MEDICINE 



117 



his death that his influence began to prevail. 

 His comprehensiveness, his prolix style, and 

 sectarian jealousy kept his authority in the back- 

 ground, and it was with the philosophers rather 

 than the profession that he was most in favour. 

 Gradually his writings, having been translated 

 into Latin, began to DC studied in the West, till | 

 in the 6th and 7th centuries they were much in 

 vogue. But it was the physicians of the Nesto- 

 rian creed, expelled from Byzantium, who became 

 his true apostles. Revering him for his teleology 

 and almost Christian worship of a benevolent j 

 creator, they diffused his name and authority 

 till the Arabian physicians l>ecanie his devoted 

 adherents, and spread his influence through East 

 and West alike for more than a thousand years. 



After Galen may be noticed the Byzantine 

 school viz. the compilers Oribasius (physician to 

 Julian the Apostate), Aetius, the abler Alexander 

 of Tralles, and the yet more independent Paul of 

 ..-Egina. In the West Crelius Aurelianus, above 

 referred to, alone redeems medicine from the 

 deterioration it hail reached in the hands of her- 

 balists and receipt-mongers. 



Arabian medicine arose oat of the Greek in those 

 Hellenic cities which had passed under Moslem 

 sway. Its importance l>egins with the Persian 

 Rhazes (925-26), a follower of Galen, though not 

 unacquainted with Hippocrates, practising in Bag- 

 dad. After him may be mentioned Mesua the 

 younger, of Damascus, whose materia medica, 

 dating from the llth century, was much in vogue 

 and was used by the London College of Physicians 

 in framing their pharmacopoeia in the reign of j 

 James I., and Abulcasis, author of a medical 

 cyclopiedia. Halv, compiler of the ' Royal Book,' 

 was the standard Arabian writer till Avicenna, 

 who, famed also as a philosopher, is the highest 

 name in Arabian medicine. His 'Canon,' lurid in 

 style and method, is an encyclopaedia of the healing 

 art, based on Aristotle, Galen, and his successors, 

 Greek as well as Arabian, but evincing no clinical 

 experience or research. His opponents were Aven- 

 znar and the latter's pupil Averrhoes, compilers 

 mainly, as was also the great Kabbi Maimonides, 

 the last noteworthy writer on Arabian medicine. 

 No advance was made by this school on the 

 Greek, except in the description of smallpox and 

 measles and, more distinctly, in pharmacy and 

 the virtues of drugs. The Arabs mrad this 

 superiority to their chemical skill, which origi- 

 nated new or modified old remedies, and also to 

 their more familiar relations with the East, im- 

 perfectly gleaned by their predecessors. Apothe- 

 caries' shops, and even tne pharmacopoeia, are 

 among the innovations medicine owes to tlieiu. 



European medicine, however, manifests no real 

 break from its rise under Hippocrates. In the 

 early middle ages the religious orders were the j 

 custodians of the degenerate knowledge and 

 practice of the healing art transmitted from the 

 later Roman authors till the curious mixture 

 of ancient science with the black art, characteristic 

 of monastic medicine, was superseded by the Bene- 

 dictines, whose house at Monte-Cassino in Cam- 

 pania was the seat of the Hippocratico-Galenic 

 revival, afterwards extended by the school of 

 Salerno. This latter was a non-religious establish- 

 ment, in which law as well as philosophy was 

 taught, while the preponderance it gave to medi- 

 cine as early as the 9th century earned for it the 

 name of Tivitas Hip|ocratica. ' It attracted pro- 

 minent men of the time in quest of health, among 

 them the Norman invaders of Southern Italy. 

 William the Conqueror was one of the visitors, and 

 bis -oil Kolx-rt is suppose.! to have lieen the king 

 of England for whom was written the famous 

 Regimen UnnHnlin Salerni, the rhyming Latin poem 



on ' health and the means of maintaining it,' which 

 afterwards circulated so widely through Europe. 

 The Salernitan school had many students, and, pro- 

 portionately, a considerable staff of teachers, some 

 of whom were women, their wives and daughters ; 

 the best known of them is Trotula (llth century), 

 wife of Joannes Platearius, first of a medical 

 family bearing that name, and author of Practica, 

 a manual of medicine which long held its ground. 

 But none of the Salernitan writers are other than 

 compilers, chiefly from Hippocrates, Galen, and 

 their successors. Diet was their sheet-anchor, 

 though their pharmacy improved on the previous 

 European standard, and their clinical teaching 

 was also favourable to rational medicine. But the 

 Arabian wave swept over the school, and, after the 

 13th century, almost obliterated it. It survived, 

 however, though but the shadow of a name, till its 

 suppression in 1811 by Napoleon. 



Latin renderings of the Arabian compilers were 

 the main channel through which Europe recovered 

 its knowledge of the classical medical writers 

 < 'onstantine Africanus (1050) being the earliest of 

 these translators. Transmitted through the Arabic, 

 the Greek medicine wore an eastern dress, and in 

 such guise it found its way to Montpellier, a school 

 which developed as that of Salerno waned. 

 Bologna and Padua, too, derived their medical 

 teaching from this oriental travesty of the Greek ; 

 but no great independent authority arose in any 

 of these seats of learning. Hiiser points out that 

 the practical tenor of the treatises they put forth 

 notably the Moritpellier school was due to 

 British authors, who, like Gilbert the English- 

 man, and (Minion the Scot, had graduated there. 

 But the fall of Constantinople and the immigration 

 of Greek scholars into Europe reopened the foun- 

 tains of ancient learning. Hippocrates and Galen 

 now l>ecame known in the original, and the master- 

 work of Celsus, till then a forgotten book, was once 

 more read with profit. Rational medicine had 

 returned to its parents. 



To the writings of Galen was due the revived study 

 of anatomy, and with it physiology ; to Dioscorides 

 the resuscitation of medical botany. The discovery 

 of America, followed up by inland exploration, led 

 to the introduction of new medicines, vegetable 

 and mineral. The reaction against the Arabian 

 masters was completed by 'authorised versions' 

 of the Greek originals versions chiefly the work 

 of physicians who were also Hellenists, and by 

 the middle of the 16th century Galen was re- 

 enthroned in the schools. "fhe downfall of 

 Arabian medicine was of earlier date in Italy 

 and England than in France, while Germany 

 was under the temporary sway of Paracelsus, a 

 meteoric genius who followed no school, but 

 vitiated his independence of judgment and great 

 acuteness by the haughtiest arrogance. He had 

 a positive as well as a mystical side, and, while 

 regarding disease as 'spiritual,' with which, \n\- 

 assisted, nature herself could often cope, he also 

 relied on chemical agencies for its cure. These 

 owed their virtue to their secret power over dis- 

 ease, whence he called them 'arcana.' Opium, 

 in the form of tincture, and antimony were among 

 these. Beyond compelling a closer study of 

 chemistry and showing an example of independ- 

 ence amid the universal belief in Galen, Paracelsus 

 did no good to medicine, and indeed, outside Ger- 

 many, was held in little account. 



Meanwhile, the outbreak of disease on an 

 epidemic scale, in forms unknown to the Greeks, 

 threw the medical art on its own resources, and 

 started that revolt against authority to which it 

 owed its next advance. The sweating sickness 

 was minutely described by Kaye (Latinised, Caius) 

 in England, and syphilis by physicians oil the 



