THERE are waste places of the earth which fill one with terror--not
simply because they are waste; one has not such feelings in the desert
nor in the vast solitude of the ocean. Very different is it where the
desolation has overtaken a brilliant and flourishing product of man's
head and hand. To know that
. . . the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep
sends a chill to the heart, and one trembles with a sense of human
instability. With this feeling we enter the Middle Ages. Following the
glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, a desolation came
upon the civilized world, in which the light of learning burned low,
flickering almost to extinction. How came it possible that the gifts
of Athens and of Alexandria were deliberately thrown away? For three
causes. The barbarians shattered the Roman Empire to its foundations.
When Alaric entered Rome in 410 A. D., ghastly was the impression made
on the contemporaries; the Roman world shuddered in a titanic spasm
(Lindner). The land was a garden of Eden before them, behind a howling
wilderness, as is so graphically told in Gibbon's great history. Many of
the most important centres of learning were destroyed, and for centuries
Minerva and Apollo forsook the haunts of men. The other equally
important cause was the change wrought by Christianity. The brotherhood
of man, the care of the body, the gospel of practical virtues formed the
essence of the teaching of the Founder--in these the Kingdom of Heaven
was to be sought; in these lay salvation. But the world was very evil,
all thought that the times were waxing late, and into men's minds
entered as never before a conviction of the importance of the four
last things--death, judgment, heaven and hell. One obstacle alone stood
between man and his redemption, the vile body, "this muddy vesture of
decay," that so grossly wrapped his soul. To find methods of bringing it
into subjection was the task of the Christian Church for centuries. In
the Vatican Gallery of Inscriptions is a stone slab with the single word
"Stercoriae," and below, the Christian symbol. It might serve as a motto
for the Middle Ages, during which, to quote St. Paul, all things were
"counted dung but to win Christ." In this attitude of mind the wisdom
of the Greeks was not simply foolishness, but a stumbling-block in the
path. Knowledge other than that which made a man "wise unto salvation"
was useless. All that was necessary was contained in the Bible or taught
by the Church. This simple creed brought consolation to thousands and
illumined the lives of some of the noblest of men. But, "in seeking a
heavenly home man lost his bearings upon earth." Let me commend for your
reading Taylor's "Mediaeval Mind."(1) I cannot judge of its scholarship,
which I am told by scholars is ripe and good, but I can judge of its
usefulness for anyone who wishes to know the story of the mind of man
in Europe at this period. Into the content of mediaeval thought only
a mystic can enter with full sympathy. It was a needful change in the
evolution of the race. Christianity brought new ideals and new motives
into the lives of men. The world's desire was changed, a desire for the
Kingdom of Heaven, in the search for which the lust of the flesh, the
lust of the eye and the pride of life were as dross. A master-motive
swayed the minds of sinful men and a zeal to save other souls occupied
the moments not devoted to the perfection of their own. The new
dispensation made any other superfluous. As Tertullian said:
Investigation since the Gospel is no longer necessary. (Dannemann, Die
Naturw., I, p. 214.) The attitude of the early Fathers toward the body
is well expressed by Jerome. "Does your skin roughen without baths? Who
is once washed in the blood of Christ needs not wash again." In this
unfavorable medium for its growth, science was simply disregarded, not
in any hostile spirit, but as unnecessary.(2) And a third contributing
factor was the plague of the sixth century, which desolated the whole
Roman world. On the top of the grand mausoleum of Hadrian, visitors at
Rome see the figure of a gilded angel with a drawn sword, from which
the present name of the Castle of St. Angelo takes its origin. On the
twenty-fifth of April, 590, there set out from the Church of SS.
Cosmas and Damian, already the Roman patron saints of medicine, a vast
procession, led by St. Gregory the Great, chanting a seven-fold litany
of intercession against the plague. The legend relates that Gregory
saw on the top of Hadrian's tomb an angel with a drawn sword, which he
sheathed as the plague abated.
(1) H. O. Taylor: The Mediaeval Mind, 2 vols., Macmillan Co.,
New York, 1911. (New edition, 1920.)
(2) Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 13: "Under their action (the Christian
Fathers) the peoples of Western Europe, from the eighth to the
thirteenth century, passed through a homogeneous growth, and
evolved a spirit different from that of any other period of
history--a spirit which stood in awe before its monitors divine
and human, and deemed that knowledge was to be drawn from the
storehouse of the past; which seemed to rely on everything except
its sin-crushed self, and trusted everything except its senses;
which in the actual looked for the ideal, in the concrete saw the
symbol, in the earthly Church beheld the heavenly, and in fleshly
joys discerned the devil's lures; which lived in the unreconciled
opposition between the lust and vain-glory of earth and the
attainment of salvation; which felt life's terror and its
pitifulness, and its eternal hope; around which waved concrete
infinitudes, and over which flamed the terror of darkness and the
Judgment Day."
Galen died about 200 A.D.; the high-water mark of the Renaissance, so
far as medicine is concerned, was reached in the year 1542. In order to
traverse this long interval intelligently, I will sketch certain great
movements, tracing the currents of Greek thought, setting forth in their
works the lives of certain great leaders, until we greet the dawn of our
own day.
After flowing for more than a thousand years through the broad plain of
Greek civilization, the stream of scientific medicine which we have
been following is apparently lost in the morass of the Middle Ages; but,
checked and blocked like the White Nile in the Soudan, three channels
may be followed through the weeds of theological and philosophical
speculation.
SOUTH ITALIAN SCHOOL
A WIDE stream is in Italy, where the "antique education never stopped,
antique reminiscence and tradition never passed away, and the literary
matter of the pagan past never faded from the consciousness of the more
educated among the laity and clergy."(3) Greek was the language of South
Italy and was spoken in some of its eastern towns until the thirteenth
century. The cathedral and monastic schools served to keep alive the
ancient learning. Monte Casino stands pre-eminent as a great hive of
students, and to the famous Regula of St. Benedict(4) we are indebted
for the preservation of many precious manuscripts.
(3) H. O. Taylor: The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. I, p. 251.
(4) De Renzi: Storia Documentata della Scuola Medica di Salerno,
2d ed., Napoli, 1867, Chap. V.
The Norman Kingdom of South Italy and Sicily was a meeting ground of
Saracens, Greeks and Lombards. Greek, Arabic and Latin were in constant
use among the people of the capital, and Sicilian scholars of the
twelfth century translated directly from the Greek.
The famous "Almagest" of Ptolemy, the most important work of ancient
astronomy, was translated from a Greek manuscript, as early as 1160, by
a medical student of Salerno.(5)
(5) Haskins and Lockwood: Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology, 1910, XXI, pp. 75-102.
About thirty miles southeast of Naples lay Salernum, which for centuries
kept alight the lamp of the old learning, and became the centre of
medical studies in the Middle Ages; well deserving its name of "Civitas
Hippocratica." The date of foundation is uncertain, but Salernitan
physicians are mentioned as early as the middle of the ninth century,
and from this date until the rise of the universities it was not only a
great medical school, but a popular resort for the sick and wounded. As
the scholar says in Longfellow's "Golden Legend":
Then at every season of the year
There are crowds of guests and travellers here;
Pilgrims and mendicant friars and traders
From the Levant, with figs and wine,
And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders,
Coming back from Palestine.
