168 MEDICAL SCIENCES. 



at a time when Tarenta the Portuguese, Jacques de Forli, Cernisone of 

 Parma, Mengo Biancheli of Faenza, and Bencio of Sienna, were still teach- 

 ing Arabic scholasticism in the chairs of Montpellier, Pisa, Padua, Pa via, and 

 Bologna. It was at Padua that the Professors Guainer, Bartholomew Mon- 

 tagnana, and Michael Savonarola were the first to denounce the prejudices 

 and ravings of astrological and cabalistic medicine. 



The mere list of medical works published from the discovery of printing 

 to the close of the fifteenth century is sufficient proof that medical teaching 

 was exclusively Arabic throughout Europe. The Latin translation of 

 Avicenna was printed at Milan in 1473, at Padua in 1476, and at Strasburg 

 somewhat earlier. The translation of Mesue had appeared at Venice in 1471, 

 and was reprinted almost simultaneously in five or six other cities. But the 

 works of Hippocrates did not see the light until 1526, and the original text 

 of Dioscorides and Galen was not printed in France or Italy till the begin- 

 ning of the sixteenth century. The treatise of Celsus alone met with any 

 favour from the antagonists of Greek and Roman medicine. Upon the other 

 hand, the leading professors resorted freely to the printing-press as a means 

 of diffusing their own writings. 



The illustrious Antonio Benivieni, at the close of the sixteenth century, 

 succeeded in substituting for the fanciful dreamings of the Arab school the 

 pure doctrine of Hippocrates ; he commentated the books of the early 

 authors, basing his themes upon the investigations of anatomy and even 

 of pathological anatomy which he proclaimed to be the only rule of medical 

 art ; and his labours were continued by his pupils, John of Vigo and 

 Berengario of Carpi. The former published a work entitled " Practica in 

 Arte Chirurgica Copiosa " (Rome, 1514, in folio), which went through twenty 

 editions in thirty years, and was translated into French. His precepts 

 were everywhere treated as oracular, but he comes down to posterity, unfor- 

 tunately for his reputation, as the originator of the system of cauterizing 

 wounds inflicted by firearms with boiling oil a barbarous practice which, 

 believed to be effective for destroying the venom of the wounds, inflicted 

 infinite torture upon thousands of patients for more than a century. 

 Berengario raised the Bologna school from the discredit into which it had 

 fallen, and his excellent treatise upon Fractures of the Skull entitled him to 

 Ihe esteem of his learned successors. 



Germany was throughout the Middle Ages an easy prey to astrologers, 



