic orders. It must not be forgotten that both Savonarola and

Bruno were Dominicans. For more than a century there emanated from

Toledo translations into Latin of classical works that had long before

been rendered from Greek into Arabic. The pioneer of this intellectual

movement was Archbishop Raymond, a Frenchman. His example was followed

by Herman of Dalmatia, Michael Scott, and John of Seville. The three

greatest Christian disseminators of the science derived from the Moors,

however, were Albertus Magnus, Bishop of Ratisbon; Robert Grossetête,

Bishop of Lincoln; and Roger Bacon, professor in the University of

Oxford, all of the thirteenth century. The first is popularly known to

posterity as an alchemist and a magician. He was, besides, a man of

extensive knowledge, and a writer of voluminous treatises on theology,

philosophy, alchemy, and chemistry. He described successfully the

action of acids, the character of alkalies, the forms and alloys of

metals. The method used to-day in the manufacture of caustic potash

is identical with the one he recommends. He was the first to prove

by sublimation that cinnabar was a compound of sulphur and mercury.

He understood perfectly the preparation of acetate of copper, of

arsenic, of oxide of lead. The process of refining metals was also

familiar to him. He gives the composition of gunpowder,--an invention

also attributed to Friar Bacon, but unquestionably due to the Arabs.

The idle legends attaching to his name, which have ascribed to him

supernatural powers derived from an intercourse with demons, are a part

of the homage that mediæval credulity was accustomed to pay to superior

intelligence. His life, devoted to science, was as exemplary in its

character, in an age of ecclesiastical corruption, as his talents were

great and his deeds meritorious. His mathematical knowledge and his

mechanical skill were the marvel of his contemporaries. The curious

automaton that he constructed, which could open doors and utter

guttural sounds, was broken to pieces by St. Thomas Aquinas, who had

previously satisfied himself of its magical origin and diabolical

character.

Robert Grossetête, Bishop of Lincoln, eminent alike in scientific

attainments and theological controversy, is one of the prominent and

interesting characters of English mediæval history. An accomplished

scholar, he was profoundly versed in all the learning of his time.

Anticipating Wyclif by more than a century, he was not afraid to

criticise publicly the abuses of the Papacy, to defy its mandates,

and to advocate the exercise of individual judgment in ecclesiastical

matters. In these daring innovations we obtain the first glimpse

of the audacious spirit which animated the founders of the English

Reformation. He resisted successfully the presentation of Italian

prelates to the vacant benefices of England, a prerogative hitherto

exercised by the See of Rome, almost without remonstrance. He elevated

the standard of scholarship at Oxford by introducing the methods of

examination which obtained in the University of Paris, at that time

the first institution of learning in Christian Europe. Although of

distinguished rank in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the unconcealed

exultation of the Pope at his decease is a suggestive indication

of the broadness of his views, and of the danger to the cause of

ecclesiastical supremacy incurred by the extent of his knowledge,

the boldness of his sentiments, and the unchecked propagation of his

heretical doctrines.

But the greatest of this trio of illustrious names, in both renown

and influence, is that of Roger Bacon. Born in 1214, he was early

distinguished for his extraordinary abilities. He studied at Oxford

and Paris, mastered without difficulty the sciences as taught at those

two universities, and, unfortunately for himself, adopted the habit

of the Franciscan Order. His inclinations, little in accordance with

the maxims of his profession, impelled him to the investigation of

natural phenomena. He seems to have had well-defined notions of many

practical devices which have contributed largely to the triumphs of

modern civilization. He regarded experiment and demonstration as the

only rational method of arriving at philosophical truth. A mind endowed

with remarkable versatility, a spirit of indomitable perseverance,

acquired for him an acquaintance with languages unexampled in his age.

In addition to being thoroughly conversant with the classics, Hebrew

and Arabic, generally unknown in the thirteenth century except to the

Jew and the Saracen, were as familiar to Bacon as the accents of his

mother tongue. It is said that he devoted forty consecutive years to

the study of science. He expended for rare books and for the apparatus

necessary for its researches the sum of two thousand pounds sterling,

an amount corresponding to seventy-five thousand dollars of our money.

In his writings, he especially recommends the study of mathematics

as the most potent instrument of mental culture, the only key which

can unlock the secrets of Nature. His erudition embraced the most

recondite branches of learning, and some of his suggestions viewed

in connection with subsequent discoveries almost seem prompted by

supernatural inspiration. He recognized the necessity for the reform of

the calendar, and applied to Pope Clement IV. for permission to rectify

its errors, but the latter refused. He declared a thorough knowledge

of optics to be indispensable for the construction of astronomical

instruments. After the perusal of his writings, a doubt can hardly be

entertained that he was the inventor of spectacles,--whose idea he

obtained from Al-Hazen,--and that he also understood the adjustment

of the lenses in the telescope. He explained the phenomena of the

rainbow as due to refraction. The power of magnifying-glasses he

correctly states to vary with the size of the angle under which the

object is seen. He gives the ingredients and describes the effects

of gunpowder, a discovery in which he was, however, anticipated by

Albertus Magnus. He discourses on the possibilities of inventions

similar to the steam-engine, the balloon, and the application of

electricity, obscure, it is true, yet with an accuracy of perception

that seems incredible, and which cannot be questioned without denying

the authenticity of his works. He apparently understood the theory of

the suspension-bridge. He refers to the inflammable product obtained by

the sublimation of organic matter, probably an allusion to hydrogen.

The properties of carbonic acid gas, unfavorable to combustion and

fatal to animal life, he mentions in terms whose meaning cannot be

misunderstood. He entertained the ancient idea of the compound nature

of metals, and declares that, in order to effect their transmutation,

a reduction to their primary elements is an essential requisite to

success. He explains their artificial coloration, a trick very popular

with charlatans, who passed off inferior metals subjected to processes

that changed their appearance for silver and gold. The latter metal

he asserts to be perfect, because in its formation the operations

of countless ages have been completed, and similar processes must

be devised by man before he can hope to enter into competition with

Nature. In addition to his proficiency in mathematics and chemistry,

Bacon was a learned astronomer and a physician. He also constructed

automatons, which brought down upon his head the censures of the

Church and the enmity of the ignorant. Accused of magic, although

he wrote a treatise against it, fanaticism and hatred sentenced him

to imprisonment and anathematized his works. After ten years of

confinement in a dungeon, he was liberated, only to die with the

first return of the blessings of freedom. The intolerant spirit of

the age that condemned him is epitomized in a sentence taken from a

chapter in which he deplores the irrational bigotry that obstructs

the progress of scientific investigation, “Animus ignorans veritatem

sustinere non potest.” The versatility of his talents was only

surpassed by the audacity with which he attacked and the success with

which he controverted the absurd prejudices of his epoch. His name,

synonymous with progress, stands forth in prominent contrast with the

intellectual abasement and unquestioning credulity with which he was

surrounded. His prophetic foresight, while it provoked the ridicule of

the thirteenth century, commands alike the respect and astonishment of

ours. Like every innovator, he experienced the penalties of superior

genius,--persecution, contumely, deprivation of liberty. Among the

representative scholars of the Middle Ages, he deserves pre-eminent

celebrity as a bold and original exponent of experimental philosophy

and scientific thought.

Although unappreciated by his contemporaries, Roger Bacon found a host

of imitators during the next three centuries. Members of every rank and

profession embraced the study of alchemy. The clerical order included

the larger number; the secrecy of the cloister was made subservient to

the purposes of magic; and the formulas of the laboratory claimed far

more attention than the accomplishment of penance or the ceremonies

of devotion. It was even alleged that Pope John XXII. found time at

Avignon to engage in a fruitless search for the philosopher’s stone.

