198 INTERNAL MEDICINE 



the first to notice salivation as the result of administration of mer- 

 cury in "skin diseases." 



Both for his own merits, and as the master of Lanfranc, William 

 Salicet was eminent among the great Italian physicians of the 

 latter half of the thirteenth century. Distinguished in surgery, 

 both as practitioner and author, he was also one of the protestants 

 of the period against the division of the craft from inner medicine; 

 a division which he justly regarded as a withdrawal of medicine 

 from intimacy with nature. Like Lanfranc and all the great sur- 

 geons of the Italian tradition, and unlike Franco and Pare*, he had 

 the advantage of the liberal university education of Italy; but, 

 like Par6 and Wiirtz, he had also large practical experience in camp, 

 hospital, and prison. His Surgery contains many case-histories. 

 He discovered that dropsy may be due to a "durities renum;" 

 he substituted the knife for the abuse of the cautery by the fol- 

 lowers of the Arabs; he pursued the investigation of the causes of 

 the failure of healing by first intention; he described the danger 

 of wounds of the neck; he forwarded the diagnosis of suppura- 

 tive disease of the hip, and he referred chancre and gangrene to 

 "coitus cum meretrice." 



The Chirurgia Magna of Lanfranc of Milan and Paris, pub- 

 lished in 1295-96, was a great work, written by a reverent but in- 

 dependent follower of Salicet. He distinguished between venous 

 and arterial hemorrhage, and generally used styptics; white of 

 egg, aloes, and rabbit's fur was a popular styptic in elder surgery, 

 though in severe cases ligature was used. Learned man as he was, 

 Lanfranc saw the more clearly the danger of separating surgery 

 from medicine. "Good God!" he exclaims, "why this abandon- 

 ing of operations by physicians to lay persons, disdaining surgery, 

 as I perceive, because they do not know how to operate ... an 

 abuse which has reached such a point that the vulgar begin to 

 think the same man cannot know medicine and surgery. ... I 

 say, however, that no man can be a good physician who has no 

 knowledge of operative surgery; a knowledge of both branches 

 is essential" (Chirurgia Magna). 



Henry of Mondeville, of whom we hear first in 1301, as surgeon 

 to Philip the Fair, was for the most part a loyal disciple of Lan- 

 franc, and, aided as it would seem by Jean Pitard, also surgeon 

 to the King, attempted for wounds to introduce the new methods 

 of Hugh and Theodoric; for his pains he exposed himself to bad 

 language, threats, and perils; and "had it not been for Truth and 

 Charles of Valois," to far worse things. So he warns the young 

 and poor surgeon not to plow the sand; but to prefer complais- 

 ance to truth, and ease to new ideas. I may summarize, briefly, the 

 teaching of Henry on the cardinal features of the new method: 



