

MKDICAL sciE.\ci:s. i 4S 



Gerbert d'Auvcrgne, who became pope under the title of Sylvester II., had 

 in his parly life professed philosophy and practised medicine. 



It is no doubt true that the clerks who had taken monastic vows, or who 

 had been ordained priests, abstained, as a rule, from practising surgery ; but 

 they were often present at ihe serious operations effected by their lay 

 assistants. In such cases they confined themselves to the part of consulting 

 surgeons ; but though they abstained from dipping their hands in blood, they 

 performed in certain urgent cases such simple operations as incisions and 

 blood-lettings ; they treated dislocations and fractures of limbs, and dressed 

 the wounds inflicted in battle. Leper hospitals had long since been esta- 

 blished all over Europe. There was an almshouse open in every monastery, in 

 every large church where canons lived in common under the conventual 

 regime. There is reason for believing that several monasteries in the diocese 

 of Mot/, and especially those of Padcrborn and Corbie, which were famous 

 lor the philosophical and medical teaching imparted there to students from 

 all lands, furnished their pupils with the means of putting their theory into 

 practice in hospitals attached to the religious establishment. Here were 

 1 rained the physicians and surgeons who travelled all over Europe without 

 discarding their monastic attire, to fulfil their mission of charity by 

 practising medicine and performing ordinary operations of surgery. It was 

 from conventual hospitals, too, 'that were recruited the men and women who 

 devoted themselves entirely to tending the sick. There were also a number 

 of matrons and elderly women who belonged to a sort of corporation, which 

 was specially employed upon obstetric medicine, at that time forbidden 

 to men. 



The renown of the medical schools of Monte Casino and Salerno continued 

 to increase. The Emperor Henry II. repaired to the monastery of Monte 

 Casino to be treated for stone. Most of the sick who came three sought 

 merely to touch the relics of St. Matthew, the patron saint of the convent, 

 and those of other healing saints (Fig. 100) ; but they found there, to second 

 the intercessions of these saints, the material attentions of a religious 

 community which had made a serious study of medicine, and which possessed 

 a hygienic code in accordance with the teaching of experience and of common 

 sense. The touching of relics was, nevertheless, looked upon at this period 

 as one of the most effective means of cure, and it is not to be wondered 

 at that the Kings of England and of France, who had been anointed with the 



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