Appendix Ii 212

INDEX 217

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

AMPUTATION BELOW THE KNEE Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

HOLY GHOST HOSPITAL 64

SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS OF GUY DE CHAULIAC 118

BRUNSCHWIG'S SURGICAL ARMAMENTARIUM 134

SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS OF THE ARABS 138

THIRTEENTH-CENTURY HOSPITAL INTERIOR 172

LEPER HOSPITAL OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 176

THE HARBLEDOWN HOSPITAL 180

"When we think of all the work, big with promise of the future, that went on in those centuries which modern writers in their ignorance used once to set apart and stigmatize as the 'Dark Ages'; when we consider how the seeds of what is noblest in modern life were then painfully sown upon the soil which Imperial Rome had prepared; when we think of the various work of a Gregory, a Benedict, a Boniface, an Alfred, a Charlemagne, we feel that there is a sense in which the most brilliant achievements of pagan antiquity are dwarfed in comparison with these."--FISKE: The Beginnings of New England, or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty.

TO MOST REVEREND P. J. HAYES ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK

AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF GRATITUDE FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF CO-OPERATING IN THE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION THAT IS A MONUMENT TO HIS PRUDENT WISDOM

PREFACE

"Medieval Medicine" is the story of the medical sciences in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages are usually assumed to begin with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, 476, and end with the fall of Constantinople, 1453. In this little volume, then, we have to outline the history of human efforts to prevent and treat the ills of mankind for nearly one thousand years. Until recently, it has been the custom to believe that there was so little of genuine interest in anything like the scientific care of ailing human beings during these centuries, that even a volume of this kind might seem large for the tale of it. Now we know how much these men of the Middle Ages, for so long called the "Dark Ages," were interested in every phase of human progress. They created a great art and literature, and above all a magnificent architecture. We have been cultivating the knowledge of these for several generations, and it would indeed be a surprise to find that the men who made such surpassing achievements in all the other lines of human effort should have failed only in medicine.

As a matter of fact, we have found that the history of medicine and surgery, and of the medical education of the Middle Ages, are quite as interesting as all the other phases of their accomplishments. Hence the compression that has been necessary to bring a purview of all that we know with regard to medieval medicine within the compass of a brief book of this kind. The treatment has been necessarily fragmentary, and yet it is hoped that the details which are given here may prove suggestive for those who have sufficient interest in the subject to wish to follow it, and may provide an incentive for others to learn more of this magnificent chapter of the work of the medieval physicians.

MEDIEVAL MEDICINE