Harnack has made complete the demonstration, then, that the third gospel and the Acts were written by St. Luke, who had been a practising physician. In spite of this, however, he finds many objections to the Luke narratives and considers that they add very little that is valuable to the contemporary evidence that we have with regard to Christ. He impairs with one hand the value of what he has so lavishly yielded with the other. He finds inconsistencies and discrepancies in the narrative that for him destroy their value as testimony. A lawyer would probably say that this is that very human element in the writings which demonstrates their authenticity and adds to their value as evidence, because it shows clearly the lack of any attempt to do anything more than tell a direct story as it had come to the narrator. No special effort was made to avoid critical objections founded on details. It was the general impression that was looked for.

Sir William Ramsay, in his "Luke the Physician and Other Studies in the History of Religion" (New York: Armstrong and Sons, 1908), has answered Harnack from the side of the professional critic with much force. He appreciates thoroughly the value of Professor Harnack's book, and above all the reactionary tendency away from nihilistic so-called higher criticism which characterized so much of German writing on biblical themes in the nineteenth century. He says (p. 7): "This [book of Harnack's] alone carries Lukan criticism a long step forwards, and sets it on a new and higher plane. Never has the unity and character of the book been demonstrated so convincingly and conclusively. The step is made and the plane is reached by the method which is practised in other departments of literary criticism, viz., by dispassionate investigation of the work and by discarding fashionable a priori theories."

The distinguished English traveller and writer on biblical subjects points out, however, that in detail many of Harnack's objections to the Lukan narratives are due to insufficient consideration of the circumstances in which they were written and the comparative significance of the details criticised. He says, "Harnack lays much stress on the fact that inconsistencies and inexactnesses occur all through Acts. Some of these are undeniable; and I have argued that they are to be regarded in the same light as similar phenomena in the poem of Lucretius and in other ancient classical writers, viz., as proofs that the work never received the final form which Luke intended to give it, but was still incomplete when he died. The evident need for a third book to complete the work, together with those blemishes in expression, form the proof."

Ramsay's placing of Harnack's writing in general is interesting in this connection. (P. 8) "Professor Harnack stands on the border between the nineteenth and twentieth century. His book shows that he is to a certain degree sensitive of and obedient to the new spirit; but he is only partially so. The nineteenth century critical method was false, and is already antiquated....

"The first century could find nothing real and true that was not accompanied by the marvellous and the 'supernatural.' The nineteenth century could find nothing real and true that was. Which view was right and which was wrong? Was either complete? Of these two questions, the second alone is profitable at the present. Both views were right—in a certain way of contemplating; both views were wrong—in a certain way. Neither was complete. At present, as we are struggling to throw off the fetters which impeded thought in the nineteenth century, it is most important to free ourselves from its prejudices and narrowness."

He adds (pp. 26 and 27): "There are clear signs of the unfinished state in which this chapter was left by Luke; but some of the German scholar's criticisms show that he has not a right idea of the simplicity of life and equipment that evidently characterized the jailer's house and the prison. The details which he blames as inexact and inconsistent are sometimes most instructive about the circumstances of this provincial town and Roman colonia.

"But it is never safe to lay much stress on small points of inexactness or inconsistency in any author. One finds such faults even in the works of modern scholarship if one examines them in the microscopic fashion in which Luke is studied here. I think I can find them in the author [Harnack] himself. His point of view sometimes varies in a puzzling way."

As a matter of fact, Harnack, as pointed out by Ramsay, was evidently working himself more and more out of the old conclusion as to the lack of authenticity of the Lucan writings into an opinion ever more and more favorable to Luke. For instance, in a notice of his own book, published in the Theologische Literaturzeitung, "he speaks far more favorably about the trustworthiness and credibility of Luke, as being generally in a position to acquire and transmit reliable information, and as having proved himself able to take advantage of his position. Harnack was gradually working his way to a new plane of thought. His later opinion is more favorable."

Ramsay also points out that Professor Giffert, one of our American biblical critics, had felt compelled by the geographical and historical evidence to abandon in part the older unfavorable criticism of Luke and to admit that the Acts is more trustworthy than previous critics allowed. Above all, "he saw that it was a living piece of literature written by one author." In a word, Luke is being vindicated in every regard.

Some of the supposed inaccuracies of Luke vanish when careful investigation is made. Some of his natural history details, for instance, have been impugned and the story of the viper that "fastened" itself upon St. Paul in Malta has been cited as an example of a story that would not have been told in that way by a man who knew medicine and the related sciences in Luke's time. Because the passage illustrates a number of phases of the discussion with regard to Luke's language I make a rather long quotation from Ramsay:

Take as a specimen with which to finish off this paper the passage Acts xxviii, 9 et seq., which is very fully discussed by Harnack twice. He argues that the true meaning of the passage was not understood until medical language was compared, when it was shown that the Greek word by which the act of the viper to Paul's hand is described, implies "bit" and not merely "fastened upon." But it is a well-assured fact that the viper, a poisonous snake, only strikes, fixes the poison fangs on the flesh for a moment, and withdraws its head instantly. Its action could never be what is attributed by Luke the eye witness to this Maltese viper; that it hung from Paul's hand and was shaken off into the fire by him. On the other hand, constrictors, which have no poison fangs, cling in the way described, but as a rule do not bite. Are we, then, to understand in spite of the medical style and the authority of Professor Blass (who translates "momordit" in his edition), that the viper fastened upon the apostle's hand? Then, the very name viper is a difficulty. Was Luke mistaken about the kind of snake which he saw? A trained medical man in ancient times was usually a good authority about serpents, to which great respect was paid in ancient medicine and custom.

Mere verbal study is here utterly at fault. We can make no progress without turning to the realities and facts of Maltese natural history. A correspondent obligingly informed me some years ago that Mr. Bryan Hook, of Farnham, Surrey (who, my correspondent assures me, is a thoroughly good naturalist), had found in Malta a small snake, Coronella austriaca, which is rare in England, but common in many parts of Europe. It is a constrictor, without poison fangs, which would cling to the hand or arm as Luke describes. It is similar in size to the viper, and so like in markings and general appearance that Mr. Hook, when he caught his specimen, thought he was killing a viper.

My friend, Prof. J.W.H. Trail, of Aberdeen, whom I consulted, replied that Coronella laevis or austriaca, is known in Sicily and the adjoining islands; but he can find no evidence of its existence in Malta. It is known to be rather irritable, and to fix its small teeth so firmly into the human skin as to need a little force to pull it off, though the teeth are too short to do any real injury to the skin. Coronella is at a glance very much like a viper; and in the flames it would not be closely examined. While it is not reported as found in Malta except by Mr. Hook, two species are known there belonging to the same family and having similar habits (leopardinus and zamenis (or coluber) gemonensis). The coloring of Coronella leopardinus would be the most likely to suggest a viper.

The observations justify Luke entirely. We have here a snake so closely resembling a viper as to be taken for one by a good naturalist until he had caught and examined a specimen. It clings, and yet it also bites without doing harm. That the Maltese rustics should mistake this harmless snake for a venomous one is not strange. Many uneducated people have the idea that all snakes are poisonous in varying degrees, just as the vulgar often firmly believe that toads are poisonous. Every detail as related by Luke is natural, and in accordance with the facts of the country.

In a word, then, the whole question as to Luke's authority as a writer, as an eye-witness of many things, and as the relator of many others with regard to which he had obtained the testimony of eye-witnesses is fully vindicated. Twenty years ago many scholars were prone to doubt this whole question. Ten years ago most of them were convinced that the Luke traditions were not justified by recent investigation. Now we have come back once more to the complete acceptance of the old traditions.

Perhaps the most unfortunate characteristic of much nineteenth-century criticism in all departments, even those strictly scientific, was the marked tendency to reject previous opinions for new ones. Somehow men felt themselves so far ahead of old-time writers and thinkers that they concluded they must hold opinions different from their ancestors. In nearly every case the new ideas that they evolved by supposedly newer methods are not standing the test of time and further study. There had been a continuous belief in men's minds, having its basis very probably on a passage in one of St. Peter's Epistles, that the earth would dissolve by fire. This was openly contradicted all during the nineteenth century and the time when the earth would freeze up definitely calculated by our mathematicians. Now after having studied radioactivity and learned from the physicist that the earth is heating up and will eventually get too hot for life, we calmly go back to the old Petrine declaration. Some of the most distinguished of the German biologists of the present day, such men as Driesch and others, calmly tell us that the edifice erected by Darwin will have to come down because of newly discovered evidence, and indeed some of them go so far as to declare that Darwinism was a crude hypothesis very superficial in its philosophical aspects and therefore acceptable to a great many people who, because it was easy to understand and was very different from what our fathers had believed, hastened to accept it. Nothing shows the necessity for being conservative in the matter of new views in science or ethics or religion more than the curious transition state in which we are with regard to many opinions at the present time, with a distinct tendency toward reaction to older views that a few years ago were thought quite untenable. We are rather proud of the advance that we are supposed to be making along many lines in science and scholarship, and yet over and over again, after years of work, we prove to have been following a wrong lead and must come back to where we started. This has been the way of man from the beginning and doubtless will continue. The present generation are having this curious regression that follows supposed progress strongly emphasized for them.