From these illusory occupations were, as already remarked, occasionally

derived discoveries of great practical value. The benefits resulting

from the exercise of the spirit of inquiry and the vigorous employment

of the intellectual faculties were of even greater consequence to the

growth of civilization and the future welfare of mankind.

In no department of scientific investigation was the genius of Arabian

culture more signally displayed than in the noble profession of

medicine. In ancient Arabia, disease was supposed to be an indication

of the anger of God, which it was the peculiar province of the sorcerer

to remove. The erroneous ideas of morbific conditions common to nations

in their intellectual infancy, among the primitive Arabs, conspicuous

for their ignorance, were even more pronounced than was characteristic

of other races not less barbarous. It was a long step from the

fetichism of the Desert to the sacrificial ceremonies of Rome and the

Asclepiads of Greece, yet all were of a similar character, though the

latter represented the origin of the medical science of antiquity.

Temperance was at once the precaution and the remedy of the abstemious

Bedouin. Mohammed diligently inculcated the doctrine that the stomach

was the seat of all diseases, and fasting their cure.

The beneficent art which has for its object the alleviation of human

suffering was in the seventh century degraded to the vilest purposes

of the priest and the charlatan. The writings of the celebrated Greek

practitioners, lost in the universal destruction of learning consequent

upon barbarian supremacy or hidden in the seclusion of the cloister,

had been forgotten. The reputation of the medical school of Alexandria,

whose methods had wrought such miracles in the advancement of science,

was, in the minds of the more intelligent, but an indistinct and

doubtful tradition; to the ignorant it was wholly unknown. Then,

and for centuries afterwards, throughout Christendom, medicine was

closely allied with sorcery and imposture, partly astrological, partly

mystical, but never scientific. The supernatural] character with which

ecclesiastical shrewdness and cunning had invested it,--the accepted

principle that disease was punishment inflicted for the commission

of sin,--a principle which, strange to say, has still its advocates

even in our enlightened age,--rendered all progress impossible.

Maladies were largely attributed to the influence of spirits or to

the possession of devils, to be exorcised by prayer, holy water, the

application of relics, the invocation of saints. The superstitions

inherited from Pagan antiquity, and of incalculable potency in their

action upon the minds of the multitude, were a source of great revenue

to the clergy. Among the vast number of holy men whose names fill

the pages of the Roman Catholic calendar there were many individuals

whose intercession was considered especially efficacious in the

treatment of certain diseases. The policy of the Church, which lost no

opportunity of impressing the fancy of its votaries, even went so far

as to expel from the constellations of the zodiac the familiar forms

of the ancients, and to substitute in their stead representations of

cenobites and martyrs, the piety of whose lives, often of questionable

authenticity, had obtained for them the honor of canonization. The

identification of the treatment of disease with religious ceremonial,

and indirectly with celestial interference, conferred upon the

priesthood a new and formidable weapon of spiritual power. Their

influence, already great at the bedside of the sick and the dying, soon

became paramount. To the weight which their ecclesiastical functions

imposed, they added the dictatorial manner which is essential to the

successful ministrations of the physician. They collected enormous

fees. They disposed of estates. Often, in the very presence of death,

they engaged in unseemly disputes over the division of the spoil. They

forced the afflicted to the most humiliating compliances. Profoundly

ignorant of the nature of disease and its cure, they supplied their

glaring deficiencies by the employment of every resource of imposture

known to their calling. By aspersions and the exhibition of the Host

they cast out demons. They removed pain with the sovereign virtues

of relics. Chronic affections were treated by protracted prayer and

vicarious penance. Pilgrimages to sacred localities, supplemented by

frequent and generous contributions, were also of notable efficacy.

The waters of certain wells and springs under the patronage of a

saint, and which had been the scenes of well-attested miracles, were

classed among the most popular therapeutic agents. The gift of healing,

especially efficacious in cases of goitre and scrofula, with which

royal personages were supposed to be endowed, was another of the

delusions in which mediæval times were so remarkably prolific. This

singular idea, probably of British origin, can be traced to the reign

of Edward the Confessor, and was not discarded until the accession of

the House of Brunswick. Its institution was undoubtedly ecclesiastical;

the repetition of a religious formula accompanied the touch of the

sovereign; and the practice of the ceremony at Pentecost was always a

source of much edification to the multitude, and of substantial profit

to the religious establishment under whose auspices it happened to be

conducted.

Side by side with clerical impostors, another class of practitioners,

equally ignorant and scarcely less dangerous, preyed upon the

superstitious and credulous of mediæval society. These were the

charlatans who posed as astrologers, alchemists, magicians. Their

encroachments upon the territory of the Church, and the suspicious

methods they employed, necessitated a certain degree of concealment

and secrecy, but their haunts were well known to their victims. They

professed to consult the appearance of the heavens, the motions of

the planets, the recurrence of eclipses, the apparition of comets

and meteors, in the compounding of medicines and the treatment of

distempers. Celestial phenomena were thus regarded as of the highest

importance in the determination of symptoms and the administration of

remedies. The curative virtues of plants were entirely dependent on the

position of the star under which they were gathered. A correspondence

of qualities was presumed to exist between objects having the same

color or form, an idea possibly as old as man himself. Hence were

derived the imaginary aphrodisiacal virtues of the mandrake, and the

alleged properties of red and white substances as calorifacients and

refrigerants. The occupations of these pretenders, usually confined to

the fleecing of their dupes, were, however, not always so innocuous.

They were eminently skilled in the composition of love-philters and

poisons, whose secret administration is believed to have more than

once changed the succession of certain of the royal houses of Europe.

The criminal history of the Middle Ages is not more remarkable for the

nefarious deeds of these fraudulent practitioners than for the immunity

which the possession of dangerous secrets enabled them to enjoy.

To the ministrations of these two classes--that of the ecclesiastic

and that of the charlatan--was the health of Christian Europe thus

committed for many centuries. A striking similarity characterized the

proceedings of both. Each employed mummeries, exorcisms, incantations.

Each professed to believe in the efficacy of amulets. One invoked

the intercession of the saints; the other was credited with holding

nightly intercourse with the spirits of the infernal world. Both, by

the alleged exercise of supernatural affiliation, wielded great power,

and lived in luxury at the expense of those whom they habitually

deluded. While each considered the other as encroaching on his peculiar

domain and an object of suspicion, a community of sentiment between

them generally prevented any serious outbreak of hostility. The

favor and protection of the prince was equally accorded to these two

appendages of the court. One was the keeper of the royal conscience;

the other was valued as an unscrupulous and ever available instrument

of secret vengeance. Both at times exercised the important functions

of physician. Unfortunate, indeed, was the invalid dependent upon such

inadequate resources. For him there was no prospect of substantial

relief; no system of intelligent treatment; no remedies but incense,

relics, and the mysterious formulas of imposture; no prophylactic

but the talisman; no diagnosis but the consultation of the stars;

no prescription but the Pater and the Ave. In the estimation of the

populace, the calling of the physician was identical with that of the

necromancer. In the advice of the priest the greater confidence was

reposed, his connection with the Church investing his opinions with a

divine, even an infallible, sanction. When failure resulted, as was

often the case, it was not attributed to inexperience and ignorance,

but to neglect to propitiate the saints and the Virgin. The commonest

rules of hygiene, upon which are absolutely dependent the health of

communities, were habitually ignored. The streets were open sewers.

