PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 97 



than has happened elsewhere in histoiy. Alfred the Great in 

 the following century also cultivated letters at his court, and 

 himself wrote on scientific as well as on literary subjects. He 

 established schools throughout his dominion, including an 

 academy at Oxford. 



The traditions attributing the University of Paris to Charles 

 and Oxford University to Alfred are discredited ; but the schools 

 they supported and established certainly did not become extinct, 

 but developed into the medieval universities. The curriculum 

 of the monastic and cathedral schools may appear narrow and 

 trivial — the well-known seven arts, the elementary trivium — 

 grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, and the more advanced quad- 

 rivium — music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy ; but if we 

 compare it with the curriculum of the American or English 

 college of a few years ago we should cast no stones. Indeed, 

 when we try to picture the state of affairs, the invasions of the 

 Northmen and Saracens, the wars and pillages, we can but ad- 

 mire the spirit that maintained schools and libraries in the 

 monasteries, the academies of sciences and arts of the time. 

 The Roman Church, the Holy Roman Empire, civic life and 

 independence and finally the universities were the offspring of 

 the so-called dark ages. 



The medical school of Salerno, whose beginnings are traced 

 to the ninth century, seems to have descended directly from the 

 Greco-Roman period. It was secular in character, extending 

 its privileges to Jews and women. It is of interest to scientific 

 men that the first university should have been a school of medi- 

 cine, but it must be admitted that it did not contribute consider- 

 ably to the advancement of science — at Alexandria the living 

 human body was dissected, at Salerno Latin hexameters were 

 written on the urine — nor has its imperfectly known organiza- 

 tion the interest for us that attaches to the universities of 

 Bologna and Paris. 



The medieval university is certainly one of the most notable 

 institutions known to history. It appears almost incredible that 

 10,000 students from all parts of Europe should have frequented 

 Bologna, when traveling was as expensive, difficult and dan- 