There were medical and surgical clinics, foundling hospitals, Sisters
of Charity, men and women professors--among the latter the famous
Trotula--and apothecaries. Dissections were carried out, chiefly upon
animals, and human subjects were occasionally used. In the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, the school reached its height, and that remarkable
genius, Frederick II, laid down regulations for a preliminary study
extending over three years, and a course in medicine for five years,
including surgery. Fee tables and strict regulations as to practice were
made; and it is specifically stated that the masters were to teach
in the schools, theoretically and practically, under the authority of
Hippocrates and Galen. The literature from the school had a far-reaching
influence. One book on the anatomy of the pig illustrates the popular
subject for dissection at that time.(6) The writings, which are
numerous, have been collected by De Renzi.(7)
(6) "And dissections of the bodies of swine
As likest the human form divine."--Golden Legend.
(7) S. de Renzi: Collectio Salernitana, 5 vols., Naples,
1852-1859; P. Giacosa: Magistri Salernitani, Turin, 1901.
The "Antidotarium" of Nicolaus Salernitanus, about 1100, became the
popular pharmacopoeia of the Middle Ages, and many modern preparations
may be traced to it.
The most prominent man of the school is Constantinus Africanus, a native
of Carthage, who, after numerous journeys, reached Salernum about the
middle of the eleventh century. He was familiar with the works both of
the Greeks and of the Arabs, and it was largely through his translations
that the works of Rhazes and Avicenna became known in the West.
One work above all others spread the fame of the school--the Regimen
Sanitatis, or Flos Medicinae as it is sometimes called, a poem on
popular medicine. It is dedicated to Robert of Normandy, who had been
treated at Salernum, and the lines begin: "Anglorum regi scripsit schola
tota Salerni . . . " It is a hand-book of diet and household medicine,
with many shrewd and taking sayings which have passed into popular use,
such as "Joy, temperance and repose Slam the door on the doctor's nose."
A full account of the work and the various editions of it is given
by Sir Alexander Croke,(8) and the Finlayson lecture (Glasgow Medical
Journal, 1908) by Dr. Norman Moore gives an account of its introduction
into the British Isles.
(8) Regimen Sanitutis Salernitanum; a Poem on the Preservation of
Health in Rhyming Latin Verse, Oxford, D.A. Talboys, 1830.
BYZANTINE MEDICINE
THE second great stream which carried Greek medicine to modern days runs
through the Eastern Empire. Between the third century and the fall of
Constantinople there was a continuous series of Byzantine physicians
whose inspiration was largely derived from the old Greek sources. The
most distinguished of these was Oribasius, a voluminous compiler, a
native of Pergamon and so close a follower of his great townsman that he
has been called "Galen's ape." He left many works, an edition of which
was edited by Bussemaker and Daremberg. Many facts relating to the older
writers are recorded in his writings. He was a contemporary, friend as
well as the physician, of the Emperor Julian, for whom he prepared an
encyclopaedia of the medical sciences.
Other important Byzantine writers were Aetius and Alexander of Tralles,
both of whom were strongly under the influence of Galen and Hippocrates.
Their materia medica was based largely upon Dioscorides.
From Byzantium we have the earliest known complete medical manuscript,
dating from the fifth century--a work of Dioscorides--one of the most
beautiful in existence. It was prepared for Anicia Juliana, daughter of
the Emperor of the East, and is now one of the great treasures of the
Imperial Library at Vienna.(9) From those early centuries till the fall
of Constantinople there is very little of interest medically. A few
names stand out prominently, but it is mainly a blank period in our
records. Perhaps one man may be mentioned, as he had a great influence
on later ages--Actuarius, who lived about 1300, and whose book on
the urine laid the foundation of much of the popular uroscopy and
water-casting that had such a vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. His work on the subject passed through a dozen Latin
editions, but is best studied in Ideler's "Physici et medici Graeci
minores" (Berlin, 1841).
(9) It has been reproduced by Seatone de Vries, Leyden, 1905,
Codices graeci et latini photographice depicti, Vol. X.
The Byzantine stream of Greek medicine had dwindled to a very tiny rill
when the fall of Constantinople (1453) dispersed to the West many Greek
scholars and many precious manuscripts.
ARABIAN MEDICINE
THE third and by far the strongest branch of the Greek river reached the
West after a remarkable and meandering course. The map before you shows
the distribution of the Graeco-Roman Christian world at the beginning of
the seventh century. You will notice that Christianity had extended
far eastwards, almost to China. Most of those eastern Christians were
Nestorians and one of their important centres was Edessa, whose school
of learning became so celebrated. Here in the fifth century was built
one of the most celebrated hospitals of antiquity.
Now look at another map showing the same countries about a century
later. No such phenomenal change ever was made within so short space
of time as that which thus altered the map of Asia and Europe at this
period. Within a century, the Crescent had swept from Arabia through the
Eastern Empire, over Egypt, North Africa and over Spain in the West, and
the fate of Western Europe hung in the balance before the gates of Tours
in 732. This time the barbaric horde that laid waste a large part of
Christendom were a people that became deeply appreciative of all that
was best in Graeco-Roman civilization and of nothing more than of its
sciences. The cultivation of medicine was encouraged by the Arabs in a
very special way. Anyone wishing to follow the history of the medical
profession among this remarkable people will find it admirably presented
in Lucien Leclerc's "Histoire de la medecine arabe" (Paris, 1876).
An excellent account is also given in Freind's well-known "History of
Medicine" (London, 1725-1726). Here I can only indicate very briefly the
course of the stream and its freightage.
With the rise of Christianity, Alexandria became a centre of bitter
theological and political factions, the story of which haunts the
memory of anyone who was so fortunate as to read in his youth Kingsley's
"Hypatia." These centuries, with their potent influence of neoplatonism
on Christianity, appear to have been sterile enough in medicine. I have
already referred to the late Greeks, Aetius and Alexander of Tralles.
The last of the Alexandrians was a remarkable man, Paul of AEgina, a
great name in medicine and in surgery, who lived in the early part of
the seventh century. He also, like Oribasius, was a great compiler. In
the year 640, the Arabs took Alexandria, and for the third time a great
library was destroyed in the "first city of the West." Shortly after
the conquest of Egypt, Greek works were translated into Arabic, often
through the medium of Syriac, particularly certain of Galen's books
on medicine, and chemical writings, which appear to have laid the
foundation of Arabian knowledge on this subject.
Through Alexandria then was one source: but the special development of
the Greek science and of medicine took place in the ninth century under
the Eastern Caliphates. Let me quote here a couple of sentences from
Leclerc (Tome I, pp. 91-92):
"The world has but once witnessed so marvellous a spectacle as that
presented by the Arabs in the ninth century. This pastoral people, whose
fanaticism had suddenly made them masters of half of the world, having
once founded their empire, immediately set themselves to acquire that
knowledge of the sciences which alone was lacking to their greatness. Of
all the invaders who competed for the last remains of the Roman Empire
they alone pursued such studies; while the Germanic hordes, glorying
in their brutality and ignorance, took a thousand years to re-unite the
broken chain of tradition, the Arabs accomplished this in less than a
century. They provoked the competition of the conquered Christians--a
healthy competition which secured the harmony of the races.
"At the end of the eighth century, their whole scientific possessions
consisted of a translation of one medical treatise and some books on
alchemy. Before the ninth century had run to its close, the Arabs were
in possession of all the science of the Greeks; they had produced from
their own ranks students of the first order, and had raised among their
initiators men who, without them, would have been groping in the dark;
and they showed from this time an aptitude for the exact sciences, which
was lacking in their instructors, whom they henceforward surpassed."