The court-yards steamed with miasmatic vapors engendered by decaying

garbage. Into most houses the purifying rays of the sun could never

penetrate. Floors and walls alike were grimy with filth. Linen and

cotton garments worn next the skin, and which contribute so much to

personal comfort and cleanliness, were unknown; the Arabs, by whom they

were invented, had not yet introduced them to the knowledge of Europe.

The supply of water, everywhere contaminated, became a prolific source

of infection. Public baths did not exist; a profane luxury of the

Pagan and the Saracen, their use was contrary to the traditions of

Christianity; the Gospels contain no general precepts for ablution; and

its practice was abhorrent to the meditative simplicity of clerical and

monastic life. The universal existence of these pathogenic conditions

is alone sufficient to account for the rapid diffusion and frightful

mortality of contagious diseases. Leprosy had under the filthy habits

and promiscuous intercourse of the populations of the Middle Ages

assumed a character of extraordinary virulence. France, at that time

certainly not the least civilized country of Europe, furnishes a

suggestive instance of the prevalence and disastrous effects of this

incurable disorder. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, there

was not a village--scarcely a hamlet--without its lazar-house; the

streets of great cities swarmed with leprous beggars in every stage of

loathsome deformity; and in 1250 there were known to be two thousand

leper-asylums in that kingdom,--there were nineteen thousand in Europe.

The result of the disregard of sanitary precautions, and the deplorable

lack of medical knowledge, is also established by the fatality of great

epidemics, previously mentioned. Such was the awful penalty entailed by

hatred of learning, personal neglect, and public indifference to the

laws of health, conditions sedulously maintained by the policy of the

papal system, whose ministers collected immense revenues from shrines,

relics, amulets, and the endless paraphernalia of superstition, and

discouraged, by all the insidious arts of their profession, every

rational method for the prevention and treatment of disease.

In the Orient, on the other hand, great progress had early been made

in the various branches of the healing art. The number of Arab

physicians was prodigious. An entire volume of the biographical work

of Abu-Osaibah is taken up with their names. In the city of Bagdad,

at one time during the eleventh century, there were nearly nine

hundred. The Nestorian school of Djondisabour had already, in the sixth

century, sent forth many eminent practitioners. Some of these, in

search of more extensive knowledge, travelled in India; at least one

of them, Harets-Ibn-Keladah, an Arab, established himself at Mecca.

From him Mohammed, who was his friend, obtained something more than

the rudiments of medicine, an accomplishment which contributed greatly

to his success. The Prophet attended the sick, gave consultations,

and imparted his learning to his wives. He recognized the paramount

importance of hygiene, and inculcated its maxims upon every occasion.

“God has not caused a single disease to descend upon men without

providing a remedy,” “Diet is the principle of cure, and intemperance

the source of all physical ills,” were some of the aphoristical

sayings whose truth he constantly impressed upon his followers. The

renowned Khalif Al-Mamun was the first Moslem prince to impart a

decided impulse to the study of scientific medicine. To Bagdad, his

capital, which he had named the City of Peace, he attracted, by the

promise of magnificent rewards, the chief professors of the medical

school of Djondisabour. The fact that they were Christians was in

the eyes of that great monarch no impediment to their employment or

promotion. Under their intelligent direction colleges and dispensaries

were established. The first hospital of which history makes mention

was founded at Bagdad. The world was diligently explored for medical

treatises of every description. The Greek authors were rendered into

Arabic by a body of translators especially employed for that purpose.

The vast importance of this intellectual movement, guided by the

spirit of scientific inquiry whose conclusions were based on results

obtained by observation and experiment, is disclosed by the great minds

it produced and through the influence it exerted on other nations.

In medicine, as in all other sciences, the Spanish Arabs enjoyed

peculiar advantages. The accumulated wisdom of the Alexandrian School

was theirs by right of conquest. The learning, the inventions, and the

methods of the great colleges of Djondisabour, of Bagdad, of Cairo, of

Damascus, were theirs by appropriation or inheritance. Many of the most

accomplished scholars of those institutions established a residence in

the Peninsula, and enriched with their knowledge the already gigantic

stock of scientific facts, the result of years of study and experiment

by the brightest minds in the most highly intellectual and cultivated

society of Europe. Neither national nor religious prejudice proscribed

the fruits produced by the labors of the philosophical observer.

The contributions of the skeptic, the Christian, the Jew, and the

Worshipper of Fire were received with the same respect and rewarded

with the same liberality as were those of the orthodox Moslem. The

enterprising surgeons and pharmacists of Moorish Spain travelled,

studied, and pursued their investigations in every country which

promised a profitable return to their industry or their researches.

The academies of the Peninsula were illumined by the genius and the

erudition of such great writers and operators as the Bakhtichous,

Masués, and Serapions, the Nestorian pioneers of medicine and surgery;

Honein-Ibn-Ishak, Albategnius, Abu-Yusuf-al-Kendi, Tsabit-Ibn-Korra,

Ibn-Bothan, Ibn-Sina, Abu-Bekr-Mohammed, of Persia; Ibn-al-Heitsam,

Al-Hazen, Abul-Mena-Ibn-Naso, of Egypt; Ibn-al-Mathran, Ibn-al-Dakhnar,

Ibn-Khalifa, Abd-al-Atif, Djimal-al-Dire, of Syria; Ibn-al-Djezzar,

Constantine Africanus, and Edrisi, of Barbary. These names, famous in

the annals of the profession, and gathered from every quarter of the

Mohammedan world, are equalled if not surpassed in renown by those of

Moorish Spain. The schools in the empire of Islam, already celebrated,

were also rendered doubly illustrious by many other distinguished

scholars of scarcely inferior ability, whose talents and discoveries

produced a revolution in the practice of every department of medical

science. All of the institutions where it was taught were not public.

Many were established by practising physicians, who had also their

private hospitals. The sons adopted the profession of their fathers

for many consecutive generations, and added to the learning obtained

by example and experience the natural advantages derived from the

hereditary transmission of genius and skill.

The khalifs often attended the lectures of eminent practitioners, and

always bestowed upon them the most substantial marks of their favor.

Capable of the exercise of every public employment, the court physician

was often raised to the post of vizier. Many accumulated immense

fortunes. Djabril-Ibn-Bakhtichou left ninety million drachmas; Al-Mamum

gave Honein for every volume he translated from the Greek its weight in

gold.

The versatility of many of these learned men is one of the marvels

of the educational system under which their talents were developed.

Their medical knowledge was often the least conspicuous of their

intellectual accomplishments. They were famous mathematicians,

astronomers, metaphysicians, grammarians, botanists. Some left hundreds

of works on the different sciences. Even in that remote age there were

specialists who wrote with signal ability on the morbid anatomy of the

different portions of the body. Affections of the eye, obstetrics,

eruptive fevers, were exhaustively treated. The book of Rhazes on

the diseases of children is the first on that topic known to exist.

Medical encyclopædias were common. The number of translators produced

by the school of Bagdad alone exceeded one hundred. The multiplication

of copies of Greek medical and philosophical works by this means,

and their consequent wide distribution, preserved them from the fate

encountered by so many other memorials of Attic genius. The salutary

example of the Abbaside khalifs was not lost upon the Moslem princes

of Syria and Egypt. In the polished capitals of Damascus and Cairo

numbers of splendidly appointed medical institutions--colleges,

hospitals, dispensaries, laboratories--arose. The services of the most

distinguished physicians were gratuitously rendered to the inmates

of the hospitals. The hygienic arrangements of the latter were, in

many respects, superior even to those dictated by the spirit of

modern scientific progress. They were larger, better arranged, and

more commodious. Purity of air was assured by a system of thorough

ventilation. There were fountains everywhere,--in the courts, in the

halls, in the gardens. Wards placed under the direction of competent

specialists were appointed for the treatment and study of every

disease. Insane patients were prescribed for like the others, and had

their attendants, their baths, and their amusements. For them, as well

as for the unfortunate victim of insomnia and the convalescent, there

were the diverting mirth of the story-teller and the soothing powers

of music. When a patient was discharged as cured from the Moristan of

Cairo, founded in the tenth century, and the most luxuriously equipped

hospital of ancient or modern times,--where cooling waters rippled by

the bedside of the sick, and their senses were refreshed by the sight

and odors of beds of flowers,--he received five pieces of gold, to

provide for his necessities until his strength was completely restored.

