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Title: The Popes and Science
The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the
Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time
Author: James J. Walsh
Release Date: October 2, 2010 [EBook #34019]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POPES AND SCIENCE ***
Produced by Don Kostuch
[Transcriber's note]
This is derived from a copy on the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/popesscienceOOwals
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly
braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred
in the original book.
Obvious spelling errors have been corrected but "inventive" and
inconsistent spelling is left unchanged. Unusual use of quotation
marks is also unchanged.
Extended quotations and citations are indented.
Two sections in the Table of Contents and several entries in the
Index have been placed in the correct order.
Footnotes have been renumbered to avoid ambiguity, and relocated
to the end of the enclosing paragraph.
[End Transcriber's note]
SOME OPINIONS
THE POPES AND SCIENCE--The story of the Papal Relations to Science
from the Middle Ages down to the Nineteenth Century. By James J.
Walsh, M. D., Ph. D., LL. D. 540 pp. Price, $2.00 net.
Prof. Pagel, Professor of History at the University of Berlin: "This
book represents the most serious contribution to the history of
medicine that has ever come out of America."
Sir Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Physic at the University of
Cambridge (England): "The book as a whole is a fair as well as a
scholarly argument."
_The Evening Post_ (New York) says: "However strong the reader's
prejudice * * * * he cannot lay down Prof. Walsh's volume without at
least conceding that the author has driven his pen hard and deep into
the 'academic superstition' about Papal Opposition to science." In a
previous issue it had said: "We venture to prophesy that all who swear
by Dr. Andrew D. White's History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology in Christendom will find their hands full, if they attempt to
answer Dr. James J. Walsh's The Popes and Science."
_The Literary Digest_ said: "The book is well worth reading for its
extensive learning and the vigor of its style."
_The Southern Messenger_ says: "Books like this make it clear that it is
ignorance alone that makes people, even supposedly educated people,
still cling to the old calumnies."
_The Nation_ (New York) says: "The learned Fordham Physician has at
command an enormous mass of facts, and he orders them with logic,
force and literary ease. Prof. Walsh convicts his opponents of hasty
generalizing if not anti-clerical zeal."
_The Pittsburg Post_ says: "With the fair attitude of mind and
influenced only by the student's desire to procure knowledge, this
book becomes at once something to fascinate. On every page
authoritative facts confute the stereotyped statement of the purely
theological publications."
Prof. Welch, of Johns Hopkins, quoting Martial, said: "It is pleasant
indeed to drink at the living fountain-heads of knowledge after
previously having had only the stagnant pools of second-hand
authority."
Prof. Piersol, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania,
said: "I have been reading the book with the keenest interest, for it
indeed presents many subjects in what to me at least is a new light.
Every man of science looks to the beacon--truth--as his guiding mark,
and every opportunity to replace even time-honored misconceptions by
what is really the truth must be welcomed."
_The Independent_ (New York) said: "Dr. Walsh's books should be read in
connection with attacks upon the Popes in the matter of science by
those who want to get both sides."
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS SERIES
MAKERS OF MODERN MEDICINE
Lives of the men to whom nineteenth century medical science owes most.
Second Edition. New York, 1910. $2.00 net.
THE POPES AND SCIENCE
The story of Papal patronage of the sciences and especially medicine.
45th thousand. New York, 1911. $2.00 net.
MAKERS OF ELECTRICITY
Lives of the men to whom important advances in electricity are due. In
collaboration with Brother Potamian, F. S. C, Sc.D. (London),
Professor of Physics at Manhattan College. New York, 1909. $2.00 net.
EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW
Addresses in the history of education on various occasions. 3rd
thousand. New York, 1911. $2.00 net.
OLD-TIME MAKERS OF MEDICINE
The story of the students and teachers of the sciences related to
medicine during the Middle Ages. New York, 1911. $2.00 net.
MODERN PROGRESS AND HISTORY
Academic addresses on How Old the New. New York, 1912. $2.00 net.
THE THIRTEENTH GREATEST OF CENTURIES
5th edition (50,000). 116 illustrations, 600 pages. Catholic Summer
School Press, 1912. Postpaid $3.50.
THE CENTURY OF COLUMBUS
Why Columbus Discovered America in 1492. Catholic Summer School Press,
1914. Postpaid $3.50.
THE DOLPHIN PRESS SERIES
CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE
First and second series, each $1.00 net.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Lectures on The Influence of the Mind on the Body delivered at Fordham
University School of Medicine. Appletons, New York, 1912. $6.00 net.
[Illustration: Portrait]
GUY DE CHAULIAC
"The Prince of surgeons" (John Freund). "The Modern Hippocrates"
(Fallopius). "His work is of infinite price" (Portal). "A masterpiece
of learned and luminous writing" (Malgaigne). "It is rich, aphoristic,
orderly, and precise" (Clifford Allbutt). "Chauliac laid the
foundation of that primacy in surgery which the French maintained down
to the nineteenth century" (Pagel).
Chauliac is a good type of a medieval papal physician. Two of his
well-known expressions were:
"Sciences are made by addition and it is not possible that the same
man should begin and finish them."
"We are like infants at the neck of a giant, for we can see all that
the giant sees and something more."
[End Illustration]
The Popes and Science
THE HISTORY OF THE PAPAL RELATIONS TO SCIENCE
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES AND DOWN TO OUR OWN TIME
BY
JAMES J. WALSH
K.C. St.G., M.D., Ph.D., LL.D. Litt.D. (Georgetown),
Sc. D. (Notre Dame)
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY AT THE CATHEDRAL COLLEGE, NEW YORK;
MEMBER OF THE GERMAN, FRENCH AND ITALIAN
SOCIETIES OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE,
THE ST. LOUIS HISTORY CLUB,
NEW ORLEANS PARISH MEDICAL SOCIETY,
NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE,
NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
A.M.A., A.A.A.S., ETC.
NOTRE DAME EDITION
_ILLUSTRATED_
FIFTIETH THOUSAND
NEW YORK
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
1915
Copyright, 1908
James J. Walsh
First edition, 2,000 copies.
Second edition, 45,000 copies, 1910.
Third (English) edition, 2,000 copies, 1912.
Fourth (Notre Dame) edition, 1915,
enlarged and illustrated.
To
Professor ETTORE MARCHIAFAVA
_Papal Physician_
The worthy living representative of the great series of Papal
Physicians, the most distinguished list of names connected by any bond
in the history of science.
"Great additions have of late been made to our knowledge of the
past; the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth has
gradually given way, and competing historians all over the civilized
world have been zealous to take advantage of the change. The
printing of archives has kept pace with the admission of enquirers;
and the total mass of new matter, which the last half-century has
accumulated, amounts to many thousands of volumes. In view of
changes and of gains such as these, it has become impossible for the
historical writer of the present age to trust without reserve even
to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest student
finds himself continually deserted, retarded, misled by the classics
of historical literature, and has to hew his own way through
multitudinous transactions, periodicals and official publications in
order to reach the truth.
"Ultimate history cannot be obtained in this generation; but, so far
as documentary evidence is at command, conventional history can be
discarded, and the point can be shown that has been reached on the
road from one to the other." (Preface of _Cambridge Modern
History_.)
{iii}
PREFACE
_A new edition of this volume being called for, I take the occasion to
place it under the aegis of the University of Notre Dame as a slight
token of gratitude for the formal recognition of the work by the
faculty of that institution, and bind this Notre Dame edition in the
University colors, blue and gold._
There is much more readiness at the present time to accept the
conclusions with regard to the relations of the Popes and science here
suggested than there was when the book was first published. Knowledge
of the general history of science has grown very materially in the
last ten years. Every increase in historical knowledge has shown more
and more clearly how utterly without foundation were many ideas which
had been very commonly accepted, particularly in English-speaking
countries, on the subjects here discussed. The supposed opposition to
the development of science on the part of the Popes and the Church is
now readily seen to have had no existence in reality, and popular
notions on the subject were due entirely to ignorance of the history
of science. There was supposed to be no scientific development and no
nature study until quite recent times. The generations immediately
preceding ours knew of none, and therefore concluded there must have
been none. They went even farther, and felt that since there had been
none, there must be some special reason for this lacuna in human
progress. The Church and the Popes were the favorite scapegoats for
human failings, so they were blamed. Now we know that there was a
magnificent development of science, not only in the Renaissance period
under the fostering care of the Popes and ecclesiastics, but also
during the old university times. What has come above all to be
recognized is that the medieval universities were _scientific
universities_. They paid more attention to the ethical and
philosophical sciences than we do, but they devoted a great deal of
time to mathematics and the physical sciences. Mr. Huxley, in his
inaugural address as Rector of the University of Aberdeen, declared
thirty years ago that the curriculum of these old universities was
better calculated to develop the many-sided mind of man than the
curriculum of any modern university. Above all, in surgery and in
medicine they did magnificent work. Anaesthesia, antisepsis, and the
natural methods of cure were all anticipated in the medieval time. At
the International Congress of Medicine last summer, a section on the
history of medicine was organized because it has come to be recognized
that very much that is even of practical value can be learned from
medical history.
The fact of the matter is that during the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries there was a great decadence of interest in
scholarship and true education. There is a distinct descent in human
culture at this time. Education was at its lowest ebb, hospitals {iv}
were the worst ever built, art and architecture were neglected, and
human liberty was so shackled that the French Revolution was needed to
lift the fetters from men's minds as well as bodies. They, in their
ignorance, spoke slightingly of old-time scholars. During the past
century we have come to a better knowledge of the Middle Ages, and he
is indeed a backward student of history who now thinks of them as
"dark." Our millionaires have gathered, at immense expense,
magnificent examples of the arts and crafts and beautiful books of the
medieval and Renaissance periods. Our binders imitate their books, our
artists study their works, we have revived their architecture and
literature, are imitating their social ideas until, instead of "the
dark ages," we have come to think of them as "the bright ages." What
is not generally realized is that they are just as bright in science
as they were in art, architecture, literature, and the arts and
crafts.
Literally, the Popes were as much the patrons of science as they were
of the arts. Professor White's book, "The Warfare of Science with
Theology," like Professor Draper's "History of the Conflict Between
Religion and Science," are now seen to represent simply an interesting
evidence of the lack of real knowledge of the history of science and,
above all, complete ignorance of details as to the genuine
accomplishment of the olden time on the part of the generation by
which they were taken seriously. Being quite sure that there was no
science to speak of in the older times, these writers gathered every
possible reference, found anywhere in secondary authorities, for they
almost never went to the original documents, as evidence for their
preconceived conviction that the Church must have suppressed science
whenever that was possible. The real history of science was ignored.
As soon as that is known there is no further question of Church
opposition, but, on the contrary, of the extent of ecclesiastical
patronage and encouragement of science.
Some of this very different story is told only too incompletely in
this volume. It would take many volumes to give all the details of it.
Readers will find here at least such references to the actual
documentary history as will form a good basis for definite knowledge
of the genuine relations of the Popes to science. The series of new
appendices in this edition, especially those on Papal Physicians,
Science in America, and the original Papal documents so often quoted,
but seldom seen entire, is meant to supply material for the correction
of many false notions that are unfortunately prevalent. They present
historical matter that has not been readily available hitherto in
English-speaking countries and that has nowhere been easy of access in
the form here given.
Appendix VII by Rev. Father Leahy on _The Fathers of The Church and
Science_ presents a controverted point of history to persuasion.
Appendix IX shows how amusing and amazing was Professor Draper's lack
of knowledge of the history of science and above all of medicine and
surgery when he wrote his "histories" that were so widely read and
accepted because we in America knew no better for the moment.
{v}
PREFACE
For years, as a student and physician, I listened to remarks from
teachers and professional friends as to the opposition of the Popes to
science, until finally, much against my will, I came to believe that
there had been many Papal documents issued, which intentionally or
otherwise hampered the progress of science. Interest in the history of
medicine led me to investigate the subject for myself. To my surprise,
I found that the supposed Papal opposition to science was practically
all founded on an exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo
incident. As a matter of history, the Popes were as liberal patrons of
science as of art. In the Renaissance period, when their patronage of
Raphael and Michel Angelo and other great artists did so much for art,
similar relations to Columbus, Eustachius, and Caesalpinus, and later
to Steno and Malpighi, our greatest medical discoverers, had like
results for science. The Papal Medical School was for centuries the
greatest medical school in Europe, and its professors were the most
distinguished medical scientists of the time. This is a perfectly
simple bit of history that anyone may find for himself in any reliable
history of medicine. The medical schools were the scientific
departments of the universities practically down to the nineteenth
century. In them were studied botany, zoology and the biological
sciences generally, chemistry, physics, mineralogy and even astronomy,
because of the belief that the stars influenced human constitutions.
The Popes in fostering medical schools (there were four of them in the
Papal dominions, and two of them, Bologna and Rome, were the greatest
medical schools for several centuries) were acting as wise and
beneficent patrons of science. Many of the greatest scientists of the
Middle Ages were clergymen. Some of the greatest of them were
canonized as saints. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas are typical
examples. At least one Pope had been a distinguished scientist before
being elected to the Papacy. For seven centuries the Popes selected as
their physicians the greatest medical scientists of the {vi} time, and
the list of Papal physicians is the worthiest series of names
connected by any bond in the history of medicine, far surpassing in
scientific import even the roll of the faculty of any medical school.
In a word, I failed to find any trace of Papal opposition to true
science in any form. On the contrary, I found abundant evidence of
their having been just as liberal and judicious patrons of science as
they were of art and education in all forms. I found also that those
who write most emphatically about Papal opposition to science, know
nothing at all of the history of science, and above all of medicine
and of surgery, during three very precious centuries. Because they
know nothing about it they think there was none, and go out of their
way to find a reason for its absence, while all the time there is a
wondrous series of chapters of science for those who care to look for
them. This is the story that I have tried to tell in this book.
This material is, I think, gathered into compact form for the first
time. No one knows better than I do how many defects are probably in
the volume. What I have tried to do is to present a large subject in a
popular way, and at the same time with such references to readily
available authorities as would make the collection of further
information comparatively easy. I am sorry that the book has had to
take on a controversial tone. No one feels more than I do that
controversy seldom advances truth. There are certain false notions,
however, which have the prestige of prominent names behind them, which
simply must be flatly contradicted. I did not seek the controversy,
for when I began to publish the original documents in the subject I
mentioned no names. Controversy was forced on me, but not until I had
made it a point to meet and spend many pleasant hours with the writer
whose statements I must impugn, because they so flagrantly contradict
the simple facts of medical history.
{vii}
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION. 1
May Catholics dissect?
Supposed prohibition of dissection.
Twenty medical schools in Catholic Europe.
Medieval universities and medical education.
Allbutt on medicine down to the sixteenth century.
William of Salicet and Lanfranc, the great medieval surgeons.
The nearer to Rome the better the medical school.
The state of medical teaching and discovery.
The relation of the Popes to medical progress.
Supposed Papal prohibitions.
Ignorance of medieval medicine the reason for misrepresentation.
The Popes did not hamper medicine nor any other science.
Galileo's case an incident, not the index of a policy.
The Papal Medical School the greatest in the world.
The Papal Physicians leaders in science.
The Church did for science as much as for art and literature.
History a conspiracy against the truth. (Cambridge Modern History.)
THE SUPPOSED PAPAL PROHIBITION OF DISSECTION. 28
A new Catholic medical school and dissection.
Supposed Papal prohibitions of anatomy and of chemistry.
The bull of Pope Boniface VIII., De Sepulturis.
Reason for the ball.
Supposed misinterpretation.
Misuse of word infallibility.
Some history of dissection.
Date of bull important in history.
Mondino's work.
Body-snatching.
Dissections elsewhere.
How Mondino prepared his bodies for dissection.
Guy de Chauliac at Bologna sees many dissections.
Mondino's assistants, Otto and Alessandra.
Papal permissions to dissect.
The Church granting anatomical privileges
where civil authorities refused.
How the tradition of this Papal prohibition originated.
M. Daunou as an authority.
Reply of Pope Benedict XIV. as to bull.
This subject a type of certain kinds of history
THE STORY OF ANATOMY DOWN TO THE RENAISSANCE. 61
Presumed failure of anatomy during the Middle Ages a myth.
Famous Law of Frederick II.
Dissections at Salerno.
Taddeo and anatomy.
Salicet and Lanfranc.
A famous medico-legal autopsy.
{viii}
Mondino in the history of anatomy.
Roth's story of dissection.
Guy de Chauliac's experience at Bologna.
The story of dissection during the fourteenth century without a break.
Continued in next century.
The work of Berengar of Carpi, Achillini, Matthew of Gradi.
Pathological anatomy born with Benivieni.
Pres. White's attitude to the evidence for dissection at this time.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ANATOMY.--VESALIUS. 90
The golden age of anatomy as of letters and art in Italy.
Not origin, but wonderful development.
Great predecessors of Raphael and Michel Angelo,
as of Vesalius and Columbus.
Legitimate culmination of anatomical development.
The pre-Vesalians, Mondino, Bertrucci, Chauliac,
Achillini, Berengar and Benivieni.
The English students, Linacre, Caius, Phreas.
Italy the Mecca of anatomical investigators.
Harvey and Steno.
Graduate work in Italy then as in Germany now.
Vesalius's career.
The University of Louvain.
Vesalius in Paris, in Italy.
The Father of Modern Anatomy.
Royal Physician to Charles V.
Some historical misconstructions.
What the Popes did for anatomy in the sixteenth century.
THE SUPPOSED PAPAL PROHIBITION OF CHEMISTRY. 120
False impression prevalent just as in anatomy.
Striking similarity of history-lie.
American writers.
The Papal decree.
Its purpose.
The gold-brick industry.
Fines to be distributed to the poor.
Pope John's bull, _Super Illius specula._
Appeal to historians of chemistry.
Chemistry in later Middle Ages.
Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Raymond Lully,
Arnold of Villanova, the two Hollanduses, Basil Valentine,
Paracelsus and his ecclesiastical teachers.
Pope John XXII. a patron of science and of education
A PAPAL PATRON OF EDUCATION AND OF SCIENCE. 138
Pope John XXII. distinguished for his administrative abilities,
his learning and his abstemiousness.
Avarice and the Papal revenues.
Educational foundations from Papal revenues.
Modern educators and this old-time patron of education.
All great Popes subject of slander.
The personality of Pope John XXII.
Pres. White's astonishing declarations as to the
bull _Super Illius specula._
Pope John XXII. "a kindly and rational scholar."
His bull for the University {ix} of Perugia.
Perugia and the history of culture.
Standards in education.
Seven years for the doctorate in medicine.
Foundation of the University of Cahors.
Modern requirements.
Why the Pope favored education
THE CHURCH AND SURGERY DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 167
Mistaken notions as to medieval surgery.
Supposed Church discouragement of surgery.
Misinterpreted ecclesiastical documents once more.
Gurlt on surgery during the Middle Ages.
Wonderful developments of surgery, when ignorantly said not to exist.
Allbutt and Pagel on the great surgeons of the Middle Ages.
Salicet.
Lanfranc.
Surprising anticipations of modern surgery.
Mondeville.
Surgical common sense.
Yperman.
Illustrations of surgical instruments.
Hydrophobia.
Chauliac the Father of Modern Surgery.
Place in surgery.
Chamberlain of the Pope.
Technics of surgery.
Chauliac's career.
Ardern, the English surgeon.
His works.
False impressions with regard to surgical history.
Professional jealousy not ecclesiastical persecution.
The college of St. Côme and its lessons.
False traditions as to the Church and surgery and their meaning
PAPAL PHYSICIANS. 199
Belief in miracles and progress in medicine.
Prayer and healing.
The men the Popes chose as their medical advisers.
Names greater than those of the medical faculty of any university.
Guy of Montpelier, Richard the Englishman, Pope John XXI.,
Simon Januensis and the first medical dictionary.
Arnold of Villanova.
Guy de Chauliac.
Cecco di Ascolo.
Joannes de Tornamira.
Francis of Siena.
Baverius of Imola.
John de Vigo.
Columbus.
Eustachius.
Varolius.
Piccolomini.
Caesalpinus.
Malpighi.
Tozzi.
Lancisi.
Morgagni.
Contributions to the biological sciences from Papal Physicians.
THE POPES AND MEDICAL EDUCATION AND THE PAPAL MEDICAL SCHOOL. 222
Papal Medical School at Rome since 1300.
Supported by revenues from Popes at Avignon.
Previous Papal relations to medicine.
Monte Cassino and Salerno.
Pope Sylvester II. and medicine.
Medical schools and the ecclesiastical authorities.
A great physician made Pope.
The Renaissance and the re-established Papal Medical School.
Columbus original discoverer and practical teacher.
Attendance at his lessons.
His book dedicated to Pope.
Other medical dedications to Popes.
Eustachius's work.
Piccolomini as a great teacher.
Caesalpinus the probable discoverer of the circulation of the blood.
Father Kircher's work at Rome.
Malpighi the Father of Comparative Anatomy.
Tozzi the best teacher of his time.
Lancisi as a founder in clinical medicine.
On Sudden Death.
Morgagni's place as an adviser.
Bologna in the Papal dominions.