It was chiefly through the Nestorians that the Arabs became acquainted
with Greek medicine, and there were two famous families of translators,
the Bakhtishuas and the Mesues, both Syrians, and probably not
very thoroughly versed in either Greek or Arabic. But the prince of
translators, one of the finest figures of the century, was Honein, a
Christian Arab, born in 809, whose name was Latinized as Joannitius.
"The marvellous extent of his works, their excellence, their importance,
the trials he bore nobly at the beginning of his career, everything
about him arouses our interest and sympathy. If he did not actually
create the Oriental renaissance movement, certainly no one played in
it a more active, decided and fruitful part."(10) His industry was
colossal. He translated most of the works of Hippocrates and Galen,
Aristotle and many others. His famous "Introduction" or "Isagoge,"
a very popular book in the Middle Ages, is a translation of the
"Microtegni" of Galen, a small hand-book, of which a translation is
appended to Cholmeley's "John of Gaddesden."(11) The first printed
edition of it appeared in 1475 (see Chapter IV) at Padua.
(10) Leclerc: Histoire de la medecine arabe, Tome I, p. 139.
(11) Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912, pp. 136-166. The Mesues also
did great work, and translations of their compilations,
particularly those of the younger Mesue, were widely distributed
in manuscript and were early printed (Venice, 1471) and
frequently reprinted, even as late as the seventeenth century.
Leclerc gives the names of more than one hundred known translators who
not only dealt with the physicians but with the Greek philosophers,
mathematicians and astronomers. The writings of the physicians of India
and of Persia were also translated into Arabic.
But close upon the crowd of translators who introduced the learning of
Greece to the Arabians came original observers of the first rank, to a
few only of whom time will allow me to refer. Rhazes, so called from the
name of the town (Rai) in which he was born, was educated at the great
hospital at Bagdad in the second half of the ninth century. With a true
Hippocratic spirit he made many careful observations on disease, and
to him we owe the first accurate account of smallpox, which he
differentiated from measles. This work was translated for the old
Sydenham Society by W.A. Greenhill (1848), and the description given
of the disease is well worth reading. He was a man of strong powers
of observation, good sense and excellent judgment. His works were very
popular, particularly the gigantic "Continens," one of the bulkiest of
incunabula. The Brescia edition, 1486, a magnificent volume, extends
over 588 pages and it must weigh more than seventeen pounds. It is an
encyclopaedia filled with extracts from the Greek and other writers,
interspersed with memoranda of his own experiences. His "Almansor" was
a very popular text-book, and one of the first to be printed. Book IX
of "Almansor" (the name of the prince to whom it was addressed) with the
title "De aegritudinibus a capite usque ad pedes," was a very favorite
mediaeval text-book. On account of his zeal for study Rhazes was known
as the "Experimentator."
The first of the Arabians, known throughout the Middle Ages as the
Prince, the rival, indeed, of Galen, was the Persian Ibn Sina, better
known as Avicenna, one of the greatest names in the history of medicine.
Born about 980 A. D. in the province of Khorasan, near Bokhara, he has
left a brief autobiography from which we learn something of his early
years. He could repeat the Koran by heart when ten years old, and at
twelve he had disputed in law and in logic. So that he found medicine
was an easy subject, not hard and thorny like mathematics and
metaphysics! He worked night and day, and could solve problems in his
dreams. "When I found a difficulty," he says, "I referred to my notes
and prayed to the Creator. At night, when weak or sleepy, I strengthened
myself with a glass of wine."(12) He was a voluminous writer to whom
scores of books are attributed, and he is the author of the most famous
medical text-book ever written. It is safe to say that the "Canon" was
a medical bible for a longer period than any other work. It "stands for
the epitome of all precedent development, the final codification of all
Graeco-Arabic medicine. It is a hierarchy of laws liberally illustrated
by facts which so ingeniously rule and are subject to one another, stay
and uphold one another, that admiration is compelled for the sagacity
of the great organiser who, with unparalleled power of systematisation,
collecting his material from all sources, constructed so imposing an
edifice of fallacy. Avicenna, according to his lights, imparted to
contemporary medical science the appearance of almost mathematical
accuracy, whilst the art of therapeutics, although empiricism did
not wholly lack recognition, was deduced as a logical sequence from
theoretical (Galenic and Aristotelian) premises. Is it, therefore,
matter for surprise that the majority of investigators and practitioners
should have fallen under the spell of this consummation of formalism and
should have regarded the 'Canon' as an infallible oracle, the more so
in that the logical construction was impeccable and the premises, in
the light of contemporary conceptions, passed for incontrovertible
axioms?"(13)
(12) Withington: Medical History, London, 1894, pp. 151-152.
(13) Neuburger: History of Medicine, Vol. I, pp. 368-369.
Innumerable manuscripts of it exist: of one of the most beautiful,
a Hebrew version (Bologna Library), I give an illustration. A Latin
version was printed in 1472 and there are many later editions, the last
in 1663. Avicenna was not only a successful writer, but the prototype
of the successful physician who was at the same time statesman, teacher,
philosopher and literary man. Rumor has it that he became dissipated,
and a contemporary saying was that all his philosophy could not make him
moral, nor all his physic teach him to preserve his health. He enjoyed a
great reputation as a poet. I reproduce a page of a manuscript of one of
his poems, which we have in the Bodleian Library. Prof. A.V.W. Jackson
says that some of his verse is peculiarly Khayyamesque, though he
antedated Omar by a century. That "large Infidel" might well have
written such a stanza as
From Earth's dark centre unto Saturn's Gate
I've solved all problems of this world's Estate,
From every snare of Plot and Guile set free,
Each bond resolved, saving alone Death's Fate.
His hymn to the Deity might have been written by Plato and rivals the
famous one of Cleanthes.(14) A casual reader gets a very favorable
impression of Avicenna. The story of his dominion over the schools in
the Middle Ages is one of the most striking in our history. Perhaps we
feel that Leclerc exaggerates when he says: "Avicenna is an intellectual
phenomenon. Never perhaps has an example been seen of so precocious,
quick and wide an intellect extending and asserting itself with so
strange and indefatigable an activity." The touch of the man never
reached me until I read some of his mystical and philosophical writings
translated by Mehren.(15) It is Plato over again. The beautiful allegory
in which men are likened to birds snared and caged until set free by the
Angel of Death might be met with anywhere in the immortal Dialogues.
The tractate on Love is a commentary on the Symposium; and the essay on
Destiny is Greek in spirit without a trace of Oriental fatalism, as you
may judge from the concluding sentence, which I leave you as his special
message: "Take heed to the limits of your capacity and you will arrive
at a knowledge of the truth! How true is the saying:--Work ever and to
each will come that measure of success for which Nature has designed
him." Avicenna died in his fifty-eighth year. When he saw that physic
was of no avail, resigning himself to the inevitable, he sold his goods,
distributed the money to the poor, read the Koran through once every
three days, and died in the holy month of Ramadan. His tomb at Hamadan,
the ancient Ecbatana, still exists, a simple brickwork building,
rectangular in shape, and surrounded by an unpretentious court. It was
restored in 1877, but is again in need of repair. The illustration here
shown is from a photograph sent by Dr. Neligan of Teheran. Though
dead, the great Persian has still a large practice, as his tomb is much
visited by pilgrims, among whom cures are said to be not uncommon.
(14) "L'hymne d'Avicenne" in: L'Elegie du Tograi, etc., par P.
Vattier, Paris, 1660.
