clergymen for the general information of the educated people of the
times, contain very little that is scientifically valuable, and probably
nothing of serious medical significance. Any such thought is, however,
due entirely to unfamiliarity with the contents of these works. They
undoubtedly contain absurdities, they are often full of misinformation,
they repeat stories on dubious authority, and sometimes on hearsay, but
usually the source of their information is stated, and especially where
it is dubious, as if they did not care to state marvels without due
support. Books of popular information, however, have always had many
queer things,--queer, that is, to subsequent generations,--and it is
rather amusing to pick up an encyclopedia of a century ago, much less a
millennium ago, and see how many absurd things were accepted as true.
The first edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica," issued one hundred
and fifty years ago, furnishes an easily available source of the
absurdities our more recent forefathers accepted. The men of the Middle
Ages, however, were much better observers as a rule, and used much more
critical judgment, according to their lights, than we have given them
credit for. Often the information that they have to convey is not only
valuable, but well digested, thoroughly practical, and sometimes a
marvellous anticipation of some of our most modern thoughts. There is
one of these encyclopedias which, because it was written in my favorite
thirteenth century, I have read with some care. It is simply a
development of the work of preceding clerical encyclopedists, and often
refers to them. Because it contains some typical examples of the better
sorts of information in these works, I have thought it worth while to
quote two passages from it. The author is Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and the
quaint English in which it is couched is quoted from "Medical Lore"
(London, 1893). The book is all the more interesting because in a dear
old English version, issued about 1540, the spellings of which are among
the great curiosities of English orthography, it was often read and
consulted by Shakespeare, who evidently quotes from it frequently, for
not a little of the quaint scientific lore that he uses for his figures
can be traced to expressions used in this book.
The first of the paragraphs that deserves to be quoted, discusses
madness, or, as we would call it, lunacy, and sums up the causes, the
symptoms, and the treatment quite as well as that has ever been done in
the same amount of space:
Madness cometh sometime of passions of the soul, as of
business and of great thoughts, of sorrow and of too great
study, and of dread: sometime of the biting of a wood hound,
or some other venomous beast; sometime of melancholy meats,
and sometime of drink of strong wine. And as the causes be
diverse, the tokens and signs be diverse. For some cry and
leap and hurt and wound themselves and other men, and darken
and hide themselves in privy and secret places. The medicine
of them is, that they be bound, that they hurt not themselves
and other men. And namely, such shall be refreshed, and
comforted, and withdrawn from cause and matter of dread and
busy thoughts. And they must be gladded with instruments of
music, and some deal be occupied.'
The second discusses in almost as thorough a way the result of the bite
of a mad dog. The old English word for mad, wood, is constantly used.
The causes, the symptoms, and course of the disease, and its possible
prevention by early treatment, are all discussed. The old tradition was
already in existence that sufferers from rabies or hydrophobia, as it is
called, dreaded water, when it is really only because the spasm
consequent upon the thought even of swallowing is painful that they turn
from it. That tradition has continued to be very commonly accepted even
by physicians down to our own day, so that Bartholomew, the Englishman,
in the thirteenth century, will not be blamed much for setting it forth
for popular information in his time some seven centuries ago. The idea
that free bleeding would bring about the removal of the virus is
interesting, because we have in recent years insisted in the case of the
very similar disease, tetanus, on allowing or deliberately causing
wounds in which the tetanus microbe may have gained an entrance, to
bleed freely.
The biting of a wood hound is deadly and venomous. And such
venom is perilous. For it is long hidden and unknown, and
increaseth and multiplieth itself, and is sometimes unknown to
the year's end, and then the same day and hour of the biting,
it cometh to the head, and breedeth frenzy. They that are
bitten of a wood hound have in their sleep dreadful sights,
and are fearful, astonied, and wroth without cause. And they
dread to be seen of other men, and bark as hounds, and they
dread water most of all things, and are afeared thereof full
sore and squeamous also. Against the biting of a wood hound
wise men and ready use to make the wounds bleed with fire or
with iron, that the venom may come out with the blood, that
cometh out of the wound.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "Medicinisches aus der Aeltesten Kirchen Geschichte."