APPENDIX II

SCIENCE AT THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES[35]

With the growth of interest in science and in nature study in our own day, one of the expressions that is probably oftenest heard is surprise that the men of preceding generations and especially university men did not occupy themselves more with the world around them and with the phenomena that are so tempting to curiosity. Science is usually supposed to be comparatively new and nature study only a few generations old. Men are supposed to have been so much interested in book knowledge and in speculations and theories of many kinds, that they neglected the realities of life around them while spinning fine webs of theory. Previous generations, of course, have indulged in theory, but then our own generation is not entirely free from that amusing occupation. Nothing could well be less true, however, than that the men of preceding generations were not interested in science even in the sense of physical science, or that nature study is new, or that men were not curious and did not try to find out all they could about the phenomena of the world around them.

The medieval universities and the school-men who taught in them have been particularly blamed for their failure to occupy themselves with realities instead of with speculation. We are coming to recognize their wonderful zeal for education, the large numbers of students they attracted, the enthusiasm of their students, since they made so many handwritten copies of the books of their masters, the devotion of the teachers themselves, who wrote at much greater length than do our professors even now and on the most abstruse subjects, so that it is all the more surprising to think they should have neglected science. The thought of our generation in the matter, however, is founded entirely on an assumption. Those who know anything about the writers of the Middle Ages at first hand are not likely to think of them as neglectful of science even in our sense of the term. Those who know them at second hand are, however, very sure in the matter.

The assumption is due to the neglect of history that came in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We have many other similar assumptions because of the neglect of many phases of mental development and applied science at this time. For instance, most of us are very proud of our modern hospital development and think of this as a great humanitarian evolution of applied medical science. We are very likely to think that this is the first time in the world's history that the building of hospitals has been brought to such a climax of development, and that the houses for the ailing in the olden time were mere refuges, prone to become death traps and at most makeshifts for the solution of the problem of the care of the ailing poor. This is true for the hospitals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it is not true at all for the hospitals of the thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Miss Nutting and Miss Dock in their "History of Nursing"[36] have called attention to the fact that the lowest period in hospital development is during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Hospitals were little better than prisons, they had narrow windows, were ill provided with light and air and hygienic arrangements, and in general were all that we should imagine old-time hospitals to be. The hospitals of the earlier time, however, had fine high ceilings, large windows, abundant light and air, excellent arrangements for the privacy of patients, and in general were as worthy of the architects of the earlier times as the municipal buildings, the cathedrals, the castles, the university buildings, and every other form of construction that the late medieval centuries devoted themselves to.

The trouble with those who assume that there was no study of science and practically no attention to nature study in the Middle Ages is that they know nothing at all at first hand about the works of the men who wrote in the medieval period. They have accepted declarations with regard to the absolute dependence of the scholastics on authority, their almost divine worship of Aristotle, their utter readiness to accept authoritative assertions provided they came with the stamp of a mighty name, and then their complete lack of attention to observation and above all to experiment. Nothing could well be more ridiculous than this ignorant assumption of knowledge with regard to the great teachers at the medieval universities. Just as soon as there is definite knowledge of what these great teachers wrote and taught, not only does the previous mood of blame for them for not paying much more attention to science and nature at once disappear, but it gives place to the heartiest admiration for the work of these great thinkers. It is easy to appreciate, then, what Professor Saintsbury said in a recent volume on the thirteenth century:

And there have even been in these latter days some graceless ones who have asked whether the science of the nineteenth century after an equal interval will be of any more positive value—whether it will not have even less comparative interest than that which appertains to the scholasticism of the thirteenth.

Three men were the great teachers in the medieval universities at their prime. They have been read and studied with interest ever since. They wrote huge tomes, but men have pored over them in every generation. They were Albertus Magnus, the teacher of the other two, Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon. All three of them were together at the University of Paris shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century. Anyone who wants to know anything about the attitude of mind of the medieval universities, their professors and students, and of all the intellectual world of the time towards science and observation and experiment, should read the books of these men. Any other mode of getting at any knowledge of the real significance of the science of this time is mere pretence. These constitute the documents behind any scientific history of the development of science at this time.

It is extremely interesting to see the attitude of these men with regard to authority. In Albert's tenth book (of his "Summa"), in which he catalogues and describes all the trees, plants, and herbs known in his time, he observes: "All that is here set down is the result of our own experience, or has been borrowed from authors whom we know to have written what their personal experience has confirmed; for in these matters experience alone can be of certainty." In his impressive Latin phrase "experimentum solum certificat in talibus." With regard to the study of nature in general he was quite as emphatic. He was a theologian as well as a scientist, yet in his treatise on "The Heavens and the Earth" he declared that "in studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power. We have rather to inquire what nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass."[37]

Just as striking quotations on this subject might be made from Roger Bacon. Indeed, Bacon was quite impatient with the scholars around him who talked over-much, did not observe enough, depended to excess on authority, and in general did as mediocre scholars always do, made much fuss on second-hand information—plus some filmy speculations of their own. Friar Bacon, however, had one great pupil whose work he thoroughly appreciated because it exhibited the opposite qualities. This was Petrus—we have come to know him as Peregrinus—whose observations on magnetism have excited so much attention in recent years with the republications of his epistle on the subject. It is really a monograph on magnetism written in the thirteenth century. Roger Bacon's opinion of it and of its author furnishes us the best possible index of his attitude of mind towards observation and experiment in science.

I know of only one person who deserves praise for his work in experimental philosophy for he does not care for the discourses of men and their wordy warfare, but quietly and diligently pursues the works of wisdom. Therefore what others grope after blindly, as bats in the evening twilight, this man contemplates in their brilliancy because he is a master of experiment. Hence, he knows all of natural science whether pertaining to medicine and alchemy, or to matters celestial or terrestrial. He has worked diligently in the smelting of ores as also in the working of minerals; he is thoroughly acquainted with all sorts of arms and implements used in military service and in hunting, besides which he is skilled in agriculture and in the measurement of lands. It is impossible to write a useful or correct treatise in experimental philosophy without mentioning this man's name. Moreover, he pursues knowledge for its own sake; for if he wished to obtain royal favor, he could easily find sovereigns who would honor and enrich him.

Similar expressions might readily be quoted from Thomas Aquinas, but his works are so easy to secure and his whole attitude of mind so well known, that it scarcely seems worth while taking space to do so. Aquinas is still studied very faithfully in many universities, and within the last few years one of his great text-books of philosophy has been replaced in the curriculum of Oxford University, in which it occupied a prominent position in the long ago, as a work that may be offered for examination in the department of philosophy. It is with regard to him particularly that there has been the greatest revulsion of feeling in recent years and a recognition of the fact that here was a great thinker familiar with all that was known in the physical sciences, and who had this knowledge constantly in his mind when he drew his conclusions with regard to philosophical and theological questions.

It used to be the fashion to make little of the medieval scholars for the high estimation in which they held Aristotle. Occasionally even yet one hears narrowly educated men, I am sorry to say much more frequently scientific specialists than others, talk deprecatingly of this ardent devotion to Aristotle. No one who knows anything about Aristotle ever indulges in such an exhibition of ignorance of the realities of the history of philosophy and science. To know Aristotle well is to think of him as probably possessed of the greatest human mind that ever existed. We do not need to go back to the Middle Ages to be confirmed in that opinion. Modern scientists who know their science well, but who also know Aristotle well, and who are ardent worshippers at his shrine, are not hard to find. Romanes, the great English biologist of the end of the nineteenth century, said: "It appears to me that there can be no question that Aristotle stands forth not only as the greatest figure in antiquity but as the greatest intellect that has ever appeared upon this earth."

Before Romanes, George H. Lewes, in his interesting monograph in the history of thought, "Aristotle, a Chapter in the History of Science," is quite as complimentary to the great Greek thinker. We may say that Lewes was by no means partial to Aristotle. Anything but inclined to accept authority as of value in philosophy, he had been rendered impatient by the fact that so much of the history of philosophy was dominated by Aristotle, and it was only that the panegyric was forced from him by careful study of all that the Stagirite wrote that he said: "History gazed on him with wonder. His intellect was piercing and comprehensive; his attainments surpassed those of every philosopher; his influence has been excelled only by the founders of religion ... his vast and active intelligence for twenty centuries held the world in awe."

Professor Osborn, whose scholarly study of the theory of evolution down the ages "From the Greeks to Darwin" rather startled the world of science by showing not only how old was a theory of evolution, but how frequently it had been stated and how many of them anticipated phases of our own thought in the matter, pays a high compliment to the great Greek scientist. He says: "Aristotle clearly states and rejects a theory of the origin of adaptive structures in animals altogether similar to that of Darwin." He then quotes certain passages from Aristotle's "Physics," and says: "These passages seem to contain absolute evidence that Aristotle had substantially the modern conception of the evolution of life, from a primordial, soft mass of living matter to the most perfect forms, and that even in these he believed that evolution was incomplete for they were progressing to higher forms."

Modern French scientists are particularly laudatory in their estimation of Aristotle. The group of biologists, Buffon, Cuvier, St. Hilaire, and others who called world attention to French science and its attainments about a century ago, are all of them on record in highest praise of Aristotle. Cuvier said: "I cannot read his work without being ravished with astonishment. It is impossible to conceive how a single man was able to collect and compare the multitude of facts implied in the rules and aphorisms contained in this book."