(15) Traites mystiques d'Abou Ali al-Hosain b. Abdallah b. Sina
ou d'Avicenne par M. A. F. Mehren, Leyden, E. J. Brill, Fasc.
I-IV, 1889-1899.
The Western Caliphate produced physicians and philosophers almost as
brilliant as those of the East. Remarkable schools of medicine
were founded at Seville, Toledo and Cordova. The most famous of the
professors were Averroes, Albucasis and Avenzoar. Albucasis was "the
Arabian restorer of surgery." Averroes, called in the Middle Ages "the
Soul of Aristotle" or "the Commentator," is better known today among
philosophers than physicians. On the revival of Moslem orthodoxy he
fell upon evil days, was persecuted as a free-thinker, and the saying is
attributed to him--"Sit anima mea cum philosophic."
Arabian medicine had certain very definite characteristics: the basis
was Greek, derived from translations of the works of Hippocrates and
Galen. No contributions were made to anatomy, as dissections were
prohibited, nor to physiology, and the pathology was practically that
of Galen. Certain new and important diseases were described; a number
of new and active remedies were introduced, chiefly from the vegetable
kingdom. The Arabian hospitals were well organized and were deservedly
famous. No such hospital exists today in Cairo as that which was built
by al-Mansur Gilafun in 1283. The description of it by Makrizi, quoted
by Neuburger,(16) reads like that of a twentieth century institution
with hospital units.
(16) "I have founded this institution for my equals and for those
beneath me, it is intended for rulers and subjects, for soldiers and for
the emir, for great and small, freemen and slaves, men and women."
"He ordered medicaments, physicians and everything else that could
be required by anyone in any form of sickness; placed male and female
attendants at the disposal of the patients, determined their pay,
provided beds for patients and supplied them with every kind of covering
that could be required in any complaint. Every class of patient was
accorded separate accommodation: the four halls of the hospital were
set apart for those with fever and similar complaints; one part of the
building was reserved for eye-patients, one for the wounded, one for
those suffering from diarrhoea, one for women; a room for convalescents
was divided into two parts, one for men and one for women. Water was
laid on to all these departments. One room was set apart for cooking
food, preparing medicine and cooking syrups, another for the compounding
of confections, balsams, eye-salves, etc. The head-physician had an
apartment to himself wherein he delivered medical lectures. The number
of patients was unlimited, every sick or poor person who came found
admittance, nor was the duration of his stay restricted, and even those
who were sick at home were supplied with every necessity."--Makrizi.
"In later times this hospital was much extended and improved. The
nursing was admirable and no stint was made of drugs and appliances;
each patient was provided with means upon leaving so that he should
not require immediately to undertake heavy work." Neuburger: History of
Medicine, Vol. 1, p. 378.
It was in the domain of chemistry that the Arabs made the greatest
advances. You may remember that, in Egypt, chemistry had already made
considerable strides, and I alluded to Prof. Elliot Smith's view that
one of the great leaps in civilization was the discovery in the Nile
Valley of the metallurgy of copper. In the brilliant period of the
Ptolemies, both chemistry and pharmacology were studied, and it seems
not improbable that, when the Arabs took Alexandria in the year 640,
there were still many workers in these subjects.
The most famous of those early Arabic writers is the somewhat mythical
Geber, who lived in the first half of the eighth century, and whose
writings had an extraordinary influence throughout the Middle Ages.
The whole story of Geber is discussed by Berthelot in his "La chimie
au moyen age" (Paris, 1896). The transmission of Arabian science to
the Occident began with the Crusades, though earlier a filtering of
important knowledge in mathematics and astronomy had reached Southern
and Middle Europe through Spain. Among the translators several names
stand out prominently. Gerbert, who became later Pope Sylvester II, is
said to have given us our present Arabic figures. You may read the story
of his remarkable life in Taylor,(17) who says he was "the first mind
of his time, its greatest teacher, its most eager learner, and most
universal scholar." But he does not seem to have done much directly for
medicine.
(17) The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. I, p. 280.
The Graeco-Arabic learning passed into Europe through two sources. As
I have already mentioned, Constantinus Africanus, a North African
Christian monk, widely travelled and learned in languages, came to
Salernum and translated many works from Arabic into Latin, particularly
those of Hippocrates and Galen. The "Pantegni" of the latter became one
of the most popular text-books of the Middle Ages. A long list of other
works which he translated is given by Steinschneider.(17a) It is not
unlikely that Arabic medicine had already found its way to Salernum
before the time of Constantine, but the influence of his translations
upon the later Middle Ages was very great.
(17a) Steinschneider: Virchow's Arch., Berl., 1867, xxxvii, 351.
The second was a more important source through the Latin translators
in Spain, particularly in Toledo, where, from the middle of the twelfth
till the middle of the thirteenth century, an extraordinary number of
Arabic works in philosophy, mathematics and astronomy were translated.
Among the translators, Gerard of Cremona is prominent, and has been
called the "Father of Translators." He was one of the brightest
intelligences of the Middle Ages, and did a work of the first importance
to science, through the extraordinary variety of material he put in
circulation. Translations, not only of the medical writers, but of an
indiscriminate crowd of authors in philosophy and general literature,
came from his pen. He furnished one of the first translations of
the famous "Almagest" of Ptolemy, which opened the eyes of his
contemporaries to the value of the Alexandrian astronomy.(18) Leclerc
gives a list of seventy-one works from his hand.
(18) For an account of that remarkable work see German
translation by Manitius, Leipzig, 1912.
Many of the translators of the period were Jews, and many of the works
were translated from Hebrew into Latin. For years Arabic had been the
learned language of the Jews, and in a large measure it was through them
that the Arabic knowledge and the translations passed into South and
Central Europe.
The Arab writer whose influence on mediaeval thought was the most
profound was Averroes, the great commentator on Aristotle.
THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES
THE most striking intellectual phenomenon of the thirteenth century is
the rise of the universities. The story of their foundation is fully
stated in Rashdall's great work (Universities of Europe in the Middle
Ages, Oxford, 1895). Monastic and collegiate schools, seats of learning
like Salernum, student guilds as at Bologna, had tried to meet the
educational needs of the age. The word "university" literally means
an association, and was not at first restricted to learned bodies. The
origin appears to have been in certain guilds of students formed for
mutual protection associated at some place specially favorable for
study--the attraction generally being a famous teacher. The University
of Bologna grew up about guilds formed by students of law, and at
Paris, early in the twelfth century, there were communities of teachers,
chiefly in philosophy and theology. In this way arose two different
types of mediaeval university. The universities of Northern Italy were
largely controlled by students, who were grouped in different "nations."
They arranged the lectures and had control of the appointment of
teachers. On the other hand, in the universities founded on the Paris
model the masters had control of the studies, though the students, also
in nations, managed their own affairs.
Two universities have a special interest at this period in connection
with the development of medical studies, Bologna and Montpellier. At
the former the study of anatomy was revived. In the knowledge of the
structure of the human body no advance had been made for more than a
thousand years--since Galen's day. In the process of translation from
Greek to Syriac, from Syriac to Arabic, from Arabic to Hebrew, and from
Hebrew or Arabic to Latin, both the form and thought of the old Greek
writers were not infrequently confused and often even perverted, and
Galen's anatomy had suffered severely in the transmission. Our earliest
knowledge of the teaching of medicine at Bologna is connected with a
contemporary of Dante, Taddeo Alderotti, who combined Arabian erudition
with the Greek spirit. He occupied a position of extraordinary
prominence, was regarded as the first citizen of Bologna and a public
benefactor exempt from the payment of taxes. That he should have
acquired wealth is not surprising if his usual fees were at the rate
at which he charged Pope Honorius IV, i.e., two hundred florins a day,
besides a "gratification" of six thousand florins.
