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that have continued to the present day as the acknowledged authorities on medicine during these times.

Those of Rhases, Haly-Abbas, Avicenna, Averrhoes, Albucasis, and others, are but so many testimonies, more or less, to the value of chirurgics, their connection with the physician's office, and the high honour attaching to those who used them as a means of cure.

The same valuable work of the Sydenham Society, before referred to, by its learned commentary, not only looks back through the ages preceding Paulus, but onward through the period we are now considering, and associates the above names and their followers with its practice; all of whom estimated the value of a remedy, in proportion to its efficacy in removing disease or suffering, by its judicious application to each especial case. The right use of one or the other constitutes alone the superiority of the means used, or the physician who used it, in spite of the prejudices existing in these Arabic schools.

IN SALERNUM, AND MONTE-CASINO, convents were established by the Benedictine monks, as early as the sixth century, where the care of the sick was enjoined as a work of piety, and their diseases were treated by means of prayers, relics, conjurations, &c., &c.; establishing here, as elsewhere, in these

Romish seminaries, a blind belief in the miraculous powers of priests and monks.

Salernum, however, obtained a better reputation as early as the eighth century, or even before. Some have asserted, that the professors, driven from Alexandria by the Arabs, A.D. 640, found refuge here; as those who, in the preceding century, were expelled from Athens, had fled to Dschondisabour.

There is also an ancient chronicle, quoted by Mazza, affirming that the founders of the school of Salernum derived their learning from the best possible sources, and that they consisted of a Jew, a Greek, a Saracen, and a Latin; who each taught medicine in their respective languages.* Be this as it may, we are without doubt that in the ninth century lectures were given and books written on medicine by Berthier-Abbé of the adjoining Convent of Monte-Casino-and others. These convents being gradually esteemed as sound schools of medicine, students, as well as sufferers of all kinds, resorted thither from distant parts. Towards the eleventh century, by translations from Arabic to Latin-of parts of Galen and other Greek and Arabic authors, science and the use of natural remedies gradually began as in the temples of Esculapius of old-to supplant bigotry and superstition. In the first year of the twelfth century, the physicians * J. C. G. Ackermann, Inst. Hist. Med.' "Schola. Med. Salern.," s. 419.

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of Salernum were consulted by Robert, son of William the Conqueror, of England; who, on his return from Palestine, disembarked there, in order to be cured of a wound he had received in the Holy Wars, and which had been badly treated* by his own attendants. Thus early our own country, as well as others, acknowledged the high authority in chirurgics of the physicians of Salernum. Shortly after this period, their estimation of the use of dietetics and pharmaceutics was exhibited—of the former, in the celebrated rhyming verses, entitled "Regimen Sanitatis Salerni," attributed to John of Milan, and other monks of Salernum-of the latter, in the "Antidotaires" of Nicolaus, director of the same school; and thus, the three acknowledged means of cure, proclaimed as the physician's armour in the times of Herophilus and Erasistratus, were reestablished in the school of Salernum in the twelfth century.

Constantin the African added much to the reputation of these schools, even in the eleventh century, by his wonderful cures, his translations, and other writings, and by the many scholars he sent forth from thence. Romualdus and Egidius, students of Salernum, are names honoured for their progress in the right direction: the former was consulted by William the Conqueror, of England, and by his son

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* Sprengel, Hist. de la Méd.,' trad. par A. J. L. Jourdan, tom. ii, p. 357.

William Rufus; the latter teaches us that the physicians of Salernum were obedient to the indications for treatment, whilst their own interest was the sole aim of ordinary monks at this period, instead of that pious zeal and benevolence which were their professed motives for having first assumed the physician's office.

The progress of medicine received, in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, further assistance from the Ordinances of Roger, first King of Naples and Sicily, and subsequently from those of the Emperor, Frederick the Second, which may be well studied and copied, at the present day, for their wise, just, and judicious regulations, and as being the acknowledged foundation of all modern laws.

We have seen the high standard in morals, as well as in medicine, previously held up to us by Hippocrates; so at this similar epoch, when for the second time medicine was escaping from the trammels of bigotry and superstition, we may in a great measure discern the evils which then threatened, by the barriers opposed to them in the following legal enactments.

Roger, King of Sicily, sheltered his subjects from the impositions of charlatans, by restrictions such as had been previously instituted amongst the Arabs. He decreed that all those who practised medicine in his states should present themselves before the appointed authorities, said to have been the

physicians of Salernum, for permission to do so, and that whoever did not conform to his decree should be subjected to imprisoment, and confiscation of all his property (A.D. 1140). This law was the more necessary, as a multitude of ignorant monks, attracted by the love of gain, sought to enrich themselves by practising medicine throughout his dominions.

Frederick the Second, of Germany, grandson to Roger-to whom the states of Naples and Sicily were for a while subjected-added, in the following century, about A.D. 1230, many ordinances, tending more especially to prove the high reputation of the school of Salernum. He not only confirmed the previous enactments, but laid down a distinct course of preliminary and professional education, of examination, the form of admission, and laws for the subsequent control-as well as protection-of physicians practising in the kingdom of Naples. By these laws, no one was allowed to enter on the study of medicine, unless he had given up three years at least to logic; after which, five consecutive years were to be devoted to medicine "and at the same time surgery, which forms a part of medicine;* and finally, one year to the practice of medicine under an expe

* This declaration of the connection of surgery with the physician's office is the more important, being coeval with, and opposed to, the edicts of the Romish church, which separated surgery from the PRIEST-physician, as will be presently shown.

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