Medical schools at Ferrara and Perugia.
Protestant traditions with regard to the Popes and medicine.
{x}
THE FOUNDATION OF CITY HOSPITALS. 248
Pope Innocent III., the Father of City Hospitals.
Santo Spirito at Rome.
Virchow on the effect of this in Germany.
French hospitals and the Hotel Dieu.
English hospitals.
The five royal hospitals.
Virchow's tribute to Pope Innocent III.
Hospital regulation.
Care for the poor.
Longings of patients.
Religious nurses and modern nursing.
Virchow's opinion.
Contemporaries on hospital accomplishment.
Magnificent hospital building.
Models for all future time.
A modern architects's opinion.
Hospital decoration.
Siena Hospital.
Hospital abuses.
Problem of malingerers.
Leper hospitals.
The eradication of leprosy.
Lesson for our generation as to tuberculosis.
Special hospitals for erysipelas.
Benefit of segregation.
The religious dress and its anticipation of aseptic needs.
Hospitals ruined when taken from the Church and the religious.
THE CHURCH AND THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD. 281
The doubting mood so important for science supposed to preclude faith.
Most great scientists Catholics.
Francis Bacon, the supposed Father of Inductive Science.
Only the popularizer of the experimental method.
Bacon and Copernicus.
Gilbert of Colchester before Bacon.
Friar Bacon on the experimental method.
Peregrinus and the value of experiments.
Bacon's four grounds of human ignorance.
Bacon's great teacher, Albertus Magnus, and the experimental method.
Christian tradition as to scientific inquiry as begun by Augustine.
Albert's place in the history of inductive science.
Interest of the Middle Ages in physical science.
{xi}
CHURCHMEN AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES. 302
The Popes and the medieval universities.
What the scholastic philosophers did for science.
Scientific teaching at the early universities.
"Foundations of knowledge for Galileo, Harvey,
Newton and Darwin." (Allbutt.)
Magnetics.
Philosopher's stone and the transmutation of metals.
Constitution of matter.
Matter and form.
Indestructibility of matter.
Conservation of energy.
Albertus Magnus on the antipodes.
Humboldt's appreciation of Albert.
Albert's scientific accomplishments.
Astronomy, botany, geography and biological sciences.
Roger Bacon and explosives; achievements in optics and astronomy.
Aquinas and chemistry.
The relations of these men to the Popes.
Bacon's difficulties.
Medieval accomplishments in applied science.
Scientific applications in medieval cities (Kropotkin).
Decadence in science after Middle Ages.
The place of the reformation so-called.
The first encyclopedia.
Vincent of Beauvais and interest in his work.
Thomas of Cantimprato and Bartholomaeus Anglicus.
Craving for information in natural science.
THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY MAN AND SCIENCE. 340
Dante a type of the medieval university student.
His knowledge a proof of how he was taught.
Dante as a student of nature.
Ruskin's opinion.
Trobridge's suggestions.
Dante's early education.
Azarias and Kropotkin on the public schools of Florence and Nuremberg.
Kuhns on Dante's science.
Optics.
Astronomy.
Humboldt's praise of Dante's scientific knowledge.
Dante the observer, phosphorescence, flies, bees and ants.
Dante knew more science than any modern poet.
His contribution to the science of education.
THE CHURCH AND THE MENTALLY AFFLICTED. 363
Disease and supernatural agency.
Denial of disease.
Scientists and spiritualism.
Reaction in recent years.
Anticipations in psychiatry.
Supposed evolution of treatment of the mentally diseased.
Medieval care of the insane.
Psychopathic wards in hospitals.
The open door treatment.
After-care of the insane.
The colony system.
Religious suggestion and cure--ancient and modern.
Prayer and mental disease.
Care of the insane at Gheel.
Neglect {xii} of insane not exclusively medieval.
Milder measures quite modern.
Spiritual agencies in life.
Alfred Russell Wallace, Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge,
Prof. Charles Richet, Lombroso.
APPENDIX I.
OPPOSITION TO SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 390
The Popes as patrons of scientific education.
Swift on genius and assinine opposition.
Allston on truth in unusual form.
"Nonsense" and "absurd" on scientists' tongues.
Jordan on human conservatism.
Galileo's letter to Kepler, on "logic" and science.
Huxley on Galileo.
De Morgan on other cases.
Dogmatism and folly.
Persecution of scientists.
Harvey, Vesalius, Servetus, Steno.
Not confined to old times, Jenner, Auenbrugger, Laennec,
Thomas Young, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Semmelweiss.
Opposition in other sciences.
Ohm.
Young men and discoveries.
Pasteur and rabies.
Our universities and economics.
Conservatism still active.
The lesson.
APPENDIX II.
LATIN TEXT OF PAPAL BULLS AND DECREES. 413
_De Sepulturis._
_De Crimine Falsi._
_Super Illius specula._
Bulls for erection of Universities of Perugia and Cahors.
APPENDIX III. 419
Emperor Frederick's Law Regulating the Practice of Medicine (1231)
APPENDIX IV.
CHURCH DECREES RELATING TO MEDICINE. 424
Prohibition of the study and practice of medicine and law to
members of religious orders.
Text of the decrees.
Significance of the prohibition.
Not all priests, but only members of religious orders involved.
Church decrees as to the physician's duty in securing the last
rites of the Church for his patients when in danger of death.
Text of the decrees.
Misunderstanding.
APPENDIX V.
PAPAL PHYSICIANS. 431
The principal Papal Physicians, their careers, and their chief
works. Ursus, Guy of Montpellier, Ricardus Anglicus, Taddeo {xiii}
Florentinus, Simon Januensis, William of Brescia, Arnold of
Villanova, Petrus Aichspadius, Gentilis Gentilis, Dino del Garbo,
Guy de Chauliac, Jean de Tornemire, Francis Casinus, John Baptist
Verallus, Ludovicus Scarampus, Bernard Garzonius, Laurentius
Roverella, Joannes Serninus, Simon Tebaldi, Jacobus Gottifredus,
Joannes Burgius, Sanctes Floccus, Sebastianus Veteranus, Onofrio de
Onofriis, John Philip de Lignamine, Benedict of Nursia, Petrus
Leonius, Alexander de Espinosa, Gaspar Torella, Petrus Pintor,
Horatio and Scipio Lancillotti, Joannes Bodier, Samuel Sarfati,
Antonius Petrutius, Dioscorides da Velletri, Bartholomeo of Pisa,
Bernardinus Speronius, Jerome Sessa, Clementius Clementinus,
Bartholomeo Montagnana, Giovanni Antracino, John de Vigo, Francesco
Fusconi, Andreas Cibbo, Andrea Turini, Ludovico Augeni, Paulus
Jovius, Matteo Corti (Curtius), Antonio Musa Brasavola, Silvius
Zeffiri, Jacobus Bonacossus, Joannes Manovelli, Thomas Cadimustus,
Tiberius Palella, Alfonso Ferri, Franciscus Frigimelica, Maggi, John
Baptist Cananus, Augustino Ricchi, Altamare, Bianchi, Simon Pasqua,
Pompeius Barba, Franciscus Gymnasius, Jerome Cardan, Mercurialis,
Placidus Fuscus, Andreas Baccius, Demetrius Canevarius, Malpighi,
Jerome Provenzalis, Jerome Rubeus, Jerome Cordella, Zecchius,
Caesalpinus, Michael Mercatus, Nicholas Masinus, Jacobus
Bonaventura, Julius de Angelis, Pompeius Caimus, Vincentius Crucius,
Giovanni and Bernardino Castellani, Julius Mancinus, Sylvester and
Thaddeus Collicola, Baldus Baldi, Paul Zacchias, Gabriel Fonseca,
Matthias Naldius, Borelli, Lancisi, Salvatorius, Romulus Spezioli,
Lucas Tozzi, Morgagni, Cotugno, Giambattista Bomba, Antonio
Baccelli, Flajani, Paolo Baroni, Pier Luigi Valentini, Giuseppe
Constantini, Castracane, Lapponi, Marchiafava.
APPENDIX VI.
ASTRONOMY AND THE CHURCH; SOME ROMAN ASTRONOMERS. 469
No formal list of Papal astronomers available. The roll of names in
astronomy connected in some way with the Popes almost as distinguished
as that of Papal Physicians: Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Nicholas of
Cusa, Regiomontanus, Toscanelli, Archbishop Antoninus, Clavius, the
Roman College, Scheiner, Ricci, Athanasius Kircher, Thomas Leseur,
Franz Jacquier, Boscovitch, Le Maire, Gilii, Beccaria, Piazzi, Secchi,
De Vico, Sestini, Denza, Lais, Rodriguez, Hagan.
{xiv}
APPENDIX VII.
THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE. 484
Supposed opposition of the Fathers of the Church to science.
Father Leahy on the true relations.
Defence of the Fathers.
Supposed opposition to science.
No opposition to true science.
Position as regards astrology.
What the Fathers did for science.
APPENDIX VIII.
SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 492
Spanish Catholic America far outdistanced English Protestant
America in the cultivation of science before our time.
Professor Bourne, on science at the Spanish-American Universities,
"Spanish-American science of the sixteenth century only reached
in English America in the nineteenth."
Dr. Chanca's letter.
Priority in medical education.
Bourne on Spanish-American anticipations.
Reasons for decadence.
APPENDIX IX.
THE DANGER OF A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE. 500
Professor Draper's "History of the Conflict Between Religion
and Science."
The tradition of Church opposition to science founded on
ignorance of the Middle Ages.
The "Bright," not the "Dark" Ages.
Draper's career.
"History of the Intellectual Development of Europe."
Acceptance of his writings as authoritative.
Lack of scholarship.
Medieval achievements.
"Lazy monks."
Wonderful work of the monks.
Monasteries as agricultural colleges.
The Arabs in science.
Medieval prophylaxis.
Magnificent hospitals.
Halley's comet.
The Popes of the beginning of the Renaissance: Nicholas V,
Calixtus III, Pius II (AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini).
Draper's summaries of history, caricatures.
Contrast between Spanish and English America.
Professor Bourne.
Sir Sidney Lee.
Professor Draper's philosophy of history.
The Church and social conditions.
Draper's surprising ignorance of the history of medicine.
Objections to the Church in her relations to science
always founded on lack of knowledge.
{xv}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Guy de Chauliac _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Guy de Chauliac's cauteries 182
Guy de Chauliac's cauteries 183
Guy de Chauliac's instruments 186
Guy de Chauliac's instruments 187
Hospital at Lübeck 252
Hospital at Tonnerre 268
Hospital, Mexico 272
Ferri's instruments _Page_ 447
Maggi's instruments _Page_ 448
Maggi's instruments _Page_ 449
Maggi's instruments _Page_ 450
Hospital, Mexico _Opp. Page_ 495
{1}
INTRODUCTION.
When, some years ago, the announcement of the prospective opening of
the medical school at Fordham University, New York City, was made, the
preliminary faculty were rather astonished to find that a number of
intelligent physicians expressed surprise that there should be any
question of the establishment of a medical school in connection with a
Catholic institution of learning, since, as they understood, the
Church forbade the practice of dissection, and in general was
distinctly unfavorable to the development of medical science. Most of
us had already known of the false persuasion existing in some minds,
that by a Papal decree the practice of dissection had been forbidden
during the Middle Ages, but it was hard to understand how men should
think, in this day of general information, that Catholics were not
free to pursue the study of any true science, and above all medical
science, without let or hindrance from ecclesiastical authorities. In
a word, though we live in what we are pleased to call an enlightened
age with the schoolmaster abroad in the land, as is so proudly
proclaimed, we encountered the most childish simplicity of belief in a
number of old-time prejudices as to the position of the Church with
regard to the study of science.
We found such a curious state of positive ignorance and such an
erroneous, pretentious knowledge with regard to the supposed attitude
of the Church to medicine especially, that we realized that the first
thing that the {2} new medical department would have to do would be to
set about correcting authoritatively the false notions which existed
with regard to the Popes and medical science. Most of the
misinformation in this matter in American minds, we soon found, had
its origin in Dr. Andrew D. White's volumes, "On the History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom." It is impossible for
anyone to read Dr. White's chapter on from Miracles to Medicine in
this work without coming to the conclusion that the constant policy of
the Church for all the centuries down practically to our own time was
to prevent the progress of medicine as far as possible. The reason for
this policy, presumably, must be taken to be that it was to the
interest of the ecclesiastics to have people apply to them for
healing. Sufferers were to look to miracles rather than to drugs for
their relief from ailments of any and every kind. Prayers were to be
considered as much more efficacious than powders, and Masses much more
likely to do good than the most careful nursing. These ecclesiastical
offices had to be paid for. Accordingly, people had to be discouraged
from applying to physicians, medical schools were kept under an
ecclesiastical ban, "dissection was prohibited," anatomy declared "a
sin against the Holy Ghost," "chemistry forbidden under the severest
penalties," "the medieval miracles of healing checked medical
science," "the practice of surgery was relegated mainly to the lowest
orders of practitioners and confined strictly to them," "as the grasp
of theology upon education tightened, medicine declined," and every
possible means was employed to keep the popular mind in subjection to
the clergy, and to prevent physicians from getting so much knowledge
as would enable them {3} to help free the people from the bondage of
superstition, of which they were the victims and the slaves.
We do not think that we exaggerate the impression likely to be
obtained from Dr. White's book in stating the ordinarily accepted
opinions thus baldly, and as a matter of fact, as the quotation marks
are intended to show, most of the strongest phrases that we have used
are Dr. White's own. For those who can take such statements in good
faith, it must be a very genuine surprise to learn a few facts from
the history of medicine in the Middle Ages. Before the beginning of
the sixteenth century, that is, before the religious revolt in
Germany, which has been dignified by the name of reformation,
altogether some twenty medical schools were founded in various parts
of Europe. Of these, the best known in the order of their foundation
were Salerno, Bologna, Naples, Montpelier, Paris, Padua and Pisa.
Excellent schools, however, were established also at Oxford, Rome,
Salamanca, Orleans and Coimbra. Even early in the fourteenth century
such unimportant towns as Perugia, Cahors and Lerida had medical
schools. These schools were usually established in connection with the
universities. It was realized that this would make the teaching of
medicine more serious and keep the practical side of medicine from
obscuring too much the scientific and cultural aspects of the medical
training. In modern times in America we made the mistake of having our
medical schools independent of universities, but with the advance in
education and culture we have come to imitate the custom of the
thirteenth and the fourteenth century in this regard.
The universities, as is well known, were the outgrowth of cathedral
schools. Practically all those in authority {4} in them, by far the
greater number of teachers and most of the pupils, were of the
clerical order, that is, had assumed some ecclesiastical obligations
and were considered to be churchmen. At these universities, if we can
trust the example of England as applicable to the Continent also,
there were, according to trustworthy, conservative statistics, more
students in attendance in proportion to the population than there has
been at any period since, or than there are even at the present time
in the twentieth century in any country of the civilized world. From
this we can readily appreciate the enthusiastic ardor of those seeking
education. Of these large numbers, the medical schools had their due
proportion. [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: This subject of the attendance at the universities of the
Middle Ages is discussed, and authorities quoted, in my book "The
Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries," published by the Catholic Summer
School Press, N. Y.]
Of course it will be said at once that though there were medical
schools and medical professors and students, what was taught and
studied at this time was so far distant from anything like practical
knowledge of medicine, that it does not tell against the argument that
medical education was practically non-existent. Some people will
perhaps harbor the thought, if they do not frankly express it, that
very probably these schools were organized under ecclesiastical
authority, only in order to enable the Church and the clergy to
maintain their control of medical education and keep the people from
knowledge that might prove dangerous to Church authority. They were
thus able to satisfy some of men's cravings for information in these
matters, and yet prevent them from making such advances as would
endanger the Church's policy of having them apply for prayers and
Masses rather than for more physical remedies, {5} except possibly for
certain minor ailments. We do not doubt that there are many educated
people who would be quite satisfied to accept this as a complete
explanation of the situation in medical education at the medieval
universities. Those who have read Dr. White's "History of the Warfare
of Theology with Science" and have placed any faith in his really
amusing excursions into a realm of which apparently he knows nothing--
the history of medicine--must believe something like this. For them a
little glance at even a few of the realities of medical teaching in
the thirteenth century will show at once what a castle of the
imagination they have been living in.
Only those who are thoroughly and completely ignorant of the real
status of medical teaching in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
continue to hold these absurd opinions as to the nullity of medieval
medicine and surgery. The reading of a single short recent
contribution to medical history, the address of Professor Clifford
Allbutt, Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge,
England, before the Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Exposition
held in St. Louis in 1904, "On the Historical Relations of Medicine
and Surgery down to the Sixteenth Century," would suffice to eradicate
completely such traditional errors. He pointed out some surprising
anticipations of what is most modern in medicine and surgery in the
teachings of William of Salicet and his pupil Lanfranc, Professors of
Medicine and Surgery in the Italian Universities and in Paris during
the thirteenth century. As these two professors were the most
distinguished teachers of surgery of the period and the acknowledged
leaders of thought in their time, their teaching may fairly be taken
as {6} representative of the curricula of medieval medical schools.
William of Salicet, according to Professor Allbutt, taught that dropsy
was due to a hardening of the kidneys; _durities renum_ are his exact
words. He insisted on the danger of wounds of the neck. He taught the
suture of divided nerves and gave explicit directions how to find the
severed ends. He made a special study of suppurative disease of the
hip and taught many practical things with regard to it. He taught,
though this is a bit of knowledge supposed to come three centuries
later into medicine and history, the true origin of chancre and
phagedena. Most surprising of all, however, remains. William
substituted the use of the knife for the abuse of the cautery, which
had been introduced by the Arabs because they feared hemorrhage, and
he insisted that hemorrhage could be controlled by proper means
without searing the tissues, and that the wounds made by the knife
healed ever so much more kindly and with less danger to the patient.
In the matter of wound healing, he investigated the causes of the
failure of healing by first intention, and expressed on this subject
some marvelous ideas that are supposed to be of late nineteenth
century origin.
While it is usually said that whatever teaching of science was done at
medieval universities, was so entirely speculative or purely theoretic
and so thoroughly impractical as not to be of any serious use for life
and its problems, the utter falsity of such declarations can be seen
from the fact that William of Salicet insisted on teaching medicine by
clinical methods, always discussed cases with his students, and his
medical and surgical works contain many case histories. This is just
what pretentiously ignorant historians of medical education {7} have
often emphatically declared that medieval teachers did not do, but
should have done, in the Middle Ages. It is not surprising then to
find that William himself, and his great pupil Lanfranc, insisted on
the utter inadvisability of separating medicine and surgery in such a
way that the physician would not have the opportunity to be present at
operations, and thus gain more definite knowledge about the actual
conditions of various organs which he had tried to investigate from
the surface of the body. It is a very curious coincidence that both
the Regius Professors of Physic in England at the present time, our
own Professor Osler, now at Oxford, as well as his colleague,
Professor Allbutt, of Cambridge, have within the last five years
emphasized this same idea in almost the very words which were used by
William and Lanfranc nearly seven hundred years ago. Lanfranc went
even beyond his master in practical applications of important
scientific principles to medicine and surgery. He added to the means
of controlling hemorrhage. In arterial hemorrhage he suggested digital
compression for an hour, or in severe cases ligature. His master had
studied wounds of the neck. Lanfranc has a magnificent chapter on
injuries of the head, which Professor Allbutt does not hesitate to
call one of the classics of surgery. Lanfranc was thoroughly
appreciated by his contemporaries. After years of study and teaching
in Italy he was invited to Paris, where he became one of the lights of
that great university. Both Salicet and Lanfranc did their wonderful
work in scientific medicine down in Italy where ecclesiastical
influence was strongest. Italy continued to be for the next six
centuries always the home of the best medical schools in the world, to
which the most ardent students from {8} all over the continent and
even England went for the sake of the magnificent opportunities
provided. It was literally true, in spite of the tradition of Church
opposition to medical science, that the nearer to Rome the university
the better its medical school; and as we shall see, Rome itself had
the best medical school in the world for two centuries, while its
greatest rival, often ahead of it in scientific achievement, always
its peer, was the medical school of Bologna in the Papal States,
directly under the control of the Popes since the beginning of the
sixteenth century.
Dr. White has said just the opposite of this in a well-known passage
of his book, in which he assures his readers that "in proportion as
the grasp of theology upon education tightened, medicine declined; and
in proportion as that grasp relaxed, medicine has been developed." The
reason for such a statement is that he knew nothing about the history
of medicine and surgery in these medieval centuries and thought there
was none. This is a characteristic example of his mode of writing the
History of the (Supposed) Warfare of Theology with Science in
Christendom. This much will give some idea of the value of his book as
a work of reference.
After knowing something of these wonderful developments of medieval
medical science, it is to be hoped that no one will listen hereafter
to the ignorant assertions of those who talk of the suppression of
medical knowledge at this time. _William of Salicet and Lanfranc were
both of them clerics,_ that is, they belonged to the ecclesiastical
body and had taken minor orders, though they were not priests, as
priests were for obvious reasons not allowed to do surgical
operations, it being as repugnant to human feelings in the Middle Ages
as it is now, that {9} the messenger of Divine Mercy should handle the
knife and spill blood, or that the pastor of souls should come
straight from the operating room to bring consolation to the afflicted
and the dying.