The man who most powerfully influenced the study of medicine in Bologna
was Mundinus, the first modern student of anatomy. We have seen that
at the school of Salernum it was decreed that the human body should be
dissected at least once every five years, but it was with the greatest
difficulty that permission was obtained for this purpose. It seems
probable that under the strong influence of Taddeo there was an
occasional dissection at Bologna, but it was not until Mundinus
(professor from 1306 to 1326) took the chair that the study of anatomy
became popular. The bodies were usually those of condemned criminals,
but in the year 1319 there is a record of a legal procedure against four
medical students for body-snatching--the first record, as far as I know,
of this gruesome practice. In 1316, Mundinus issued his work on anatomy,
which served as a text-book for more than two hundred years. He quotes
from Galen the amusing reasons why a man should write a book: "Firstly,
to satisfy his own friends; secondly, to exercise his best mental
powers; and thirdly, to be saved from the oblivion incident to old age."
Scores of manuscripts of his work must have existed, but they are now
excessively rare in Italy. The book was first printed at Pavia in 1478,
in a small folio without figures. It was very often reprinted in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The quaint illustration shows us the
mediaeval method of teaching anatomy: the lecturer sitting on a chair
reading from Galen, while a barber surgeon, or an "Ostensor," opens the
cavities of the body.
I have already referred to the study of medicine by women at Salernum.
Their names are also early met with in the school of Bologna. Mundinus
is said to have had a valuable assistant, a young girl, Alessandra
Giliani, an enthusiastic dissector, who was the first to practice the
injection of the blood vessels with colored liquids. She died, consumed
by her labors, at the early age of nineteen, and her monument is still
to be seen.
Bologna honored its distinguished professors with magnificent tombs,
sixteen or seventeen of which, in a wonderful state of preservation,
may still be seen in the Civic Museum. That of Mundinus also exists--a
sepulchral bas-relief on the wall of the Church of San Vitale at
Bologna.(19)
(19) For these figures and for points relating to the old school
at Bologna see F. G. Cavezza: Le Scuole dell' antico Studio
Bolognese, Milano, 1896.
The other early mediaeval university of special interest in medicine is
that of Montpellier. With it are connected three teachers who have left
great names in our story--Arnold of Villanova, Henri de Mondeville and
Guy de Chauliac. The city was very favorably situated not far from the
Spanish border, and the receding tide of the Arab invasion in the eighth
century had left a strong Arabic influence in that province. The date
of the origin of the university is uncertain, but there were teachers of
medicine there in the twelfth century, though it was not until 1289 that
it was formally founded by a papal bull.
Arnold of Villanova was one of the most prolific writers of the Middle
Ages. He had travelled much, was deeply read in Arabic medicine and was
also a student of law and of philosophy. He was an early editor of the
Regimen Sanitatis, and a strong advocate of diet and hygiene. His views
on disease were largely those of the Arabian physicians, and we
cannot see that he himself made any very important contribution to our
knowledge; but he was a man of strong individuality and left an enduring
mark on mediaeval medicine, as one may judge from the fact that among
the first hundred medical books printed there were many associated
with his name. He was constantly in trouble with the Church, though
befriended by the Popes on account of his medical knowledge. There is
a Bull of Clement V asking the bishops to search for a medical book by
Arnold dedicated to himself, but not many years later his writings were
condemned as heretical.
In Henri de Mondeville we have the typical mediaeval surgeon, and we
know his work now very thoroughly from the editions of his "Anatomy"
and "Surgery" edited by Pagel (Berlin, 1889-1892), and the fine French
edition by Nicaise (Paris, 1893). The dominant Arabic influence is seen
in that he quotes so large a proportion of these authors, but he was an
independent observer and a practical surgeon of the first rank. He had a
sharp wit and employed a bitter tongue against the medical abuses of his
day. How the Hippocratic humors dominated practice at this time you may
see at a glance from the table prepared by Nicaise from the works of de
Mondeville. We have here the whole pathology of the period.
===============================================================
TABLEAU DES HUMEURS
D'APRES H. DE MONDEVILLE
Flegme naturel.
F. aqueux.
Flegme F. mucilagineux.
F. vitreux.
Flegme non naturel F sale.
F. doux.
F. pontique, 2 especes.
F. acide, 2 especes.
Bile naturelle.
Bile B. citrine.
B. vitelline
Bile non naturelle B. praline.
B. aerugineuse.
B. brulee, 3 especes.
Sang naturel.
non naturel, 5 especes.
Melancolie naturelle.
non naturelle, 5 especes.
===============================================================
A still greater name in the history of this school is Guy de Chauliac,
whose works have also been edited by Nicaise (Paris, 1890). His
"Surgery" was one of the most important text-books of the late Middle
Ages. There are many manuscripts of it, some fourteen editions in the
fifteenth century and thirty-eight in the sixteenth, and it continued to
be reprinted far into the seventeenth century. He too was dominated
by the surgery of the Arabs, and on nearly every page one reads of
the sages Avicenna, Albucasis or Rhazes. He lays down four conditions
necessary for the making of a surgeon--the first is that he must be
learned, the second, expert, the third that he should be clever, and the
fourth that he should be well disciplined.
You will find a very discerning sketch of the relation of these two men
to the history of surgery in the address given at the St. Louis Congress
in 1904 by Sir Clifford Allbutt.(20) They were strong men with practical
minds and good hands, whose experience taught them wisdom. In both there
was the blunt honesty that so often characterizes a good surgeon, and I
commend to modern surgeons de Mondeville's saying: "If you have operated
conscientiously on the rich for a proper fee, and on the poor for
charity, you need not play the monk, nor make pilgrimages for your
soul."
(20) Allbutt: Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery,
London, Macmillan Co., 1905.
One other great mediaeval physician may be mentioned, Peter of Abano (a
small town near Padua, famous for its baths). He is the first in a long
line of distinguished physicians connected with the great school of
Padua. Known as "the Conciliator," from his attempt to reconcile the
diverse views on philosophy and medicine, he had an extraordinary
reputation as a practitioner and author, the persistence of which
is well illustrated by the fact that eight of the one hundred and
eighty-two medical books printed before 1481 were from his pen. He seems
to have taught medicine in Paris, Bologna and Padua. He was a devoted
astrologer, had a reputation among the people as a magician and, like
his contemporary, Arnold of Villanova, came into conflict with the
Church and appears to have been several times before the Inquisition;
indeed it is said that he escaped the stake only by a timely death.
He was a prolific commentator on Aristotle, and his exposition of the
"problems" had a great vogue. The early editions of his texts are among
the most superb works ever printed. He outlived his reputation as a
magician, and more than a century after his death Frederick, Duke of
Urbino, caused his effigies to be set up over the gate of the palace at
Padua with this inscription:
PETRUS APONUS PATAVINUS PHILOSOPHIAE MEDICINAEQUE
SCIENTISSIMUS, OB IDQUE, CONCILIATORIS NOMEN
ADEPTUS, ASTROLOGIAE VERO ADEO PERITUS,
UT IN MAGIAE SUSPICIONEM INCIDERIT,
FALSOQUE DE HAERESI POSTULATUS,
ABSOLUTUS FUERIT.(21)
(21) Naude: History of Magick, London, 1657, p. 182, or the
original: Apologie pour les grands hommes soupconnez de magic,
e.g., ed. Amst., 1719, p. 275.