Leipzig, 1892.]
[Footnote 2: Foulis, London and Edinburgh, 1910.]
[Footnote 3: My attention was called to the interesting story of the
Jewish physicians of the Middle Ages and their scientific accomplishment
while writing the article on Joseph Hyrtl for the Catholic Encyclopedia.
His "Das Arabische und Hebraeische in der Anatomie" (Wien, 1879) has some
interestingly suggestive material on these important chapters of the
history of medicine. (I owe my opportunity to consult it to the courtesy
of the Surgeon-General's library.) Biographic material has been obtained
from Carmoly's "History of the Jewish Physicians," translated by Dr.
Dunbar for the _Maryland Medical and Surgical Journal_, some extra
copies of which were printed by John Murphy and Co., Baltimore, about
the middle of the nineteenth century. Baas and Haeser's Histories of
Medicine and Puschmann and Pagel's "Handbook" provided additional
material, and I have found Landau's "Geschichte der Juedischen Aerzte"
(Berlin, 1895) of great service.]
[Footnote 4: Of course there are many absurd things recommended in the
Talmud. We cannot remind ourselves too often, however, that there have
been absurd things at all times in medicine, and especially in
therapeutics. It is curious how often some of these absurdities have
repeated themselves. We are liable to think it very queer that men
should have presumed, or somehow jumped to the conclusion, that portions
of animals might possess wonderful virtue for the healing of diseases of
the corresponding special parts of man. We ourselves, however, within a
little more than a decade, had a phase of opotherapy--how much less
absurd it seems under that high-sounding Greek term--that was apparently
very learned in its scientific aspects yet quite as absurd as many
phases of old-time therapy, as we look at it. We administered cardin for
heart disease and nephrin for kidney trouble, cerebrin for insanity
(save the mark!), and even prostate tissue for prostatism--and with
reported good results! How many of us realize now that in this we were
only repeating the absurdities, so often made fun of in old medicine,
with regard to animal tissue and excrement therapeutics? The Talmud has
many conclusions with regard to the symptoms of patients drawn from
dreams; as, for instance, it is said to be a certain sign of sanguineous
plethora when one dreams of the comb of a cock. One phase of our
psycho-analysis in the modern time, however, has taken us back to an
interpretation of dreams different of course from this, yet analogous
enough to be quite striking.]
[Footnote 5: "Maimonides," by David Yellin and Israel Abrahams,
Philadelphia, 1903.]
[Footnote 6: "Das Arabische und Hebraeische in der Anatomie," Dr. Joseph
Hyrtl, Wien, 1879.]
[Footnote 7: "Anat. Antiq. Rariores," Vienna, 1835.]
[Footnote 8: It seems hard to understand how so useful an auxiliary to
the surgeon as the ligature,--it seems indispensable to us,--could
possibly be allowed to go out of use and even be forgotten. It will not
be difficult, however, for anyone who recalls the conditions that
obtained in old-time surgery. The ligature is a most satisfying
immediate resource in stopping bleeding from an artery, but a septic
ligature inevitably causes suppuration and almost inevitably leads to
secondary hemorrhage. In the old days of septic surgery secondary
hemorrhage was the surgeon's greatest and most dreaded bane. Some time
from the fifth to the ninth day a septic ligature came away under
conditions such that inflammatory disturbance had prevented sealing of
the vessel. If the vessel was large, then the hemorrhage was fast and
furious and the patient died in a few minutes. After a surgeon had had a
few deaths of this kind he dreaded the ligature. He abandoned its use
and took kindly to such methods as the actual cautery, red-hot knives
for amputations, and the like, that would sear the surfaces of tissues
and the blood-vessels, and not give rise to secondary hemorrhage. A
little later, however, someone not familiar with secondary risks would
reinvent the ligature. If he were cleanly in his methods and, above all,
if he were doing his work in a new hospital, the ligature worked very
well for a while. If not, it soon fell into innocuous desuetude again.]
[Footnote 9: Puschmann: "Handbuch der Geschichte der Medizin," Vol. I,
page 652.]