Much more might be said about the wonderful medical teaching of the
thirteenth century. The men who made the universities what they have
continued to be down to the present time, had open minds for any great
advances that might come. Accordingly, when the histories of
anesthesia tell us that there was a form of anesthesia introduced
during the thirteenth century by Ugo da Lucca, and that even some
method of inhalation was employed for this purpose, it will be a
surprise only to those who have never properly realized all that our
educational forefathers of the early university days succeeded in
accomplishing.
Down at Montpelier, Gilbert the Englishman taught that small-pox
patients should be treated in rooms with red hangings, red curtains
being especially advised for the doors and windows. This is what
Finsen re-discovered in the nineteenth century, and for it was given
the Nobel prize in the twentieth century. He found that small-pox
patients suffered much less, that their fever was shorter, and that
the after effects were much less marked when only red light was
admitted to them. One may well ask what drugs did they employ, and
perhaps conclude that because they knew very little of drugs,
therefore they knew little of medicine. It is in the use of drugs,
however, that medicine has always been at its weakest, and we scarcely
need Oliver Wendel Holmes's declaration, that if all the drugs men
used up to his time had been thrown into the sea, they would be better
rather than worse off for it; nor Professor Osier's many {10} emphatic
protests with regard to our ignorance of drugs, to make the world of
the present day realize that a generation's use of them as a test
would tell quite as severely against the eighteenth or the nineteenth
century, as against the thirteenth or the fourteenth. They did use
opium, however, the drug having been introduced into general practice,
it is said, by a distinguished Papal physician, Simon Januensis.
Mandrake was employed, and has not as yet gone entirely out of use.
Various herbal decoctions were employed, and though these were used
entirely on empiric grounds, some at least of them have continued in
use with no better reason for their employment during most of the
centuries since.
The relation of the Popes to these advances in medicine may be best
appreciated from the interest which they took in the hospitals. It was
only in hospitals that cases could be properly studied, and the
medieval hospitals were conducted with very nearly the same relations
to the universities of that time as those that exist at the present
day. In the chapter on the Foundation of City Hospitals we show that
these institutions are all, as Virchow, who is surely an authority
above suspicion in any matter relating to the Popes has declared, due
to one great Pope. This is the best possible demonstration of supreme
humanitarian interest in human ills, and their treatment. Innocent
III., as we shall see, at the beginning of the thirteenth century
summoned Guy from Montpelier, where he had been trained in the care of
patients, and where the greatest medical school of the time existed,
to come to Rome and organize the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in the
Papal City, which was to be a model for hospitals of the same kind in
every diocese throughout the Christian world. Literally hundreds of
{11} these hospitals were founded during the thirteenth century as the
result of this initiative. Patients were not left to die, with only
the hope of prayers to relieve their sufferings, but they were cared
for as skilfully as the rising science of the time knew how and with
the tenderness that religious care has always been able to give. For
added consolation in the midst of their sufferings and as a fortifier
against the thought of death, they had religion and all its beautiful
influences, for which even Virchow, himself utterly unbelieving,
cannot suppress a tribute.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the University of the City
of Rome was founded by Pope Boniface VIII. Only a year or two later
the Popes removed their capital to Avignon. It has often been thought
that, because of this removal of the Papal capital, this University of
the City never came into existence; but we have definite records of
salaries paid out of the Papal revenues to professors of law and
medicine about the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century.
Down in the South of France, at Avignon itself, the Popes had for one
of their chamberlains the famous Guy de Chauliac, who is always spoken
of as the Father of Modern Surgery. One of the Popes of the Avignon
period founded the College of Twelve Physicians at Montpelier, the
foundation being sufficient to support twelve medical students, and by
adding the prestige of the Pope's patronage to the reputation of the
University, greatly encouraged attendance at it.
Another of the Popes of the Avignon period, Pope John XXII., who is
said by President White to have been most bitter in opposition to
every form of science, actually helped in the foundation of two
medical schools. {12} One of these was at Cahors, his birthplace, and
the other was at Perugia, at that time in the Papal States. In
founding the medical school at Perugia, Pope John insisted that its
standards must be as high as those of Paris and Bologna, and required
that the first teachers there should be graduates from Paris or
Bologna, where were the two greatest medical schools of the time.
Seven years of study, three in the undergraduate department and four
in the graduate schools, were to be required, according to this bull
of foundation (given in full in the appendix), before the degree of
Doctor of Medicine could be conferred. If it is recalled that this
standard of three years of undergraduate work and four in the graduate
school, or at least of seven years of University work, is the ideal
toward which our universities are struggling, and, it must be said,
not with the entire success we would like, at the beginning of the
twentieth century, then, it is surprising to think that the president
of a modern university, deeply interested in education in all its
features and himself a professor of history, should know so little of,
and be so lacking in sympathy with these men who laid the deep
foundations of our modern education.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the relation of the Popes to
medicine remains to be mentioned. If they really were the bitter
opponents of things medical that Dr. White would have us believe, then
we should expect that either there were no such officials as Papal
physicians, or else that the men who occupied these posts were the
veriest charlatans, who knew very little of medicine, and certainly
did nothing to develop the science. As a matter of fact, there is no
list of physicians connected by any common bond in history who are
{13} so gloriously representative of scientific progress in medicine
as the Papal physicians. The faculty of no medical school presents
such a list of great names as those of the men who were chosen to be
the official medical attendants of the Popes, and who were thus given
a position of prominence where their discoveries in medicine had a
vogue they otherwise could not have attained. The list of the Royal
physicians of any reigning house of Europe for the last seven
centuries looks trivial beside the roll of Papal physicians. Could the
Popes possibly have done anything more than this for medicine, or
shown their interest in its progress, or made people realize better,
that while prayer might be of service, every possible human means must
be taken to secure, maintain and recover health.
To read even the headings of Dr. White's chapter on from Miracles to
Medicine, in which he tells of how "the medieval miracles of healing
checked medical science," how "pastoral medicine held back scientific
effort," how "there was so much theological discouragement of
medicine," and finally, how "the study of Anatomy was considered a sin
against the Holy Ghost," in the light of this plain, matter-of-fact
story of the wonderful development of medical science in the
ecclesiastically founded and ruled universities of the thirteenth
century, makes one realize into what a farcical state of mind as
regards the realities of history such writers have forced themselves,
and unfortunately have led many readers, by their excursions into the
history of medicine and science. Probably there was never a more
pretentious exhibition of ignorance of the facts of history than is
displayed by these expressions and by the whole drift of this chapter.
Dr. White would have us {14} believe that the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries were so backward in medicine and surgery that
they practically have no history in these departments, or so little as
not to be worth talking about. The simple facts show us that this is
one of three or four great periods in human history in which there was
the most wonderful development of medicine and surgery.
As we shall see in the course of this book, there was no bull or any
other document issued by the Popes forbidding dissection or hampering
the development of anatomy in any way. As a matter of fact, the
ecclesiastics, instead of being behind their age in liberality of
spirit with regard to the use of the human body after death for
anatomical purposes, were always ahead of it. There has always existed
a popular horror of dissection, and this has manifested itself from
the earliest times in history down to and within the last half
century, in refusal to enact such secular legislation as would
properly provide for the practice of dissection. This was as true in
the United States until within the memory of men still alive as it had
always been hitherto in European history. Dissection came to be
allowed so freely in the medieval universities founded under
ecclesiastical influence and ruled by ecclesiastics, as the result of
the intelligent realization on the part of churchmen that the study of
the human body was necessary for a proper recognition and appreciation
of the causes of the ills to which flesh is heir. They realized that
the only way to lay the foundation of exact medical knowledge was not
only to permit, but to encourage the practice of dissection, and
accordingly this was done at everyone of a dozen medical schools of
Italy during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and
nowhere more so than at the {15} Papal University at Rome itself
during the sixteenth century, at a time when, if we would believe Dr.
White, the Church authorities were doing everything in their power to
prevent dissection.
None of the other sciences allied to medicine were hampered in any
way, but, on the contrary, fostered and encouraged; and the devoted
students of science were prominent churchmen, some of whom were
honored with the title of saint after their deaths. In spite of
declarations to the contrary, chemistry was not forbidden by a Papal
decree or other document, though the practice of certain alchemists of
pretending to make gold and silver out of baser metals and thus
cheating people was condemned, just as we condemn the corresponding
practice of selling "gold bricks" at the present time. As will be made
very clear, the Pope who issued the decree that forbids such sharp
practices was a distinguished and discriminating patron of medical
education at the beginning of the fourteenth century, doing more for
it than any ruler for three centuries after his time; yet in doing so
he was only carrying out the policy which had been maintained by the
Popes before his time and was to continue ever afterwards.
Strange as it may appear when we recall how much has been said with
regard to Papal, and Church, and theological opposition to science,
the story that we have just told with regard to the Papal relations to
medicine and medical schools must be retold with regard to science in
every department, and the scientific studies at the great medieval
universities. Most people will find it even more difficult to accept
this than to reach a calm consideration of the Papal relations to the
medical sciences. Medicine is supposed to be the sort of practical
{16} subject that, in spite of prejudice, the ecclesiastical
authorities could not neglect and were not able to suppress. Science
in general, however, is supposed to be so distinctly opposed to what
was at least considered religious truth, that the Church could not
very well do anything else than prevent its development, or at least
hamper its progress to such an extent that it was only with the
lifting of the ecclesiastical incubus in our own day, that any great
scientific advances came in the physical sciences. This is an entirely
false impression emphasized by the ridiculous intolerance of writers
who knew practically nothing of the real history of science in the
Middle Ages, wrote their own prejudices large into the story of the
times, and did great positive harm to the cause of truth by a pretense
of knowledge they did not have, but which so many confidingly believed
them to possess.
But it will at once be said, what of Galileo? Does not his case show
the anti-scientific temper of churchmen? Nearly half a century ago,
Cardinal Newman in his Apologia characteristically observed that this
very case sufficed to prove that the Church did not set herself
against scientific progress, for this is the "one stock argument" to
the contrary, "the exception which proves the rule." Commenting upon
the Galileo incident, Professor Augustus de Morgan, in his article on
the Motion of the Earth in the English Encyclopedia, has expressed
exactly the same conclusion. He is an authority not likely to be
suspected of Catholic sympathy. He says:
"The Papal power must upon the whole have been moderately used in
matters of philosophy, if we may judge by the great stress laid on
this one case of Galileo. It is the standing proof that an authority
which has {17} lasted a thousand years was all the time occupied in
checking the progress of thought(!) There are certainly one or two
other instances, but those who make most of the outcry do not know
them."
There is no doubt that Galileo was prosecuted by the Roman inquisition
on account of his astronomical teachings. We would be the last to deny
that this was a deplorable mistake made by persons in ecclesiastical
authority, who endeavored to make a Church tribunal the judge of
scientific truth, a function altogether alien to its character which
it was not competent to exercise. The fact that this was practically
the only time that this was done serves to show that it was an
unfortunate incident, but not a policy. The mistake has been to
conclude that this was a typical case--one of many, more flagrant than
the others. This single incident has indeed made it impossible that
anything of the same kind should ever occur again. It was rather
because of the way in which Galileo urged his truths than because of
the truths themselves that he was condemned. Even Professor Huxley, in
a letter to Professor St. George Mivart, November 12th, 1885, said: "I
gave some attention to the case of Galileo when I was in Italy, and I
arrived at the conclusion that the Pope and the College of Cardinals
had rather the best of it."
Before as well as after Galileo's time scientific research was carried
on ardently in the universities, especially in Italy. In the chapter
on Science at the Medieval Universities, we call attention to the many
advances then made with regard to scientific questions in which the
world is very much interested at the present time. A hundred years
before Galileo's time Copernicus went down to Italy to study astronomy
and medicine, and {18} when his book was published it was dedicated to
a Pope. Copernicus himself was a faithful churchman all his life, came
near being made a bishop once, and kept the diocese in which he lived,
and in which his personal friend was bishop, in the fold of the Church
in spite of Luther and the religious revolt all around it in Germany.
One of the great scientists of the seventeenth century whose name is
stamped deeply on the history of science, Father Kircher, the Jesuit,
was invited to Rome the very year after Galileo's condemnation, and
for thirty years continued to _experiment_ and write in all branches
of science, not only with the approbation of his own order, the
Jesuits, which helped him in every way by the collection of specimens
for his museum, but also with the hearty good will of many cardinals
who were his personal friends, and with the constant patronage of the
Popes, whose generous liberality enabled him to make Rome the greatest
centre of scientific interest during this century.
At this time and during the preceding century the Roman University had
the greatest medical school in the world. The names of its professors
during the preceding century need only be mentioned in order to
emphasize this. They include such distinguished men as Eustachius and
Varolius, whose names are forever enshrined in the history of anatomy;
Columbus, who discovered and described the lesser or pulmonary
circulation half a century before Harvey's publication with regard to
the general circulation; Caesalpinus, to whom the Italians attribute
the discovery of the greater circulation before Harvey. In the next
century Malpighi was tempted to come to Rome to teach at the Papal
University, and the great Father of Comparative Anatomy {19} ended his
days in the Papal capital, amidst the friendship of all the high
ecclesiastics and with the social intimacy of the Pope. From the
beginning of the sixteenth century Bologna is a Papal city, but its
medical school, far from declining after it came under Papal
jurisdiction, was even more brilliant than before, and soon came even
to outshine its previously successful rival, Padua.
What we would say then, is that the story of the supposed opposition
of the Church and the Popes and the ecclesiastical authorities to
science in any of its branches, is founded entirely on mistaken
notions. Most of it is quite imaginary. Much of it is due to the
exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo incident. Only those
who know nothing about the history of medicine and of science continue
to harbor it. That Dr. White's book, contradicted as it is so directly
by all our serious histories of medicine and of science, should have
been read by so many thousands in this country, and should have been
taken seriously by educated men, physicians, teachers, and even
professors of science who want to know the history of their own
sciences, only shows how easily even supposedly educated men may be
led to follow their prejudices rather than their mental faculties, and
emphasizes the fact that the tradition that there is no good that can
possibly come out of the Nazareth of the times before the reformation,
still dominates the intellects of many educated people who think that
they are far from prejudice and have minds perfectly open to
conviction.
We would not leave the impression, moreover, that it was in medicine
alone that the misunderstood Middle Ages made distinct progress in
science. This is true in every department of what we now call natural
science. {20} The reason for the false impression that science was not
studied in the Middle Ages at the universities, is that the supposed
historians of education and of science who have made such declarations
have never taken the trouble to look into the works of the great
writers of this period. Anyone who does so, at once changes his
opinion in this matter. Humboldt, for instance, the great German
natural philosopher, has given ample credit to these colleagues of
his, who lived some six centuries before him, yet did such wonderful
work in spite of their inadequate means and the fact that they were as
yet only groping in the darkness of the beginnings of science.
Whewell, the English historian of the inductive sciences, has also
proved sympathetic to these old philosophers, and especially to
Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon. Those who so ignorantly but with a
pretense of knowledge make little of the science of the Middle Ages,
know nothing of the real accomplishments of such men as Bacon,
Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Arnold of Villanova, nor Vincent of
Beauvais, the encyclopedist. As is always the case, however, the
ignorance of supposed historians of science and education in this
matter, has only served to emphasize the presumptuous assurance of
their declarations as to the intolerance of the Middle Ages toward
scientific progress. It is ever the ignorant man who has the least
doubt about his opinions.
Unfortunately many students of science followed these writers
apparently without a hint of the deception that was being practiced on
them. Not infrequently the prestige or institutional position of the
writers has been enough to carry their works into a vogue which has
been heightened by the existence of religious prejudice and {21}
intolerance. Usually such motives are supposed to be far distant from
the scientific mind. In this case they have been, to some degree at
least, unconsciously present. There has unfortunately been a definite
persuasion that there could be nothing good in the Middle Ages, and
therefore there has been no surprise that evil should be found there.
Perhaps there is nothing sadder in present day education, than the
fact that serious students and professors of science should thus have
been led astray. Nothing shows more clearly the superficiality of our
education than the fact that these unfounded statements with regard to
the greatest period of education in history have been so universally
accepted with so little question.
A moment's consideration of the conditions in which the universities
developed will show how unreasonable is the thought that the Church or
the Popes were opposed to any phase of education.
It has come to be universally conceded in recent years that the Church
was the great patron of art and of letters during these centuries.
Without the inspiration of her teachings there would have been no
sublime subjects for artists; without the lives of her saints there
would have been much less opportunity for artistic expression; without
the patronage of the cathedral builders, the high ecclesiastics, and
above all the monastic orders, on whom, with so little reason, so much
contempt has been heaped, there would have been none of that great art
which developed during the centuries before what is called the
Renaissance. In literature, everyone of the great national poems that
lie at the basis of modern literature is shot through and through with
sublime thoughts that owe {22} their origin to the Church. We need
only mention the Cid in Spain, the Arthur Legends in England, such
works of the Meistersingers as Perceval and Arme Heinrich, the Golden
Legend, the Romance of the Rose, and Dante,--all written during the
thirteenth century alone, to illustrate Church influence in
literature. This is, as we have said, admitted by all. It is supposed,
however, that while the Church encouraged this side of human
development, it effectually prevented the evolution of man's
scientific interests.
As a matter of fact, however, the Church did quite as much for science
as for literature and art and charity, There has never been any
question that under her fostering care philosophy developed in a very
marvelous way. The scholastic philosophers are no longer held in the
disrepute so ignorantly accorded them in the last century. It is
recognized that scholastic philosophy represents a supremely great
development of human thinking with regard to the relations of man to
his Creator, to his fellow man, and to the universe. Even those who do
not accept its conclusions now, if themselves educated men, no longer
make little of those wonderful thinkers, but sympathize with their
magnificent work. Only those who are ignorant of scholastic philosophy
entirely, still continue to re-echo the expressions of critics whose
opinions were founded on second-hand authorities and who confessedly
had been unable to make anything out of the scholastics themselves.
This field of philosophy was the real danger point for faith and the
Church, yet its study was encouraged in every way, provided the
philosophers kept within the bounds of their subject.
Just exactly the same thing was true in the realm of natural science.
Strange as it may seem to those {23} who have allowed themselves to be
led into thinking that only for the last century or a little more have
men made observations on nature, and only comparatively recently have
the conclusions which they reached with regard to natural phenomena
been of any real significance, there is no doubt at all that men made
great achievements in physical science in the Middle Ages, some of
which unfortunately were lost sight of later, but many of which
remained to form the basis on which our modern scientific knowledge
has been built. In order to obtain a proper appreciation of this, all
that is necessary is to study the works of the investigating scholars
of the early history of the universities, and see how much that is
considered very modern they anticipated in their writings. They must
be read for themselves, not be judged by excerpts chosen by prejudiced
readers, much less by critics who were bent on not finding anything
good in the Middle Ages. There is need of sympathetic interpretation
to replace the ignorant contempt which has so far dominated this
period of the history of education. The precious lesson that men may
learn from the unfortunate misunderstanding, however, is how much
old-time prejudice still dominates the attitude even of scholars--nay,
even of scientists and educators, with regard to certain periods in
history.
To most people it will be utterly uncomprehensible, however, that
after all that they have heard about Church opposition to science and
Papal discouragement of education as dangerous to faith, there should
now be an absolute denial of the supposed grounds for the assertions
in this matter. Most readers, even among educated people, will be very
prone to think that their impressions in these matters cannot be
entirely wrong, and {24} that previous writers on the subject cannot
have been either deceiving or deceived. In all that relates to the
Roman Catholic Church, however, before the date of the so-called
reformation, it is important to remember that there came into
existence a definite body of Protestant tradition, the creation of the
reformers who wished to blacken the memory of the Old Church as much
as possible to justify their own apostasy, and who therefore spared no
means to pervert the facts of history or to exaggerate the
significance of historical details so as to produce this false
impression. Subsequent generations were oftener deceived themselves
than deceiving. They were sure that the Church was opposed to
education and to science, and consequently it was not hard for them to
read in certain incidents and documents a meaning quite other than
their actual significance, because this added meaning agreed with
their prejudices on these subjects.
Every advance in modern history, every modification of view that has
been brought about by the critical historical method of recent times,
has emphasized this point of view almost without exception. The
distinguished philosophic and historical writer, the Comte de Maistre,
in his Soirées of St. Petersburg about a century ago, declared that
"History for the last three centuries (1500-1800) has been a
conspiracy against the truth." Just about a century later the editors
of the Cambridge Modern History, in the preface to the first volume of
their monumental work, re-echoed the words of the Comte de Maistre
almost literally in a pregnant paragraph which deserves to be in the
note-book of everyone who is trying to get at the real truth of
history. They said:
{25}
"Great additions have of late been made to our knowledge of the
past; _the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth has
gradually given way,_ and competing historians all over the
civilized world have been zealous to take advantage of the change.
The printing of archives has kept pace with the admission of
enquirers; and the total mass of new matter, which the last
half-century has accumulated, amounts to many thousands of volumes.
