MEDICAL SCIENCES. 147 



whose treatise on the Materia Mcdiea, disencumbered of the subtleties of the 

 Anil> school, contains ingenious deductions drawn from the external aspect nt' 

 eaeh plant ; Ishak ben Soliman, who collected some very sensible observations 

 upon dietetics ; and Serapion the younger, a Greek doctor, whose writings 

 embodied, some entirely novel suggestions as to the use of medicaments. 

 Moreover, the Arabic system of medicine, in passing from the schools of 

 the East to the. school of Cordova, underwent many changes. Thus the 

 Spaniard, Albucasis, who was at once an anatomist and physiologist, did 

 not implicitly accept the often contradictory authority of Galen and 

 Avicenna. He laid down as a principle that medicine and surgery should 

 lend each other mutual assistance, and he invented surgical instruments of a 

 most formidable kind. These instruments were of iron ; for, in opposition 

 to the prejudices of the age, according to which every metal had sonic- 

 special property analogous to the- different operations in surgery, he main- 

 tained that iron only ought to be employed. He therefore attacked the 

 disease with fire and iron, resorting to cauterization with a degree of bold- 

 ness which was often successful, and practising the difficult operation of 

 bronchotomy, or incision of the windpipe, which modern science again 

 resorts to in certain eases of croup. 



The numerous hospitals founded during the eleventh century were 

 rendered all the more indispensable on account of the Crusades ; and monks, 

 hospitallers, and hermits created upon the routes leading to the Holy Land 

 fresh refuges for pilgrims in distress. The Johannists and the brotherhoods 

 of St. Mary and St. Lazarus devoted themselves to the mission of charity 

 in the East ; in France there were the brothers of St. Antony and of the 

 Holy Ghost; and throughout the civilised world the heroic chevaliers of 

 St. John of Jerusalem, or the Templars, whose countless establishments 

 combined the triple character of conventual church, almshouse, and fortress, 

 and who, attired in a dress both military and monastic, wore a mantle 

 similar to that seen in the statues of J^sculapius, as a sign of the double 

 mission, beneficent and warlike, which they had sworn to fulfil, at the risk 

 of their lives, in the hospitals and upon the field of battle. 



l-'.iieh of these religious congregations gave itself over, either by its 

 origin or by the character of its rules, to the treatment of certain special 

 (lis.-as.-s. The Order of St. Antony, for instance, treated the terrible inflam- 

 mations of the bowels and the dysenteries known under the ^enerie name of 