[Footnote 10: The first dentist who filled teeth with amalgam in New
York, some eighty years ago, had to flee for his life, because of a hue
and cry set up that he was poisoning his patients with mercury.]
[Footnote 11: "Storia de la Scuola di Salerno."]
[Footnote 12: It is probably interesting to note that the word
_universitas_ as used here has no reference to our word university, but
refers to the whole world of students as it were. In the Middle Ages
universities were called _studia generalia_, general studies--that is,
places where everything could be studied and where everyone from any
part of the world could study. Our use of the word university in the
special modern sense of the term comes from the formal mode of address
to the faculty of a university when Popes or rulers sent them
authoritative documents. Such documents began with the expression
_Universitas vestra_, all of you (in the old-time English, as preserved
in the Irish expression, "the whole of ye"), referring to all the
members of the faculty. The transfer to our term and signification
university was not difficult.]
[Footnote 13: Physicians wore a particular garb consisting of a cloak
and often a mask, supposed to protect them from infections at this time,
so that it was not difficult to make a characteristic picture as a sign
for a pharmacy. These symbolic signs were much commoner and very
necessary when people generally were not able to read. It is from that
period that we have the mortar and pestle as also the colored lights in
the windows of the drug stores, and the many-colored barber-pole. Also
the big boot, key, watch, hat, bonnet, and the like, the last symbolic
sign invention apparently being the wooden Indian for the tobacco
store.]
[Footnote 14: _The Medical Library and Historical Journal_, Brooklyn,
December, 1906.]
[Footnote 15: Taddeo, who was born in 1215, according to our usually
accepted traditions in the matter, would have been seventy-five years of
age when Mondino as a youth of scarcely more than fifteen went to the
University. It might seem that so old a man would have very little
influence over the young man. Taddeo, however, had, as we have said, a
very strenuous old age. Everything in life had come to him late. He was
well past thirty before he began to study philosophy and medicine,
having been a seller of candles from necessity because of poverty in his
younger years. His great success in practice came when he was past
forty. He first began to teach when he was forty-five, and he was nearly
fifty-five before he began to write. According to tradition he married
when he was nearly eighty--whether for the first or second time is not
said--and while this might be considered, and would in some cases be, an
indication of weakness of character (it would probably depend on whether
he married or was married), it seems in his case to have indicated a
vigor of body and character which shows very clearly how great was the
possibility of his influence as a teacher having been maintained even up
to this late time of life, and thus influencing a pupil who is to
represent the most potent influence at the beginning of the next
century.]
[Footnote 16: _Medical Library and Historical Journal_, 1906.]
[Footnote 17: Pilcher (_loc. cit._) tells of her tomb. I venture to
change his translation of the inscription in certain unimportant
particulars. He says:
"We know the very place where she was buried in front of the Madonna
delle Lettre in the Church of San Pietro e Marcellino of the Hospital of
Santa Maria de Mareto, where her associate, Agenio, mourning and
inconsolable, placed a tablet with this inscription:
D . O . M .
Vrceo . Contenti
Alexandrae . Galinae . Pvellae . Persicetanae
Penicillo . Egregiae . Ad . Anatomen . Exhibendam
Et . Insignissimi . Medici . Mundini . Lucii
Paucis . Comparandae . Discipulae . Cineres
Carnis . Hic . Expectant . Resurrectionem
Vixit . Ann . XIX . Obiit . Studio . Absunta
Die XXVI Martii . A . S . MCCCXXVI
Otto . Agenius . Lustrulanus . Ob . Eam . Demptam
Sui . Potiori . Parte . Spoliatus . Sodali . Eximiae
Ac . De . Se . Optime . Meritae . Inconsolabilis . M . P .
This inscription may be translated as follows:
In this urn enclosed
The ashes of the body of
Alexandra Giliani, a maiden of Periceto;
Skilful with her brush in anatomical demonstrations
And a disciple equalled by few,
Of the most noted physician, Mundinus of Luzzi,
Await the resurrection.
She lived 19 years: she died consumed by her labors
March 26, in the year of grace 1326.