In view of changes and of gains such as these, it has become
impossible for the historical writer of the present age to trust
without reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities.
The honest student finds himself continually deserted, retarded,
_misled by the classics of historical literature_, and has to hew
his own way through multitudinous transactions, periodicals and
official publications in order to reach the truth.
"Ultimate history cannot be obtained in this generation; _but, so
far as documentary evidence is at command, conventional history can
be discarded, and the point can be shown that has been reached on
the road from one to the other._"
The italics in this passage are ours, but the ideas they emphasize
will serve to show how necessary it is for most of us to give up the
supposed historical truth of the preceding generations and have an
open mind for the newer ideas that are coming in as the result of the
renewed consultation of original documents and primal sources of
information. The present volume is written entirely with the idea of
bringing out the facts of the relations of the Popes and the Church
and the ecclesiastics, especially of the centuries before the
reformation, to science and to scientific education. My own position
as a professor of the history of medicine has necessarily made medical
science very prominent in the book. This, however, far from being a
disadvantage, is really an {26} advantage, since the physical sciences
of the medieval times gathered mainly around medicine, and it was
chiefly physicians and medical students who devoted most time to them.
After a detailed study of the history of medical science in the Middle
Ages as well of its allied sciences, it becomes very clear that there
was no trace of Papal or Church opposition to science as science, and,
on the contrary, liberal patronage, abundant encouragement, and even
pecuniary aid for the development of scientific education in every
way.
What we have tried to give in this book, then, is the authoritative
refutation of the supposed prohibition of the cultivation of certain
departments of medical and allied sciences by the Popes, and
sufficient information to enable students and teachers of science to
realize that the ordinarily accepted notions with regard to opposition
to science in the Middle Ages are founded on nothing more substantial
than sublime ignorance of the facts of the history of science at that
time. There was no bull against anatomy or dissection; no bull against
chemistry; the Popes were the patrons of the great medical scientists
and surgeons; the Papal Medical School was one of the best in the
world and was sedulously fostered; the great scientists of the Middle
Ages were clergymen, and many of them when they died were declared
saints by the Church. The opposite impression is entirely a deduction
from false premises with regard to the supposed attitude of the Church
and churchmen. We shall furnish abundant authorities of the first rank
and of value as absolute as there can be in present day history as to
these questions. The consultation of these will furnish further
material for those who desire to have real knowledge of {27} the
history of science in a magnificently original and greatly fruitful
period.
{28}
THE SUPPOSED PAPAL PROHIBITION OF DISSECTION.
There is a very general impression that the Roman Catholic Church was,
during the Middle Ages, opposed to the practice of dissection, and
that various ecclesiastical regulations and even Papal decrees were
issued which prohibited, or at least limited to a very great degree,
this necessary adjunct of medical teaching. These ecclesiastical
censures are supposed to be in force, to some extent at least, even at
the present time. The persuasion as to the minatory attitude of the
Church in regard to dissection is so widespread among even supposedly
well-educated professional men, that, as we have said in the
introductory chapter, when there was question some time ago of opening
a medical school in New York City under Catholic auspices as a
department of Fordham University, a number of more than ordinarily
intelligent physicians asked: What would be done about the study of
anatomy, since in the circumstances suggested dissection would not be
allowed? This false impression has been produced by writers in the
history of science who have emphasized very strenuously the supposed
opposition of the Church to science, and as these writers had a
certain prestige as scholars their works have been widely read and
their assertions have been unquestioned, because it would naturally be
presumed that they would not make them without thorough investigation
of such important questions. Professional men are not to blame if they
have taken such statements {29} seriously, even though they are
absolutely without foundation. That statements of this kind should
have been made by men of distinction in educational circles and should
have passed current so long, is only additional evidence of an
intolerant spirit in those who least suspect it in themselves and are
most ready to deprecate intolerance in others.
Take a single example. Most of what is said as to the opposition of
the Church to medicine during the Middle Ages in A History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, by Andrew D. White
(Appleton's, New York), is founded on a supposed Papal prohibition of
anatomy and on a subsequent equally supposed Papal prohibition of
chemistry. These two documents are emphasized so much, that most
readers cannot but conclude that, even without further evidence, these
are quite enough to prove the contention with regard to the
unfortunate opposition of the Church to medical science. Without these
two presumably solid pillars of actual Papal documents, what is said
with regard to the Church and its relations to medical science in the
Middle Ages amounts to very little. Much is made of the existence of
superstitions in medicine as characteristic of the Middle Ages and as
encouraged by clergymen, but medical superstitions of many kinds
continue to have their hold on even the intelligent classes down to
the present day in spite of the progress of education, and in
countries where the Church has very little influence over the people.
Dr. White quotes with great confidence and absolute assurance a Papal
decree issued in the year 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII., which forbade
the mutilation of the human body and consequently hampered all
possibility of progress in anatomy for {30} several important
centuries in the history of modern science. Indeed, this supposed
Papal prohibition of dissection is definitely stated to have precluded
all opportunity for the proper acquisition of anatomical knowledge
until the first half of the sixteenth century, when the Golden Age of
modern anatomy set in. This date being coincident with the spread of
the movement known as the Protestant Reformation, many people at once
conclude that somehow the liberality of spirit that then came into the
world, and is supposed at least to have put an end to all intolerance,
must have been the active factor in this development of anatomy, and
that, as Dr. White has indeed declared, it was only because the Church
was forced from her position of opposition that anatomical
investigation was allowed.
Since so serious an accusation is founded on a definite Papal
document, it cannot but be a matter of surprise that those who have
cited it so confidently as forbidding anatomy, and especially
dissection, have never given the full text of the document. It is
practically impossible for the ordinary reader, or even for the
serious student of the history of medicine, to obtain a copy of this
decree unless he has special library facilities at his command and the
help of those who are familiar with this class of documents. Many
references have been made to this prohibition by Pope Boniface VIII.,
but no one has thought it worth while to give, even in a footnote, the
text of it. The reason for this is easy to understand as soon as one
reads the actual text. It has nothing to say at all with regard to
dissection. It has absolutely no reference to the cutting up of the
human body for teaching purposes. Its purpose is very plain, and is
stated so that there can be no possible {31} misapprehension of its
meaning. Here we have an excellent illustration of what the editors of
the Cambridge Modern History declared to be the breaking up of the
long conspiracy against the truth by the consultation of original
documents.
Through the kindness of the Rev. D. A. Corbett, of the Seminary of St.
Charles Borromeo, Overbrook, Pa., I have been able to secure a copy of
Pope Boniface's decree, and this at once disposes of the assertion
that dissection was forbidden or anatomy in any way hampered by it.
Father Corbett writes:
"The Bull De Sepulturis of Boniface VIII. is not found in the
Collectio Bullarum of Coquelines, nor is it incorporated in the
Liber Sextus Decretalium Divi Bonifacii Papae VIII., though it is
from here that it is quoted in the Histoire Litteraire de la France
(as referred to by President White). It appears in an appendix to
this sixth book among the Extravagantes, a term that is used to
signify that the documents contained under it were issued at a time
somewhat apart from the period this special book of decretals was
supposed to cover. The Liber Sextus was published in 1298. This
'Bull De Sepulturis' was not issued until 1300. It is to be found in
the third book of the Extravagantes, Chapter I."
Even a glance at the title would seem to be sufficient to show that
this document did not refer even distantly to dissection, and this
makes it all the harder to understand the misapprehension that ensued
in the matter, if the document was quoted in good faith, for usually
the compression necessary in the title is the source of such errors.
The full text of the bull only confirms the absolute absence of any
suggestion of forbidding dissection or discouraging the study of
anatomy.
{32}
"Title--Concerning Burials.[Footnote 2] Boniface VIII. Persons
cutting up the bodies of the dead, barbarously boiling them, in
order that the bones, being separated from the flesh, may be carried
for burial into their own countries, are by the very act
excommunicated.
[Footnote 2: See Latin text in full in appendix.]
"As there exists a certain abuse, which is characterized by the most
abominable savagery, but which nevertheless some of the faithful
have stupidly adopted. We, prompted by motives of humanity, have
decreed that all further mangling of the human body, the very
mention of which fills the soul with horror, should be henceforth
abolished.
"The custom referred to is observed with regard to those who happen
to be in any way distinguished by birth or position, who, when dying
in foreign lands, have expressed a desire to be buried in their own
country. The custom consists of disemboweling and dismembering the
corpse, or chopping it into pieces and then boiling it so as to
remove the flesh before sending the bones home to be buried--all
from a distorted respect for the dead. Now, this is not only
abominable in the sight of God, but extremely revolting under every
human aspect. Wishing, therefore, as the duty of our office demands,
to provide a remedy for this abuse, by which the custom, which is
such an abomination, so inhuman and so impious, may be eradicated
and no longer be practiced by anyone, We, by our apostolic
authority, decree and ordain that no matter of what position or
family or dignity they may be, no matter in what cities or lands or
places in which the worship of the Catholic faith flourishes, the
practice of this or any similar abuse with regard to the bodies of
the dead should cease {33} forever, no longer be observed, and that
the hands of the faithful should not be stained by such barbarities.
"And in order that the bodies of the dead should not be thus
impiously and barbarously treated and then transported to the places
in which, while alive, they had selected to be buried, let them be
given sepulture for the time either in the city or the camp or in
the place where they have died, or in some neighboring place, so
that, when finally their bodies have been reduced to ashes or
otherwise, they may be brought to the place where they wish to be
buried and there be interred. And, if the executor or executrix of
the aforesaid defunct, or those of his household, or anyone else of
whatever order, condition, state or grade he may be, even if he
should be clothed with episcopal dignity, should presume to attempt
anything against the tenor of this our statute and ordination, by
inhumanly and barbarously treating the bodies of the dead, as we
have described, let him know that by the very fact he incurs the
sentence of excommunication, from which he cannot obtain absolution
(unless at the moment of death), except from the Holy See. And
besides, the body that has been thus barbarously treated shall be
left without Christian burial. Let no one, therefore, etc. (Here
follows the usual formula of condemnation for the violation of the
prescriptions of a decree.) Given at the Lateran Palace, on the
twelfth of the calends of March, in the sixth year of our
pontificate."
The reason for the bull is very well known. During the crusades,
numbers of the nobility who died at a distance from their homes in
infidel countries were prepared for transportation and burial in their
own lands by dismemberment and boiling. The remains of {34} Louis IX.,
of France, and a number of his relatives who perished on the ill-fated
crusade in Egypt in 1270, are said to have been brought back to France
in this fashion. The body of the famous German Emperor, Frederick
Barbarossa, who was drowned in the river Saleph near Jerusalem, was
also treated thus in order that the remains might be transported to
Germany without serious decomposition being allowed to disturb the
ceremonials of subsequent obsequies. Such examples were very likely to
be imitated by many. The custom, as can be appreciated from these
instances from different nations, was becoming so widespread as to
constitute a serious source of danger to health, and might easily have
furnished occasion for the conveyance of disease. It is almost
needless to say to our generation that it was eminently unhygienic.
Any modern authority in sanitation would at once declare against it,
and the custom would be put an end to without more ado. There can be
no doubt at all then that Pope Boniface VIII. accomplished good, not
evil, by the publication of this bull. So anyone with modern views as
to the danger of disease from the foolish custom which it abolished
would at once have declared, and yet, by a perversion of its
signification, it came to be connected with a supposed prohibition of
dissection. For this misunderstanding Pope Boniface VIII. has had to
suffer all sorts of reproaches and the Church has been branded as
opposed to anatomy by historians(!)
Is it possible, however, that this bull was misinterpreted so as to
forbid dissection, or at least certain forms of anatomical preparation
which were useful for the study and teaching of anatomy? That is what
Dr. White asserts. He shows, moreover, in his History of {35} the
Warfare of Science with Theology, that he knew that the document in
question was perfectly inoffensive as regards any prohibition of
dissection in itself, but insists that by a misinterpretation, easy to
understand as he considers, because of the supposed opposition of
ecclesiastics to medical science, it did actually prevent anatomical
development. President White says: "As to the decretal of Pope
Boniface VIII., the usual statement is that it forbade all
dissections. While it was undoubtedly construed universally to
prohibit dissection for anatomical purposes, its declared intent was
as stated in the text; that it was constantly construed against
anatomical investigations cannot for a moment be denied."
If a misinterpretation were subsequently made, surely Pope Boniface
VIII. must not be held responsible for it; yet in spite of the fact
that Dr. White shows that he knew very well that this bull did not
forbid the practice of dissection, he does not hesitate to use over
and over again expressions which would imply that some formal decision
against dissection itself had been made, though this is the only Papal
document he refers to. He even goes so far as to say that "anatomical
investigation was made a sin against the Holy Ghost." He frequently
repeats that for three centuries after the issuance of this bull the
development of anatomy was delayed and hampered, and insists that only
that Vesalius at great personal risk broke through this Church
opposition, modern anatomy would never have developed. He proceeds
constantly on the theory that it was always this bull that was in
fault, though he confesses that if so, it was by a misunderstanding;
and the only fault he can find to attribute to the Pope is a lack of
infallibility, as he {36} calls it, because he was not able to foresee
that his bull would be so misunderstood.
I suppose we are to understand from this that Dr. White considers that
he knows the meaning of the word infallibility. It is not a hard word
to understand if one wishes to understand it. The meaning that he
gives it in this passage is so entirely different from its accepted
meaning among Catholics, that any schoolboy in any of our parochial
schools would tell him that the word was never used by Catholics in
the sense in which he here employs it. It is so misunderstood
popularly outside of the Church, and this Dr. White doubtless knew
very well. When a man uses a term in medicine in a different sense to
that which is ordinarily accepted, we consider him ignorant; but when
he deliberately uses it in another sense for his own purposes because
of a false significance attached to it in the popular mind, we have a
special name for him.
The whole matter, however, resolves itself into the simple question,
"Was dissection prevented and anatomical investigation hampered after
the issuance of the bull?" This is entirely a question of fact. The
history of anatomy will show whether dissection ceased or not at this
time. Now if those who so confidently make assertions in this matter
had ever gone to a genuine history of anatomy, they would have learned
at once that, far from this being the time when dissection ceased, the
year 1300 is almost exactly the date for which we have the first
definite evidence of the making of dissections and the gradual
development of anatomical investigation by this means in connection
with the Italian universities. This is such a curious coincidence that
I always call it to the attention of medical students in lecturing on
this subject.
{37}
The first dissection of which we have definite record, Roth tells us
in his life of Vesalius, was a so-called private anatomy or dissection
made for medico-legal purposes. Its date is the year 1302, within two
years after the bull. A nobleman had died and there was a suspicion
that he had been poisoned. The judge ordered that an autopsy be made
in order to determine this question. Unfortunately we do not know what
the decision of the doctors in the case was. We know only that the
case was referred to them. Now it seems very clear that if this had
not been a common practice before, the court would not have adopted
this measure, apparently as a matter of judicial routine, as seems to
have been the case in this instance. Had it been the first time that
it was done instead of having the record of the transaction preserved
only by chance, any mention of it at all would have appeared so
striking to the narrator, that he would have been careful to tell the
whole story, and especially the decision reached in the matter.
After this, evidence of dissection accumulates rapidly. During the
second decade of the century Mondino, the first writer on anatomy, was
working at Bologna. We have the records of his having made some
dissections in connection with his university teaching there, and
eventually he published a text-book on dissection which became the
guide for dissectors for the next two centuries. Within five years
after this we have a story of students being haled to court for
body-snatching for anatomical purposes, and about this time there was,
according to Rashdall in his History of the Universities, a statute of
the University of Bologna which required the teacher in anatomy to
dissect a body, if the students brought it to him. More than ten years
earlier than this, that is, {38} within ten years after the supposed
Papal prohibition, there are records of dissections having been made
at Venice in public, for the benefit of the doctors of the city, at
the expense of the municipal treasury. During the first half of this
century money was allowed at Bologna for wine, to be given to those
who attended the public dissections, and if we recall the state in
which the bodies must have been at a time when the use of
preservatives was unknown, we can well understand the need for it. All
this shows, as I have said, that the date of Boniface's bull (1300),
far from representing the eclipse of anatomy, actually fixes the date
of the dawn of modern practical anatomical study.
The most interesting question in this whole discussion is as to how
much dissection Mondino actually did during the second decade of the
fourteenth century. His book became the manual of dissection that was
in practically every dissector's hands for several centuries after.
Probably no book of its kind has ever been more used, and none
maintained its place as the standard work in this department for so
long. No less than 25 printed editions of it appeared altogether. It
would seem to be utterly improbable that the author of a text-book of
this kind could have made only a few dissections. There are a number
of historians who have claimed, nevertheless, that at most he did not
dissect more than three or four bodies. This is all that we have
absolute evidence for, that is to say, only these dissections are
recorded. It is easy to understand, however, that a professor of
anatomy might make even hundreds of dissections, and yet have
something to say only about a very few which happened to present some
special peculiarities. The absence of further records may readily be
accounted for also in {39} other ways. The art of printing was not yet
invented; paper had only just been discovered and was extremely
expensive, and many factors conspired to destroy any records that may
have been made.
Outsiders dipping into the history of medicine have made much of our
paucity of documentary evidence with regard to what Mondino actually
did, and have, when it suited their purpose, insisted that this first
author of a dissector's manual did but the three or four dissections
explicitly mentioned. Those who are more familiar with the history of
medicine, and especially of anatomy, are persuaded that he must have
done many. In the first class of writers is Prof. White, for instance,
who declares positively that Mondino did not dissect more bodies than
those of which we have absolute records. According to his emphatically
expressed opinion, the reason why the father of dissection did not
dissect more was because of ecclesiastical opposition. Even these few
dissections were due to some favoring chance or the laxity of the
ecclesiastical authorities, or Mondino might have paid dear for his
audacity. No one else, according to Prof. White, dared to encounter
the awful penalties that might have been inflicted on Mondino until
Vesalius, more than two centuries later, broke through "the
ecclesiastical barrier" and gave liberty to anatomists. Prof. Lewis S.
Pilcher, of Brooklyn, who has made a special study of Mondino and his
times, who has consulted that author's original editions, who has
searched out the traditions with regard to him in the very scene of
his labors in Bologna, thinks quite differently. Prof. White has a
purpose, that of minimizing the work done in anatomy during the
fourteenth century; Prof. Pilcher's only purpose is to bring out the
truth with regard to the history of {40} anatomy. In the Medical
Library and Historical Journal for December, 1906, Prof. Pilcher has
an article entitled The Mondino Myth, by which term he designates the
idea that Mondino dissected but a few bodies. He says with regard to
this subject:
"The changes have been rung by medical historians upon a casual
reference in Mondino's chapter on the uterus to the bodies of two
women and one sow which he had dissected, as if these were the first
and the only cadavers dissected by him. The context involved no such
construction. He is enforcing a statement that the size of the
uterus may vary, and to illustrate it remarks that, 'a woman whom I
anatomized in the month of January last year (1315 Anno Christi),
had a larger uterus than one whom I anatomized in the month of March
of the same year.' And further, he says, 'the uterus of a sow which
I dissected in 1316 (the year in which he was writing) was a hundred
times greater than any I had seen in the human female, for she was
pregnant, and contained thirteen pigs.' These happen to be the only
references to specific bodies that he makes in his treatise. But it
is a far cry to wring out of these references the conclusions that
these are the only dissections he made. It is quite true that if we
incline to enshroud his work in a cloud of mystery, and to figure it
as an unprecedented, awe-inspiring feature to break down the
prejudices of the ages, it is easy to think of him as having timidly
profaned the human body in his anatomizing zeal in but one or two
instances. His own language, however, throughout his book is that of
a man who was familiar with the differing conditions of the organs
found in many different bodies--a man who was habitually
dissecting."
{41}
As I think must be clear to any one who knows Mondino's book, no other
conclusion than this suggested by Prof. Pilcher can be drawn. This
opinion has been frankly stated, by every historian of anatomy in
recent years. Puschmann says it very clearly. Von Töply is evidently
of the same opinion. These are the latest authorities in the history
of anatomy. No other conclusion than this could well be reached by
anyone who has studied the question seriously. Pilcher confirms this
in the article already quoted in the following paragraph:
"Salernum was not alone in its legalization of the dissection of
human bodies before the first public work of Mondino, for, according
to a document of the Maggiore Consiglio of Venice of 1308, it
appears that there was a college of medicine in Venice, which was
even then authorized to dissect a body once every year. Common
experience tells us that the embodiment of such regulations into
formal law would occur only after a considerable preceding period of
discussion, and in this particular field, of clandestine practice.