It is possible, however, to get opinions ardently laudatory of Aristotle from the serious students of any nation, provided only they know their Aristotle. Sir William Hamilton, the Scotch philosopher, said:

"Aristotle's seal is upon all the sciences, his speculations have determined those of all subsequent thinkers." Hegel, the German philosophic writer, is not less outspoken in his praise: "Aristotle penetrated the whole universe of things and subjected them to intelligence." Kant, who is often said to have influenced our modern thinking more than any other in recent generations, has his compliment for Aristotle. It relates particularly to that branch of philosophy with which Kant had most occupied himself. The Koenigsberg philosopher said: "Logic since Aristotle, like Geometry since Euclid, is a finished science."

I do not want to tire you or I could quote many other authorities who proclaim Aristotle the genius of the race. They would include poets like Dante and Goethe, scholars like Cicero and Anthon, literary men like Lessing and Reich and many others. The scholars of the Middle Ages, far from condemnation for their devotion to Aristotle, deserve the highest praise for it. If they had done nothing else but appreciate Aristotle as our greatest modern scholars have done, that of itself would proclaim their profound scholarship.

The medieval writers are often said to have been uncritical in their judgment, but in their lofty estimation of Aristotle they displayed the finest possible critical judgment. On the contrary, the generations who made much of the opportunity to minimize medieval scholarship because of its worship at the shrine of Aristotle, must themselves fall under the suspicion at least of either not knowing Aristotle or of not thinking deeply about the subjects with regard to which he wrote. For in all the world's history the rule has been that whenever men have thought deeply about a subject and know what Aristotle has written with regard to that subject, they have the liveliest admiration for the great Greek thinker. This is true for philosophy, logic, metaphysics, politics, ethics, dramatics, but it is also quite as true for physical science. He lacked our knowledge, though not nearly to the degree that is usually thought, and he had a marvellous accumulation of information, but he had a breadth of view and a thoroughness of appreciation with a power of penetration that make his opinions worth while knowing even on scientific subjects in our enlightened age.

As for the supposed swearing by Aristotle, in the sense of literally accepting his opinions without daring to examine them critically, which is so constantly asserted to have been the habit of the medieval scholars and teachers, it is extremely difficult in the light of the expressions which we have from them, to understand how this false impression arose. Aristotle they thoroughly respected. They constantly referred to his works, but so has every thinking generation ever since. Whenever he had made a declaration they would not accept the contradiction of it without a good reason, but whenever they had good reasons, Aristotle's opinion was at once rejected without compunction. Albertus Magnus, for instance, said: "Whoever believes that Aristotle was a God must also believe that he never erred, but if we believe that Aristotle was a man, then doubtless he was liable to err just as we are." A number of direct contradictions of Aristotle we have from Albert. A well-known one is that with regard to Aristotle's assertion that lunar rainbows appeared only twice in fifty years. Albert declared that he himself had seen two in a single year.

Indeed, it seems very clear that the whole trend of thought among the great teachers of the time was away from the acceptance of scientific conclusions on authority unless there was good evidence for them available. They were quite as impatient as the scientists of our time with the constant putting forward of Aristotle as if that settled a scientific question. Roger Bacon wanted the Pope to forbid the study of Aristotle because his works were leading men astray from the study of science, his authority being looked upon as so great that men did not think for themselves but accepted his assertions. Smaller men are always prone to do this, and indeed it constitutes one of the difficulties in the way of advance in scientific knowledge at all times, as Roger Bacon himself pointed out.

These are the sort of expressions that are to be expected from Friar Bacon from what we know of other parts of his work. His "Opus Tertium" was written at the request of Pope Clement IV, because the Pope had heard many interesting accounts of what the great thirteenth-century teacher and experimenter was doing at the University of Oxford, and wished to learn for himself the details of his work. Bacon starts out with the principle that there are four grounds of human ignorance. These are, "first, trust in inadequate authority; second, that force of custom which leads men to accept without properly questioning what has been accepted before their time; third, the placing of confidence in the assertions of the inexperienced; and fourth, the hiding of one's own ignorance behind the parade of superficial knowledge, so that we are afraid to say I do not know." Professor Henry Morley, a careful student of Bacon's writings, said with regard to these expressions of Bacon:

No part of that ground has yet been cut away from beneath the feet of students, although six centuries have passed. We still make sheep-walks of second, third and fourth, and fiftieth hand references to authority; still we are the slaves of habit, still we are found following too frequently the untaught crowd, still we flinch from the righteous and wholesome phrase "I do not know" and acquiesce actively in the opinion of others that we know what we appear to know.

In his "Opus Majus" Bacon had previously given abundant evidence of his respect for the experimental method. There is a section of this work which bears the title "Scientia Experimentalis." In this Bacon affirms that "without experiment nothing can be adequately known. An argument may prove the correctness of a theory, but does not give the certitude necessary to remove all doubt, nor will the mind repose in the clear view of truth unless it finds its way by means of experiment." To this he later added in his "Opus Tertium": "The strongest argument proves nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences, and the goal of all speculation."

It is no wonder that Dr. Whewell, in his "History of the Inductive Sciences," should have been unstinted in his praise of Roger Bacon's work and writings. In a well-known passage he says of the "Opus Majus":

Roger Bacon's "Opus Majus" is the encyclopedia and "Novum Organon" of the thirteenth century, a work equally wonderful with regard to its wonderful scheme and to the special treatises by which the outlines of the plans are filled up. The professed object of the work is to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had not made greater progress, to draw back attention to the sources of knowledge which had been unwisely neglected, to discover other sources which were yet almost untouched, and to animate men in the undertaking of a prospect of the vast advantages which it offered. In the development of this plan all the leading portions of science are expanded in the most complete shape which they had at that time assumed; and improvements of a very wide and striking kind are proposed in some of the principal branches of study. Even if the work had no leading purposes it would have been highly valuable as a treasure of the most solid knowledge and soundest speculations of the time; even if it had contained no such details it would have been a work most remarkable for its general views and scope.

As a matter of fact the universities of the Middle Ages, far from neglecting science, were really scientific universities. Because the universities of the early nineteenth century occupied themselves almost exclusively with languages and especially formed students' minds by means of classical studies, men in our time seem to be prone to think that such linguistic studies formed the main portion of the curriculum of the universities in all the old times and particularly in the Middle Ages. The study of the classic languages, however, came into university life only after the Renaissance. Before that the undergraduates of the universities had occupied themselves almost entirely with science. It was quite as much trouble to introduce linguistic studies into the old universities in the Renaissance time to replace science, as it was to secure room for science by pushing out the classics in the modern time. Indeed the two revolutions in education are strikingly similar when studied in detail. Men who had been brought up on science before the Renaissance were quite sure that that formed the best possible means of developing the mind. In the early nineteenth century men who had been formed on the classics were quite as sure that science could not replace them with any success.

There is no pretence that this view of the medieval universities is a new idea in the history of education. Those who have known the old universities at first hand by the study of the actual books of their professors and by familiarity with their courses of study, have not been inclined to make the mistake of thinking that the medieval university neglected science. Professor Huxley in his "Inaugural Address as Rector of Aberdeen University" some thirty years ago stated very definitely his recognition of medieval devotion to science. His words are well worth remembering by all those who are accustomed to think of our time as the first in which the study of science was taken up seriously in our universities. Professor Huxley said:

The scholars of the medieval universities seem to have studied grammar, logic, and rhetoric; arithmetic and geometry; astronomy, theology, and music. Thus their work, however imperfect and faulty, judged by modern lights, it may have been, brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man. For these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo, sometimes it may be in caricature, what we now call philosophy, mathematical and physical science, and art. And I doubt if the curriculum of any modern university shows so clear and generous a comprehension of what is meant by culture, as this old Trivium and Quadrivium does.

It would be entirely a mistake, however, to think that these great writers and teachers who influenced the medieval universities so deeply and whose works were the text-books of the universities for centuries after, only had the principles of physical and experimental science and did not practically apply them. As a matter of fact their works are full of observation. Once more, the presumption that they wrote only nonsense with regard to science comes from those who do not know their writings at all, while great scientists who have taken the pains to study their works are enthusiastic in praise. Humboldt, for instance, says of Albertus Magnus, after reading some of his works with care:

Albertus Magnus is equally active and influential in promoting the study of natural science and of the Aristotelian philosophy. His works contain some exceedingly acute remarks on the organic structure and physiology of plants. One of his works bearing the title of "Liber Cosmographicus De Natura Locorum" is a species of physical geography. I have found in it considerations on the dependence of temperature concurrently on latitude and elevation and on the effect of different angles of the sun's rays in heating the ground which have excited my surprise.

It is with regard to physical geography of course that Humboldt is himself a distinguished authority.

Humboldt's expression that he found some exceedingly acute remarks on the organic structure and physiology of plants in Albert the Great's writings will prove a great surprise to many people. Meyer, the German historian of botany, however, has re-echoed Humboldt's praise with emphasis. The extraordinary erudition and originality of Albert's treatise on plants drew from Meyer the comment:

No botanist who lived before Albert can be compared with him unless Theophrastus, with whom he was not acquainted; and after him none has painted nature in such living colors or studied it so profoundly until the time of Conrad Gessner and Caesalpino.

These men, it may be remarked, come three centuries after Albert's time. A ready idea of Albert's contributions to physical science can be obtained from his life by Sighart, which has been translated into English by Dixon and was published in London in 1870. Pagel, in Puschmann's "History of Medicine," already referred to, gives a list of the books written by Albert on scientific matters with some comments which are eminently suggestive, and furnish solid basis for the remark that I have made, that men's minds were occupied with nearly the same problems in science in the thirteenth century as we are now, while the conclusions they came to were not very different from ours, though reached so long before us.