Otto Agenius Lustrulanus, by her taking away
Deprived of his better part, his excellent companion,
Deserving of the best,
Has erected this tablet."
]
[Footnote 18: This is so striking that I quote their actual words from
Gurlt, p. 704: "_Multoties fit percussio in anteriori parte cranei et
craneum in parte frangitur contraria._"]
[Footnote 19: "Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery Down to the
Sixteenth Century," London, 1904.]
[Footnote 20: Of course, for any extended knowledge of Mondeville, a
modern reader must turn to Nicaise's translation of his "Chirurgia,"
which, with an introduction and a biography, was published at Paris in
1893. Nicaise's publication of this and of Guy de Chauliac's treatise
has worked a revolution in medical history and, above all, has made
these old authors available for those who hesitate to take up a work
written entirely in Latin.]
[Footnote 21: In the very first book containing some account of human
anatomy, a German volume by Conradus Mengenberger, called "Puch der
Natur," the date of printing of which is about 1478,--that is, less than
ten years after the printing of the very first book, the "Biblia
pauperum," which appeared in 1470,--there are, according to Haller in
his "Bibliotheca Anatomica," a series of illustrations. This is the
first illustrated medical work ever published.]
[Footnote 22: Fordham University Press, New York, 1908.]
[Footnote 23: Fordham University Press, New York, 1908.]
[Footnote 24: See picture of the hospital ward at Tonnerre, in "The
Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries," 3rd edit., New York, 1911.]
[Footnote 25: "The Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery," by T.
Clifford Allbutt, M.A., M.D. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1905.]
[Footnote 26: The beginning of the manuscript copy in the "Bibliotheque
Nationale" is extremely interesting as an example of the English of the
period, and alongside of it it seems worth while to quote the closing
sentence as Nicaise reproduces them:
"In godes name here bygyneth the inventarie of gadryng to gedre medecyne
in the partye of cyrurgie compilede and fulfilled in the zere (yere?) of
our Loord 1363 by Guide de Cauliaco cirurgene and doctor of physik in
the fulclere studye of Mountpylerz.
"On page 191, verso.--Here endeth the cyrurgie of Maistre Guyd' de
Cauliaco dottoure of phisik."
The University of Cambridge copy has the title in the colophon. It runs
as follows: "Ye inventorye of Guydo de Caulhiaco Doctor of Phisyk and
Cirurgien in Ye Universitie of Mount Pessulanee of Montpeleres." The
fly-leaf contains the words, "Jesu Christ save ye soule of mich." It is
rather interesting to note how much closer to modern English is this
copy, made probably not much more than half a century later than the
first one and, above all, how much more nearly the spelling has come. At
this time, however, and, indeed, for more than a century later, spelling
had no fixed rule, and a man might spell the same word quite differently
even on the same page. The difference between doctor spelled thus in the
early edition, and doctours in the later one, probably means nothing
more than personal peculiarities of the original translator or copyist.]
[Footnote 27: In Nicaise this last word is written _crapte_. I have
ventured to suggest _crafte_, since a misreading between the two letters
would be so easy. In the same way I have suggested tentatively a
changing of the _z_ in the title of the Bibliotheque Nationale copy to
_y_, making the word _yere_ instead of _zere_.]
[Footnote 28: "A History of Dentistry from the Most Ancient Times Until
the End of the Eighteenth Century," by Dr. Vincenzo Guerini, editor of
the Italian Review _L'Odonto-Stomatologia_, Philadelphia and New York,
Lea and Febriger, 1909.]
[Footnote 29: The first printed edition of Arculanus is that of Venice,
1542, bearing the Latin title, "Joannis Arculani Commentaria in Nonum
Librum Rasis," etc.]
[Footnote 30: It is curious to trace how old are the traditions on which
some of these old stories, that must now be rejected, are founded. I
have come upon the story with regard to Basil Valentine and the antimony
and the monks in an old French medical encyclopedia of biography,
published in the seventeenth century, and at that time there was no
doubt at all expressed as to its truth. How much older than this it may
be I do not know, though it is probable that it comes from the sixteenth
century, when the _kakoethes scribendi_ attacked many people because of
the facility of printing, and when most of the good stories that have so
worried the modern dry-as-dust historian in his researches for their
correction became a part of the body of supposed historical tradition.