It is too much to ask us to believe that in all this period, from
the date of the promulgation of Frederick's decree of 1241 to the
first public demonstration by Mondino at Bologna in 1315, the decree
had been a dead letter and no human body had been anatomized. It is
true there is not, as far as I am aware, any record of any such
work, and commentators and historians of a later date have, without
exception, accepted the view that none was done, and thereby
heightened the halo assigned to Mondino as the one who ushered a new
era. Such a view seems to me to be incredible. Be that as it may, it
is undeniable that at the beginning of the fourteenth century the
idea of dissecting the human body was not a novel one; {42} the
importance of a knowledge of the intimate structure of the body had
already been appreciated by divers ruling bodies, and specific
regulations prescribing its practice had been enacted. It is more
reasonable to believe that in the era preceding immediately that of
Mondino, human bodies were being opened and after a fashion
anatomized. All that we know of the work of Mondino suggests that it
was not a new enterprise in which he was a pioneer, but rather that
he brought to an old practice a new enthusiasm and better methods,
which, caught on the rising wave of interest in medical teaching at
Bologna, and preserved by his own energy as a writer in the first
original systematic treatise written since the time of Galen,
created for him in subsequent uncritical times the reputation of
being the restorer of the practice of anatomizing the human body,
the first one to demonstrate and teach such knowledge since the time
of the Ptolemaic anatomists, Erasistratus and Herophilus."
In order to show that Mondino did not perform only the two or three
dissections which he himself for special reasons mentions, but many
more, Professor Pilcher has made a series of quotations from the
Bolognese anatomist's manual of dissection. It is after all quite easy
to understand that if dissections were common, there would be no
records of most of them, as they would be too commonplace for
chroniclers to mention. Only those that have some special feature are
by chance mentioned in some accounts of doings at the university. The
records of the actual number of dissections at most medical schools,
even a century ago, are not now available in most cases. On the other
hand, no one can read these quotations from Mondino's book without
realizing that the man who wrote these passages had made many {43}
dissections, and that it was a common practice for him to make
anatomical preparations in many different ways, under many different
circumstances and for many different purposes.
The second quotation shows, in fact, that Mondino had the custom
sometimes of boiling his bodies before dissecting them when he wished
to demonstrate special features, and he promises to make such an
anatomy for his students at another time. If the bull of Pope Boniface
VIII. was misinterpreted in any way to prohibit dissection, this would
surely be the practice supposed to fall under its provisions. Here we
find Mondino, less than twenty years after the promulgation of the
bull, writing about this very practice, however, and calmly suggesting
that he follows it as a routine, in a book that was published without
let or hindrance from the ecclesiastical authorities, and that became
for the next two centuries the most used book in the teaching of
anatomy in educational institutions that were directly under
ecclesiastical authorities. If the bull was misinterpreted so as to
forbid dissection, as has been said, surely this flagrant violation of
it would not have been permitted. It is clear that, if there was a
misinterpretation, it must have come later in the history of anatomy.
But of that we shall find no trace any more than at this time.
Here are the quotations from the Anatomy of Mondino which show that he
practiced not one but many methods of making dissections, according to
the purposes he had in view. The leaf and line references are to the
Dryander Edition, Marburg, 1541. (Taken from Prof. Pilcher.)
"I do not consider separately here the anatomy of component parts,
because their anatomy does not appear {44} clearly in the fresh
subject, but rather in those macerated in water." (Leaf 2, lines
8-13.)
".... these differences are more noticeable _in the cooked_ or
perfectly dried body, and so you need not be concerned about them,
as perhaps _I will make an anatomy upon such a one at another time_
and will write what I observe with my own senses, as I have proposed
from the beginning." (Leaf 60, lines 14-17.)
"What the members are to which these nerves come cannot well be seen
in such dissection as this, but it should be liquified with rain
water, and this is not contemplated in the present body." (Leaf 60,
lines 31-33.)
"After the veins you will note many muscles and many large and
strong cords, the complete anatomy of which you will not endeavor to
find in such a body, but in a body dried in the sun for three years,
as I have demonstrated at another time; I also declared completely
their number, and wrote the anatomy of the muscles of the arms,
hands and feet in a lecture which I gave over the first, second,
third and fourth subjects."
As must be clear to anyone, many of these expressions are, as
Professor Pilcher insists, intelligible only if we accept the
conclusion that their author had done many dissections, under many and
varying circumstances, during his career as an anatomist before
writing this volume. We have other evidence, of a much more direct
character, for this fact. Mondino uses the expression, that he had
demonstrated many times a certain anatomical feature which could only
be the subject of demonstration after dissection. The expression
occurs in a description of the hypo-gastric region which he calls the
sumen. Through this region, he says, there pass to the surface certain
veins which transmit fluid in the fetus {45} during the time of its
life in utero. For this reason they are better studied in the unborn
than in the fully developed, since they lose their function as soon as
complete development is reached. In this description Mondino uses the
words "ego hoc modo multitotiens monstravi."
As with regard to this, so as to another bit of evidence of Mondino's
frequency of dissection, Professor Pilcher has supplied the material.
He says in his article on the Mondino Myth, already cited:
"Shortly after his (Mondino's) death, the young Guy de Chauliac, of
Montpelier, came to Bologna to study anatomy under the tuition of
Mondino's successor, Bertrucius. When he wrote his own treatise, 'La
Grande Chirurgie,' thirty years later, he prefaced it with an
appreciation of the study of anatomy, saying: 'It is necessary and
useful to every physician to know first of all anatomy'; and that a
knowledge of anatomy was to be acquired by two means; 'these are,'
he says, 'the study of books, a means useful indeed, but not
sufficient to explain those things which can only be appreciated by
the senses; the other, experimentally on the dead body, according to
the treatise of Mondinus, of Bologna, which he has written, and
which (experimental anatomy on the cadaver) he (Mondinus) has done
many times'--'_et ipsam fecit multitoties._'"
Besides this evidence we have details of the lives of two of Mondino's
assistants which furnish further proofs of the frequency of dissection
at the University of Bologna during these first two decades of the
fourteenth century, which, it will be recalled, are also the first two
decades after the promulgation of Pope Boniface's bull. Curiously
enough, one of these assistants was a young woman who, as was not
infrequently the custom at this {46} time in the Italian universities,
was matriculated as a student at Bologna. She took up first philosophy
and afterwards anatomy under Mondino. While it is not generally
realized, co-education was quite common at the Italian universities of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and at no time since the
foundation of the universities has a century passed in Italy without
distinguished women occupying professors' chairs at some of the
Italian universities. This young woman, Alessandra Giliani, of
Persiceto, a country district not far from Bologna, took up the study
of anatomy with ardor and, strange as it may appear, became especially
enthusiastic about dissection. She became so skilful that she was made
the prosector of anatomy, that is, one who prepares bodies for
demonstration by the professor.
According to the Cronaca Persicetana, quoted by Medici in his History
of the Anatomical School of Bologna:
"She became most valuable to Mondino because she would cleanse most
skilfully the smallest vein, the arteries, all ramifications of the
vessels, without lacerating or dividing them, and to prepare them for
demonstration she would fill them with various colored liquids, which,
after having been driven into the vessels, would harden without
destroying the vessels. Again, she would paint these same vessels to
their minute branches so perfectly and color them so naturally that,
added to the wonderful explanations and teachings of the master, they
brought him great fame and credit." This whole passage shows a
wonderful anticipation of all our most modern methods--injection,
painting, hardening--of making anatomical preparations for class and
demonstration purposes.
Some of the details of the story have been doubted, but her memorial
tablet, erected at the time of her death {47} in the Church of San
Pietro e Marcellino of the Hospital of Santa Maria de Mareto, gives
all the important facts, and tells also the story of the grief of her
fiance, who was himself Mondino's other assistant. This was Otto
Agenius, who had made for himself a name as an assistant to the chair
of Anatomy in Bologna, and of whom there were great hopes entertained
because he had already shown signs of genius as an investigator in
anatomy. These hopes were destined to grievous disappointment,
however, for Otto died suddenly, before he had reached his thirtieth
year. The fact that both these assistants of Mondino died young and
suddenly, would seem to point to the fact that probably dissection
wounds in those early days proved even more fatal than they
occasionally did a century or more ago, when the proper precautions
against them were not so well understood. The death of Mondino's two
prosectors in early years would seem to hint at some such unfortunate
occurrence.
As regards the evidence of what the young man had accomplished before
his untimely death, probably the following quotation, which Medici has
taken from one of the old chroniclers, will give the best idea. He
said:
"What advantage indeed might not Bologna have had from Otto Agenius
Lustrolanus, whom Mondino had used as an assiduous prosector, if he
had not been taken away by a swift and lamentable death before he had
completed the sixth lustrum of his life!"
Further absolute proof that dissections were very common about the
time that Mondino made those which are recorded, and the mention of
which has led to the false assumption as to the rarity of dissection,
is to be found in the legal prosecution for body-snatching, which I
have already mentioned and which took place within five {48} years
after Mondino made the public demonstrations in dissection that are
the subject of discussion. It will be conceded by everyone that such
prosecutions for body-snatching are not likely to occur when only one
or two graves are violated a year, but are usually the result of a
series of such outrages, which arouse the community against them. We
prefer to give this bit of history once more in the words of Professor
Pilcher, who has argued this whole case for _the frequency of
dissection within twenty years after the bull that is supposed to have
forbidden it_ better than anyone else, and whose knowledge of Mondino
and his times is such as to make him an authority on the subject. He
has no interest in them, as I have said, either for or against the
Popes. His only idea is to bring out the real meaning of whatever data
we possess for the history of anatomy and dissection at this time.
"An instructive and interesting side-light on the conditions
attending the study of practical anatomy in the days of Mondino may
be found in a record, still extant, of a legal procedure which
occurred in Bologna in the year 1319, four years after Mondino had
begun his public demonstrations and at a time when Otto and
Alessandra were doubtless enthusiastically working with him.
According to the record, four students, three from Milan and one
from Piacenza, were accused of having gone at night time to the
cemetery of the church of San Barnada, outside the San Felice gate,
and to have sacrilegiously violated the grave in which was buried
the body of a certain Pasino who had been hung on the gallows near
the Ponte di Reno. It was charged that the students had taken up the
body and carried it to the school of the parish of San Salvatore,
near the pharmacy of {49} Giacomo de Guido, where Master Alberto
(Zancari) was teaching. There were witnesses who affirmed that they
had seen the body of Pasino in the school and the students and
others intent upon dissecting it. It was the sixth of December when
the arrests were made, but the final outcome of the trial is not
stated."
Surely all this must be considered sufficient evidence to show that
Pope Boniface's bull neither forbade dissection, nor was
misinterpreted as prohibiting any practice in connection with
anatomical investigation. It is not enough for President White,
however, for after the publication of my original article in the
Medical Library and Historical Journal on The Popes and Anatomy, and
another article on Pope John XXII. and the Supposed Bull against
Chemistry, President White wrote thus in reply: "Dr. Walsh takes up
the decretal of Boniface VIII., in 1300, and endeavors to show that,
so far from forbidding dissection, it had quite a different tenor, and
that at sundry universities in Italy and at the University at
Montpelier, in France, dissection was permitted and most openly
practiced. This seems to me very disingenuous. The decretal of
Boniface was construed universally as prohibiting dissections for any
purpose whatever."
For President White, then, the publication of the text of the bull is
only an _endeavor_ to show that, so far from forbidding dissection, it
had quite a different tenor. This endeavor seems to him very
disingenuous(!) It matters not what evidence there may be for
dissection, or lack of evidence as to ecclesiastical opposition, the
decretal of Boniface was _construed universally_ as prohibiting any
dissections for any purpose whatever. All history must yield before
the reiteration of the assertion {50} that the Popes did forbid
dissection, and that there was no anatomy during the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, except such as by chance, in some
way or other, succeeded in evading the Church regulations. It simply
must have been so. President White has said it. For anyone to deny it
is to question his historical infallibility. Only those who are
disingenuous will dare to do so.
It is true, he grants there were some permits to dissect given, but
these were wrung from the unwilling hands of the ecclesiastical
authorities, and are only proofs of their opposition, not at all of
their toleration of dissection. There is no limit to which Professor
White will not go in order to maintain his proposition that the Popes
did forbid anatomy, and that there was no anatomical investigation
during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Here, for
instance, is a paragraph from Professor White's answer which shows
very strikingly one method of arguing with regard to a question of
major significance in the history of education as well as of science,
and especially of medicine, during the Middle Ages. Comments on it are
entirely unnecessary:
"And now, as to Dr. Walsh's statement that dissection was permitted
by Popes and ecclesiastical authorities in universities. His
argument in the matter is an excellent example of Jesuitism. It is
true that under the pressure of the developing science of medicine,
sundry civil and ecclesiastical authorities did, from time to time,
issue permits allowing an occasional dissection, at rare intervals,
here and there; as, for example, the permission given to the
University of Lerida, in 1391, to dissect one dead criminal every
three years, and to sundry other universities to dissect one or two
human {51} bodies each year. It is a fact of which we have ample
testimony, that Mundinus, the great anatomist preceding Vesalius,
only dissected three human bodies with his classes during his entire
career. So far from effectually helping anatomy, these permissions
served really to fasten the idea upon the European mind that
dissection to any considerable extent by anatomical investigators
ought not to be allowed, and, as a matter of fact, it was not until
Vesalius, _in spite of theological opposition, braved calumny,
persecution, and possibly death, that this ecclesiastical barrier to
investigation was broken through._" (Italics ours.)
Since Professor White has insisted so much on the significance of
these permissions, a discussion of them will not be out of place.
There are records of a certain small number of permissions to dissect
having been granted by the Popes to various universities during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These are so few, however, that it
would seem that if they represented the only opportunities afforded
for dissection, then the development of anatomy must have been much
hampered.
With regard to this, it may be said that if the Popes gave permission
for dissection, then this practice was not forbidden by them. Here is
the proof of it out of the mouths of those who say the opposite. Why
should a permission be necessary, however, will be asked?
At the present moment such formal permissions are required quite as
much in all civilized countries as they were during the Middle Ages.
In certain parts of the United States a bond has to be filed by
applicants before permission to dissect will be given. Dissection is
recognized generally as a practice that needs definite regulation.
Without such regulation all sorts of abuses {52} would creep in.
During the Middle Ages popular feeling was all against dissection. It
was difficult, in many places, for the university authorities to
obtain permission for dissection from their immediate political
rulers. As a consequence of this they reverted to the theory, very
generally accepted at that time, that the university was independent
of the political authorities of the place in which it was situated, in
educational matters, and an appeal was made directly to the
ecclesiastical authorities for permission to dissect, as coming under
their jurisdiction in education. They had thus obtained many other
educational privileges that would not have been allowed them by
municipalities, and they were successful also in this. Anyone who
knows the details of the struggle of the universities to maintain the
rights of their students and faculties against the encroachments of
municipal and state authorities, will appreciate how much this
possibility of appeal to the Pope meant for the universities of that
time.
The permission to dissect was only another, but a very striking
example, of ecclesiastical authority granting privileges to
universities beyond those which they could have obtained from the
local governments under which they existed. Such permissions, far from
showing that the Popes were hampering or prohibiting dissection,
prove, on the contrary, that they were securing for educational
institutions what local popular prejudice would not have allowed them.
That this is the proper way to view this question will be best
appreciated by a review of the history of anatomy during the two
centuries and a half in which ecclesiastical authorities are said to
have prevented or discouraged its development. From this it will be
seen very clearly that the nearer to Rome the {53} medical schools
were, the more dissection was done in them; that dissection was most
common in Rome, at least during the latter part of this period; that
the golden age of anatomy developed most luxuriantly in Bologna when
that was a Papal city, and in Rome itself; and that in general the
Popes must be looked upon as having fostered and patronized the
medical sciences and anatomy in every possible way, while there is not
the slightest hint anywhere to be found of the ecclesiastical
opposition that is supposed to have dominated these centuries of
medical history.
In concluding this chapter it has seemed worth while to trace the
origin of the misinterpretation of Pope Boniface's decretal, which
makes it forbid dissection for anatomical purposes as well as the
cutting up and boiling of bodies in order to facilitate their removal
for long distances for burial. Prof. White quotes with great
confidence in the matter the Benedictine Literary History of France as
his authority, which he declares to be a Catholic authority. Under
ordinary circumstances, this would be quite sufficient to establish
the fact that such a misinterpretation must have taken place, for the
Benedictines were extremely careful in such matters and were not
likely to admit an assertion of this kind, unless they had good
foundation for it. The quotation on which Prof. White depends for his
declarations in the matter is found in the Sixteenth Volume of the
Histoire Litteraire de la France, which runs as follows:
"But what was to retard still more (than the prohibition of surgery
to the clergy mentioned in the preceding paragraph) was the very
ancient prejudice which opposed anatomical dissection as
sacrilegious. By a decree inserted in Le Sexte, Boniface VIII.
forbade the boiling {54} of bodies in order to obtain skeletons.
Anatomists were obliged to go back to Galen for information, and
could not study the human body directly, and consequently could not
advance the human science of bodily health and therapeutics."
Had this been written by the Benedictines, there would have been every
reason to think that though Boniface's decretal itself did not forbid
dissection it had unfortunately been so misinterpreted. While the
Histoire Litteraire de la France, however, was begun by the
Benedictine Congregation of St. Maur, their work, like many another
magnificent undertaking of the monks, was interrupted by the French
Revolution. What they had accomplished up to this time showed the
necessity for such work, and accordingly in the early part of the
nineteenth century a continuation of it was undertaken by the members
of the Institute of France. The Sixteenth Volume from which the
quotation just cited comes was mainly written by Pierre Claude
François Daunou, the French historian and politician. His life had not
been such as to make him a sympathetic student of the Middle Ages. He
had been a deputy to the Convention, 1792-1795, was elected the first
President of the Council of 500 in this latter year, and became a
member of the Tribunate in 1800. His contributions to history were
made near the close of his life. While he is usually considered an
authority in the political details of these centuries, it is easy to
understand that he was not favorably situated for familiarity with the
medical history of these times.
Once it is understood that the paragraph in question was written by M.
Daunou and not by the Benedictines, its adventitious prestige as a
Catholic historical {55} authority, to which we shall see presently it
has absolutely no right, vanishes. A word about M. Daunou will serve
to show how carefully any declaration of his with regard to the Popes
must be weighed. He belonged to that French school of Catholics who
try to minimize in every way the influence of the Papacy in the
Church, and who, as students of history know very well, do not
hesitate even to twist historical events to suit their prejudices and
give them a significance detrimental to the Popes. This was the
principal purpose of Daunou's historical writing. There is a little
volume called Outlines of a History of the Court of Rome and of the
Temporal Power of the Popes, declared by the translator to be by
Daunou, which was published in Philadelphia in 1837. The American
edition was issued as a Protestant tract, and the translator states
frankly that M. Daunou's purpose in composing it was to prove that
"the temporal power of the Roman Pontiffs originated in fraud and
usurpation; that its influence upon their pastoral ministry has been
to mar and degrade it, and its continuation is dangerous to the peace
and the liberties of Europe; and that its constant influence to these
effects is to retard the advancement of civilization and knowledge."
M. Daunou's title for the work as issued originally in French was An
Historical Essay on the Temporal Power of the Popes and on the Abuses
which they have made of their Spiritual Ministry. [Footnote 3]
[Footnote 3: The time at which this little book was published
furnishes the best possible commentary on its purpose. It was
originally issued in 1810, the year after Pope Pius VII. had been
carried off from Rome, and when Napoleon was using every effort to
discredit the Pope and bring about a state of affairs in which the
pontiff would be compelled to accept a Concordat that would deprive
the Church of many of her former rights. It was then really a
political pamphlet meant to curry favor with Napoleon, and issued
anonymously, because even Daunou did not care to put his name to it
under the circumstances. This will give a better idea of how much
credence may be given to Daunou's assertions with regard to the Popes
of the Middle Ages, than any reflections that we could make.]
Everything that M. Daunou has to say with regard to the Popes is
tinged by his political and Gallican {56} prejudices. This is why he
states so definitely in the Histoire Litteraire de la France that the
bull of Pope Boniface VIII., if it did not actually forbid dissection,
at least was responsible for hampering the practice for two centuries.
That M. Daunou's expressions on this subject have been taken so
seriously, however, is to me at least a never-ending source of
surprise. He himself must have known nothing at all of the history of
dissection, while those who accepted his opinion must have carefully
avoided consulting authorities on the history of anatomy, for it is
actually just after this bull that the history of public dissection
begins. It is clear to me, then, that this absurd assertion of M.
Daunou never would have been swallowed so readily only that writers
were over-anxious to find material to use against the Popes and the
Church.
Daunou found this bull of Boniface an excellent opportunity to
discredit the Popes in their relations to science. It is true, the
bull itself says nothing about dissection, nor is there anything in it
that would tend to create even a distant impression that it was
directed against anatomical preparations of any kind. We might expect,
then, that his assertion in this matter would have been contradicted
at once by some one who would read the bull. The bull is, however, not
easy to find for consultation purposes. It does not occur, as we have
said, in Le Sexte itself, that is, in the ordinary Sixth Book of Papal
Decretals, published by Boniface VIII., though Daunou quotes it as
from there and without a {57} hint as to where it may be really found.