It is said that Abano caused to be painted the astronomical figures in
the great hall of the palace at Padua.
One characteristic of mediaeval medicine is its union with theology,
which is not remarkable, as the learning of the time was chiefly in
the hands of the clergy. One of the most popular works, the "Thesaurus
Pauperum," was written by Petrus Hispanus, afterwards Pope John XXI.
We may judge of the pontifical practice from the page here reproduced,
which probably includes, under the term "iliac passion," all varieties
of appendicitis.
For our purpose two beacons illuminate the spirit of the thirteenth
century in its outlook on man and nature. Better than Abelard or St.
Thomas Aquinas, and much better than any physicians, Albertus Magnus and
Roger Bacon represent the men who were awake to greet the rising of the
sun of science. What a contrast in their lives and in their works! The
great Dominican's long life was an uninterrupted triumph of fruitful
accomplishment--the titanic task he set himself was not only completed
but was appreciated to the full by his own generation--a life not only
of study and teaching, but of practical piety. As head of the order in
Germany and Bishop of Regensburg, he had wide ecclesiastical influence;
and in death he left a memory equalled only by one or two of his
century, and excelled only by his great pupil, Thomas Aquinas. There are
many Alberts in history--the Good, the Just, the Faithful--but there is
only one we call "Magnus" and he richly deserved the name. What is his
record? Why do we hold his name in reverence today?
Albertus Magnus was an encyclopaedic student and author, who took all
knowledge for his province. His great work and his great ambition was to
interpret Aristotle to his generation. Before his day, the Stagirite was
known only in part, but he put within the reach of his contemporaries
the whole science of Aristotle, and imbibed no small part of his spirit.
He recognized the importance of the study of nature, even of testing
it by way of experiment, and in the long years that had elapsed since
Theophrastus no one else, except Dioscorides, had made so thorough
a study of botany. His paraphrases of the natural history books
of Aristotle were immensely popular, and served as a basis for all
subsequent studies. Some of his medical works had an extraordinary
vogue, particularly the "De Secretis Mulierum" and the "De Virtutibus
Herbarum," but there is some doubt as to the authorship of the first
named, although Jammy and Borgnet include it in the collected editions
of his works. So fabulous was his learning that he was suspected of
magic and comes in Naude's list of the wise men who have unjustly
been reputed magicians. Ferguson tells(22) that "there is in actual
circulation at the present time a chapbook . . . containing charms,
receipts, sympathetical and magicalcures for man and animals, . . .
which passes under the name of Albertus." But perhaps the greatest claim
of Albertus to immortality is that he was the teacher and inspirer
of Thomas Aquinas, the man who undertook the colossal task of fusing
Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, and with such success
that the "angelic doctor" remains today the supreme human authority of
the Roman Catholic Church.
(22) Bibliotheca Chemica, 1906, Vol. I, p. 15.
A man of much greater interest to us from the medical point of view is
Roger Bacon and for two reasons. More than any other mediaeval mind he
saw the need of the study of nature by a new method. The man who could
write such a sentence as this: "Experimental science has three great
prerogatives over other sciences; it verifies conclusions by direct
experiment; it discovers truth which they never otherwise would reach;
it investigates the course of nature and opens to us a knowledge of the
past and of the future," is mentally of our day and generation. Bacon
was born out of due time, and his contemporaries had little sympathy
with his philosophy, and still less with his mechanical schemes and
inventions. From the days of the Greeks, no one had had so keen an
appreciation of what experiment meant in the development of human
knowledge, and he was obsessed with the idea, so commonplace to us, that
knowledge should have its utility and its practical bearing. "His chief
merit is that he was one of the first to point the way to original
research--as opposed to the acceptance of an authority--though he
himself still lacked the means of pursuing this path consistently. His
inability to satisfy this impulse led to a sort of longing, which is
expressed in the numerous passages in his works where he anticipates
man's greater mastery over nature."(23)
(23) Dannemann: Die Naturwissenschaften in ihrer Entwicklung und
in ibrem Zusammenhange, Leipzig, 1910, Vol. I, pp. 278-279.
Bacon wrote a number of medical treatises, most of which remain in
manuscript. His treatise on the "Cure of Old Age and the Preservation of
Youth" was printed in English in 1683.(24) His authorities were largely
Arabian. One of his manuscripts is "On the Bad Practices of Physicians."
On June 10, 1914, the eve of his birth, the septencentenary of Roger
Bacon will be celebrated by Oxford, the university of which he is the
most distinguished ornament. His unpublished MSS. in the Bodleian will
be issued by the Clarendon Press (1915-1920), and it is hoped that his
unpublished medical writings will be included.
(24) It may be interesting to note the three causes to which he
attributes old age: "As the World waxeth old, Men grow old with
it: not by reason of the Age of the World, but because of the
great Increase of living Creatures, which infect the very Air,
that every way encompasseth us, and Through our Negligence in
ordering our Lives, and That great Ignorance of the Properties
which are in things conducing to Health, which might help a
disordered way of Living, and might supply the defect of due
Government."
What would have been its fate if the mind of Europe had been ready for
Roger Bacon's ferment, and if men had turned to the profitable studies
of physics, astronomy and chemistry instead of wasting centuries over
the scholastic philosophy and the subtleties of Duns Scotus, Abelard and
Thomas Aquinas? Who can say? Make no mistake about the quality of these
men--giants in intellect, who have had their place in the evolution of
the race; but from the standpoint of man struggling for the mastery of
this world they are like the members of Swift's famous college "busy
distilling sunshine from cucumbers." I speak, of course, from the
position of the natural man, who sees for his fellows more hope from the
experiments of Roger Bacon than from the disputations of philosophy on
the "Instants, Familiarities, Quiddities and Relations," which so roused
the scorn of Erasmus.
MEDIAEVAL MEDICAL STUDIES
IT will be of interest to know what studies were followed at a mediaeval
university. At Oxford, as at most of the continental universities, there
were three degrees, those of Bachelor, Licentiate and Doctor. The books
read were the "Tegni" of Galen, the "Aphorisms" of Hippocrates, the "De
Febribus" of Isaac and the "Antidotarium" of Nicolaus Salernitanus: if
a graduate in arts, six years' study in all was required, in other
faculties, eight. One gets very full information on such matters from
a most interesting book, "Une Chaire de Medecine au XVe Siecle," by Dr.
Ferrari (Paris, 1899). The University of Pavia was founded in 1361, and
like most of those in Italy was largely frequented by foreigners, who
were arranged, as usual, according to their nationalities; but the
students do not appear to have controlled the university quite so much
as at Bologna. The documents of the Ferrari family, on which the work is
based, tell the story of one of its members, who was professor at Pavia
from 1432 to 1472. One is surprised at the range of studies in certain
directions, and still more at the absence of other subjects. A list is
given of the teachers in medicine for the year 1433, twenty in all, and
there were special lectures for the morning, afternoon and evening. The
subjects are medicine, practical medicine, physics, metaphysics, logic,
astrology, surgery and rhetoric: very striking is the omission of
anatomy, which does not appear in the list even in 1467. The salaries
paid were not large, so that most of the teachers must have been in
practice: four hundred and five hundred florins was the maximum.