This catalogue of Albertus Magnus' works shows very well his own interest and that of his generation in physical science of all kinds. There were eight treatises on Aristotle's physics and on the underlying principles of natural philosophy and of energy and of movement; four treatises concerning the heavens and the earth, one on physical geography which also contains, according to Pagel, numerous suggestions on ethnography and physiology. There are two treatises on generation and corruption, six books on meteors, five books on minerals, three books on the soul, two books on the intellect, a treatise on nutritives, and then a treatise on the senses and another on the memory and on the imagination. All the phases of the biological sciences were especially favorite subjects of his study. There is a treatise on the motion of animals, a treatise in six books on vegetables and plants, a treatise on breathing things, a treatise on sleep and waking, a treatise on youth and old age, and a treatise on life and death. His treatise on minerals contains, according to Pagel, a description of ninety-five different kinds of precious stones. Albert's volumes on plants were reproduced with Meyer, the German botanist, as editor (Berlin, 1867). All of Albert's books are available in modern editions.

Pagel says of Albertus that

His profound scholarship, his boundless industry, the almost incontrollable impulse of his mind after universality of knowledge, the many-sidedness of his literary productivity, and finally the almost universal recognition which he received from his contemporaries and succeeding generations, stamp him as one of the most imposing characters and one of the most wonderful phenomena of the Middle Ages.

In another passage Pagel has said:

While Albert was a Churchman and an ardent devotee of Aristotle, in matters of natural phenomena he was relatively unprejudiced and presented an open mind. He thought that he must follow Hippocrates and Galen, rather than Aristotle and Augustine, in medicine and in the natural sciences. We must concede it a special subject of praise for Albert that he distinguished very strictly between natural and supernatural phenomena. The former he considered as entirely the object of the investigation of nature. The latter he handed over to the realm of metaphysics.

Roger Bacon is, however, the one of these three great teachers who shows us how thoroughly practical was the scientific knowledge of the universities and how much it led to important useful discoveries in applied science and to anticipations of what is most novel even in our present-day sciences. Some of these indeed are so startling, that only that we know them not by tradition but from his works, where they may be readily found without any doubt of their authenticity, we should be sure to think that they must be the result of later commentators' ideas. Bacon was very much interested in astronomy, and not only suggested the correction of the calendar, but also a method by which it could be kept from wandering away from the actual date thereafter. He discovered many of the properties of lenses and is said to have invented spectacles and announced very emphatically that light did not travel instantaneously but moved with a definite velocity. He is sometimes said to have invented gunpowder, but of course he did not, though he studied this substance in various forms very carefully and drew a number of conclusions in his observations. He was sure that some time or other man would learn to control the energies exhibited by explosives and that then he would be able to accomplish many things that seemed quite impossible under present conditions.

He said, for instance:

Art can construct instruments of navigation, such that the largest vessels governed by a single man will traverse rivers and seas more rapidly than if they were filled with oarsmen. One may also make carriages which without the aid of any animal will run with remarkable swiftness.

In these days when the automobile is with us and when the principal source of energy for motor purposes is derived from explosives of various kinds, this expression of Roger Bacon represents a prophecy marvellously surprising in its fulfilment. It is no wonder that the book whence it comes bears the title "De Secretis Artis et Naturae." Roger Bacon even went to the extent, however, of declaring that man would some time be able to fly. He was even sure that with sufficient pains he could himself construct a flying machine. He did not expect to use explosives for his motor power, however, but thought that a windlass properly arranged, worked by hand, might enable a man to make sufficient movement to carry himself aloft or at least to support himself in the air, if there were enough surface to enable him to use his lifting power to advantage. He was in intimate relations by letter with many other distinguished inventors and investigators besides Peregrinus and was a source of incentive and encouragement to them all.

The more one knows of Aquinas the more surprise there is at his anticipation of many modern scientific ideas. At the conclusion of a course on cosmology delivered at the University of Paris he said that "nothing at all would ever be reduced to nothingness" (nihil omnino in nihilum redigetur). He was teaching the doctrine that man could not destroy matter and God would not annihilate it. In other words, he was teaching the indestructibility of matter even more emphatically than we do. He saw the many changes that take place in material substances around us, but he taught that these were only changes of form and not substantial changes and that the same amount of matter always remained in the world. At the same time he was teaching that the forms in matter by which he meant the combinations of energies which distinguish the various kinds of matter are not destroyed. In other words, he was anticipating not vaguely, but very clearly and definitely, the conservation of energy. His teaching with regard to the composition of matter was very like that now held by physicists. He declared that matter was composed of two principles, prime matter and form. By forma he meant the dynamic element in matter, while by materia prima he meant the underlying substratum of material, the same in every substance, but differentiated by the dynamics of matter.

It used to be the custom to make fun of these medieval scientists for believing in the transmutation of metals. It may be said that all three of these greatest teachers did not hold the doctrine of the transmutation of metals in the exaggerated way in which it appealed to many of their contemporaries. The theory of matter and form, however, gave a philosophical basis for the idea that one kind of matter might be changed into another. We no longer think that notion absurd. Sir William Ramsay has actually succeeded in changing one element into another and radium and helium are seen changing into each other, until now we are quite ready to think of transmutation placidly. The Philosopher's Stone used to seem a great absurdity until our recent experience with radium, which is to some extent at least the philosopher's stone, since it brings about the change of certain supposed elements into others. A distinguished American chemist said not long ago that he would like to extract all the silver from a large body of lead ore in which it occurs so commonly, and then come back after twenty years and look for further traces of silver, for he felt sure that they would be found and that lead ore is probably always producing silver in small quantities and copper ore is producing gold.

Most people will be inclined to ask where the fruits of this undergraduate teaching of science are to be found. They are inclined to presume that science was a closed book to the men and women of that time. It is not hard, however, to point the effect of the scientific training in the writings of the times. Dante is a typical university man of the period. He was at several Italian universities, was at Paris and perhaps at Oxford. His writings are full of science. Professor Kuehns, of Wesleyan, in his book "The Treatment of Nature in Dante," has pointed out how much Dante knows of science and of nature. Few of the poets not only of his own but of any time have known more. There are only one or two writers of poetry in our time who go with so much confidence to nature and the scientific interpretation of her for figures for their poetry. The astronomy, the botany, the zooelogy of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, Dante knew very well and used confidently for figurative purposes. Anyone who is inclined to think nature study a new idea in the world forgets, or has never known, his Dante. The birds and the bees, the flowers, the leaves, the varied aspects of clouds and sea, the phenomena of phosphorescence, the intimate habits of bird and beast and the ways of the plants, as well as all the appearances of the heavens, Dante knew very well and in a detail that is quite surprising when we recall how little nature study is supposed to have attracted the men of his time. Only that his readers appreciated it all, Dante would surely not have used his scientific erudition so constantly.

So much for the undergraduate department of the universities of the Middle Ages, and the view is absolutely fair, for these were the men to whom the students flocked by thousands. They were teaching science, not literature. They were discussing physics as well as metaphysics, psychology in its phenomena as well as philosophy, observation and experiment as well as logic, the ethical sciences, economics, practically all the scientific ideas that were needed in their generation—and that generation saw the rise of the universities, the finishing of the cathedrals, the building of magnificent town halls and castles and beautiful municipal buildings of many kinds, including hospitals, the development of the Hansa League in commerce, and of wonderful manufacturers of all the textiles, the arts and crafts, as well as the most beautiful book-making and art and literature. We could be quite sure that the men who solved all the other problems so well could not have been absurd only in their treatment of science. Anyone who reads their books will be quite sure of that.

While most people might be ready, then, to confess that possibly Huxley was not mistaken with regard to the undergraduate department of the universities, most of them would feel sure that at least the graduate departments were sadly deficient in accomplishment. Once more this is entirely an assumption. The facts are all against any such idea.

There were three graduate departments in most of the universities—theology, law, and medicine. While physical scientists are usually not cognizant of it apparently, theology is a science, a department of knowledge developed scientifically, and most of these medieval universities did more for its scientific development than the schools of any other period. Quite as much may be said for philosophy, for there are many who hesitate to attribute any scientific quality to modern developments in the matter. As for law, this is the great period of the foundation of scientific law development; the English common law was formulated by Bracton, the deep foundations of basic French and Spanish law were laid, and canon law acquired a definite scientific character which it was always to retain. All this was accomplished almost entirely by the professors in the law departments of the universities.

It was in medicine, however, where most people would be quite sure without any more ado that nothing worth while talking about was being done, that the great triumphs of graduate teaching at the medieval universities were secured. Here more than anywhere else is there room for supreme surprise at the quite unheard-of anticipations of our modern medicine and, stranger still, as it may seem, of our modern surgery.

The law regulating the practice of medicine in the Two Sicilies about the middle of the thirteenth century shows us the high standard of medical education. Students were required to have three years of preliminary study at the university, four years in the medical department, and then practise for a year with a physician before they were allowed to practise for themselves. If they wanted to practise surgery, an extra year in the study of anatomy was required. I published the text of this law, which was issued by the Emperor Frederick II about 1241, in the Journal of the American Medical Association three years ago. It also regulated the practice of pharmacy. Drugs were manufactured under the inspection of the government and there was a heavy penalty for substitution, or for the sale of old inert drugs, or improperly prepared pharmaceutical materials. If the government inspector violated his obligations as to the oversight of drug preparations the penalty was death. Nor was this law of the Emperor Frederick an exception. We have the charters of a number of medical schools issued by the Popes during the next century, all of which require seven years or more of university study, four of them in the medical department, before the doctor's degree could be obtained. When new medical schools were founded they had to have professors from certain well-recognized schools on their staff at the beginning in order to assure proper standards of teaching, and all examinations were conducted under oath-bound secrecy and with the heaviest obligations on professors to be assured of the knowledge of students before allowing them to pass.