These institutions were supported by the government, and placed under

the supervision of the court physician, the head of his profession,

who was held to a strict accountability for their proper management.

For this important and responsible employment belief in Islamism was

by no means essential; honesty, skill, and industry were the sole

recommendations to imperial favor, and the medical advisers of the

Successors of the Prophet were frequently Christians and Jews. In all

hospitals registers of cases were opened and preserved, and far more

importance was attached to the observations made at the bedside of the

patient than to the information obtained by the perusal of books.

The fame of the medical colleges of the Orient spread rapidly

throughout the world, and attracted the ambitious of every

creed,--Christian, Hebrew, Mohammedan. In the eleventh century there

were more than six thousand students of medicine in the schools of

Bagdad. The methods of the professors and writers who directed the

policy of these institutions owed their efficacy and success to their

severely practical character. No course of treatment was approved until

it had been repeatedly tested. Rhazes boasted that his knowledge had

been acquired in hospitals and not from libraries. It was the leading

principle of the practice of Ibn-Zohr that the resources of nature, if

properly directed, are generally sufficient to cure disease. Abulcasis

insisted that a thorough knowledge of anatomy was indispensable to

success in surgical practice, a statement which, in his day, had the

merit of novelty. The original principles of science transmitted from

the great Greek physicians were again promulgated for the benefit

of mankind, after having been divested of the mass of superstition

and imposture with which they had long been encumbered. Almost every

disease incident to humanity was treated by the Arab practitioner.

Ophthalmia, endemic in countries subjected to the incessant glare of

a tropical sun, received particular attention. The Moorish surgeons

describe eleven different operations for cataract. Smallpox and leprosy

were the subject of protracted and exhaustive investigation. There

were specialists for affections of the nerves and the brain, and of

the pectoral organs; for complaints resulting from physical excesses;

for the various forms of insanity. Considerations of delicacy and

the jealous prejudice resulting from the life of the harem debarred

the physician from the application of the principles of gynæcology,

and the practice of obstetrics was relinquished to women. Surgery,

whose practice now implies the possession of the highest degree of

professional skill, was for ages among the Arabs considered of inferior

importance, and was abandoned to barbers and charlatans. The Mohammedan

doctrine that the soul remained with the body for a certain time after

dissolution was a serious obstacle to the acquisition of anatomical

knowledge, vital to the success of the operator. This feeling was

intensified by an idea prevalent among the rabble that handling a

corpse was a source of frightful, nay, even of ineffaceable, pollution.

The same impediments to the study of anatomy also existed in Christian

Europe under the rules of the Church. One of the most heinous offences

of the Emperor Frederick II. was that he encouraged dissections, a

practice which, as it violated the sacred tabernacle of the soul and,

according to ecclesiastical precept, might cause serious embarrassment

on the day of the General Resurrection, had been rigidly proscribed by

the policy of Rome.

The Arabs attached the greatest importance to hygienic precautions for

the prevention as well as for the cure of disease. It was a cardinal

principle of their pathology that overtaxing the digestive organs was

the cause of a multitude of disorders. The abstemious and temperate

habits which characterized the life of the Desert were impressively

inculcated by the Koran and the entire body of Moslem tradition. Their

observance was constantly suggested by the familiar use of amusing and

pertinent aphorisms and proverbial phrases, such, for instance, as,

“The worst things that an old man can have are a young wife and a good

cook.”

The science of medicine, in common with the other branches of practical

knowledge already enumerated, was introduced into Christendom through

the Moslem kingdoms of Southern Europe. The Spanish and Sicilian

Arabs were the distributors of the accumulated wisdom of the East.

The munificent patronage of their rulers, the enterprise of their

merchants, the ambition of their scholars, enabled them to profit by

the literary resources and invaluable observations of the great medical

schools of Bagdad, Cairo, and Damascus. The Continent of Rhazes, the

Canon of Avicenna, the Meliki of Ali-Ibn-Abbas, each a vast compendium

of scientific information, whose principles form the basis of all

modern practice, were early familiar to the Moorish physicians of

the Peninsula. The works of Al-Hazen and Ali-Ibn-Issa, indispensable

to oculists, were used by the students of Cordova even before their

adoption by the colleges of Teheran and Cairo. Every medical treatise

of importance was to be found in the libraries of the khalifate. Nor

were the efforts of the Hispano-Arab practitioners limited to the

collection of the literary productions of their professional brethren

of the Orient. They translated the ancient Greek masters. They

composed voluminous commentaries on famous authors whose opinions

were regarded as oracular. No names in the long catalogue of Moslem

genius stand higher than those of Abulcasis, the originator of modern

surgery; than Avenzoar, whose family was prominent for three hundred

years in the medical annals of Moorish Spain; than Averroes, whose

great professional attainments have been obscured by his pre-eminent

reputation as a natural philosopher. Arib-Ibn-Said-al-Khatib, whose

works exceeded a thousand in number, composed treatises on gynæcology

and obstetrics, and was the author of the Calendar of Cordova, a

wonderful compilation of medical truths, surgical maxims, astronomical

and agricultural knowledge. Ibn-Wafed, of Toledo, who lived in the

tenth century, and whose extraordinary abilities made him conspicuous

among hundreds of eminent contemporaries, consumed twenty years in

the preparation of his work on the general practice of medicine.

Ibn-Zohr, of Seville, was the first to discover that scabies was

produced by a diminutive parasite, and to prescribe sulphur as a

remedy. The treatise of Mohammed-Ibn-Quassum on diseases of the eye

occupied six hundred pages; that of Mohammed-al-Temini on hernia and

tumors nearly four hundred. Daoud-al-Agrebi wrote on fumigations,

collyriums, hemostatics; he recommends the administration of narcotics

in lithotomy, in the incision of abscesses, and in emasculation for

the production of eunuchs. Saladin-Ibn-Yusuf published a book on the

anatomy of the eye and the theories of vision. The scientific and

logical methods inaugurated by the khalifs of the East were perfected

in the medical colleges of Mohammedan Spain. The study of anatomy

attained a development previously unknown to the traditions and

experience of the profession. From the contemplation of bone-heaps

in the cemeteries the student advanced to the performance of

autopsies; to the determination, by actual survey, of the location

and offices of the internal organs; to the vivisection of quadrupeds

and criminals. A material advance in general intelligence is implied

from the fact that these inquiries, heretofore so repugnant to popular

feeling and religious tradition, could be prosecuted in peace. In

etiology, pathology, therapeutics, great progress was made. Surgery,

whose practice had entailed reproach rather than distinction upon

its professors, was, by the removal of the prejudice attaching to

anatomical demonstration, relieved of the obloquy with which it was

generally regarded. A blind reverence for precedent and authority

was not recognized by the practitioners of the Hispano-Arab school.