It is in an appendix to this work, added after Boniface's death. It
would be rather difficult, then, and would require some special
knowledge and no little patience on the part of a subsequent collator
of historical sources to find the bull, unless he were determined on
getting at the bottom of this whole question. As a consequence
Daunou's assertion has remained practically unchallenged for the
better part of a century, though many scholars who were familiar with
Boniface's sixth book have doubtless realized its falsity, but owing
to the fact that they would not ordinarily come across the bull in
their direct reading of Boniface's famous volume, would not be in a
position to contradict its misquotation. If looked at in this way,
Daunou's passage in the Histoire Litteraire would seem to be a
deliberate and very clever and, unfortunately, successful perversion
of history.
Daunou, who was a deep student of Papal affairs and whose knowledge of
the history of the Papacy would not be likely to have missed so
important a detail, might very well have known, that about a half a
century before the time when he wrote asserting that this bull of
Boniface VIII. had prevented dissection, someone who had a doubt on
the subject asked the ecclesiastical authorities at Rome, whether this
Papal document was to be considered as referring in any way to the
practice of dissection, or the cutting up of human bodies for
anatomical purposes. In reply to this question Pope Benedict XIV. made
a very direct answer, absolutely in the negative. This is the only
hint that I know of in serious history that Pope Boniface's bull was
ever considered to have any reference to dissection for anatomical
purposes. At the time when Pope Benedict XIV.'s answer {58} was
published the Papal Medical School had been in existence for some five
centuries and a half. For about two centuries and a half it had been
distinguished in the annals of medicine, and as we shall see in the
chapter on The Papal Medical School, some of the most distinguished
anatomists of their time had been investigating and teaching by means
of dissections, and their demonstrations had been attended by many of
the high ecclesiastics, even many autopsies had been made on
Cardinals.
Pope Benedict's reply is quoted in full in Puschmann's Handbuch der
Geschichte der Medizin. Vol. II., page 227, in Robert Ritter Von
Töply's article on the History of Anatomy. It occurs in the midst of
an abundance of material of great historical importance which shows
the place that the Popes occupy as patrons of anatomy for several
centuries. Von Töply has no illusions with regard to any supposed
opposition of the Popes to medical science. He even says, that while
the older writers have always told the story of the development of
anatomy as if the Popes tried to prevent the study of it, as a matter
of fact, there is scarcely any evidence for this, and copious evidence
for their having done much to foster this branch of medical science
which they consider so important for the healing of the ills of
mankind. His reference to Boniface's answer with regard to the
relation of Boniface's bull to dissection runs as follows:
"Under the heading, Concerning the Dissection of Bodies in Public
Institutions of Learning, and in reply to the question whether the
bull of Boniface VIII. forbids the dissection of human bodies,
Benedict XIV. said (Institute 64):
"By the singular beneficence of God the study of medicine flourished
in a very wonderful manner in this {59} city (Rome). Its professors
are known for their supreme talents to the remotest parts of the
earth. There is no doubt that they have greatly benefited by the
diligent labor which they have devoted to dissection. From this
practice beyond doubt they have gained a profound knowledge of their
art and a proficiency that has enabled them to give advice for the
benefit of the ailing as well as a skill in the curing of disease.
Now such dissection of bodies is in no way contrary to the bull of
Pope Boniface. He indeed imposed the penalty of excommunication, to
be remitted only by the Sovereign Pontiff himself, upon all those
who would dare to disembowel the body of any dead person and either
dismember it or horribly cut it up, separating the flesh from the
bones. From the rest of his bull, however, it is clear that this
penalty was only to be inflicted upon those who took bodies already
buried out of their graves and by an act horrible in itself, cut
them in pieces in order that they might carry them elsewhere and
place them in another tomb. It is very clear, however, that by this,
the dissection of bodies, which has proved so necessary for those
exercising the profession of medicine, is by no means forbidden."
[Footnote 4]
[Footnote 4: The original Latin taken from Puschmann runs thus: "De
cadaverum sectione facienda in publicis Academiis, utrum constitutio
Bonifacii VIII. sectioni humanorum cadaverum adversetur. Singulari
dei beneficio medicinae studium in hac civitate (Roma) magnopere
floret cujus etiam professores ob eximiam virtutem in remotissimis
terrae partibus commendantur. Ipsis sane maxime profuit, quod
incidendis mortuis corporibus diligentem operam contulerint, ex qua
procul dubio praeclaram artis scientiam, in consultationibus obeundis
pro aegrotorum salute praestantiam, morbisque eurandis peritiam
consecuti sunt . . . . Porro haec membrorum incisio nullo modo adversatur
Bonifacii Institutioni . . . . Ille quidem poenam excommunicationis
indicit Pontifici solo remittendam, iis omnibus qui audeant
cuiuscumque defuncti corpus exenterare, ac illud membratim vel in
frustra immaniter concidere ab ossibus tegumentum carnis excutere.
Tamen ex reliquis ejusdem constitutionis partibus clare
deprehenditur, hanc poenam illis infligi qui sepulta corpora e tumulis
eruentes ipsa nefario scelere in frustra secabant ut alio deferrent,
alioque sepulchro collocarent. Quamobrem membrorum incisio
minime interdicitur, quae adeo necessaria est medicinae facultatem
exercentibus."]
This whole subject of the Supposed Papal Prohibition of Anatomy is
typical of a certain form of controversial writing against the Church.
A document of some time or other from the Middle Ages is taken,
twisted from its {60} original meaning and set up as a serious
stumbling block to the development of science or education in some
way. It is quoted confidently by some one without much authority.
Others who are glad of the opportunity to have such an objection to
urge against the Papacy, take it up eagerly, do not look it up in the
original, absolutely fail to consider the circumstances in which it
was issued, and then spread it broadcast. Of course it is accepted by
unthinking readers, whose prejudices lead them to believe that this is
what was to be expected anyhow. It maybe that history, as is the case
in anatomy, absolutely contradicts the assertion. That makes no
difference. History is ignored and treatises are written showing how
much science would have developed only for Papal opposition, by people
who know nothing at all about the real story of the development of
science. The real history of anatomy, showing very clearly how much
was done for the science by the Popes and ecclesiastics, will be told
in the following chapters.
{61}
THE STORY OF ANATOMY DOWN TO THE RENAISSANCE.
We have seen that the supposed prohibition of anatomy by the Popes has
no existence in reality. In spite of this fact, which it was easy for
anyone to ascertain who wished to consult the documents asserted to
forbid, a number of historical writers have insisted on finding
religious or ecclesiastical, or theological, opposition to anatomical
studies. Professor White has been most emphatic in his assertions in
this regard. He admits that the supposed bull of prohibition had quite
a different purport, yet he still continued to assert its connection
with the failure of anatomy to develop during the Middle Ages. This
presumed failure of anatomy during the Middle Ages is a myth. It
continues to secure credence only in the minds of those who know
nothing of the history of medical science during the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries and who have not consulted the
serious histories of medicine that treat of this time, but flourishes
vigorously in the minds of those who have a definite purpose in making
out a story of theological or Church opposition to science in general.
To counteract the false impression that has gained such wide
acceptance in this matter, it has seemed advisable, in order to settle
the question definitely once and for all, to trace the history of
anatomical science from its beginning in the Middle Ages down to
modern {62} times. It will not be hard to show that there was a
constant development and an unfailing interest in this subject. This
can be understood even more clearly from the story of the development
of surgery in the Middle Ages and its relations to anatomy than from
the history of anatomy itself. As is well known, materials with regard
to practical and applied science interest men more at all times, and
documents with regard to them are more likely to be preserved, and so
the history of surgery is very full, while the history of anatomy may
prove not quite so satisfactory. It is true of all sciences, that
there are periods when they have much less attraction than at other
times, and the success of investigators and original workers is not
always the same. As in nearly everything else, the real advances in
all science come when genius makes its mark, and not merely because a
large number of men happen to be interested in the subject. This will
be found as true in anatomy as in other sciences, and so there are
periods when not much is doing, but nowhere is there a trace of
ecclesiastical opposition to account for these variations of interest.
There is no doubt at all that there was much popular opposition to the
practice of dissection in the Middle Ages; that has existed at all
times in the world's history. It was very pronounced among the old
Pagans in Rome as well as in Greece, and it prevented anatomical study
to a very great degree. It continued to exist in modern times until
almost the present generation. Indeed, it has not yet entirely
disappeared, as any physician who has tried to secure autopsies on
interesting cases knows very well. The New York Academy of Medicine is
only a little over a half century old, and yet nearly every one of its
early presidents had thrilling {63} experiences in body-snatching as a
young man, because no proper provision for the supplying of anatomical
material had as yet been made by law, and bodies had to be obtained.
The feeling of objection to having the bodies of friends anatomized is
natural and not due to religion. It exists quite as strongly among the
ignorant who have no religion as among the religiously inclined. It
has not disappeared among the educated classes of our own time,
religious or irreligious. If this is borne in mind, the history of the
development of anatomy will be easier to understand.
The first definite evidence in modern history for the existence of the
practice of dissection is a famous law of the German Emperor,
Frederick II., from the first half of the thirteenth century. This law
was promulgated for the two Sicilies, that is, for Southern Italy and
Sicily proper, very probably in the year 1240. It has often been
vaguely referred to, but its actual significance can only be
understood from the terms of the law itself, which has been literally
translated by Von Töply in his Studien Zur Geschichte der Anatomie in
Im Mittelalter. [Footnote 5]
[Footnote 5: Deuticke Leipzig und Wien, 1893]
The paragraph with regard to dissection runs
as follows:
"As an enactment that will surely prove beneficial to health, we
decree that no surgeon will be allowed to practice, in case he has
not a written testimonial, which he must present to the teachers in
the medical faculty, that he has for at least a year applied himself
to that department of medicine which is concerned with the teaching
and practice of surgery, and that he has, above all, learned the
anatomy of the human body in this manner, and that he is fully
competent in this department {64} of medicine, without which neither
surgery can be undertaken with success nor sufferers cured."
[Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: The complete text of this law, which is a marvelous
anticipation of all our efforts for the regulation of the practice of
medicine down even to the present day, will be found in the appendix.]
Such a regulation, as pointed out by Professor Pilcher in an article
on the early history of dissection, [Footnote 7] and as we know by
modern experience, does not come into force as a rule before the
actual practice of what is prescribed, has been for some time the
custom and its usefulness proved by the results attained. It seems
very probable, then, that even at this early day the Emperor Frederick
was only making into a law what had been at least a custom before this
time. Lest anyone should think that this is a far-fetched assumption,
certain other paragraphs of this law, which show very definitely the
high degree to which the development of medical teaching had reached,
must be recalled. Frederick declared that medicine could only be
learned if there was a proper groundwork of logic. Only after three
years devoted to logic, then, under which term is included the grammar
and philosophy of an ordinary undergraduate course, could a man take
up the study of medicine. After three years devoted to medicine, to
which it is again specifically declared another year must be added if
surgery were to be practiced, a man might be given his degree in
medicine, but must spend a subsequent full year in the practical study
of medicine under the supervision of an experienced physician.
[Footnote 7: The Mondino Myth, Medical Library and Historical Journal,
1906]
The law further decreed definite punishments for the practice of
medicine without due warrant and violation of its regulations, and
also regulated the practice of apothecaries. It is rather interesting
to find that these {65} were forbidden to share their profits with
physicians, and the physicians themselves were not allowed to
distribute their own medicines. In a word, practically every one of
the problems in the practice of medicine which medical societies are
trying to solve at the present moment, were also occupying the
attention of the civil authorities about seven centuries ago. Anyone
who reads this law will not be loath to believe that it represents the
culmination of a series of efforts to regulate medical practice, and
especially medical education, and that it was not merely a chance
legal utterance that happened to touch a single important question for
the first time. One of the paragraphs of the law even contains some
clauses that would prevent fake medical schools and that establishes a
board of medical examiners. This consisted of certain state officials
and some professors of the art of medicine. In a word, medical
education had reached a high grade of development, and medical
practice was legally established on a high plane of professional
dignity.
Salerno had already enjoyed a high reputation as a medical school for
more than two centuries when Frederick's law was promulgated. It is
true that we have no definite records of dissections done in the
school. If these were not an uncommon occurrence, however, but came as
did dissections later on, quite as a matter of course, the absence of
such records, when we recall how liable to destruction were the meagre
accounts of the university transactions of the time during the long
period that has intervened and because of the many vicissitudes they
were liable to, is not surprising. During the century following this
decree there seems to be no doubt that dissections were done
regularly, though {66} perhaps not very frequently from our modern
standpoint, at Salerno. Salerno, as we shall see in the chapter on The
Papal Medical School, was always closely in touch with the
ecclesiastical authorities, and especially with the Papacy. There was
no hint of friction of any kind, either before or after this law of
Frederick's. The question of ecclesiastical interference with
dissection does not seem to have arisen at all, much less to have
proved an obstacle to the development of medical science.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century the center of interest in
anatomy and the matter of dissections shifts to Bologna. We have
already discussed the question whether Mondino was the first to do
public anatomies, and as to whether he performed only the few that by
a narrow misunderstanding of certain of his own words have sometimes
been ascribed to him. Professor Pilcher, in the article The Mondino
Myth, already cited, is of the opinion, and gives excellent reasons
for it, that Taddeo, the great Bolognese physician of the thirteenth
century, who was Mondino's master, had done at least some dissections
in Bologna. Personally I have long felt sure that Taddeo or Thaddeus,
as he is sometimes called in the Latin form of his name, did not a
few, but a number of dissections.
Professor Pilcher's account of him does not exaggerate his merits. I
may say that he was one of the great Papal physicians of whom we shall
have more to tell hereafter.
"Any comprehensive attempt to trace the real influences to which was
due so great a step as a return to the practice of dissections of
the human body, seems to me must be very defective if it failed to
take into consideration the influence of such a man as Thaddeus
(Italian Taddeo).{67} That he was able to impress himself in the way
in which history records that he did, both upon the general public
and upon the scholastic foundations of Bologna, shows a strength of
character and a mastery of the peculiar conditions of the moment in
the fields of science and philosophy which made him a master and an
inspirer. If he is to be considered in his proper historical light,
as one who declares that the knowledge of the structure of the human
body to a most minute degree is the foundation upon which all
rational medicine and surgery must be built, then it is impossible
to exaggerate the importance of the pivotal moment when, in the
development of science, the human body began to be anatomized. Nor
is any fault to be found with the custom which has crowned with the
laurels of universal appreciation the names of those men who began
and who continued anatomical study, who vulgarized the practice of
dissection.
"In my own investigations and reflections upon the conditions which
led up to this happy renewal of scientific search into the
composition of the body of man, it has seemed to me that writers
have hitherto fallen short of tracing through to its ultimate
source, the earlier spirit of enthusiasm for knowledge, of insight
into the problems of disease, and of contempt for traditionary
shackles, to the influence of which, as shown by the master, Taddeo,
the latter work of the pupil, Mondino, was in great measure due."
Medici, in his History of the School of Anatomy at Bologna, [Footnote
8] quotes Sarti on The Distinguished Professors of the University of
Bologna for proof of Taddeo's familiarity with dissection. Von Töply
does not think that {68} this quotation is enough absolutely to prove
that Taddeo had done dissections, yet it would be hard to understand
it unless some such interpretation is made. Taddeo was asked to decide
a medico-legal question with regard to a pregnant woman. He refused,
however, with a modesty that might well be commended to medico-legal
experts of more modern times, to answer the question decisively,
because he had never made a dissection of a pregnant woman. Sarti
argues that it is evident from this that he had dissected other bodies
more easy to obtain than those of pregnant women, or else that he had
had the opportunity to make observations on them when dissected by
others.
[Footnote 8: Medici Compendio Storico Della Scuola Anatomica de
Bologna, Bologna, 1857. ]
Certain of Taddeo's contemporaries must have had the incentive of his
example to help them to a knowledge of human anatomy, for they surely
could not have accomplished all that they did in surgery without
experience in dissection, yet Taddeo was looked up to as a master by
all of them.
Anyone who has read the contributions to surgery of William of Salicet
and his great pupil Lanfranc, even if only what we give with regard to
them in our chapter on Surgery during the Middle Ages, cannot but be
impressed with the idea that they must have done human dissections.
They do not mention this fact explicitly, but portions of their
surgical works are taken up with the consideration of applied anatomy.
They discuss the relations of various structures to one another,
especially with reference to the surgery of them. Von Töply, in his
Studies on the History of Anatomy in the Middle Ages, says that the
anatomies written before William's chapters on applied anatomy, were
most of them purely theoretic discussions meant to be guides for
internal {69} medicine, or else they were very short directions for
those who undertook the practical work of the dismemberment of bodies,
usually, however, with reference to animals rather than to human
bodies. In William of Salicet we encounter, he says, for the first
time a treatise on anatomy made with the deliberate purpose of its
application to practical surgery. Everywhere William gives hints for
surgical operations with special reference to the anatomical
relations.
Puccinotti quotes from William of Salicet's surgery, written about
1270, a passage that shows how familiar this surgeon must have been
with dissection. The nephew of Count Pallavicini received an arrow
wound in the jugular vein and died within an hour. During his death
agony he suffered from a peculiar form of rattle in his throat. It was
thought that this might be due to the fact that the arrow had been
poisoned. William was called in to decide this question, and found
that there was nothing responsible for his death except the wound
itself. He describes how he found the blood in the lungs and in the
heart, and considers that the conditions that were present were due to
the wound. Von Töply has suggested that William would have given more
details had he actually examined these organs, but when the autopsy
report is negative, such descriptive details are not usual even at the
present time. If he had found reason for thinking that there was
poison in the case, a careful description of the other organs would be
necessary. The fact, however, that he was asked to decide such a
question, would seem to indicate that he was supposed to have a
knowledge of the normal appearances of human tissues when examined by
dissection.
In everything else Lanfranc went farther than his {70} master William,
and he did so also in anatomy. Some of the details of his work will be
found in our chapter on Surgery in the Middle Ages. He could not have
been able to give the detailed instructions that he has for the
treatment of every portion of the body only that he knew them by
actual contact in the cadaver as well as the patient. His outlook upon
scientific medicine and surgery would satisfy even the most exacting
of modern experimental scientists. The famous aphorism of his runs as
follows: "Every science which depends on operation is greatly
strengthened by experience." More than anything else, however, surgery
owes to Lanfranc the distinct advantage that he carried into the West
as far as Paris, the methods which had come into existence in Italy,
and were ever after to prove a precious heritage in the great French
University. As Salicet's work was carried on by Lanfranc, at least as
well was Lanfranc's work further advanced by his pupil and successor
in the chair of surgery, Henri de Mondeville. This subject of surgical
development will be treated in the chapter on Surgery in the Middle
Ages. Here it is introduced only to emphasize the opportunity there
must have been for anatomical study through dissection in the
thirteenth century, or these men would not have made the marvelous
progress they actually accomplished in this department.
With regard to Mondino, Taddeo's successor at Bologna, enough has been
said already in the preceding chapter. About this time, however, very
definite evidence begins to accumulate of the frequent practice of
dissection. Roth, whose life of Vesalius is a standard work in the
history of anatomy, has summed up most of what we know with regard to
dissections in the early {71} part of the fourteenth century, in his
chapter on Dissection Before Vesalius's Time. Roth's work is well
known and is frequently referred to in Dr. White's History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology. There can be no question, then, but
that in taking what Roth has to say I shall be quoting from a work
with regard to which there can be no hint even of partiality. Roth
himself was a Swiss, with no leaning toward the Church. There are
certain portions of his book, indeed, in which he is inclined not to
allow that the Church did as much for education in these times as she
actually did. His study of the rise of anatomy can be accepted with
absolute assurance, that it is at least not written from the
standpoint of one who wants to make the situation with regard to
anatomy more favorable than it actually was during the fourteenth
century, for the sake of showing any lack of opposition on the part of
ecclesiastics.
Some of the material that Roth has made use of has already been
referred to in the preceding chapter, but it has seemed proper to
repeat it here because this gives a connected account from a definite
authority in the history of medicine, and especially of anatomy, with
regard to the century immediately following the promulgation of
Boniface's bull. Besides, it gives an opportunity for such comments on
various features of the history of anatomy, as he details it, as will
bring out the significance of his remarks. His account will make it
very clear that, far from the Papal bull in question having been
universally construed as prohibiting dissections, as Dr. White says it
was, it never entered into the minds of medieval anatomists to
consider it as having any such signification. The bull was never
thought of in that sense at all. It does not refer to anatomy or
dissection and it never had {72} any place in the history of anatomy
until dragged into it without warrant by Daunou and other nineteenth
century writers. Roth says:
"In the pre-Vesalian period the dissection of the human body was
practiced, according to the terms of Frederick's law, for the
instruction of those about to become physicians and surgeons. The
natural place for this school anatomy--for a dissection was called
anatomia, or, erroneously, anatomia publica--was at the universities
and the medical schools. Apart from teaching institutions, however,
public anatomies were held in Strasburg and in Venice. Their purpose
was the instruction of the practicing medical personnel of these
towns. Dissections which were not made for general instruction were
called private anatomies. They were performed for the benefit of a
few physicians, or students, or magistrates, or artists. Private
anatomies began to have special importance only toward the end of
the pre-Vesalian period (this would be about the end of the
fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth century). It is a
play of chance that the first historical reference to a dissection
concerns a private anatomy, one undertaken for the purpose of making
a legal autopsy. This was made in Bologna in the year 1302 (two
years after the decretal supposed to forbid dissection). A certain
Azzelino died with unexpected suddenness, after his physicians had
visited him once. A magistrate suspected poison and commissioned two
physicians and three surgeons to determine the cause of death. It
was found that death resulted from natural causes. (As I have said,
it would appear that this was not an unusual procedure, for unless
medical autopsies had been done before, it does not seem probable
that this method of {73} determining the cause of death would have
been so readily taken up.)