The dominance of the Arabians is striking. In 1467, special lectures
were given on the "Almansor" of Rhazes, and in the catalogue of
the Ferrari's library more than one half of the books are Arabian
commentaries on Greek medicine. Still more striking evidence of their
influence is found in the text-book of Ferrari, which was printed in
1471 and had been circulated earlier in MS. In it Avicenna is quoted
more than 3000 times, Rhazes and Galen 1000, Hippocrates only 140
times. Professor Ferrari was a man who played an important role in
the university, and had a large consultation practice. You will be
interested to know what sort of advice he gave in special cases. I have
the record of an elaborate consultation written in his own hand, from
which one may gather what a formidable thing it was to fall into the
hands of a mediaeval physician. Signor John de Calabria had a digestive
weakness of the stomach, and rheumatic cerebral disease, combined with
superfluous heat and dryness of the liver and multiplication of choler.
There is first an elaborate discussion on diet and general mode of life;
then he proceeds to draw up certain light medicines as a supplement,
but it must have taken an extensive apothecary's shop to turn out the
twenty-two prescriptions designed to meet every possible contingency.
One of the difficulties in the early days of the universities was to
procure good MSS. In the Paris Faculty, the records of which are the
most complete in Europe, there is an inventory for the year 1395 which
gives a list of twelve volumes, nearly all by Arabian authors.(25)
Franklin gives an interesting incident illustrating the rarity of
medical MSS. at this period. Louis XI, always worried about his health,
was anxious to have in his library the works of Rhazes. The only copy
available was in the library of the medical school. The manuscript was
lent, but on excellent security, and it is nice to know that it was
returned.
(25) Franklin: Recherches sur la Bibliotheque de la Faculte de
Medecine de Paris, 1864.
It is said that one of the special advantages that Montpellier had over
Paris was its possession of so many important MSS., particularly
those of the Arabian writers. Many "Compendia" were written containing
extracts from various writers, and no doubt these were extensively
copied and lent or sold to students. At Bologna and Padua, there were
regulations as to the price of these MSS. The university controlled the
production of them, and stationers were liable to fines for inaccurate
copies. The trade must have been extensive in those early days, as
Rashdall mentions that in 1323 there were twenty-eight sworn booksellers
in Paris, besides keepers of bookstalls in the open air.
MEDIAEVAL PRACTICE
THE Greek doctrine of the four humors colored all the conceptions of
disease; upon their harmony alone it was thought that health depended.
The four temperaments, sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious and melancholic,
corresponded with the prevalence of these humors. The body was composed
of certain so-called "naturals," seven in number--the elements,
the temperaments, the humors, the members or parts, the virtues
or faculties, the operations or functions and the spirits. Certain
"non-naturals," nine in number, preserved the health of the body, viz.
air, food and drink, movement and repose, sleeping and waking, excretion
and retention, and the passions. Disease was due usually to alterations
in the composition of the humors, and the indications for treatment were
in accordance with these doctrines. They were to be evacuated, tenuated,
cooled, heated, purged or strengthened. This humoral doctrine prevailed
throughout the Middle Ages, and reached far into modern times--indeed,
echoes of it are still to be heard in popular conversations on the
nature of disease.
The Arabians were famous for their vigor and resource in matters of
treatment. Bleeding was the first resort in a large majority of all
diseases. In the "Practice" of Ferrari there is scarcely a malady
for which it is not recommended. All remedies were directed to the
regulation of the six non-naturals, and they either preserved health,
cured the disease or did the opposite. The most popular medicines were
derived from the vegetable kingdom, and as they were chiefly those
recommended by Galen, they were, and still are, called by his name.
Many important mineral medicines were introduced by the Arabians,
particularly mercury, antimony, iron, etc. There were in addition scores
of substances, the parts or products of animals, some harmless, others
salutary, others again useless and disgusting. Minor surgery was in the
hands of the barbers, who performed all the minor operations, such as
bleeding; the more important operations, few in number, were performed
by surgeons.
ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION
AT this period astrology, which included astronomy, was everywhere
taught. In the "Gouernaunce of Prynces, or Pryvete of Pryveties,"
translated by James Yonge, 1422,(26) there occurs the statement:
"As Galian the lull wies leche Saith and Isoder the Gode clerk, hit
witnessith that a man may not perfitely can the sciens and craft of
Medissin but yef he be an astronomoure."
(26) Early English Text Society, Extra Series, No. LXXIV, p. 195,
1898; Secreta Secretorum, Rawl. MS. B., 490.
We have seen how the practice of astrology spread from Babylonia and
Greece throughout the Roman Empire. It was carried on into the Middle
Ages as an active and aggressive cult, looked upon askance at times
by the Church, but countenanced by the courts, encouraged at the
universities, and always by the public. In the curriculum of the
mediaeval university, astronomy made up with music, arithmetic and
geometry the Quadrivium. In the early faculties, astronomy and astrology
were not separate, and at Bologna, in the early fourteenth century, we
meet with a professorship of astrology.(27) One of the duties of this
salaried professor, was to supply "judgements" gratis for the benefit of
enquiring students, a treacherous and delicate assignment, as that most
distinguished occupant of the chair at Bologna, Cecco d'Ascoli, found
when he was burned at the stake in 1357, a victim of the Florentine
Inquisition.(28)
(27) Rashdall: Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol.
I, p. 240.
(28) Rashdall, l.c., Vol. I, p. 244.--Rashdall also mentions that
in the sixteenth century at Oxford there is an instance of a
scholar admitted to practice astrology. l.c., Vol. II, p. 458.
Roger Bacon himself was a warm believer in judicial astrology and in the
influence of the planets, stars and comets on generation, disease and
death.
Many of the stronger minds of the Renaissance broke away from the
follies of the subject. Thus Cornelius Agrippa in reply to the request
of a friar to consult the stars on his behalf says:(29) "Judicial
astrology is nothing more than the fallacious guess of superstitious
men, who have founded a science on uncertain things and are deceived by
it: so think nearly all the wise; as such it is ridiculed by some most
noble philosophers; Christian theologians reject it, and it is condemned
by sacred councils of the Church. Yet you, whose office it is to
dissuade others from these vanities, oppressed, or rather blinded by I
know not what distress of mind, flee to this as to a sacred augur, and
as if there were no God in Israel, that you send to inquire of the god
of Ekron."
(29) H. Morley: The Life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa, London,
1856, Vol. II, p. 138.
In spite of the opposition of the Church astrology held its own; many of
the universities at the end of the fifteenth century published almanacs,
usually known as "Prognosticons," and the practice was continued far
into the sixteenth century. I show you here an illustration. Rabelais,
you may remember, when physician to the Hotel Dieu in Lyons, published
almanacs for the years 1533, 1535, 1541, 1546. In the title-page he
called himself "Doctor of Medicine and Professor of Astrology," and they
continued to be printed under his name until 1556. In the preparation
of these he must have had his tongue in his cheek, as in his famous
"Pantagrueline Prognostication," in which, to satisfy the curiosity of
all good companions, he had turned over all the archives of the heavens,
calculated the quadratures of the moon, hooked out all that has ever
been thought by all the Astrophils, Hypernephilists, Anemophylakes,
Uranopets and Ombrophori, and felt on every point with Empedocles.(30)
(30) Pantagrueline Prognostication, Rabelais, W. F. Smith's
translation, 1893, Vol. II, p. 460.