They inculcated the paramount importance of a competent knowledge of

the functions of the organs of the human body, which they well knew

could only be obtained from the practice of dissection, abhorrent to

the minds of both the Moslem and the Jew. They advised great caution

in all operations. Every new theory was subjected to severe and

exhaustive tests. Heroic treatment was adopted only where milder means

had proved unsuccessful. Whenever possible, the curative powers of

nature were allowed full exercise; and a change of climate, especially

in pulmonary affections, was one of the principal resources of the

Moorish physicians. Their works were elucidated by the introduction

into the text of drawings of instruments adapted to the removal of the

morbid conditions described; and science is indebted to the Spanish

Moslems for this innovation, now an essential part of all treatises

on surgery. The treatment of the eye received more attention from

the Arabs than any other branch of the profession. Their oculists

were most accomplished operators; the heat and dryness of the climate

being favorable to ophthalmic affections and affording the surgeon

varied and incessant practice. They enumerate nine different forms

of cataract, which they treated by couching and by puncture. Their

needles were both round and triangular; some were hollow and made of

glass. The Arabs were the first to perform the important operation of

lithotomy and to reduce old dislocations. They knew how to ligature

the arteries four centuries before Ambrose Paré. They used hooks for

the extraction of polypi. They made frequent and intelligent use of

counter-irritants. The seton is their invention. The application of

leeches in apoplexy was a common incident in their practice. They

were familiar with the effects of caustics and acids as escharotics.

They substituted refrigerants for tonics in certain affections of the

nerve-centres. They understood the value of cold water in arresting

hemorrhage. They originated the modern method of bandaging. The

treatment of slow fevers, like typhoid, by baths of low temperature,

was frequently employed by them; it was recommended by Rhazes nine

hundred years before its announcement to the present generation

as a new and remarkable discovery. To Ibn-Zohr medical science

owes the operation of tracheotomy and the original description of

pericarditis. Abulcasis, in explaining lithotomy, advises the section

used by surgeons ever since he wrote, in the tenth century. Nor had

the advantages derived from anæsthesia escaped the notice of these

profound and ingenious observers. They suggest the administration,

in decoction, of darnel--the Lolium Temulentum--and other plants of

narcotic properties, until complete loss of consciousness and sensation

is obtained, to facilitate the performance of severe operations. Even

the results of microbial infection appear to have been recognized by

them, although its cause remained unknown. When, in the tenth century,

Rhazes was directed by the Khalif to select a hospital site in the

city of Bagdad, he caused pieces of meat to be suspended in different

localities, and the building was erected in that place where, after a

given time, the least putrefaction was visible. Nor in that early day

was the care of animals neglected, and the name of Abu-Bekr-Ibn-Bedr

has descended to posterity as that of a famous veterinary surgeon.

In their contributions to the pharmacopœia, the Spanish Mohammedans

rendered invaluable services to medicine. Abul-Abbas, of Seville, was

the first to apply the principles of botanical science--heretofore

principally devoted to agriculture--to the purposes of the apothecary

and the physician. In the work of Ibn-al-Awam six hundred plants

possessing medicinal properties are enumerated; in that of Ibn-Beithar

more than three hundred, hitherto unclassified or unknown, are

mentioned and described. Ibn-Essouri, in his work on the Materia

Medica, painted the herbs which had been the subject of his

investigations not only as they grew, but as they appeared, when dried,

on the shelves of the druggist; his is the first example of an Arabic

book illustrated in colors. The methods of the Moorish practitioners

were conservative. They attempted no doubtful or hazardous experiments.

They discarded the drastic remedies of the ancients. Profoundly versed

in the science of horticulture, they watered the roots of plants

and trees with strong infusions of purgative drugs, and afterwards

administered their fruits. Their personal attention to the rules of

hygiene was often evidenced by their remarkable longevity. Rhazes was

in active practice at Bagdad for more than half a century; Abulcasis

attained the great age of one hundred and one years.

The superior excellence of the Spanish-Arab school is attributable to

the fact that its members devoted their talents to a single profession.

For the most part, they avoided the example of the Oriental, whose

medical researches were hampered by philosophical speculations, and who

turned from the diagnosis of ailments and the application of remedies

to the fascinations of alchemy and to vagaries concerning the imaginary

relations of humanity to the mysterious influence of the stars. They

were not altogether free from these delusions, nevertheless, for they

pulverized jewels, supposed to be efficacious in certain diseases,

and coated their drugs with gold and silver leaf, a proceeding which

to the adept had a profound alchemical significance. From this

custom is derived our expression, “to gild the pill.” They usually,

however, confined their observations to the legitimate sphere of the

physician--to the subjects of medicine, surgery, pharmacy, hygiene.

The various topical applications used at present by the

profession--such as unguents, plasters, counter-irritants, and

pomades--originated in Mohammedan Spain. The hospital service of that

country has received little attention from historians, but it is

highly improbable that, in the general advance of civilization, this

important auxiliary to medicine should have been at all neglected.

It is a singular fact that the only detailed notice of a Moorish

hospital in the Peninsula is of that of Algeziras, which was founded

in the twelfth century. Tradition reports, however, that fifty

public institutions of this kind existed at one time at Cordova. The

Hispano-Arab practitioners held consultations at the bedside of the

patient; some, employed by the government, visited the sick of remote

localities at regular intervals; for the poor there was gratuitous

attendance and treatment. The discoveries of Arab medicine were mainly

preserved and diffused through the translations of Gerard of Cremona,

whose indefatigable industry imposed such lasting obligations on

modern science. For fifty years he was employed at Toledo, until his

translations reached the enormous number of seventy-six. Had it not

been for his efforts, and those of his patient collaborators, the

works of the Moorish physicians would have shared the fate of the

voluminous collections of Arabic miscellaneous literature. Of the

millions of volumes which represented the intellectual glory of the

khalifate scarcely a copy exists in Spain. What escaped the malignant

vigilance of Ximenes perished at the hands of the Inquisition. It is

not generally known that the bulk of the manuscripts of the Escorial

library constitutes no part of the literary inheritance of the Moslem

domination. They represent the spoil of vessels captured on the coast

of Morocco in the early part of the seventeenth century. In nearly

all of these the invocation of Allah and Mohammed, with which every

important Arabic work begins, has been carefully erased.

Of such a character were the literary and scientific achievements of

the Arabs, whose highest mental development was reached under the

influence of the Mohammedan dynasties of the Peninsula. In the fierce

and relentless struggle prosecuted for centuries between pontifical

iniquity and intolerance and Moslem learning, the former ultimately

triumphed. It may not be inappropriate at the close of this chapter

to recount the consequences of that triumph; to disclose the aims of

the victor; to enumerate the sacrifices of the vanquished; to contrast

the effects of the supremacy of either upon the welfare of humanity

and the march of civilization. From the Arabian Prophet, reared amidst

the pastoral simplicity and barbaric ignorance of the Desert, came

such utterances as these,--utterances which, if not inspired, are

yet certainly of priceless value to the human race: “Teach science:

whoever teaches it fears God; whoever desires it adores God; whoever

speaks of it praises God; whoever diffuses it distributes alms; whoever

possesses it becomes an object of veneration and respect. Science

preserves us from error and from sin; it illuminates the road to

Paradise; it is our protector in travel, our confidant in the Desert,

our companion in solitude. It guides us through the pleasures and the

sorrows of life; it serves us alike as an ornament among our friends

and as a buckler against our enemies; it is through its instrumentality

that the Almighty raises up those whom he has appointed to determine

the good and the true. The memories of such men are the only ones which

shall survive, for their noble deeds will serve as models for the

imitation of the great minds that shall come after them. Science is

a potent remedy for the infirmities of ignorance, a brilliant beacon

in the night of injustice. The study of letters is as meritorious as

fasting; their communication is not inferior in efficacy to prayer;

in a generous heart they awaken the most elevated sentiments; to the

wicked they impart the corrective and humanizing precepts of virtue.”