It might be easy to think, and many people are prone to do so, that in spite of the long years of study required there was really very little to study in medicine at that time. Those who think so should read Professor Clifford Allbutt's address on the "Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery" delivered at the World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904. He has dwelt more on surgery than on medicine, but he makes it very clear that he considers that the thinking professors of medicine of the later Middle Ages were doing quite as serious work in their way as any that has been done since. They were carefully studying cases and writing case histories, they were teaching at the bedside, they were making valuable observations, and they were using the means at their command to the best advantage. Of course there are many absurdities in their therapeutics, but then we must not forget there have always been many absurdities in therapeutics and that we are not free from them in our day. Professor Richet, at the University of Paris, said not long ago: "The therapeutics of any generation is quite absurd to the second succeeding generation." We shall not blame the medieval generations for having accepted remedies that afterwards proved inert, for every generation has done that, even our own.

Their study of medicine was not without lasting accomplishment, however. They laid down the indications and the dosage for opium. They used iron with success, they tried out many of the bitter tonics among the herbal medicines, and they used laxatives and purgatives to good advantage. Down at Montpellier, Gilbert, the Englishman, suggested red light for smallpox because it shortened the fever, lessened the lesions, and made the disfigurement much less. Finsen was given the Nobel prize partly for re-discovery of this. They segregated erysipelas and so prevented its spread. They recognized the contagiousness of leprosy, and though it was probably as widespread as tuberculosis is at the present time, they succeeded not only in controlling but in eventually obliterating it throughout Europe.

It was in surgery, however, that the greatest triumphs of teaching of the medieval universities were secured. Most people are inclined to think that surgery developed only in our day. The great surgeons of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, anticipated most of our teaching. They investigated the causes of the failure of healing by first intention, recognized the danger of wounds of the neck, differentiated the venereal diseases, described rabies, and knew much of blood poisoning, and operated very skilfully. We have their text-books of surgery and they are a never-ending source of surprise. They operated on the brain, on the thorax, on the abdominal cavity, and did not hesitate to do most of the operations that modern surgeons do. They operated for hernia by the radical cure, though Mondeville suggested that more people were operated on for hernia for the benefit of the doctor's pocket than for the benefit of the patient. Guy de Chauliac declared that in wounds of the intestines patients would die unless the intestinal lacerations were sewed up, and he described the method of suture and invented a needle holder. We have many wonderful instruments from these early days preserved in pictures at least, that show us how much modern advance is merely re-invention.

They understood the principles of aseptic surgery very well. They declared that it was not necessary "that pus should be generated in wounds." Professor Clifford Allbutt says:

They washed the wound with wine, scrupulously removing every foreign particle; then they brought the edges together, not allowing wine or anything else to remain within—dry adhesive surfaces were their desire. Nature, they said, produces the means of union in a viscous exudation, or natural balm, as it was afterwards called by Paracelsus, Pare, and Wurtz. In older wounds they did their best to obtain union by cleansing, desiccation, and refreshing of the edges. Upon the outer surface they laid only lint steeped in wine. Powders they regarded as too desiccating, for powder shuts in decomposing matters; wine after washing, purifying, and drying the raw surfaces evaporates.

Almost needless to say these are exactly the principles of aseptic surgery. The wine was the best antiseptic that they could use and we still use alcohol in certain cases. It would seem to many quite impossible that such operations as are described could have been done without anaesthetics, but they were not done without anaesthetics. There were two or three different forms of anaesthesia used during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. One method employed by Ugo da Lucca consisted of the use of an inhalant. We do not know what the material employed was. There are definite records, however, of its rather frequent employment.

What a different picture of science at the medieval universities all this makes from what we have been accustomed to hear and read with regard to them. It is difficult to understand where the old false impressions came from. The picture of university work that recent historical research has given us shows us professors and students busy with science in every department, making magnificent advances, many of which were afterwards forgotten, or at least allowed to lapse into desuetude.

The positive assertions with regard to old-time ignorance were all made in the course of religious controversy. In English-speaking countries particularly it became a definite purpose to represent the old Church as very much opposed to education of all kinds and above all to scientific education. There is not a trace of that to be found anywhere, but there were many documents that were appealed to to confirm the protestant view. There was a Papal bull, for instance, said to forbid dissection. When read it proves to forbid the cutting up of bodies to carry them to a distance for burial, an abuse which caused the spread of disease, and was properly prohibited. The Church prohibition was international and therefore effective. At the time the bull was issued there were twenty medical schools doing dissection in Italy and they continued to practise it quite undisturbed during succeeding centuries. The Papal physicians were among the greatest dissectors. Dissections were done at Rome and the cardinals attended them. Bologna at the height of its fame was in the Papal States. All this has been ignored and the supposed bull against anatomy emphasized as representing the keynote of medical and surgical history. Then there was a Papal decree forbidding the making of gold and silver. This was said to forbid chemistry or alchemy and so prevent scientific progress. The history of the medical schools of the time shows that it did no such thing. The great alchemists of the time doing really scientific work were all clergymen, many of them very prominent ecclesiastics.

Just in the same way there were said to be decrees of the Church councils forbidding the practice of surgery. President White says in his "Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom," that, as a consequence of these, surgery was in dishonor until the Emperor Wenceslaus, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, ordered that it should be restored to estimation. As a matter of fact, during the two centuries immediately preceding the first years of the fifteenth century, surgery developed very wonderfully, and we have probably the most successful period in all the history of surgery except possibly our own. The decrees forbade monks to practise surgery because it led to certain abuses. Those who found these decrees and wanted to believe that they prevented all surgical development simply quoted them and assumed there was no surgery. The history of surgery at this time is one of the most wonderful chapters in human progress.

The more we know of the Middle Ages the more do we realize how much they accomplished in every department of intellectual effort. Their development of the arts and crafts has never been equalled in the modern time. They made very great literature, marvellous architecture, sculpture that rivals the Greeks', painting that is still the model for our artists, surpassing illuminations; everything that they touched became so beautiful as to be a model for all the after time. They accomplished as much in education as they did in all the other arts, their universities had more students than any that have existed down to our own time, and they were enthusiastic students and their professors were ardent teachers, writers, observers, investigators. While we have been accustomed to think of them as neglecting science, their minds were occupied entirely with science. They succeeded in anticipating much more of our modern thought, and even scientific progress, than we have had any idea until comparatively recent years. The work of the later Middle Ages in mathematics is particularly strong, and was the incentive for many succeeding generations. Roger Bacon insisted that, without mathematics, there was no possibility of real advance in physical science. They had the right ideas in every way. While they were occupied more with the philosophical and ethical sciences than we are, these were never pursued to the neglect of the physical sciences in the strictest sense of that term.

Is it not time that we should drop the foolish notions that are very commonly held because we know nothing about the Middle Ages—and, therefore, the more easily assume great knowledge—and get back to appreciate the really marvellous details of educational and scientific development which are so interesting and of so much significance at this time?



APPENDIX III

MEDIEVAL POPULARIZATION OF SCIENCE

The idea of collecting general information from many sources, of bringing it together into an easily available form, so as to save others labor, of writing it out in compendious fashion, so that it could readily pass from hand to hand, is likely to be considered typically modern. As a matter of fact, the Middle Ages furnish us with many examples of the popularization of science, of the writing of compendia of various kinds, of the gathering of information to save others the trouble, and, above all, of the making of what, in the modern time, we would call encyclopedias. Handbooks of various kinds were issued, manuals for students and specialists, and many men of broad scholarship in their time devoted themselves to the task of making the acquisition of knowledge easy for others. This was true not only for history and philosophy and literature, but also for science. It is not hard to find in each century of the Middle Ages some distinguished writer who devoted himself to this purpose, and for the sake of the light that it throws on these scholars, and the desire for information that must have existed very commonly since they were tempted to do the work, it seems worth while to mention here their names, and those of the books they wrote, with something of their significance, though the space will not permit us to give here much more than a brief catalogue raisonne of such works.

Very probably the first who should be mentioned in the list is Boethius, who flourished in the early part of the sixth century. He owed much of his education to his adoptive father, afterwards his father-in-law, Symmachus, who, with Festus, represented scholarship at the court of the Gothic King, Theodoric of Verona. These three—Festus, Symmachus, and Boethius—brought such a reputation for knowledge to the court that they are responsible for many of the wonderful legends of Dietrich of Bern, as Theodoric came to be called in the poems of the medieval German poets. The three distinguished and devoted scholars did much to save Greek culture at a time when its extinction was threatened, and Boethius particularly left a series of writings that are truly encyclopedic in character. There are five books on music, two on arithmetic, one on geometry, translations of Aristotle's treatises on logic, with commentaries; of Porphyry's "Isagoge," with commentaries, and a commentary on Cicero's "Topica." Besides, he wrote several treatises in logic and rhetoric himself, one on the use of the syllogism, and one on topics, and in addition a series of theological works. His great "Consolations of Philosophy" was probably the most read book in the early Middle Ages. It was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred, into old German by Notker Teutonicus, the German monk of St. Gall, and its influence may be traced in Beowulf, in Chaucer, in High German poetry, in Anglo-Norman and Provencal popular poetry, and also in early Italian verse. Above all, the "Divine Comedy" has many references to it, while the "Convito" would seem to show that it was probably the book that most influenced Dante. Though it is impossible to confirm by documentary evidence the generally accepted idea that Boethius died a martyr for Christianity, the tradition can be traced so far back, and it has been so generally accepted that this seems surely to have been the case. The fact is interesting, as showing the attitude of scholars towards the Church and of the Church towards scholarship thus early.

