Paracelsus united in his person the functions of physician 

 and surgeon, a rare combination at that period; surgery in 

 a very crude form was practiced by barbers and was re- 

 garded as a disreputable handicraft even in the eyes of the 

 law; to raise it to an honorable calling Charles V., seven 

 years after the death of Paracelsus, promulgated an edict to 

 dignify the standing of surgeons, a law which was renewed 

 by. Rudolph in 1577. 



Another important influence was at work in the sixteenth 

 century hastening the overthrow of the slavish devotion to 

 ancient authorities; physicians educated in the classical 

 languages took up the study of the early writers on medicine 

 and translated them and edited them with commentaries, 

 often proving the current interpretations to be false ; so great 

 a role did this play that a recent historian has claimed that 

 "Philology is the mother of modern medicine." 



Dr. Pettigrew has summarized the situation in these 

 words: "The errors in medicine have usually originated in 

 the speculative conceits of men of superior capacities; the 

 blunders of the weak are short lived, but a false theory, with 

 a semblance of nature, struck in the mint of genius, often 

 deceives the learned and passes current through the world.' 1 



107 



