456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



being done, that the great triumphs of graduate teaching at the 

 medieval universities were secured. Here more than anywhere else is 

 there room for supreme surprise at the quite unheard-of anticipations 

 of our modern medicine and stranger still, as it may seem, of our mod- 

 ern surgery. 



The law regulating the practise of medicine in the Two Sicilies 

 about the middle of the thirteenth century shows us the high standard 

 of medical education. Students were required to have three years of 

 preliminary study at the university, four years in the medical depart- 

 ment and then practise for a year with a physician before they were 

 allowed to practise for themselves. If they wanted to practise surgery, 

 an extra year in the study of anatomy was required. I published the 

 text of this law, which was issued by the Emperor Frederick II. about 

 1241, in the Journal of the American Medical Association three years 

 ago. It also regulated the practise of pharmacy. Drugs were manu- 

 factured under the inspection of the government and there was a heavy 

 penalty for substitution, or for the sale of old inert drugs, or improp- 

 erly prepared pharmaceutical materials. If the government inspector 

 violated his obligations as to the oversight of drug preparations the 

 penalty was death. Nor was this law of the Emperor Frederick an ex- 

 ception. We have the charters of a number of medical schools issued 

 by the popes during the next century, all of which require seven years 

 or more of university study, four of them in the medical department 

 before the doctor's degree could be obtained. When new medical 

 schools were founded they had to have professors from certain well- 

 recognized schools on their staff at the beginning in order to assure 

 proper standards of teaching, and all examinations were conducted 

 under oath-bound secrecy and with the heaviest obligations on pro- 

 fessors to be assured of the knowledge of students before allowing them 

 to pass. 



It might be easy to think, and many people are prone to do so, that 

 in spite of the long years of study required there was really very little 

 to study in medicine at that time. Those who think so should read 

 Professor Clifford Allbutt's address on the " Historical Eelations of 

 Medicine and Surgery " delivered at the World's Fair at St. Louis in 

 1904. He has dwelt more on surgery than on medicine, but he makes 

 it very clear that he considers that the thinking professors of medicine 

 of the later Middle Ages were doing quite as serious work in their way 

 as any that has been done since. They were carefully studying cases 

 and writing case histories, they were teaching at the bedside, they were 

 making valuable observations and they were using the means at their 

 command to the best advantage. Of course there are many absurdities 

 in their therapeutics, but then we must not forget there have always 

 been many absurdities in therapeutics and that we are not free from 