It is probably French in origin because in that language _antimoine_ is
a tempting bait for that pseudo-philology which has so often led to
false derivations.]
[Footnote 31: There is in the New York Academy of Medicine a thick 24mo
volume in which three of the classics of older medicine are bound
together. They are Kerckringius's "Commentary on the Triumphal Chariot
of Antimony," published at Amsterdam, 1671; Steno's "Dissertation on the
Anatomy of the Brain," published in Leyden in 1671, and Father Kircher's
"Scrutinium Physico Contagiosae Luis quae dicitur Pestis"
(Physico-medical Discussions of the Contagious Disease which is called
Pest). This was published at Leipzig in 1659. Just how the three works
came to be bound together is hard to say. Very probably they belonged to
some old-time scholar, though there is nothing about the books to tell
anything of the story. The fact that all three of the authors were
ecclesiastics of the Catholic Church, Valentine a Monk, Steno a Bishop,
and Kircher a Jesuit, would seem to be one common bond and perhaps a
reason for the binding of these rather disparate treatises together. In
that case it is probable that the book came from an old monastic library
dispersed after the suppression of the order by some government. It
seems not unlikely that the volume belonged at some time to an old
Jesuit library, for they have suffered the most in that way. That these
three classics of medicine should have been republished in handy volume
editions within practically ten years shows an interest in medical
literature that has not existed again until our own time, for during the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there was almost utter neglect
of them.]
[Footnote 32: Paper read before the first meeting of the American Guild
of St. Luke.]
[Footnote 33: Published by Putnams, New York, 1909.]
[Footnote 34: Dublin, 1882.]
[Footnote 35: The material for this chapter was gathered for a paper
read before the Medical Improvement Society of Boston in the spring of
1911. In nearly its present form it was published in _The Popular
Science Monthly_ for May, 1911, and thanks are returned to the editor of
that magazine for permission to reprint it here. The additions that have
been made refer particularly to the estimation of Aristotle in the
Middle Ages.]
[Footnote 36: New York, Putnam, 1908.]
[Footnote 37: "De Coelo et Mundo," 1, tr. iv., x.]
INDEX
=A=
Abbassides, 73
Abba Oumna, 70
Abbas, 324
Abelard, 189
Abraham, 97, 98
Abu Dschafer, 173
Abulcasis, 123, 170, 226, 317, 318, 323
Abul Farag, 51
Abulkasim, 124
Academy of Bagdad, 135
Acid, hydrochloric, 369
Ackermann, 302
Adalberon, 145
Adelard of Bath, 134
Adhesions, 128
AEgidius, 150
Aetius, 10, 117, 180, 317
Aetius, Amidenus, 28
Afflacius, 151, 171
Affinity, 372
Agenius, Otto, 227
Agricola, 345
A Kempis, Thomas, 345, 361
Alanfrancus, 260
Albertus Magnus, 267, 306, 356, 403
Alchemist, 354
Alcuin, 432
Alderotti, 213
Alexander II, Pope, 83
Alexander of Hales, 108
Alexander of Tralles, 10, 28, 39
Alexandria, 135, 385
Allbutt, Sir Clifford, 247, 254, 257, 304, 355, 421
Ali Abbas, 121, 173, 266, 323
Ali Ben el Abbas, 170
Almansor, 132
Alphanus, 143, 145
Amandaville, 264
