226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



influential existence. There was a celebrated hospital at Montpellier, 

 taking advantage of the salubrious climate of the Riviera, and its proxi- 

 mity to Spain made the Moorish learning accessible. 



The thirteenth century, in which occurred the downfall of Arabian 

 empire and culture, saw in Europe a great intellectual revival. Many 

 great universities were founded within a few decades from the year 

 1200, such as those of Bologna, Padua, Naples and Eome in Italy, Paris, 

 Orleans and Toulouse in Prance, Oxford and Cambridge in England, 

 and others. The medical instruction given in these institutions, and in 

 others founded later, has ever since been the fountain of medical knowl- 

 edge for the world and conferred upon the medical profession the stamp 

 of learning and repute. 



During the middle ages medicine shared in the intellectual charac- 

 teristics of the period. It was an age of dogmatism and intellectual 

 narrowness ; the church exercised a censorship over all thought, and all 

 tendency to mental independence and originality was repressed. The 

 empirical method of gaining knowledge, that is, the accumulation of 

 facts by direct and careful observation and study of natural phenomena, 

 was rejected. This method was too slow and laborious, and left too 

 many blanks in knowledge, to be acceptable. The ancient and medieval 

 philosophers preferred to construct complete schemes of the universe 

 out of their own minds, and took such pride in these brilliant creations- 

 of their own intellects, and regarded them as so complete and perfect, 

 that observation of nature was regarded as superfluous and unnecessary. 

 Men engaged in fine-spun controversies over metaphysical and theo- 

 logical subtleties and dwelt on the unimportant and unreal trivialities 

 of their subjective philosophies, to the neglect of the important and real 

 things of the objective world. Schools were plentiful and vigorous ; but 

 they were under the ecclesiastical control and influence, and simply 

 fostered the scholastic dogmatism and dialectics. There were men in 

 those days with as great intellects as the world has ever produced; but 

 they frittered away their gigantic powers on inane trivialities. Dogmas 

 and authorities were rigidly adhered to, originality and innovations were 

 repressed, and for centuries mental advancement was inhibited. 



Medieval medicine displayed all these characteristics (scholastic 

 medicine). The doctrines of the ancients, especially Galen and Hip- 

 pocrates, and of the Arabians were rigidly followed, and until the 

 Eenaissance there was no change and no progress. Medical thought was 

 dominated by the humoral pathology or theory of disease, which had 

 appeared as early as in the writings of Hippocrates. According to this 

 theory health consisted in a perfect combination and action of the 

 elements and humors of the body, while disease resulted from a derange- 

 ment or corruption of them. Pour humors were recognized, mucus, 

 blood, bile (yellow bile) and black bile (atrabile). Mucus was sup- 



