Septembeb 3, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



227 



Until very recent years, the history of 

 medieval science has been regarded with 

 mingled feelings, whether of indifference or 

 aversion, due to the fact that real knowledge 

 of the subject, as based upon the elliptical 

 data in the printed literature, is so meager as 

 to be deceptive, while what little is known 

 has been constantly misread, over-stated or 

 misinterpreted, according to the religious bias 

 of the expositors. Until Sudhoff began to 

 photograph and interpret the hitherto undis- 

 covered medical manuscripts on the continent 

 of Euroi)e, such valuable source-books of 

 medieval folk-medicine as Oswald Cockayne's 

 " Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of 

 Early England" (1864^6) remained undis- 

 turbed on the dustier shelves of libraries. 

 But with the foundation of the Leipzig In- 

 stitute (1905), things began to take a new 

 turn. The classified hand-list of manuscripts 

 which Dr. and Mrs. Singer are making is an 

 imjwrtant move in aid of the problem : " How 

 are we to trace the disintegration of Greek 

 science in the Middle Ages and the slow 

 processes which led to the apparently sudden 

 Mse of the experimental method ? " Before 

 we can investigate the great mass of un- 

 digested manuscript material, we must first 

 have a reasoned catalogue; while to catalogue 

 all the manuscripts in a single country is the 

 first step to a classified " world catalogue " of 

 such manuscripts. Encouraged by grants 

 from the Eoyal Society and the British 

 Academy, the Singer catalogue has already 

 progressed far enough to enable its compilers 

 to block out their classification by subjects. 

 This list of subjects, replete with such rubrics 

 as Aristotle, Menology, Bestiaries, Magic, 

 Cosmology, Herbaria, Lapidaries, Marvels, 

 Melothesia Physiognomy, Cheiromancy, etc., 

 already affords a glimpse into the medieval 

 mind; and could we conceive of a medieval 

 scientific library, public or private, as attain- 

 ing to any great size (imjwssible by reason of 

 the costliness of the illuminated manuscripts 

 and printed incunabula), we should have an 

 inkling of the probable arrangement of its 

 books, by alcoves and shelves. Some 15,000 

 of these manuscripts are medical, and, of 



these, 1,900 are on general medicine, 953 

 alchemical, 600 magical, 194 surgical, 173 

 gynecological, 72 pediatric, 144 veterinary, 

 274 on pulse-lore, 274 on uroscopy, 234 on 

 blood-letting, 144 on diet, 18 on fevers, 90 on 

 the pest, 63 on the eye, 600 on herbs and 

 simples, 114 on physiognomy and cheiromancy, 

 106 on generation, while no less than 669 are 

 bestiaries and 2,500 collections of recipes. 

 These figures at once give a better notion of 

 the extent to which medicine was followed in 

 the Middle Ages, than any existing lists of 

 medical incunabula. Most of these manu- 

 scripts were written between 1200 and 1500 

 A.D., and but few before the eighth cen- 

 tury. Mrs. Singer shows by curve-tracing 

 their distribution in time, the curve taking 

 an abrupt and constantly upward slope after 

 the thirteenth century. The second pajjer 

 (1920) concludes with a highly instructive set 

 of 34 legends for lantern slides of specimen 



E. H. Garrison 



Aemt Medical Museum 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



THE ARRANGEMENT OF ATOMS IN SOME 

 COMMON METALS 



During the past year the crystal structures 

 of several elementary substances have been de- 

 termined. A brief summary of the results will 

 be given here. Complete data will be published 

 in the Physical Review. 



The method is the same as that previously 

 used.^ A narrow beam of monochromatic X- 

 rays is passed through the powdered material 

 to be analyzed and produces on a photographic 

 plate a pattern of fine lines. These lines are 

 due to the reflection of the X-rays from the 

 faces of the tiny crystals, one line for each 

 kind of face. From the positions and intensi- 

 ties of the lines the crystal structure can be 

 calculated. 



CALCIUM 



Calcium has generally been considered hexa- 

 gonal, partly from analogy with magnesium 



iPhys. Bev., 10, 661, 1917; Proc. A. I. E. E., 38, 

 1171, 1919. See also Debye & Sherrer, Phys. Z., 

 18, 291, 483, 1917. 