"Thirteen years later there is an account of the dissection of two
female bodies, in January and March of the year 1315, performed by
Mundinus." (We have already seen that the fact that the two female
bodies should be especially mentioned, though taken by some
historians of medicine to indicate that Mundinus had done but few
dissections, will not stand such an interpretation, in the light of
the evidence that he had dissected many male bodies at least, as his
text-book of anatomy indeed makes very clear. These two dissections
of females happened only to have special features that made them
noteworthy.) "A few years later (1319) there is a remarkable
document which tells the story of body-snatching for dissecting
purposes." (This would seem to be sufficient of itself to show that
a number of dissections were being done, and, indeed, as I have
already said, Rashdall, in his History of the Universities, states
that, according to the University statutes teachers were bound to
dissect such bodies as students brought to them.) Roth concludes
with the words (italics are mine): "_These are a few, but weighty
testimonies for the zeal with which Bologna pursued anatomy in the
fourteenth century._" (I may add that all of these concern the
twenty years immediately following Pope Boniface's supposed
prohibition.)
Nor was the custom of making dissections any less active during the
rest of the half century after the time when, if we are to believe
Professor White, the decree of Boniface had been universally
interpreted to forbid it. In a note to his history of dissection
during this period in Bologna, Roth says: "Without doubt the passage
in {74} Guy de Chauliac which tells of having very often (multitoties,
many times, is the exact word) seen dissections must be considered as
referring to Bologna." This passage runs as follows: "My master,
Bertruccius, conducted the dissection very often after the following
manner: The dead body having been placed upon a bench, he used to make
four lessons on it. First, the nutritional portions were treated,
because they are so likely to become putrified. In the second, he
demonstrated the spiritual members; in the third, the animate members;
in the fourth, the extremities." (Guy de Chauliac was at Bologna
studying under Bertruccius just before the middle of the fourteenth
century. It is evident beyond all doubt, from what he says, that
dissections were quite common. This is during the first fifty years
after the decree. I shall show a little later that there are records
of dissections during the second half of this century. Roth, however,
goes on to tell next of the fifteenth century.)
Roth says nothing about the decree of Boniface VIII., nor of any
possible effect that it had upon anatomy. The real historian, of
course, does not mention things that have not happened. Roth
confesses, as I have said, that he takes the material for his sketch
of anatomy before Vesalius's time from Corradi. [Footnote 9] Corradi
being an Italian, and knowing of the slander with regard to the Papal
decree, explicitly denies it. Surely, here is material enough to
convince anyone that all that Professor White has said with regard to
the supposed effect of the misinterpretation of Boniface's decree is
without foundation in the history of anatomy. Within twenty years {75}
after the bull was issued dissection was practiced to such an extent,
that body-snatching became so common that there were prosecutions for
it, and public dissections seem to have been held every year in the
universities of Italy during most of the fourteenth century.
[Footnote 9: Corradi Dello Studio e dell' Insegnamento dell' Anatomia
in Italia nel Medio Evo ed in parte del Cinquecento, Padova, 1873.]
De Renzi [Footnote 10] gives an interesting account of the methods by
which material was obtained for dissection purposes before governments
made any special provision for this purpose. Naturally, the rifling of
graves was resorted to by students intensely interested in the subject
of anatomy. The first criminal prosecution for body-snatching on
record is in 1319, when some students brought a body to one Master
Albert, a lecturer in medicine at the University at Bologna, and he
dissected it for them. At this time, according to the statutes of the
university, teachers of anatomy were bound to make a dissection if the
students supplied the body. The whole party were brought to trial for
this offence, though they do not seem to have suffered any severe
penalty for their violation of the laws. At this time, according to De
Renzi, there was a rage for dissection and many bodies were yearly
obtained surreptitiously for the purpose.
[Footnote 10: De Renzi Storia della Medicina in Italia, Napoli.
1845-49, Vol. II., p. 247.]
With regard to the bodies of condemned criminals, people began to
countenance the procedure, and while unwilling as yet to give them
freely, allowed the bodies to be taken. Corradi, quoted by Puschmann,
says "that laws against the desecration of graves, without being
abolished, became a dead letter. The authorities interfered only if
decided violence had been used or a great scandal raised. Such
consequences were likely to follow only if, in the ardor of their
enthusiasm for anatomical knowledge, students rifled the graves of
well-known {76} persons or took the bodies of those whose relatives
discovered the desecration and proceeded against the marauders by
legal measures."
At the Italian universities after the middle of the fourteenth century
there is abundant evidence for perfect freedom with regard to
dissection. We have already shown by our quotation from Roth that
Bertrucci was very active in dissection work and did many public
dissections. He was followed by Pietro di Argelata, who died toward
the end of the fourteenth century. These men followed Mondino in the
chair of anatomy at Bologna, and Julius Pagel, in his chapter on
Anatomy and Physiology in Puschmann's Handbuch der Geschichte der
Medizin (Vol. I., p. 707), says that "the successors of Mondino were
in a position, owing to the gradual enlightenment of the spirit of the
time and the general realization of the importance of anatomy as well
as the fostering liberality of the authorities, _to make regular,
systematic dissections of the human body._" This would bring us down,
then, to the end of the fourteenth century.
To return now to Roth, who takes up the next century. He says:
"For the fifteenth century, the university statutes of Bologna for
the year 1405 furnish many sources of information. There is a
special division which is concerned with the _annual anatomy or
dissection_ that had to be made and the selection of the persons to
be present, the payment of the expenses and other details. An
addition to the statutes, made in the year 1442, determines the
arrangement of the delivery of the body from the city to the
university authorities. Every year two bodies, one male and one
female, must be provided for the {77} medical school dissections. In
default of a female body, a second male body was to be provided. In
the presence of such detailed regulations, the absence almost
entirely of details as to the actual performance of dissections can
mean very little. Bologna reached its highest development as a
medical school at the beginning of the sixteenth century when
Alexander Achillinus and Jacob Berengarius had charge of the public
dissections there. Of these I shall speak later." (All this is at
the University of Bologna, where ecclesiastical influence was
supreme and where the Popes exercised their jurisdiction as the
ultimate authority to be appealed to in all disputed educational
questions.)
Roth continues: "Padua had, like Bologna, dissection in the
fourteenth century. There is the record of a dissection made in the
year 1341, in which Gentilis made the discovery of a gall-stone."
(It is evidently not because the dissection was unusual, but because
the discovery was unusual, that this incident is mentioned. The
dissections were such ordinary occurrences as not to deserve special
mention except for some particular reason.)
"Much more is known about dissection at Padua in the fifteenth
century, when the city had become Venetian." [Footnote 11] (It is
significant to note that the previous occurrence was in pre-Venetian
days, for Professor White insists that it was the Venetian
authorities, in opposition to the Pope, who allowed dissection at
Padua. Here is the rebuttal of any such theory.) "Bertapaglia, in
his Surgery, has the record of the dissection of a criminal made
under the direction of Master Hugo De Senis, on {78} the 8th of
February, 1429. On the 4th of April, 1430, the dissection of a woman
was made. In 1444 Professor Montagnana speaks of fourteen
dissections at which he had been present." (This would seem to
indicate that dissections were quite common and that the occasional
records of them give no proper idea of their actual number.)
[Footnote 11: Note that this is a full century before Vesalius's time,
who, Professor White insists, reintroduced dissection.]
I would not wish to produce the impression, however, that Italy was
the only place in Europe in which dissections were freely done during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There is no doubt that anatomy
and surgery and every branch of medicine was cultivated much more
assiduously and with much better opportunities provided for students
down in Italy, than anywhere else in the world. This of itself alone
shows the utter absurdity of the declarations that the Church was
opposed to medical progress in any way, since the nearer the center of
Christendom, the more ardor there was for investigation and the more
liberty to pursue original researches. Other countries also began to
wake up to the spirit of progress in medical education that was
abroad. In France there were two centers of interest in anatomy. One
of these was at Montpelier, the other at Paris. It is interesting to
note, however, that the men to whom anatomical progress is due at
these universities obtained their training, or at least had taken
advantage of the special opportunities provided for anatomical
investigation to be had, in the Italian cities. Guy de Chauliac I have
already mentioned. He is spoken of as the Father of Modern Surgery,
and there is no doubt that he did much to set surgery on a very
practical basis and to make anatomy a fundamental feature of the
training for it. He declared that it was absurd to think that surgeons
could do good work unless they knew their anatomy.
{79}
Under his fostering care the study of anatomy flourished to a
remarkable degree at the University of Montpelier. The difficulty
hitherto had been that it was very hard to procure bodies for
dissecting purposes. It is easy to understand that friends of the dead
would always prevent dissections as far as they could. They do so even
at the present moment, and there are not many of us who find it in our
hearts to blame them over much for it. Few of us are ready to make the
sacrifice of our own dead. Even the poor in those days had friends who
prevented the cutting up of their remains; for large alms-houses were
not presided over by paid officials, but by religious, to whom their
poor in their friendlessness appealed as kindred. There were not many
prisons, and they were not needed because all felonies were punished
by death. Guy de Chauliac realized that here was the best opportunity
to procure bodies. Accordingly it was mainly through his
instrumentality that a regulation was made handing over the dead
bodies of malefactors to the medical school for dissecting purposes.
It must be recalled that when he did this the Papal court was at
Avignon, in the South of France, and exerted great influence over the
University of Montpelier, situate not far away.
The reputation of the University of Paris is such that we should not
expect her to be backward in this important department of education.
As a matter of fact, there is abundant evidence of dissection having
been carried on here at the end of the thirteenth century, and the
practice was not interrupted at the beginning of the fourteenth
century. Lanfranc, the famous surgeon who had studied with William of
Salicet in Italy (we have already mentioned both of them and we shall
have much {80} to say of them hereafter), taught surgery from a very
practical standpoint in Paris, and illustrated his teachings by means
of dissections. Lanfranc was succeeded in Paris by Mondeville, whose
name is also associated with the practice of dissection by most
historians of medicine, and whose teaching was of such a practical
character that there can be no doubt that he must have employed this
valuable adjunct in his surgical training of students. In general,
however, the records of dissecting work and of anatomical development
are not near so satisfactory at Paris as in the Italian universities.
As is the case in our own day and has always been true, universities
were inclined to specialties in the Middle Ages, and the specialty of
Paris was Philosophy and Theology. This was choice, however, not
compulsion, any more than similar conditions in our own time. The
medical school continued to be in spite of this one of the best in the
world, though it was not famous for its original work, except in
surgery, which is, however, the subject most nearly related to anatomy
and the one whose development would seem necessarily to demand
attention to anatomy.
With the Renaissance, which is usually said to begin after the fall of
Constantinople in 1453, and the consequent dispersion of Greek
scholars throughout Italy, a new spirit entered into anatomy as into
every other department of intellectual life at this time. The reason
for it is not easy to explain. Perhaps the spread of Greek texts with
regard to medicine inspired students and teachers to try out their
problems for themselves, and so a new impetus was given to anatomical
investigation. Whatever it was that caused it, the new movement came
unhampered by the Church, and Italy {81} continued to be even to a
greater degree than before the Mecca for medical students who wished
to do original work in anatomy. During the last fifty years of the
fifteenth century anatomy began its modern phase, and original work of
a very high order was accomplished. There are five names that deserve
to be mentioned in this period. They are Gabriele Zerbi, Achillini,
Berengar of Carpi, Matthew of Gradi and Benivieni. Each of these men
did work that was epoch-making in anatomy, and each has a place in the
history of the science that will never be lost.
Zerbi, who did his work at Verona, traced the olfactory nerves and
describes the nerve supply of the special senses more completely than
it had ever been done before. After his time it was only a question of
filling in the details of this subject. Achillini added much to our
knowledge of the anatomy of the head, being the first to describe the
small bones of the ear and also to recognize the orifices of Wharton's
ducts. Besides this, which would have been quite enough to have given
him a place in the history of anatomy, he added important details to
what had been previously known with regard to the intestines, and
described very clearly the ileocecal valve and suggested its function.
Matthew of Gradi, or De Gradibus, was the first, according to
Professor Turner in his article on Anatomy in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, who represented the ovaries in the correct light as
regards their anatomical relations and their function.
The most important of these fifteenth century investigators in pure
anatomy, however, is Berengarius or Berengar of Carpi, who did his
work at Bologna at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the
sixteenth {82} century. His commentaries on Mondino's work show how
much he added to that great teacher's instruction. If he had no other
distinction than that of having been the first to undertake a
systematic view of the several textures of which the body is composed,
it would have been sufficient to stamp him as a great original worker
in anatomy. He treats successively of the anatomical characters and
properties of fat, of membrane in general, of flesh, of nerve, of
villus or fibre, of ligament, of sinew or tendon, and of muscle in
general. Almost needless to say, he must have made many dissections to
obtain such clear details of information, and, as we shall see, he
probably did make many hundreds. If he had done nothing else but be
the first to mention the vermiform appendix, it would have been quite
sufficient to give him a distinction in our day. Everything that he
touched, however, he illuminated. His anatomy of the fetus was
excellent. He was the first to note that the chest of the male was
larger than in the female, while the capacity of the female pelvis was
in the opposite ratio. In the larynx he discovered the two arytenoid
cartilages. He recognized the opening of the common biliary duct, and
was the first to give a good description of the thymus gland. All
this, it must be remembered, before the end of the second decade of
the sixteenth century, that is, almost before Vesalius was born.
Berengar's work was done at Bologna. Some five years before his death
Bologna became a Papal city. There is no sign, however, that this
change in the political fortunes of the city made any difference in
Berengar's application to his favorite studies in anatomy. As we shall
see in the chapter on The Papal Medical School, already the Popes were
laying the foundations {83} of their own great medical school in Rome,
in which anatomy was to be cultivated above all the other sciences, so
that there would be no reason to expect from other sources of
historical knowledge any interruption of Berengar's work, and it did
not come.
A fifth great student of anatomy during the fifteenth century was
Benivieni, who has been neglected in the ordinary histories of anatomy
because his work concerned itself almost exclusively with
pathological, not with normal anatomy. In our increasing interest in
pathology during the nineteenth century, he has very properly come in
for his due share of attention. Professor Allbutt, in his address on
the Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery down to the Sixteenth
Century, declares that Benivieni should be revered as the forerunner
of Morgagni and as one of the greatest physicians of the late Middle
Ages. Benivieni's life occupies almost exactly the second half of the
fifteenth century, as he was born probably in 1448, and died in 1502.
Allbutt says:--
"He was not a professor, but an eminent practitioner in Florence, at
a period when, in spite of its Platonism, Florence on the whole was
doing most for science; for as Bologna turned to law, Padua turned
to humanism and philosophy. He was one of those fresh and
independent observers who, like Mondeville, was oppressed by the
authority neither of Arab nor Greek."
We are not interested, however, at the present time in what he
accomplished for surgery, though there are a number of features of his
work, including the crushing of stone in the bladder and his puncture
of the hymen for retained menses, as well as his methods of division
and slow extension of the cicatricial contractions {84} resulting from
burns near the elbow, which place him among the most ingenious and
original of surgical thinkers. It is his interest in dissection that
commends him to us here. He must have done a very great number of
autopsies.
His interest in the causes of disease was so great that he seems to
have taken every possible opportunity to search out changes in organs
which would account for symptoms that he had observed. His place in
anatomy and the history of pathology has not been properly appreciated
in this matter, and Professor Allbutt claims for him the title of
Father of Pathology, rather than for those to whom it has been given,
and demands for his work done in Florence during the second half of
the fifteenth century the credit of laying the real foundation-stones
of the great science of pathological anatomy. Unfortunately, he died
comparatively young and without having had time properly to publish
his own contributions to medical science. Professor Allbutt says:--
"The little book _De abditis causis morborum_ (brief title), was not
published in any form by Antony Benivieni himself, but posthumously
by his brother Jerome, who found these precious notes in Antony's
desk after his death, and with the hearty cooperation of a friend
competent in the subject, published them in 1506 in a form which no
doubt justly merits our admiration. Benivieni's chief fame for us is
far more than all this; it is that he was the founder of
pathological anatomy. So far as I know, he was the first to make the
custom and to declare the need of necropsy to reveal what he called
not exactly "the secret causes," but the hidden causes of diseases.
Before Vesalius, before Eustachius, he opened the bodies of the dead
as {85} deliberately and clear-sightedly as any pathologist in the
spacious time of Baillie, Bright and Addison. Virchow, in his
address at Rome, said Morgagni was the first pathological anatomist
who, instead of asking What is disease? asked Where is it?"
But Benivieni asked this question plainly before Morgagni: "Not
only," says he, "must we observe the disease, but also with more
diligence search out the seat of it." The precept is so important, I
will quote the original words: "Oportet igitur medicum non solum
morbum cognoscere, sed et locum in quo fit, diligentius
perscrutari."
Among the pathological reports are morbus coxae (two cases); biliary
calculus (two cases); abscess of the mesentery, thrombosis of the
mesenteric vessels; stenosis of the intestine; some remarkable cardiac
cases, several of "polypus" (clot, which was a will-of-the-wisp to the
elder pathologists); scirrhus of the pylorus, and probably another
case in the colon; ruptured bowel (two cases); caries of ribs with
exposure of the heart. He gives a good description of senile gangrene
which even Paré did not discriminate. He seems to have had remarkable
success in obtaining necropsies; concerning one fatal case he says
plaintively, "Sed nescio qua superstitione versi negantibus cognatis,"
etc. Of another he says, "cadavere publicae utilitatis gratia inciso"
(the case of cancer of the stomach). With this admirable and original
leader, Italian medicine of the fifteenth century closes gloriously,
to slumber for some fifty years, till the dayspring of the new
learning. Of his work Malpighi says, and apparently with truth, "up to
now it is the only work in pathology which owes nothing to anyone."
{86}
This should be enough, it seems to me, to settle the question that
anatomy was permitted very freely before Versalius's time. I have said
it in other places, but it may be well to recall here, that Berengar
did his dissection at Bologna just before and after the time it became
a Papal city and when Papal influence was very strong. In spite of the
fact that in 1512 Bologna passed under the dominion of the Popes,
there is no question of any interruption or hampering of Berengar's
work in anatomy, and as a matter of fact, this great anatomist did not
succeed to the professorship of anatomy, which had been held up to
this time by Achillini, until in the very year when Bologna came under
Papal sway, and had his opportunity to do his independent work only
after this. Professor Turner can scarcely find words strong enough to
set down his admiration for Berengar and his work. Besides what we
have already quoted he says that, "the science of anatomy boasts in
Berengar of one of its most distinguished founders."
The distinguished Edinburgh anatomist harbors no illusions with regard
to any supposed opposition of the Church to dissection or to the
development of anatomy. As a life-long student of anatomy who knew the
history of his favorite science, he appreciated very well just who had
been the great workers in it and where their work had been done. He
says that "Italy long retained the distinction of giving birth to the
first eminent anatomists in Europe, and the glory she acquired in the
names of Mondino, Achillini, Berengar of Carpi, and Massa was destined
to become more conspicuous in the labors of Columbus, Fallopius and
Eustachius." These are the greatest names in the history of anatomy
down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, with the single
exception of Vesalius.
{87}
All this of anatomical development in Italy at universities that were
directly under the ecclesiastical authorities would seem to settle all
question of interference by the Popes or the Church with any phase of
anatomical development. It does not seem sufficient for Dr. White,
however. When I called attention to all these details of the history
of anatomy, long before the reformation and before Vesalius, Dr.
White's response was the following paragraph in which he explains how
dissection came to be practiced at all, and reiterates not only his
belief that Pope Boniface's bull prevented dissection, but even
insists on what cannot but seem utterly absurd to any one who has read
even the brief account I have given here, that except at one or two
places, and then only to a very limited degree, dissection was not
practiced at all. Here is how the history of dissection must be viewed
according to Dr. White:--
"But Dr. Walsh elsewhere falls back on the fact that shortly after
the decree of Pope Boniface VIII., which struck so severe a blow at
dissection, the Venetian Senate passed a decree ordaining that a
dissection of the human body should be made every year in the city
of Venice, and he leaves his readers to conclude that this
effectually proves that dissection had not really been discouraged
by the Pope. The very opposite conclusion would be deduced by anyone
familiar with the relations between the Republic of Venice and the
Papacy. These two powers were always struggling against each other;
again and again the Venetian Republic, in maintaining its rights,
braved the Papal interdicts. The fact that it allowed dissections,
so far from proving that the Pope allowed them, would seem to prove
that in this case, and in so many other cases, and especially that
of {88} Vesalius of Padua, the Venetian Senate sought to show the
Vatican that it would yield none of its rights to clerical control.