These words, spoken by Mohammed in the seventh century, were received

by the votaries of Islam with the respect due to a revelation destined

to guide their policy, with reference to literary pursuits, through all

subsequent ages.

Far different was the attitude assumed by the ecclesiastical power

whose despotic mandates were for a thousand years recognized and obeyed

by the proudest sovereigns of Christendom. It early perceived the

incompatibility of its pretensions with the untrammelled exercise of

the faculties of the human intellect. Founded upon principles whose

acceptance, as maxims of divine origin, necessarily precluded all

ideas of improvement and progress, it had no resource but quiescence;

it could countenance no condition but that of immobility. It placed

a premium upon ignorance, and enjoined the employment of persecution

as a virtue. It blighted every noble aspiration which came within

the sphere of its destructive energy. Through the oracular mouths of

the Fathers it denounced all philosophy as “empty and false.” In its

Constitution of Faith, promulgated in the nineteenth century by the

Vatican Council,--many of whose articles are indorsed as sound by every

consistent member of the Evangelical Communion,--it anathematized all

“who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit

of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions,

even when opposed to revealed doctrine.”

Such were the various aspects under which scientific thought was

regarded respectively by the Founder of Islam and the infallible

representatives of Christianity. The effects of such spiritual

admonitions upon the physical condition of those subjected to their

influence are disclosed by the material and intellectual prosperity or

debasement of nations. In no examples of the political and economic

life of the Middle Ages or of subsequent times are such striking, such

incredible, contrasts exhibited as in the annals of Mohammedan Spain

and Catholic Europe. In the tenth century Andalusia was traversed

in every direction by magnificent aqueducts; Cordova was a city of

fountains; its thoroughfares, for a distance of miles, were brilliantly

illuminated, substantially paved, kept in excellent repair, regularly

patrolled by guardians of the peace. In Paris there were no pavements

until the thirteenth century; in London none until the fourteenth;

the streets of both capitals were receptacles of filth, and often

impassable; at night shrouded in inky darkness; at all times dominated

by outlaws; the haunt of the footpad, the nursery of the pestilence,

the source of every disease, the scene of every crime. It was not

until the close of the reign of Charles II. that even a defective

system of street lighting was adopted; in London the mortality of

the plague is a convincing proof of the unsanitary conditions that

everywhere prevailed; the supply of water was derived from the polluted

river or from wells reeking with contamination. Nor did time and

experience bring to the public mind a realization of the importance

of improvements vitally affecting the health and convenience of every

community. As late as 1825, water of doubtful purity was hawked about

from door to door in the city of New York; a solitary wooden pump in

Chatham Street sufficed for the general necessities of the poor; sewage

was carried in tubs on the heads of negroes and thrown into the river;

and only three hundred lamps and gas-jets diffused their uncertain and

flickering glare through the squares and avenues of the metropolis of

the western world.

The annual receipts of the state from all sources under Abd-al-Rahman

III. in the first half of the tenth century exceeded three hundred

million dollars; the revenues of the English Crown at the close of

the seventeenth century were fifteen million; those of the United

Provinces less than eighteen million; those of France sixty million,

estimated at the present value of money. At the decease of this

Moorish sovereign in 961, there were found in the royal coffers five

million pieces of gold, equal to one hundred million dollars. When

Louis XIV., the greatest potentate of his time, died in 1715, the

treasury of France was bankrupt. The inhabitants of England at the

death of Elizabeth were about four million; the population of Moorish

Spain six centuries previous to that date could not have been less

than thirty million, and was probably nearer fifty. In 1700, London,

the most populous city of Christian Europe, was only half as large as

Cordova was in 900, when Almeria and Seville had each as numerous a

population as the capital of the British Empire eight hundred years

afterwards. At the dawn of the eleventh century the Moslem dominions

of Sicily and Spain presented a picture of universal cultivation and

consequent prosperity, where industry was promoted and idleness was

punished; where an enlightened spirit of humanity had provided asylums

within whose walls the infirm and the aged might pass their remaining

days in comfort and peace. Six hundred years afterwards what are now

the richest and most valuable agricultural districts of Great Britain

were unclaimed and uninhabitable bog and coppice, abandoned to game and

frequented by robbers; and one-fourth of the inhabitants of England,

incapable of the task of self-support, were during the greater part of

the year dependent upon public charity, for which purpose a sum equal

to one-half of the revenues of the crown was annually disbursed. In the

middle of the tenth century there were nine hundred public baths in the

capital of Moorish Spain; in the eighteenth century there were not as

many in all the countries of Christian Europe. In the eighth century,

the cottages occupied by the lower classes of the Spanish Moslems were

embowered in roses, were surrounded by fields of waving grain and

orchards of luscious fruits, were furnished with all the comforts and

many of the luxuries of life; in the sixteenth century, the peasantry

of France and Germany, ill-clad, begrimed with filth, and ignorant of

the taste of bread, were living in squalid huts, sleeping upon reeking

heaps of straw, drinking the waters of pond and morass, and feeding on

carrots and acorns. Seven centuries after the cities of the Peninsula

had been drained by a system of great sewers, their streets kept

free from rubbish, and subjected to daily cleansing, Paris was still

worthy of its ancient appellation of Lutetia, “The Muddy;” the way of

the pedestrian was blocked by heaps of steaming offal and garbage;

and droves of swine, the only scavengers, roamed unmolested through

court-yard and thoroughfare.

Under the conditions of intellectual culture which characterized

Moslem and Christian society even a greater inequality prevailed.

The library of Mostandir, Sultan of Egypt, contained eighty thousand

volumes; that of the Fatimites of Cairo, a million; that of Tripoli,

two hundred thousand; in the thirteenth century, when Bagdad was

sacked by the Mongols, the books cast into the Tigris completely

covered its surface, and their ink dyed its waters black, while a

far greater number were destroyed by fire; the public collections of

the Moorish khalifate of Spain were seventy in number, and the great

library of Al-Hakem II. alone included six hundred thousand volumes.

The collections of many private individuals were proportionately

large. In that of Ibn-al-Mathran, the physician of Saladin, were ten

thousand manuscripts; upon the shelves of Dunasch-ben-Tamin, the

great Jewish surgeon of Cairo, were more than twenty thousand. Four

centuries afterwards few books existed in Christian Europe excepting

those preserved in monasteries; the royal library of France consisted

of nine hundred volumes, two-thirds of which were theological works;

their subjects were limited to pious homilies, the miracles of saints,

the duties of obedience to ecclesiastical superiors,--their sole

merit consisted in the elegance of their chirography and the beauty

of their illuminations. During the Hispano-Arab domination it was

difficult to encounter even a Moorish peasant who could not read and

write; during the same period in Europe many great personages could

not boast these accomplishments. From the ninth to the thirteenth

century the Spanish-Arabs possessed an educational system not inferior

to the most improved ones of modern times; they taught astronomy from

globes and planispheres; they measured the circumference of the

earth; they observed the motions of the planets; they calculated the

density of the atmosphere; they were familiar with the natural and

artificial conditions under which vapors and gases are generated. For

the European of that epoch there were no schools, for popular learning

was discountenanced as conducive to heresy; education was confined to

the cloister; the stars were but celestial lamps, whose only office

was the nocturnal illumination of the earth; the latter was flat, and

above it rose, in regular gradation, the seven regions of heaven; the

ebullition and the explosion of gases were attributed to demoniac

influence and to the agency of mischievous imps and goblins. Five

centuries after the Moorish physicians of Spain had treated disease

by the rational principles of medicine, surgery, and hygiene, Europe

still adhered to the archaic conceptions of barbaric ignorance; to the

belief that all illness was a manifestation of divine displeasure;