Anaesthesia, 17;
inhalation of, 295, 296
Anaesthetics, 246
Anathomia, 203
Anatomy, ignorance of, 289;
of the teeth, 326
Anatomical material, 224
Anatomical injection, 227
Anatomical preparations, 277
Andrew of Piacenza, 248
Animals, motion of, 414
Anthemios, 40
Angelico, Fra, 360
Angina, 32, 44, 332
Anthon, 407
Antimony, 362
Antiseptic, 253
Antisepsis, 17, 246
Apocalypse, the chemical, 376
Aquinas, 306, 403
Arabian lack of originality, 140
Arabian words in anatomy, 138
Arabs, 7
Arabisms, 237
Archimattheas, 160
Arcoli, John of, 208
Arculanus, 323
Arezzo, 248
Arithmetical complements, 340
Armandaville, 264
Arnold of Villanova, 290, 358
Arrows, extraction of, 270
Arpinum, 4
Arsenic, 335
_Artemisia maritima_, 50
Arterial hemorrhage, 126
Arthur Legends, 218, 375, 392
Arts, 7;
liberal, 149;
and crafts, 425
Asepsis, 17, 244, 246, 387
Aspasia, 180
Astrology, 105;
and astronomy, 106, 418
Asylums, 8
Auenbrugger, 91, 166
Authority, 269, 292, 404
Authorship, dual, 391
Automobile, 415
Avenzoar, 80, 123, 130, 132
Averroes (Averrhoes), 80, 123, 132, 230, 267
Avicenna, 80, 128, 170, 266, 268, 331
Avignon, 16, 233
=B=
Baas, 61, 63
Bachtischua, 56
Bacon, Roger, 107, 306, 356, 361, 403
Bagdad, 110, 111, 115, 134, 135
Barbarians, 5
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 433
Bartholomew, 172
Basilios, 26
Basil. St., 24
Basila, 180
Basil Valentine, 20, 180, 349
Basra, 111
Bath, 103
Bath, milk, 131;
in fever, 172;
of the soul, 25
Baverius, 209
Baynes, Henry Samuel, 390
Bede, 432
Benedict, St., 178
Benedictines, 12, 164
Benedictine Nuns, 191
Beowulf, 428
Berengarius, 209
Bernard of Clairvaux, 192
Bernard, St., 85
Bertruccio, 209, 287
Bertruccius, 229
Binz, Prof. Carl, 333
Birthplace, Latin writers, 4
Black Death, 304
Boccaccio, 183, 306
Body-snatching, 224
Boerhaave, 38
Boethius, 427
Bokhara, 111
Bologna, 16, 142, 202, 206, 248
Book-learning, 371
Botany, 413;
medieval, 414, 418
Botticelli, 360
Bracton, 419
Brain substance, loss of, 294
Brant, 361
Brethren of the Common Life, 344
Bridgework, dental, 315
Broeck, 277
Bronchoceles, 34
Bruno da Longoburgo, 245, 248
Bubonocele, 53
Buffon, 406
Bull, supposed against dissection, 424
Busche, 344
Bzowski, S.J., 181
=C=
Caesalpinus, 2, 209
Caius, 360
Calenda, Constance, 187
Calendar, correction of, 340
Calvo, 302
Cancer, 255
Cantor, 346
Carmoly, 61
Carthage, 165
Cases, desperate, 262
Cassiodorus, 12, 429
Cataract, 300
Cato, 267
Chanina Ben Chania, 66, 69
Charlatans, numbers of, 274
Charters, medical school, 420
Charts, 19
Chasdai Ben Schaprut, 79
Chaucer, 306, 428
Chauliac, 18, 285, 301, 319
Chauliac, bibliography, 308;
editio princeps, 312
Chemical compounds, artificial, 376
Chirurgia Magna, 261, 284
Chirurgy, 19
Chosroes I, 109
Church and Jews, 80;
and anatomy, 234;
and surgery, 234
Cicatrices, beautiful, 255
Cicero, 4, 427
Cid, The, 218, 375, 392
Cimabue. 211
Circulation of the blood, 147
Cities, large, 5
City hospitals, 8;
for the sick, 24, 296
City physician, 251
Clavius, S.J., Father, 340
Classics of Medicine, 165
Clement of Alexandria, 83;
VI, Pope, 83
Cleopatra, 179
Clepsydra, 341
Clinical experience, 378
Clitoris hypertrophy, 37
Clysters, 279
Cnidos, 135
Colic, 279
Collectio Salernitana, 143, 238
College of St. Come, 26