The next great name in the tradition should probably be that of Cassiodorus, the Roman writer and statesman, prime minister of Theodoric, who, after a busy political life, retired to his estate at Vivarium, and, in imitation of St. Benedict, who had recently established a monastery at Monte Cassino, founded a monastery there. He is said to have lived to the age of ninety-three. His retirement favored this long life, for, after the death of Theodoric, troublous times came, and civil war, and only his monastic privileges saved him from the storm and stress of the times. He had been interested in literature and the collection of information of many kinds before his retirement, and it is not unlikely that his recognition of the fact that the monastic life offered opportunities for the pursuit of this, under favorable circumstances, led him to take it up.

While still a statesman he wrote a series of works relating to history and politics and public affairs generally. These consisted mainly of chronicles and panegyrics, and twelve books of miscellanies called Variae. After his retirement to the monastery, a period of ardent devotion to writing begins, and a great number of books were issued. He evidently gathered round him a number of men whom he inspired with his spirit, or, perhaps, selected, because he found that, while they had a taste for a quiet, peaceful spiritual life, they were also devoted to the accumulation and diffusion of knowledge. A series of commentaries on portions of the Scriptures was written, the Jewish antiquities of Josephus translated, and the ecclesiastical histories of Theodoric, Sozomen, and Socrates made available in Latin. Cassiodorus himself is said to have made a compendium of these, called the "Historia Tripartita," which was much used as a manual of history during succeeding centuries. Then there were treatises on grammar, on orthography, and a series of works on mathematics. In all of his writings Cassiodorus shows a special fondness for the symbolism of numbers.

There is a well-grounded tradition that he insisted on the study of the Greek classics of medical literature, especially Hippocrates and Galen, and awakened the interest of the monks in the necessity for making copies of these fathers of medicine. The tradition that he established at Vivarium is also found to have existed at Monte Cassino among the Benedictines, and, doubtless, to this is to be attributed the foundation of the medical school of Salerno, where Benedictine influence was so strong. It is probable, therefore, that to Cassiodorus must be attributed the preservation in as perfect a state as we have them of the old Greek medical writers.

His main idea was, of course, the study of Scriptures, but with just as many helps as possible. He thought that commentators, and historians, not alone Christian, but also Hebrew and Pagan, should be studied to illustrate it, and then the commentaries of the Latin fathers, so that a thoroughly rounded knowledge of it should be obtained. He thus began an "Encyclopedia Biblica," and set a host of workers at its accomplishment.

Every country in Europe shared this movement for the diffusion of information during the early Middle Ages, and the works of men from each of these countries in succeeding centuries has come down to us, preserved in spite of all the vicissitudes to which they were so liable during the centuries before the invention of printing and the easy multiplication of books. To many people it will seem surprising to learn that the next evidence of deep broad interest in knowledge is to be found in the next century in the distant west of Europe, in the Spanish Peninsula. It is a long step from the semi-barbaric splendor of the Gothic court at Verona, to the bishop's palace in Seville in Andalusia. The two cities are separated by what is no inconsiderable distance in our day. In the seventh century they must have seemed almost at the other end of the world from each other. Those who recall what we have insisted on in several portions of the body of this work with regard to the high place Spanish genius won for itself in the Roman Empire, and how much of culture among the Spaniards of that time the occurrence of so many important writers of that nationality must imply, will not be surprised at the distinguished work of a great Christian Spanish writer of the seventh century.

Indeed, it would be only what might be expected for evidences of early awakening of the broadest culture to be found in Spain. The important name in the popularization of science in the seventh century is St. Isidore of Seville. He made a compendium of all the scattered scientific traditions and information of his time with regard to natural phenomena in a sort of encyclopedia of science. This consisted of twenty books—chapters we would call them now—treating almost de omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis (everything knowable and a few other things besides). It is possible that the work may have been written by a number of collaborators under the patronage of the bishop, though there is no sure indication of this to be found either in the volume itself or even contemporary history. All the ordinary scientific subjects are treated. Astronomy, geography, mineralogy, botany, and even man and the animals have each a special chapter. Pouchet, in his "History of the Natural Sciences During the Middle Ages," calls attention to the fact that, in grouping the animals for collective treatment in the different chapters, sometimes the most heterogeneous creatures are brought under a common heading. Among the fishes, for instance, are classed all living things that are found in water. The whale and the dolphin, as well as sponges, and oysters, and crocodiles, and sea serpents, and lobsters, and hippopotamuses, all find a place together, because of the common watery habitation. The early Spanish Churchman would seem to have had an enthusiastic zeal for complete classification that would surely have made him a strenuous modern zooelogist.

The next link in the tradition of encyclopedic work is the Venerable Bede, whose character was more fully honored by the decree on November 13, 1899, by Pope Leo XIII declaring him a Doctor of the Church. Bede was the fruit of that ardent scholarship which had risen in England as a consequence of the introduction of Christianity. It had been fostered by the coming of scholar saints from Ireland, but was, unfortunately, disturbed by the incursions of the Danes. While Bede is known for his greatest work, the "Ecclesiastical History of the English People," which gives an account of Christianity in England from its beginning until his own day, he wrote many other works. His history is the foundation of all our knowledge of early British history, secular as well as religious, and has been praised by historical writers of all ages, who turned to it for help with confidence. He wrote a number of other historical works. Besides, he wrote books on grammar, orthography, the metrical art, on rhetoric, on the nature of things, the seasons, and on the calculation of the seasons. These latter books are distinctly scientific. His contributions to Gregorian Music are now of great value.

After this, Alcuin and the monks, summoned by Charlemagne, take up the tradition of gathering and diffusing information, and the great monasteries of Tours, Fulda, and St. Gall carry it on. Besides these, in the ninth century Monte Cassino comes into prominence as an institution where much was done of what we would now call encyclopedic work. After his retirement from Salerno Constantine Africanus made his translations and commentaries on Arabian medicine, constituting what was really a medical encyclopedia of information not readily available at that time.

After this, of course, the tradition is taken up by the universities, and it is only when, with the thirteenth century, there came the complete development of the university spirit, that encyclopedias reached their modern expression. Three great encyclopedists, Vincent of Beauvais, Thomas of Cantimprato, and Bartholomaeus Anglicus, are the most famous. Vincent consulted all the authors sacred and profane that he could lay hold on, and the number was, indeed, prodigious. I have given some account of him in "The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries" (Catholic Summer School Press, New York, third edition, 1910).

It would be very easy to conclude that these encyclopedias, written by clergymen for the general information of the educated people of the times, contain very little that is scientifically valuable, and probably nothing of serious medical significance. Any such thought is, however, due entirely to unfamiliarity with the contents of these works. They undoubtedly contain absurdities, they are often full of misinformation, they repeat stories on dubious authority, and sometimes on hearsay, but usually the source of their information is stated, and especially where it is dubious, as if they did not care to state marvels without due support. Books of popular information, however, have always had many queer things,—queer, that is, to subsequent generations,—and it is rather amusing to pick up an encyclopedia of a century ago, much less a millennium ago, and see how many absurd things were accepted as true. The first edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica," issued one hundred and fifty years ago, furnishes an easily available source of the absurdities our more recent forefathers accepted. The men of the Middle Ages, however, were much better observers as a rule, and used much more critical judgment, according to their lights, than we have given them credit for. Often the information that they have to convey is not only valuable, but well digested, thoroughly practical, and sometimes a marvellous anticipation of some of our most modern thoughts. There is one of these encyclopedias which, because it was written in my favorite thirteenth century, I have read with some care. It is simply a development of the work of preceding clerical encyclopedists, and often refers to them. Because it contains some typical examples of the better sorts of information in these works, I have thought it worth while to quote two passages from it. The author is Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and the quaint English in which it is couched is quoted from "Medical Lore" (London, 1893). The book is all the more interesting because in a dear old English version, issued about 1540, the spellings of which are among the great curiosities of English orthography, it was often read and consulted by Shakespeare, who evidently quotes from it frequently, for not a little of the quaint scientific lore that he uses for his figures can be traced to expressions used in this book.

The first of the paragraphs that deserves to be quoted, discusses madness, or, as we would call it, lunacy, and sums up the causes, the symptoms, and the treatment quite as well as that has ever been done in the same amount of space:

Madness cometh sometime of passions of the soul, as of business and of great thoughts, of sorrow and of too great study, and of dread: sometime of the biting of a wood hound, or some other venomous beast; sometime of melancholy meats, and sometime of drink of strong wine. And as the causes be diverse, the tokens and signs be diverse. For some cry and leap and hurt and wound themselves and other men, and darken and hide themselves in privy and secret places. The medicine of them is, that they be bound, that they hurt not themselves and other men. And namely, such shall be refreshed, and comforted, and withdrawn from cause and matter of dread and busy thoughts. And they must be gladded with instruments of music, and some deal be occupied.'

