Ill 



MEDI/EVAL SCIENCE IN THE WEST 



WE have previously referred to the influence of 

 the Byzantine civilization in transmitting the 

 learning of antiquity across the abysm of the dark 

 age. It must be admitted, however, that the impor- 

 tance of that civilization did not extend much beyond 

 the task of the common carrier. There were no great 

 creative scientists in the later Roman empire of the East 

 any more than in the corresponding empire of the West. 

 There was, however, one field in which the Byzantine 

 made respectable progress and regarding which their 

 efforts require a few words of special comment. This 

 was the field of medicine. 



The Byzantines of this time could boast of two great 

 medical men, Aetius of Amida (about 502-575 A.D.) 

 and Paul of vEgina (about 620-690). The works of 

 Aetius were of value largely because they recorded 

 the teachings of many of his eminent predecessors, 

 but he was not entirely lacking in originality, and 

 was perhaps the first physician to mention diph- 

 theria, with an allusion to some observations of the 

 paralysis of the palate which sometimes follows this 

 disease. 



Paul of ^gina, who came from the Alexandrian 

 school about a century later, was one of those remark- 



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