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earned themselves with the practice of it From 

 Erasistratus to Celsus physicians of all schools 

 practised medicine and surgery as one art. Galen 

 urges the unity of medicine, and Littre points out 

 that this unity is maintained in the Hippocratic 

 writings. In the Middle Ages the ascetic contempt 

 for the body partly Stoic, chiefly oriental, the 

 barren alliance of medicine with philosophy, and 

 the low esteem of mechanical callings hid from the 

 physician the very gates of the city into which he 

 would enter. Francis Bacon says of the phy- 

 sicians of Harvey's day, that they saw things from 

 afar off, as if from a high tower ; and, again, that 

 after the manner of spiders they spun webs of sophis- 

 tical speculation from their own bowels. Surgery, by 

 virtue of its imperative methods, was kept clear of 

 philosophy on the one hand and of humanism on the 

 other ; and in Paris the establishment of the College 

 de St Come, afterwards the Academy of Surgery, 

 protected the higher surgery against the rabble 

 of barbers. Upon the raft of anatomy and surgery, 

 with some clinical aid from Salerno, positive 

 medicine crossed the gulf between Byzantine 

 compilations, monkish leechcraft, Arab starcraft 