The second discusses in almost as thorough a way the result of the bite of a mad dog. The old English word for mad, wood, is constantly used. The causes, the symptoms, and course of the disease, and its possible prevention by early treatment, are all discussed. The old tradition was already in existence that sufferers from rabies or hydrophobia, as it is called, dreaded water, when it is really only because the spasm consequent upon the thought even of swallowing is painful that they turn from it. That tradition has continued to be very commonly accepted even by physicians down to our own day, so that Bartholomew, the Englishman, in the thirteenth century, will not be blamed much for setting it forth for popular information in his time some seven centuries ago. The idea that free bleeding would bring about the removal of the virus is interesting, because we have in recent years insisted in the case of the very similar disease, tetanus, on allowing or deliberately causing wounds in which the tetanus microbe may have gained an entrance, to bleed freely.

The biting of a wood hound is deadly and venomous. And such venom is perilous. For it is long hidden and unknown, and increaseth and multiplieth itself, and is sometimes unknown to the year's end, and then the same day and hour of the biting, it cometh to the head, and breedeth frenzy. They that are bitten of a wood hound have in their sleep dreadful sights, and are fearful, astonied, and wroth without cause. And they dread to be seen of other men, and bark as hounds, and they dread water most of all things, and are afeared thereof full sore and squeamous also. Against the biting of a wood hound wise men and ready use to make the wounds bleed with fire or with iron, that the venom may come out with the blood, that cometh out of the wound.



FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: "Medicinisches aus der Aeltesten Kirchen Geschichte." Leipzig, 1892.]

[Footnote 2: Foulis, London and Edinburgh, 1910.]

[Footnote 3: My attention was called to the interesting story of the Jewish physicians of the Middle Ages and their scientific accomplishment while writing the article on Joseph Hyrtl for the Catholic Encyclopedia. His "Das Arabische und Hebraeische in der Anatomie" (Wien, 1879) has some interestingly suggestive material on these important chapters of the history of medicine. (I owe my opportunity to consult it to the courtesy of the Surgeon-General's library.) Biographic material has been obtained from Carmoly's "History of the Jewish Physicians," translated by Dr. Dunbar for the Maryland Medical and Surgical Journal, some extra copies of which were printed by John Murphy and Co., Baltimore, about the middle of the nineteenth century. Baas and Haeser's Histories of Medicine and Puschmann and Pagel's "Handbook" provided additional material, and I have found Landau's "Geschichte der Juedischen Aerzte" (Berlin, 1895) of great service.]

[Footnote 4: Of course there are many absurd things recommended in the Talmud. We cannot remind ourselves too often, however, that there have been absurd things at all times in medicine, and especially in therapeutics. It is curious how often some of these absurdities have repeated themselves. We are liable to think it very queer that men should have presumed, or somehow jumped to the conclusion, that portions of animals might possess wonderful virtue for the healing of diseases of the corresponding special parts of man. We ourselves, however, within a little more than a decade, had a phase of opotherapy—how much less absurd it seems under that high-sounding Greek term—that was apparently very learned in its scientific aspects yet quite as absurd as many phases of old-time therapy, as we look at it. We administered cardin for heart disease and nephrin for kidney trouble, cerebrin for insanity (save the mark!), and even prostate tissue for prostatism—and with reported good results! How many of us realize now that in this we were only repeating the absurdities, so often made fun of in old medicine, with regard to animal tissue and excrement therapeutics? The Talmud has many conclusions with regard to the symptoms of patients drawn from dreams; as, for instance, it is said to be a certain sign of sanguineous plethora when one dreams of the comb of a cock. One phase of our psycho-analysis in the modern time, however, has taken us back to an interpretation of dreams different of course from this, yet analogous enough to be quite striking.]

[Footnote 5: "Maimonides," by David Yellin and Israel Abrahams, Philadelphia, 1903.]

[Footnote 6: "Das Arabische und Hebraeische in der Anatomie," Dr. Joseph Hyrtl, Wien, 1879.]

[Footnote 7: "Anat. Antiq. Rariores," Vienna, 1835.]

[Footnote 8: It seems hard to understand how so useful an auxiliary to the surgeon as the ligature,—it seems indispensable to us,—could possibly be allowed to go out of use and even be forgotten. It will not be difficult, however, for anyone who recalls the conditions that obtained in old-time surgery. The ligature is a most satisfying immediate resource in stopping bleeding from an artery, but a septic ligature inevitably causes suppuration and almost inevitably leads to secondary hemorrhage. In the old days of septic surgery secondary hemorrhage was the surgeon's greatest and most dreaded bane. Some time from the fifth to the ninth day a septic ligature came away under conditions such that inflammatory disturbance had prevented sealing of the vessel. If the vessel was large, then the hemorrhage was fast and furious and the patient died in a few minutes. After a surgeon had had a few deaths of this kind he dreaded the ligature. He abandoned its use and took kindly to such methods as the actual cautery, red-hot knives for amputations, and the like, that would sear the surfaces of tissues and the blood-vessels, and not give rise to secondary hemorrhage. A little later, however, someone not familiar with secondary risks would reinvent the ligature. If he were cleanly in his methods and, above all, if he were doing his work in a new hospital, the ligature worked very well for a while. If not, it soon fell into innocuous desuetude again.]

[Footnote 9: Puschmann: "Handbuch der Geschichte der Medizin," Vol. I, page 652.]

[Footnote 10: The first dentist who filled teeth with amalgam in New York, some eighty years ago, had to flee for his life, because of a hue and cry set up that he was poisoning his patients with mercury.]

[Footnote 11: "Storia de la Scuola di Salerno."]

[Footnote 12: It is probably interesting to note that the word universitas as used here has no reference to our word university, but refers to the whole world of students as it were. In the Middle Ages universities were called studia generalia, general studies—that is, places where everything could be studied and where everyone from any part of the world could study. Our use of the word university in the special modern sense of the term comes from the formal mode of address to the faculty of a university when Popes or rulers sent them authoritative documents. Such documents began with the expression Universitas vestra, all of you (in the old-time English, as preserved in the Irish expression, "the whole of ye"), referring to all the members of the faculty. The transfer to our term and signification university was not difficult.]

[Footnote 13: Physicians wore a particular garb consisting of a cloak and often a mask, supposed to protect them from infections at this time, so that it was not difficult to make a characteristic picture as a sign for a pharmacy. These symbolic signs were much commoner and very necessary when people generally were not able to read. It is from that period that we have the mortar and pestle as also the colored lights in the windows of the drug stores, and the many-colored barber-pole. Also the big boot, key, watch, hat, bonnet, and the like, the last symbolic sign invention apparently being the wooden Indian for the tobacco store.]

[Footnote 14: The Medical Library and Historical Journal, Brooklyn, December, 1906.]

[Footnote 15: Taddeo, who was born in 1215, according to our usually accepted traditions in the matter, would have been seventy-five years of age when Mondino as a youth of scarcely more than fifteen went to the University. It might seem that so old a man would have very little influence over the young man. Taddeo, however, had, as we have said, a very strenuous old age. Everything in life had come to him late. He was well past thirty before he began to study philosophy and medicine, having been a seller of candles from necessity because of poverty in his younger years. His great success in practice came when he was past forty. He first began to teach when he was forty-five, and he was nearly fifty-five before he began to write. According to tradition he married when he was nearly eighty—whether for the first or second time is not said—and while this might be considered, and would in some cases be, an indication of weakness of character (it would probably depend on whether he married or was married), it seems in his case to have indicated a vigor of body and character which shows very clearly how great was the possibility of his influence as a teacher having been maintained even up to this late time of life, and thus influencing a pupil who is to represent the most potent influence at the beginning of the next century.]

[Footnote 16: Medical Library and Historical Journal, 1906.]

[Footnote 17: Pilcher (loc. cit.) tells of her tomb. I venture to change his translation of the inscription in certain unimportant particulars. He says:

"We know the very place where she was buried in front of the Madonna delle Lettre in the Church of San Pietro e Marcellino of the Hospital of Santa Maria de Mareto, where her associate, Agenio, mourning and inconsolable, placed a tablet with this inscription:

D . O . M . Vrceo . Contenti Alexandrae . Galinae . Pvellae . Persicetanae Penicillo . Egregiae . Ad . Anatomen . Exhibendam Et . Insignissimi . Medici . Mundini . Lucii Paucis . Comparandae . Discipulae . Cineres Carnis . Hic . Expectant . Resurrectionem Vixit . Ann . XIX . Obiit . Studio . Absunta Die XXVI Martii . A . S . MCCCXXVI Otto . Agenius . Lustrulanus . Ob . Eam . Demptam Sui . Potiori . Parte . Spoliatus . Sodali . Eximiae Ac . De . Se . Optime . Meritae . Inconsolabilis . M . P .

This inscription may be translated as follows:

In this urn enclosed The ashes of the body of Alexandra Giliani, a maiden of Periceto; Skilful with her brush in anatomical demonstrations And a disciple equalled by few, Of the most noted physician, Mundinus of Luzzi, Await the resurrection. She lived 19 years: she died consumed by her labors March 26, in the year of grace 1326. Otto Agenius Lustrulanus, by her taking away Deprived of his better part, his excellent companion, Deserving of the best, Has erected this tablet."

]

[Footnote 18: This is so striking that I quote their actual words from Gurlt, p. 704: "Multoties fit percussio in anteriori parte cranei et craneum in parte frangitur contraria."]

[Footnote 19: "Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery Down to the Sixteenth Century," London, 1904.]