Even physicians of the most distinguished reputation practised judicial
astrology. Jerome Cardan was not above earning money by casting
horoscopes, and on this subject he wrote one of his most popular books
(De Supplemento Almanach, etc., 1543), in which astronomy and
astrology are mixed in the truly mediaeval fashion. He gives in it some
sixty-seven nativities, remarkable for the events they foretell, with an
exposition. One of the accusations brought against him was that he had
"attempted to subject to the stars the Lord of the stars and cast our
Saviour's horoscope."(31) Cardan professed to have abandoned a practice
looked upon with disfavor both by the Church and by the universities,
but he returned to it again and again. I show here his own horoscope.
That remarkable character, Michael Servetus, the discoverer of the
lesser circulation, when a fellow student with Vesalius at Paris, gave
lectures upon judicial astrology, which brought him into conflict with
the faculty; and the rarest of the Servetus works, rarer even than
the "Christianismi Restitutio," is the "Apologetica disceptatio pro
astrologia," one copy of which is in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Nor
could the new astronomy and the acceptance of the heliocentric views
dislocate the popular belief. The literature of the seventeenth century
is rich in astrological treatises dealing with medicine.
(31) De Thou, Lib. LXII, quoted by Morley in Life of Jerome
Cardan, Vol. II, p. 294.
No one has ever poured such satire upon the mantic arts as did Rabelais
in chapter twenty-five of the third book of "Pantagruel." Panurge goes
to consult Her Trippa--the famous Cornelius Agrippa, whose opinion
of astrology has already been quoted, but who nevertheless, as court
astrologer to Louise of Savoy, had a great contemporary reputation.
After looking Panurge in the face and making conclusions by metoposcopy
and physiognomy, he casts his horoscope secundum artem, then, taking a
branch of tamarisk, a favorite tree from which to get the divining
rod, he names some twenty-nine or thirty mantic arts, from pyromancy to
necromancy, by which he offers to predict his future. While full of rare
humor, this chapter throws an interesting light on the extraordinary
number of modes of divination that have been employed. Small wonder that
Panurge repented of his visit! I show here the title-page of a popular
book by one of the most famous of the English astrological physicians,
Nicholas Culpeper.
Never was the opinion of sensible men on this subject better expressed
than by Sir Thomas Browne:(32) "Nor do we hereby reject or condemn a
sober and regulated Astrology; we hold there is more truth therein than
in ASTROLOGERS; in some more than many allow, yet in none so much
as some pretend. We deny not the influence of the Starres, but often
suspect the due application thereof; for though we should affirm that
all things were in all things; that Heaven were but Earth Celestified,
and earth but Heaven terrestrified, or that each part above had an
influence upon its divided affinity below; yet how to single out these
relations, and duly to apply their actions, is a work ofttimes to be
effected by some revelation, and Cabala from above, rather than any
Philosophy, or speculation here below."
(32) Sir Thomas Browne: Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Bk. IV, Chap.
XIII. (Wilkin's ed., Vol. III, p. 84.)
As late as 1699, a thesis was discussed at the Paris Faculty, "Whether
comets were harbingers of disease," and in 1707 the Faculty negatived
the question propounded in a thesis, "Whether the moon had any sway on
the human body."
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw, among intelligent men, a
progressive weakening of the belief in the subject; but not even the
satire of Swift, with his practical joke in predicting and announcing
the death of the famous almanac maker, nor contemptuous neglect of the
subject of late years sufficed to dispel the belief from the minds of
the public. Garth in the Dispensary (1699) satirizes the astrological
practitioners of his day:
The Sage in Velvet Chair, here lolls at Ease
To promise future Health for present Fees
Then as from Tripod solemn Sham reveals
And what the Stars know nothing of foretell. (Canto ii.)
The almanacs of Moore and Zadkiel continue to be published, and
remain popular. In London, sandwich men are to be met with carrying
advertisements of Chaldeans and Egyptians who offer to tell your fortune
by the stars. Even in this country, astrology is still practiced to
a surprising extent if one may judge from advertisements in certain
papers, and from publications which must have a considerable sale. Many
years ago, I had as a patient an estimable astrologer, whose lucrative
income was derived from giving people astral information as to the rise
and fall of stocks. It is a chapter in the vagaries of the human mind
that is worth careful study.(33) Let me commend to your reading the
sympathetic story called "A Doctor of Medicine" in the "Rewards and
Fairies" of Kipling. The hero is Nicholas Culpeper, Gent., whose picture
is here given. One stanza of the poem at the end of the story, "Our
Fathers of Old," may be quoted:
Wonderful tales had our fathers of old--
Wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars--
The Sun was Lord of the Marigold,
Basil and Rocket belonged to Mars.
Pat as a sum in division it goes--
(Every plant had a star bespoke)--
Who but Venus should govern the Rose?
Who but Jupiter own the Oak?
Simply and gravely the facts are told
In the wonderful books of our fathers of old.
(33) It is not generally known that Stonewall Jackson practiced
astrology. Col. J. W. Revere in "Keel and Saddle" (Boston, 1872)
tells of meeting Jackson in 1852 on a Mississippi steamer and
talking with him on the subject. Some months later, Revere
received a letter from Jackson enclosing his (Revere's)
horoscope. There was a "culmination of the malign aspect during
the first days of May, 1863--both will be exposed to a common
danger at the time indicated." At the battle of
Chancellorsville, May 9, 1863, Revere saw Jackson mortally
wounded!
James J. Walsh of New York has written a book of extraordinary interest
called "The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries." I have not the necessary
knowledge to say whether he has made out his case or not for art and for
literature. There was certainly a great awakening and, inspired by high
ideals, men turned with a true instinct to the belief that there was
more in life than could be got out of barren scholastic studies. With
many of the strong men of the period one feels the keenest mental
sympathy. Grosseteste, the great Clerk of Lincoln, as a scholar, a
teacher and a reformer, represents a type of mind that could grow
only in fruitful soil. Roger Bacon may be called the first of
the moderns--certainly the first to appreciate the extraordinary
possibilities which lay in a free and untrammelled study of nature.
A century which could produce men capable of building the Gothic
cathedrals may well be called one of the great epochs in history, and
the age that produced Dante is a golden one in literature. Humanity has
been the richer for St. Francis; and Abelard, Albertus and Aquinas form
a trio not easy to match, in their special departments, either before or
after. But in science, and particularly in medicine, and in the advance
of an outlook upon nature, the thirteenth century did not help man very
much. Roger Bacon was "a voice crying in the wilderness," and not one of
the men I have picked out as specially typical of the period instituted
any new departure either in practice or in science. They were servile
followers, when not of the Greeks, of the Arabians. This is attested by
the barrenness of the century and a half that followed. One would have
thought that the stimulus given by Mundinus to the study of anatomy
would have borne fruit, but little was done in science during the two
and a half centuries that followed the delivery of his lectures and
still less in the art. While William of Wykeham was building Winchester
Cathedral and Chaucer was writing the Canterbury Tales, John of
Gaddesden in practice was blindly following blind leaders whose
authority no one dared question.
The truth is, from the modern standpoint the thirteenth was not the
true dawn brightening more and more unto the perfect day, but a glorious
aurora which flickered down again into the arctic night of mediaevalism.
To sum up--in medicine the Middle Ages represent a restatement from
century to century of the facts and theories of the Greeks modified here
and there by Arabian practice. There was, in Francis Bacon's phrase,
much iteration, small addition. The schools bowed in humble, slavish
submission to Galen and Hippocrates, taking everything from them but
their spirit and there was no advance in our knowledge of the structure
or function of the body. The Arabians lit a brilliant torch from Grecian
lamps and from the eighth to the eleventh centuries the profession
reached among them a position of dignity and importance to which it is
hard to find a parallel in history.