to the possession by evil spirits; to the delusive expedients of

priestly artifice,--the exhibition of relics, the muttering of texts,

the performance of exorcisms. Six hundred years after the celebrated

astronomer, Ibn-Junis--who constructed the Hakemite Table, advanced

proofs of the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, and utilized the

pendulum for the purposes of chronometry--was honored and awarded

with the friendship of the Khalif of Egypt, Galileo, in the degrading

robe of the penitent, horrible with painted flames and devils, was

forced, kneeling before the familiars of the Holy Office, to abjure,

as dangerous heresies, the scientific truths he had subjected to

mathematical and ocular demonstration,--the grand discoveries which

have made his name immortal; and Bruno was sent to the stake for

admitting the philosophical doctrine of the all-pervading Divine

Essence, for teaching the heresy of a plurality of worlds, and for

insisting that the earth revolved on its axis and round the sun. Seven

hundred years after universal toleration was enforced throughout the

domain of the Ommeyade Khalifate,--where even the populace had learned

to respect the weaknesses of senile eccentricity, and the belief in

demoniacal possession had been contemptuously abandoned to the most

ignorant of the provincial rabble,--the Duke of York was subjecting

the unhappy Covenanters of Scotland to promiscuous massacre and to

the excruciating torture of the boot, and Cotton Mather was burning

witches on Salem Common. More than twenty generations had elapsed

since the Arab geographer was first regarded by his countrymen as a

public benefactor, by his king as worthy of the highest honors that

royalty can bestow, by the learned with the respect attaching to the

possessor of unusual attainments; when Calvin tortured Servetus at

Geneva for publishing the unscriptural assertion that Palestine, so far

from being a land flowing with milk and honey, was, in fact, a barren

waste of volcanic desolation,--Servetus, the great anatomist, who came

within a hair’s-breadth of anticipating Harvey in his discovery of the

circulation of the blood. From time immemorial among unenlightened

races insanity has been attributed to the influence of malignant

spirits, who could only be expelled by the unsparing use of the scourge

or by the intervention of the priest. The Arabs were the first of

nations to discard this idea, to use kindness and the administration of

remedies in the treatment of the demented, and to establish asylums.

These conditions disclose the comparative value of two great

politico-religious systems, both claiming divine authority, each

uniting in its head the functions of Church and State,--one the

exponent and zealous promoter of every scientific impulse, the other

the ever-consistent representative of intellectual repression. The

influence of Moslem genius is felt to-day in the numerous inventions,

the insatiable thirst for knowledge, the marvellous development of

art, science, and letters which have made the closing years of the

nineteenth century ever memorable in the annals of civilization.

Apparently extinguished by the noxious vapors of superstition that

had darkened the Christian world for so many ages, the vital spark of

learning still remained, which, rekindled in an epoch more propitious

to mental culture, was destined to advance in an even more marked

degree the material interests, as well as the most noble aspirations,

of mankind. The law of human progress even under the most unfavorable

conditions is constant, invariable, eternal. Its manifestations differ

only in the degree of their advancement. The latter may be checked, but

its retardation is only temporary. The ground lost by scientific truth

in one century it will surely make up in the next, and, despite the

hostile agencies which may conspire for its suppression, it is destined

eventually to triumph.

The consideration of Arabic intellectual life, and especially of

its culmination in the Spanish Peninsula, the astonishing energy,

curiosity, and perseverance that characterized every stage of its

development from its very origin to its extinction, the phenomenal

rapidity of its advance, the superhuman greatness of its deeds, suggest

the infinite possibilities to which its revival may ultimately give

rise as affecting the destiny of nations.

At the present day, when every year, nay, almost every month, brings

forth some new and wonderful discovery; when vocal communication

between distant points is maintained solely by atmospheric aid; when

chemistry is resolving into numerous constituents substances for ages

considered elementary; when by the employment of enormous lenses the

heavenly bodies are brought within almost tangible propinquity to

the earth; when even the most humble offices of domestic economy are

performed by the mysterious agency of electrical apparatus; when the

invention of tremendously powerful means of destruction daily renders

war more difficult and peace more desirable; when the gases of the

atmosphere are artificially decomposed and separately made the objects

of commercial traffic; when the skill of the physician has practically

eradicated diseases long deemed incurable; in this era of scientific

progress and of unparalleled intellectual achievement who will be so

bold as to assert that even the dreams of the alchemist, the cherished

phantoms of Moorish imagination, may not soon be realized? In scores

of laboratories in Europe and America there are to-day chemists,

diligently and quietly, with the patience, if not with the enthusiasm,

of the ancient adept, endeavoring to determine by the aid of the

prodigious resources of modern science the ever doubtful question of

the transmutation of metals. From all quarters of the civilized world

come well-authenticated reports that some of the greatest minds of the

century, minds whose every utterance claims attention and respect,

are engaged in investigations whose effects may surpass those of the

imagined universal panacea, and which will impart to the listless

energy, to the deformed symmetry, and to hoary and decrepit age the

strength of long departed manhood;

“Lumenque Juventæ

Purpureum.”

Is it too much to assume that our age, so prolific of marvels that what

excites astonishment to-day is certain to become commonplace to-morrow,

will accomplish these and even greater results; an age ingenious in

theory, fertile in invention, phenomenal in versatility, skilful in

practice; an age of eccentric and startling propositions; an age which

looks forward with audacious confidence to the solution of even that

most recondite problem of biology, the artificial production of organic

life? Is it unreasonable to expect that those secrets of nature which

have hitherto eluded the researches of philosophical experiment and

scientific inquiry will erelong be revealed?

These being among the assumed possibilities of science, let us

turn to what it has actually done for mankind. In what respect are

these investigations preferable to that absolute resignation to

ecclesiastical authority which so generally prevailed when devotion was

exalted and intelligence enchained? What advantage has resulted from

this poring over manuscripts, this collecting of plants, this delving

in the earth, this star-gazing, this mixing of acids, this study of

skeletons? Cui bono?

The answer comes back from every phase of an advancing civilization,

from the din of a thousand workshops and the clatter of a million

looms; from the whistle of the locomotive in the desert and the bell of

the steamer stranded amidst the polar ice; from the network of railways

seaming each continent from centre to circumference; from canal and

aqueduct, from tunnel and bridge, and all the grand monuments of civil

engineering; from the safety-lamp, flickering through the poisonous

vapors of the miner’s cave; from the seats of commerce crowded with the

appliances of enjoyment and luxury; from the harbors with their forests

of shapely masts; from the innumerable triumphs of inventive genius

which alike increase the pleasures of the wealthy and ease the burdens

of the poor, and are gratefully felt at the desk of the speculative

philosopher and the bench of the artisan. But even more than this has

science accomplished. It has explored new regions in the boundless

domain of human knowledge. It has discovered and applied the laws of

planetary motion; determined the distances of the heavenly bodies;

estimated their masses; laid down the substances of which they are

composed; and described the complex relations in which they stand to

each other. It has measured time down to the incredibly small fraction

of the millionth part of a second. It has scanned the borders of the

universe, and brought within the scope of vision stars so distant that

the image formed to-day upon the retina of the observer is produced

by light emitted five million years ago. By means of the microscope,

it has opened a fairy world teeming with myriad types of animal and

vegetable life, more curious than the fabled regions of the Orient,

more wonderful than the enchanted garden of Armida. It has placed

upon the photographic negative faces, flowers, landscapes, depicted

in the exquisite and harmonious colors of Nature. By the discovery

of the radiferous salts,--polonium, radium, thorium, actinium,

titanium,--it has disclosed to the chemist a new and enchanting field

of research, whose extent and possibilities cannot yet even be made

the subject of intelligent conjecture; and has instituted the study of

substances whose astonishing properties tend to overthrow the hitherto

well-founded theories of the various relations of matter, and, in

some instances, to imperatively demand their modification or radical

reconstruction; whose investigation has established as truisms the

most glaring apparent physical paradoxes; in the presence of whose

marvellous effects the properties of solidity, cohesion, and opacity

seem to vanish; which exhibit such a subdivision of matter into

infinitesimal particles as to suggest their practical dissociation,

and in comparison with whose dimensions the inconceivably minute

primordial atoms of Democritus are absolutely colossal; the origin of

whose mysterious power no hypothesis, no analysis, no apparatus, has

so far been able to satisfactorily determine; which not improbably may

afford solutions of cosmical phenomena whose manifestations alone have

been observed; and which, by their application to anatomical, medical,

and mechanical science, may ultimately serve to explain the origin of

life, and confer inestimable material benefits upon the human race.