[Footnote 20: Of course, for any extended knowledge of Mondeville, a modern reader must turn to Nicaise's translation of his "Chirurgia," which, with an introduction and a biography, was published at Paris in 1893. Nicaise's publication of this and of Guy de Chauliac's treatise has worked a revolution in medical history and, above all, has made these old authors available for those who hesitate to take up a work written entirely in Latin.]

[Footnote 21: In the very first book containing some account of human anatomy, a German volume by Conradus Mengenberger, called "Puch der Natur," the date of printing of which is about 1478,—that is, less than ten years after the printing of the very first book, the "Biblia pauperum," which appeared in 1470,—there are, according to Haller in his "Bibliotheca Anatomica," a series of illustrations. This is the first illustrated medical work ever published.]

[Footnote 22: Fordham University Press, New York, 1908.]

[Footnote 23: Fordham University Press, New York, 1908.]

[Footnote 24: See picture of the hospital ward at Tonnerre, in "The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries," 3rd edit., New York, 1911.]

[Footnote 25: "The Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery," by T. Clifford Allbutt, M.A., M.D. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1905.]

[Footnote 26: The beginning of the manuscript copy in the "Bibliotheque Nationale" is extremely interesting as an example of the English of the period, and alongside of it it seems worth while to quote the closing sentence as Nicaise reproduces them:

"In godes name here bygyneth the inventarie of gadryng to gedre medecyne in the partye of cyrurgie compilede and fulfilled in the zere (yere?) of our Loord 1363 by Guide de Cauliaco cirurgene and doctor of physik in the fulclere studye of Mountpylerz.

"On page 191, verso.—Here endeth the cyrurgie of Maistre Guyd' de Cauliaco dottoure of phisik."

The University of Cambridge copy has the title in the colophon. It runs as follows: "Ye inventorye of Guydo de Caulhiaco Doctor of Phisyk and Cirurgien in Ye Universitie of Mount Pessulanee of Montpeleres." The fly-leaf contains the words, "Jesu Christ save ye soule of mich." It is rather interesting to note how much closer to modern English is this copy, made probably not much more than half a century later than the first one and, above all, how much more nearly the spelling has come. At this time, however, and, indeed, for more than a century later, spelling had no fixed rule, and a man might spell the same word quite differently even on the same page. The difference between doctor spelled thus in the early edition, and doctours in the later one, probably means nothing more than personal peculiarities of the original translator or copyist.]

[Footnote 27: In Nicaise this last word is written crapte. I have ventured to suggest crafte, since a misreading between the two letters would be so easy. In the same way I have suggested tentatively a changing of the z in the title of the Bibliotheque Nationale copy to y, making the word yere instead of zere.]

[Footnote 28: "A History of Dentistry from the Most Ancient Times Until the End of the Eighteenth Century," by Dr. Vincenzo Guerini, editor of the Italian Review L'Odonto-Stomatologia, Philadelphia and New York, Lea and Febriger, 1909.]

[Footnote 29: The first printed edition of Arculanus is that of Venice, 1542, bearing the Latin title, "Joannis Arculani Commentaria in Nonum Librum Rasis," etc.]

[Footnote 30: It is curious to trace how old are the traditions on which some of these old stories, that must now be rejected, are founded. I have come upon the story with regard to Basil Valentine and the antimony and the monks in an old French medical encyclopedia of biography, published in the seventeenth century, and at that time there was no doubt at all expressed as to its truth. How much older than this it may be I do not know, though it is probable that it comes from the sixteenth century, when the kakoethes scribendi attacked many people because of the facility of printing, and when most of the good stories that have so worried the modern dry-as-dust historian in his researches for their correction became a part of the body of supposed historical tradition. It is probably French in origin because in that language antimoine is a tempting bait for that pseudo-philology which has so often led to false derivations.]

[Footnote 31: There is in the New York Academy of Medicine a thick 24mo volume in which three of the classics of older medicine are bound together. They are Kerckringius's "Commentary on the Triumphal Chariot of Antimony," published at Amsterdam, 1671; Steno's "Dissertation on the Anatomy of the Brain," published in Leyden in 1671, and Father Kircher's "Scrutinium Physico Contagiosae Luis quae dicitur Pestis" (Physico-medical Discussions of the Contagious Disease which is called Pest). This was published at Leipzig in 1659. Just how the three works came to be bound together is hard to say. Very probably they belonged to some old-time scholar, though there is nothing about the books to tell anything of the story. The fact that all three of the authors were ecclesiastics of the Catholic Church, Valentine a Monk, Steno a Bishop, and Kircher a Jesuit, would seem to be one common bond and perhaps a reason for the binding of these rather disparate treatises together. In that case it is probable that the book came from an old monastic library dispersed after the suppression of the order by some government. It seems not unlikely that the volume belonged at some time to an old Jesuit library, for they have suffered the most in that way. That these three classics of medicine should have been republished in handy volume editions within practically ten years shows an interest in medical literature that has not existed again until our own time, for during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there was almost utter neglect of them.]

[Footnote 32: Paper read before the first meeting of the American Guild of St. Luke.]

[Footnote 33: Published by Putnams, New York, 1909.]

[Footnote 34: Dublin, 1882.]

[Footnote 35: The material for this chapter was gathered for a paper read before the Medical Improvement Society of Boston in the spring of 1911. In nearly its present form it was published in The Popular Science Monthly for May, 1911, and thanks are returned to the editor of that magazine for permission to reprint it here. The additions that have been made refer particularly to the estimation of Aristotle in the Middle Ages.]

[Footnote 36: New York, Putnam, 1908.]

[Footnote 37: "De Coelo et Mundo," 1, tr. iv., x.]



INDEX

A

Abbassides, 73

Abba Oumna, 70

Abbas, 324

Abelard, 189

Abraham, 97, 98

Abu Dschafer, 173

Abulcasis, 123, 170, 226, 317, 318, 323

Abul Farag, 51

Abulkasim, 124

Academy of Bagdad, 135

Acid, hydrochloric, 369

Ackermann, 302

Adalberon, 145

Adelard of Bath, 134

Adhesions, 128

AEgidius, 150

Aetius, 10, 117, 180, 317

Aetius, Amidenus, 28

Afflacius, 151, 171

Affinity, 372

Agenius, Otto, 227

Agricola, 345

A Kempis, Thomas, 345, 361

Alanfrancus, 260

Albertus Magnus, 267, 306, 356, 403

Alchemist, 354

Alcuin, 432

Alderotti, 213

Alexander II, Pope, 83

Alexander of Hales, 108

Alexander of Tralles, 10, 28, 39

Alexandria, 135, 385

Allbutt, Sir Clifford, 247, 254, 257, 304, 355, 421

Ali Abbas, 121, 173, 266, 323

Ali Ben el Abbas, 170

Almansor, 132

Alphanus, 143, 145

Amandaville, 264

Anaesthesia, 17; inhalation of, 295, 296

Anaesthetics, 246

Anathomia, 203

Anatomy, ignorance of, 289; of the teeth, 326

Anatomical material, 224

Anatomical injection, 227

Anatomical preparations, 277

Andrew of Piacenza, 248

Animals, motion of, 414

Anthemios, 40

Angelico, Fra, 360

Angina, 32, 44, 332

Anthon, 407

Antimony, 362

Antiseptic, 253

Antisepsis, 17, 246

Apocalypse, the chemical, 376

Aquinas, 306, 403

Arabian lack of originality, 140

Arabian words in anatomy, 138

Arabs, 7

Arabisms, 237

Archimattheas, 160

Arcoli, John of, 208

Arculanus, 323

Arezzo, 248

Arithmetical complements, 340

Armandaville, 264

Arnold of Villanova, 290, 358

Arrows, extraction of, 270

Arpinum, 4

Arsenic, 335

Artemisia maritima, 50

Arterial hemorrhage, 126

Arthur Legends, 218, 375, 392

Arts, 7; liberal, 149; and crafts, 425

Asepsis, 17, 244, 246, 387

Aspasia, 180

Astrology, 105; and astronomy, 106, 418

Asylums, 8

Auenbrugger, 91, 166

Authority, 269, 292, 404

Authorship, dual, 391

Automobile, 415

Avenzoar, 80, 123, 130, 132

Averroes (Averrhoes), 80, 123, 132, 230, 267

Avicenna, 80, 128, 170, 266, 268, 331

Avignon, 16, 233

B

Baas, 61, 63

Bachtischua, 56

Bacon, Roger, 107, 306, 356, 361, 403

Bagdad, 110, 111, 115, 134, 135

Barbarians, 5

Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 433

Bartholomew, 172

Basilios, 26

Basil. St., 24

Basila, 180

Basil Valentine, 20, 180, 349

Basra, 111

Bath, 103

Bath, milk, 131; in fever, 172; of the soul, 25

Baverius, 209

Baynes, Henry Samuel, 390

Bede, 432

Benedict, St., 178

Benedictines, 12, 164

Benedictine Nuns, 191

Beowulf, 428

Berengarius, 209

Bernard of Clairvaux, 192

Bernard, St., 85

Bertruccio, 209, 287

Bertruccius, 229

Binz, Prof. Carl, 333

Birthplace, Latin writers, 4

Black Death, 304

Boccaccio, 183, 306

Body-snatching, 224

Boerhaave, 38

Boethius, 427

Bokhara, 111

Bologna, 16, 142, 202, 206, 248

Book-learning, 371

Botany, 413; medieval, 414, 418

Botticelli, 360