FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOCTORS. 691 



opinions as there are heads. If by chance they should agree upon 

 the purpose to be effected, they will differ concerning the details. 

 One will propose, for example, in the treatment of a tumor, to 

 make it ripen, while another, who had intended to prescribe the 

 same, will say althea and a third ursine, and so on with the others, 

 if there are a thousand of them ; then all these drugs will be 

 mixed in the same medicine, although mallows alone would have 

 been the best. 



An anecdote is related by Mondeville in illustration of the 

 desire that prevailed in those days to appear to be doing some- 

 thing. During a consultation, when a number of the best doctors 

 in Paris had just formulated a prescription for a sirup, a belated 

 colleague came in. After carefully examining the prescription, he 

 added a berry. On the others expressing surprise, he exclaimed : 

 " Mutton-heads and oxen ! why are you looking at me so ? How 

 could I conscientiously take my part of the fees if I did not put 

 something in the sirup ? " 



If the consultants do not dispute over some definite object, they 

 will dispute from jealousy or hatred ; and the instant one of them 

 suggests something reasonable and conformable to experience, the 

 others, even though it was what each one of them himself would 

 have recommended if he had been alone, rise one after the other 

 and agree in declaring the contrary of what was proposed. 



Mondeville thus describes consultations under two different 

 aspects. The first picture presents the typical, orderly consulta- 

 tion ; the second exhibits the daily strifes and rivalries, of which 

 he collects several various types in a few lines. Viewed in this 

 light, the men of the fourteenth century were much like those 

 who followed them, except that they were more brutal and less 

 careful of delicate forms. Translated for the Popular Science 

 Monthly from the Revue Scientifique. 



THE progress of Tommy Stringer at the Massachusetts Kindergarten for 

 the Blind affords a remarkable illustration of the power of suitable train- 

 ing to awaken and develop a mind from the darkest obscurity, and when 

 the conditions around seemingly act only to eclipse it Tommy was 

 brought to the institution, four and a half years old, in 1891, blind, deaf, 

 speechless, with no great intelligence, and "not unlike a puppy in some of 

 his instincts and characteristics." He was placed under the charge of a 

 special teacher and a competent one who devoted all her time to him. 

 He is described in the last published report of the institution as having 

 become " a fine boy bright, energetic, manly, instinct with life, erect in 

 stature, innocent as a lamb, frolicsome as a kitten, full of fun and ingenu- 

 ity, and not destitute even of a tendency to mischief " ; pure, honest, intel- 

 ligent, generous, using tools handily and with good taste, and advancing 

 well in all the branches of education, mental and physical. 