Of these metallic, radio-active bodies, radium, the most important

and wonderful, is one that presents pre-eminently interesting and

inexplicable peculiarities; a substance which possesses the remarkable

qualities of self-luminosity, thermogenesis, and actinism; which is

endowed with a singular recuperative power, by means of which its

recently diminished force is restored without the apparent aid of any

external agency; whose primary and apparently inexhaustible source of

potency has been variously and inconclusively asserted to be the sun,

the earth, the atmosphere; whose emanations, charged with negative

electricity, impart the latter to the solid, liquid, or gaseous medium

through which they pass, and communicate temporary phosphorescence and

permanent coloring to objects subjected to their impact; whose rays

travel with such inconceivable velocity that they would traverse a

distance equal to five times the circumference of the earth in a single

second; which have mass as well as energy; which, despite the enormous

rapidity with which they move, may be instantaneously deflected from a

direct to a curvilinear path by the interposition of a magnet; and by

whose aid photographs may readily be taken through thick plates of lead

and iron. Science has invented explosives that rend mountains asunder;

by the application of the carbon point, it has caused the hardest steel

to fluidize in the twinkling of an eye. From the black and glutinous

refuse of gas manufacture, it has extracted pigments whose tints vie

in brilliancy with those of the rainbow, and remedial agents which in

certain departments have revolutionized the practice of medicine. It

has perfected the transmission of light, so that by the mere touching

of a button great cities are in an instant illuminated. With no small

degree of probability, it has suggested that incessant and universal

molecular activity, pervading all matter both organic and inorganic,

may be the controlling principle of the mysterious condition which we

designate as life, and that the weight of every substance is in an

inverse ratio to its atomic energy. It has made objects hitherto opaque

transparent, and has opened to the view of the surgical operator the

inmost recesses of the human body. It has removed without apparent

injury organs whose functions were long considered indispensable to

animal existence. By simple manipulation it has cured congenital

deformities formerly considered hopeless, and restored distorted limbs

to their normal strength and symmetry. It has discovered the specific

pathogenic bacteria which produce many diseases, and rendered them

innocuous by means of their own cultures. Through the injection of

an extract obtained from a glandular secretion it has prolonged the

pulsations of the heart in an animal for hours after decapitation; by

rhythmic compression it has restored the action of that organ after it

had completely ceased--when life was practically extinct.

Science has told us that the clear blue of the firmament, seemingly of

spotless purity, is caused by floating particles of atmospheric dust;

that every twig, and leaf, and blade of grass--even every newly-fallen

drop of rain--are radiferous centres of electric energy; that motion

is the rule, and quiescence the exception, affecting the component

atoms of the universe,--if, indeed, quiescence at all exists; that

the parasite, infesting the body of the smallest of insects, is

itself the abode of minute organisms; that the very air we breathe

is swarming with the germs of suffering, disease, and death. It has

pressed into its service the imponderable agents, and demonstrated

their interconvertibility; has bestowed priceless blessings upon the

living; has soothed the pillow of languishing humanity, and extended

its welcome offices even to the grave. It has given us an idea of the

duration of our globe, and established a system of chronology the

immensity of which we endeavor in vain to comprehend, where centuries

are as nothing, and cycles but fleeting periods of time. From a single

fossil bone it has reproduced the form and described the habits of the

monster to which, in prehistoric ages, it belonged. It has measured the

movement of thought, which, despite its proverbial rapidity, has been

proved to be only about one hundred feet a second. By investigation

of the mental phenomena of hypnotism and telepathy, it has added to

the evidence which tends to establish the existence of the Soul of

the World. It has taught all to exert the proudest prerogatives of

intelligence,--to think, to doubt, to reason,--and has rescued the mind

of man long buried beneath the accumulated absurdities of venerable

tradition. These great results it has achieved in its childhood, under

adverse influences, opposed by the fanatical and the ignorant, with its

devotees menaced by the dungeon, the scaffold, and the fires of the

Inquisition; but who, with that stern, unflinching perseverance which

at last reaps its reward in the tardy honors of posterity, have pursued

their way, conscious of the nobility of their calling, and fortified by

the reflections of that sublime philosophy which “looks through Nature

up to Nature’s God.”

Society has progressed far beyond that intellectual stage when the

comet was dreaded as a harbinger of universal misfortune; when the

appearance of the pestilence was considered a manifestation of the

wrath of the Almighty; when superstitious fear transformed every

floating mist into a cloak for goblins; regarded every rustling of

the foliage as an evidence of supernatural presence; saw in every

ebullition of gaseous water a mysterious phenomenon, in every

subterranean rumble an omen of sinister and portentous augury. This

emancipation of the human intellect, this impetus to every expression

of material progress, cannot be attributed to ecclesiastical

inspiration. They were not a product of the Crusades. They were not

the effect of the Reformation. They are not the work of Christianity,

whose policy has indeed been constantly inimical to their toleration

or encouragement. They are a legitimate consequence of the liberal

policy adopted and perpetuated by the Ommeyade Khalifs throughout their

magnificent empire, whose civilization was the wonder, as its power was

the dread, of mediæval Europe.

Modern science unquestionably owes everything to Arab genius. From the

mass of debased superstitions, mummeries, and fetichism, entertained

and cultivated by the Bedouin, emerged, as has been seen, a thorough

knowledge of the mutual relations of the different parts of the

Universe and a familiarity with the wonderful phenomena of Nature.

From the study of astrology astronomy was evolved; from alchemy,

chemistry; from geomancy, geography; from magic, natural philosophy.

The principles of government by law were established. Anthropomorphism

was discarded. It was no longer attempted to control the inexorable

operation of physical agencies by prayers and incantations. In

one especially important respect the Moslems differed from their

European predecessors. The Roman system and the Gothic polity were

founded entirely upon force; Arabic power was largely controlled by

intellectual conditions.

With this great people the love of scientific investigation was

an absorbing passion. It pervaded every department of government,

every occupation of life, every branch of study; it even invaded the

sanctuaries of religion. The cultivation of letters, the prosecution

of experiments, were, for eight centuries, the most prominent

characteristics of the Arab race, the highest distinction of Mussulman

sovereigns. It is far from creditable to modern civilization, indebted

for its existence to these pursuits, to ignore such claims to gratitude

and renown, through prejudice against the religious principles of those

who engaged in them. Surely in all literature there exists no nobler or

more elevated sentiment than that expressed in the saying of Mohammed,

“A mind without culture is like a body without a soul, and glory does

not consist in riches, but in knowledge.”