This very fact--that Venice refused to be bound with regard to
anatomical investigation by an order from the Vatican--seems to be
entirely in the line with all the other facts in the case, which
show that the Roman court had committed itself, most unfortunately,
against the main means of progress in anatomy and medicine."
Here then is the answer that a modern historian and educator makes to
all the representations with regard to the development of anatomy and
the practice of dissection during the Middle Ages. If the practice of
dissection was permitted it was in spite of the Popes. The fact that
there were a dozen of medical schools in Italy at which dissection was
carried on is ignored. The great anatomists of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries simply did not exist--Dr. White knows nothing
about them. There must be no admission that the Popes permitted
dissection or any other form of science. Dr. White makes his last
stand by a really marvelous tour d'esprit. It was Venice defying the
Vatican that permitted dissection. This, he supposes, may help him,
for anatomy did develop very wonderfully at Padua when it was Venetian
territory. But, as pointed out by Roth, dissection was practiced very
successfully, and the anatomical tradition established at Padua,
before it came under the dominion of Venice. At all the other
important cities of Italy dissection was carried on. We have given
some of the evidence for Verona, for Pisa, for Naples, for Bologna,
for Florence, and, be it remembered, even for Rome. Padua was the
rival of Bologna in anatomy only for a comparatively short time.
Bologna {89} always maintained a primacy in the field of anatomy, and
never more so than after she became a Papal city at the beginning of
the sixteenth century. Vesalius taught and demonstrated not at Padua
alone, but also at Bologna and at Pisa. For two centuries Rome was the
most successful rival of Bologna, _and hundreds of dissections were
done in the Papal Medical School_.
Of course, the appeal to Venetian opposition to the Papacy as an
explanation for dissection being carried on in Italy in spite of
ecclesiastical regulations to the contrary is only a subterfuge. It
can only be found in histories written by those who refuse to see
facts as they were, because those facts do not accord with pet
theories as to Papal Opposition to Science, and the Warfare Between
Theology and Science, which must be maintained at all costs, though
with an air of apology always for having to tell such unpleasant
truths of these old-time religious authorities.
{90}
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ANATOMY
VESALIUS.
The Golden Age of discovery in anatomy culminated during the first
half of the sixteenth century. This will not be surprising if it is
but recalled that this period represents the culmination also of that
larger golden age of achievement in art and letters, which has been
called the Renaissance. Columbus and Copernicus were giving men a new
world and a new universe. Raphael, Michael Angelo, Lionardo da Vinci,
the Bellinis and Titian were creating a new world of art. Most of
these artists were deeply interested in anatomy. Every phase of human
thought was being born anew. Unfortunately, this word Renaissance has
given rise to many misunderstandings. Many people have taken its
significance of re-birth to mean that art and letters, and with them
education and thinking, were born again into the modern world at this
time with the coming in of the New Learning, just as if there had been
nothing worth while talking about in these lines of human
accomplishment in the preceding centuries. Taken in this sense, the
word Renaissance is entirely a misnomer. Magnificent achievements in
art and letters and every form of education preceded the Renaissance
by at least three or four centuries. The Gothic cathedrals and the
enduring artistic development that took place in their making, the
magnificent organization of technical education in the training of
artist artisans by the guilds of the time (we would be glad if our
technical schools could accomplish {91} anything like the same
results, for evidently, though the name technical education is our
invention, these medieval peoples had the reality to a high degree),
and finally the universities, which have remained essentially the same
down to our own day--all these serve to show how much was done for
every form of education many centuries before the beginning of the
Renaissance so-called.
It is not surprising that with this much of education abroad in the
land men succeeded in making enduring literature in every form and in
every country in Europe, and in setting examples of style in prose and
verse that succeeding generations have nearly always gone back to
admire lovingly. Such an amount of education and development of
thinking could not have come without profound attention to science,
and, as a matter of fact, there was much more anticipation of even
what is most modern in our scientific thinking than most scholars seem
to have any idea of. Personally, I have found, in writing the history
of The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries, more that interested me
in the science of this century than in almost any other department of
its wonderful educational development.
We have already seen that while anatomy had during preceding centuries
only the beginning of the development that it was destined to reach
during the sixteenth century, it would be a serious mistake to think
that the study of anatomy, having died in the old classical days, was
not re-born until the sixteenth century. This would be to commit the
error that many ardent devotees of the Renaissance make with regard to
all the accomplishments of this period. In spite of the contrary
almost universal impression, the Renaissance was not original {92} to
any marked degree. With the touch of the Greek spirit that had come
again into the world, it only carried the preceding work of great
original thinkers to a high order of perfection. This happened as well
in anatomy as in art and architecture and literature. Anatomical
science was a lusty infant of great promise when Vesalius, the Father
of Anatomy, came on the scene. The great painters, Raphael and
Lionardo and Michael Angelo, owed much to Giotto and Fra Angelico, who
had preceded them, but not more than Vesalius and his contemporaries,
who did such magnificent work in original anatomical investigation,
owed to Mondino, Bertrucci, Zerbi, Achillini, and above all to
Berengar of Carpi and Benivieni, who did their work before and just
after the sixteenth century opened. There is never a sudden
development in the history of any department of man's knowledge or
achievement, as there is nothing absolutely new under the sun, though
it is still the custom of the young man in his graduation essay to
talk of such things, and older men sometimes fail to realize the truth
that in history as in biology, life always comes from preceding
life--_omne vivum ex vivo_--and there is no such thing as spontaneous
generation.
If the achievements of this earlier period of scientific work, which
affected anatomy even more than any of the other sciences, be kept in
mind, the discussion of the Golden Age of Anatomy will find its proper
place in the history of the relation of the Popes to science. Though
the date of the Golden Age in Anatomy follows that of the so-called
reformation, there is absolutely no connection between the two series
of events, for the one took place in Germany and the other in Italy.
The Golden Age of Anatomy was indeed a perfectly {93} legitimate and
quite to be expected culmination of the anatomical interest which had
been gradually rising to a climax in the Italian universities during
the preceding century. It has a definite place in the evolution of
science, and is not a sudden or unlooked for phenomenon.
If there was any place in the world at the beginning of the sixteenth
century in which the ecclesiastical authorities had much to say with
regard to what should not be taught and what should not be studied in
the universities, it was Italy. In spite of this fact, all medical men
who wanted to do post-graduate work in medicine went down into Italy.
This was especially true for those who desired to obtain ampler
opportunities for anatomical study than were afforded by the rest of
Europe. In his maturer years as a student of medicine, Vesalius went
down to Italy in order to avail himself of the magnificent field for
investigation that was provided there. This favorable state of affairs
as regards research in anatomy had existed for more than a century
before his time. It continued to be true for at least two centuries
after his time. As a matter of fact, Italy was to the rest of the
world of the fifteenth and sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the
home of post-graduate opportunities in all sciences as well as in
medicine.
These are not idle words, but are fully substantiated by the lives of
the men who stand at the head of our modern medicine. More than a
decade before Vesalius was born, Linacre, the distinguished English
physician and founder of the Royal College of Physicians, went to
Italy to complete his medical studies and incidentally also to round
out his education in the midst of the new learning which was so
thoroughly cultivated there. When Linacre was leaving Italy, with true
classic spirit {94} he set up a little altar on the top of the Alps
whence he could get his last view of the Italian plains, and greeted
the charming country that he was leaving so reluctantly with the
beautiful name of Alma Mater Studiorum. To him, after his return to
England, English-speaking medical men owe the establishment of the
institution which above all others has helped to uplift the dignity of
the medical profession and make the practice of the healing art
something more than a mere trade--the Royal College of Physicians.
One of Vesalius's most distinguished fellow students at Padua was Dr.
John Caius, who was later to become the worthy president of the Royal
College of Physicians of England and the author of certain important
medical works. Dr. Caius was the first to introduce the practice of
public dissections into England. Caius and Vesalius were roommates,
though at the time Vesalius was an instructor at the University, and
the inspiration of his originality seems to have had a great effect
upon young Caius. They were nearly of the same age, though Vesalius
was a precocious genius, and Caius's greatness only showed itself in
maturity. Caius was studying in Italy partly because the religious
disturbances in England had made it uncomfortable for him to remain in
his native country, for he was a firm adherent of the old Church and
he hoped they would pass over, but mainly because he coveted the
opportunities afforded by that country. Later in life, out of the
revenues of his position as Royal Physician to Queen Mary and
subsequently for some time to Queen Elizabeth, he founded the famous
Caius College at Cambridge, usually called Key's College by
Cantabrigians.
Before either of these men there had been a third {95} distinguished
English physician who had gone down to Italy for his education. This
was the celebrated and learned John Phreas, who was born about the
commencement of the fifteenth century. Very little is known of his
career, but what we do know is of great interest. He was educated at
Oxford and obtained a fellowship on the foundation of Balliol College.
Afterward he seems to have studied medicine with a physician in
England, but was not satisfied with the medical education thus
obtained. He set the fashion for going down into Italy sometime during
the first half of the fifteenth century, and after some years spent at
Padua received the degree of doctor in medicine, which in those days
carried with it, as the name implies, the right to teach. As not
infrequently happens to the brilliant medical student, he settled down
for practice in the university town in which he graduated, to take up
both occupations, that of teacher and practitioner. He is said to have
made a large fortune in the practice of physic. [Footnote 12] The best
proof of his scholarship is to be found in some letters still
preserved in the Bodleian and in the Library of Balliol College.
Personally, I have considered that his career was interesting from
another standpoint. I have often looked in history for the cases of
appendicitis which occur so frequently in our day and with regard to
which people ask how is it they did not occur in the past. The fact
is, they did occur, but were unrecognized. People were taken suddenly
ill, not infrequently a short time after a meal, and after
considerable pain and fever, swelling and great tenderness in the
abdomen {96} developed, and they died with all the signs of poisoning.
They were actually poisoned, not by some extraneous material, but by
the putrid contents of their own intestines which found a way out
through the ruptured appendix. These cases were set down as poisoning
cases, and usually some interested person was the subject of
suspicion. Dr. Phreas's learning had obtained for him an appointment
to a bishopric in England, a curious bit of evidence of the absence of
opposition between medical science and religion in his time. He died
shortly after this, under circumstances that raised a suspicion of
poisoning in the minds of some of his contemporaries--but raises the
thought of appendicitis in mine,--and one of his rivals was blamed for
it.
[Footnote 12: Like the other distinguished physicians of this time,
John Phreas did not devote himself to medicine alone. He had a taste
for literature, and besides being an accomplished scholar he was a
poet.]
Nor did the custom for English medical students to go down to Italy to
complete their education cease with the so-called reformation. Some
two generations after Vesalius's time another distinguished
Englishman, Harvey, went down to Italy to complete the studies he had
already made and eventually to lay the foundation of that knowledge on
which he was twenty years later to construct his doctrine of the
circulation of the blood. This doctrine, however, remained merely a
theory until the distinguished Italian anatomist, Malpighi, after
another half century, demonstrated the existence of the capillaries,
the little blood vessels which connect the veins and arteries, and by
thus showing the continuity of both the blood systems, proved beyond
all doubt the certainty of the teaching that the blood does circulate.
Students came, moreover, from even the distant North of Europe to the
Italian schools of medicine during these centuries. Neil Stensen, or
as he is perhaps better known by his Latin name, Nicholas Steno, the
{97} discoverer of the duct of the parotid gland, which has been named
after him, and of many other anatomical details, especially of the
fact that the heart is a muscle, which stamp him as an original
investigator of the highest order, after having made extensive studies
in the Netherlands and in France to complete the medical education
which he had begun in his native city of Copenhagen, went down into
Italy to secure freer opportunities for original research than he
could obtain anywhere else in Europe. [Footnote 13]
[Footnote 13: It may perhaps be of interest to say that while doing
investigation in anatomy and certain other sciences allied to
medicine, Steno became a convert to the Catholic Church and after some
years became a priest. Before his ordination, however, though after
his conversion, he received the call to the chair of anatomy at
Copenhagen. He accepted this and worked for several years at the Danish
University, but was dissatisfied with the state of affairs around him
as regards religion and went back to Italy. Eventually he was made a
bishop--hence the curious picture of him in a Roman Catholic Bishop's
robes in the collection of pictures of professors of anatomy at the
University of Copenhagen. Not long after, at his own request, he was
sent up to the Northern part of Germany in order to try to bring back
to the Church as many of the Germans as might be won by his gentleness
of disposition, his saintly character, his wonderful scientific
knowledge, and his winning ways. He is the Father of Modern Geology as
well as a great anatomist, and his little book on geology was
published after he became a priest, yet did not hamper in any way his
ecclesiastical preferment nor alienate him from his friends in the
hierarchy. He was honored especially by the Popes. In a word, his
career is the best possible disproof of any Papal or ecclesiastical
opposition to science in his time.]
We have mentioned that it was while he was pursuing his special
investigations in various Italian universities that Stensen was
honored with the invitation to become professor of anatomy at the
University of Copenhagen. This was not a chance event, but a type of
the point of view in university education at the time. Just as at the
present time the prestige of research in a German university counts
for much as a recommendation for professorships in our American
universities, so in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was it
with regard to study in Italy. It was felt that men who had spent {98}
several years there could be reasonably expected to know all that
there was to be known in the rising sciences of anatomy and
physiology; at the same time there was a very general impression,
quite justified by the results observed, that those who did their
post-graduate work in Italy were nearly always sure to make
discoveries that would add to the prestige of their universities
later, and that would be a stimulus to students and to the other
teachers around them such as could be provided in no other way. If
read in the proper spirit, the history of the universities of those
times is quite like our own, only for influence, the name of Italy
must always be substituted for that of Germany. Yet Italy, if we were
to believe some of the writers on the history of education and
science, was at this time laboring under the incubus of ecclesiastical
intolerance with regard to anatomy and an almost complete suppression
of opportunities for dissection. Those who write thus know nothing at
all of the actual facts of the history of science, or else they are
blinding themselves for some reason to the real situation.
Fortunately students of the facts of history, especially those who
have devoted any serious attention to the history of medicine, make no
such mistake. For them it is perfectly clear that there was a
wonderful development in anatomy which took place down in Italy,
beginning about the middle of the fifteenth century or even earlier,
and which led to the provision of such opportunities for dissection
and original research in medicine, that students from all over the
world were attracted there. For instance, Professor Clifford Allbutt,
in the address on the Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery to
the end of the Sixteenth Century, already quoted, has a passage {99}
in which, as an introduction to what he has to say about Galen, he
sums up the history of anatomy from the return of the Popes from
Avignon to Rome, which took place just about the beginning of the last
quarter of the fourteenth century, down to the time of Vesalius. This
expresses so well what I have been trying to say with regard to the
gradual development that led up to the Golden Age of Anatomy and to
Vesalius's work, that I quote it.
"Meanwhile, however, the return of the Popes to Rome (1374) and the
displacement of the Albucasis and Avicenna by the Greek texts
renewed the shriveling body of medicine, and with the help of
anatomy, Italian medicine awoke again; though until the days of
Vesalius and Harvey the renascence came rather from men of letters
than of medicine. The Arabs and Paris said: "Why dissect if you
trust Galen? _But the Italian physicians insisted on verification;
and therefore back to Italy again the earnest and clear-sighted
students flocked from all regions._ Vesalius was a young man when he
professed in Padua, yet, young or venerable, _where but in Italy
would he have won, I would not say renown, but even sufferance!_ If
normal anatomy was not directly a reformer of medicine, by way of
anatomy came morbid anatomy, as conceived by the genius of
Benivieni, of Morgagni, and of Valsalva; the galenical or humoral
doctrine of pathology was sapped, and soaring in excelsis for the
essence of disease gave place to grubbing for its roots."
A sketch of Vesalius's career will give the best possible idea of the
influences at work in science during this Golden Age of anatomical
discovery, and will at the same time serve to show better than
anything else, how {100} utterly unfounded is the opinion that there
was opposition between religion, or theology and science, and above
all medical science, at this time. On the other hand, it will
demonstrate that the educational factors at work in Vesalius's time
were not different from those of the preceding century, nor indeed
from those that had existed for two or three centuries before his
time; and though his magnificent original research introduced the new
initiative which always comes after a genius has left his mark upon a
scientific department, the spirit in which science was pursued after
his time did not differ essentially from that which had prevailed
before. He represents not a revolution in medical science, as has so
often been said, though always with the purpose of demonstrating how
much the so-called reformation accomplished in bringing about this
great progress in anatomy, but only a striking epoch in that gradual
evolution which had already advanced so far that his work was rendered
easy and some such climax of progress as came in his time was
inevitable.
Vesalius's earlier education was received entirely in his native town
of Louvain. There were certain preparatory schools in connection with
the university at Louvain, and to one of these, called Paedagogium
Castri because of the sign over the door, which was that of a fort,
Vesalius was sent. Here he learned Latin and Greek and some Hebrew.
How well he learned his Latin can be realized from the fact that at
twenty-two he was ready to lecture in that language on anatomy in
Italy. His knowledge of Greek can be estimated from the tradition that
he could translate Galen at sight, and he was known to have corrected
a number of errors in translations from that author made by preceding
{101} translators. To those who know the traditions of that time in
the teaching of the classic languages along the Rhine and in the Low
Countries, these accomplishments of Vesalius will not be surprising.
They knew how to teach in those pre-reformation days, and probably
Latin and Greek have never been better taught than by the Brethren of
the Common Life, whose schools for nearly a hundred years had been
open in the Low Countries and Rhenish Germany for the children of all
classes, but especially of the poor. Other schools in the same region
could scarcely fail to be uplifted by such educational traditions.
Altogether, Vesalius spent some nine years in the Paedagogium.
As illustrating how men will find what interests them in spite of
supposed lack of opportunities, it may be said that from his earliest
years Vesalius was noted for his tendency to be inquisitive with
regard to natural objects, and while still a mere boy his anatomical
curiosity manifested itself in a very practical way. He recalls
himself in later years, that the bladders with which he learned to
swim, and which were also used by the children of the time as
play-toys for making all sorts of noises, became in his hands objects
of anatomical investigation. Anatomy means the cutting up of things,
and this Vesalius literally did with the bladders. He noted
particularly that they were composed of layers and fibres of various
kinds, and later on when he was studying the veins in human and animal
bodies he was reminded of these early observations, and pointed out
that the vein walls were made up of structures not unlike those,
though more delicate, of which the bladders of his childhood days had
proven to be composed.
His preparatory studies over, Vesalius entered the {102} University of
Louvain, at that time one of the most important universities of
Europe. At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth
century, Louvain probably had more students than any other university
in Europe except that of Paris, and possibly Bologna. There are good
grounds for saying that the number in attendance here during the first
half of the sixteenth century was always in excess of 5,000. The
university was especially famous for its teaching of jurisprudence and
philology. The faculty of theology, however, was considered to be one
of the strongest in Europe, and Louvain, as might be expected from its
position in the heart of Catholic Belgium, was generally acknowledged
to be one of the great intellectual bulwarks of Catholicity against
the progress of Lutheranism in the Teutonic countries at this time.
Vesalius's parents were, and his family always had been, ardent
Catholics, so that, quite apart from his dwelling not far away, it was
very natural that he should have been sent here. He seems to have
spent five years in the university mainly engaged in the study of
philosophy and philology, but also of the classics and languages so
far as they were taught at that time.
It may be noted as another instance in his life of how a student will
find that which appeals to him even in the most unexpected sources,
that Vesalius took special interest in certain treatises of Albertus
Magnus and Michael Scotus, which treated of the human body in the
vague, curious way of the medieval scholars, and yet with a precious
amount of information, that this inquisitive youth eagerly drank in.
More interesting for Vesalius himself were certain studies undertaken
entirely independently of his university course. One of his {103}
biographers tells that he dissected small animals, rats and mice, and
occasionally even dogs and cats, in his eagerness to learn the details
of anatomy for himself and at first hand.
After graduating at Louvain in philosophy and philology, Vesalius went
to Paris to study medicine. At this time at Paris, Sylvius, after whom
one of the most important fissures of the brain, the sylvian, is
named, was not only teaching anatomy in a very interesting way, but
was also providing opportunities for original research in anatomy in
connection with his own investigations. The interest that his teaching
excited may be gathered from the fact that over 400 students were in
attendance at his lectures. Besides Sylvius, Günther of Andernach in
Switzerland was also teaching in Paris, and with both of these
distinguished professors Vesalius became intimately associated. His
deep interest in the subject of anatomy would of itself be quite
sufficient to attract the attention of professors, but he had besides
the added advantage of being known as the descendant of a family which
had occupied prominent posts as medical attendants to the greatest
ruling family of Europe.
It was at Paris, then, that Vesalius first was able to devote himself
with the intense ardor of his character to the study of anatomy.
Nothing less than original research at first hand would satisfy his
ardent desire for information and his thirst for accurate knowledge.
His practical temper of mind was demonstrated by a revolution that he
worked in the method of doing dissections at the time. The dissections
in Paris used to be performed by the barber-surgeons, as a rule rather
ignorant men, who knew little of their work beyond the barest outline
of the technics of dissection. Teachers in {104} anatomy used to stand
by and direct the operation and demonstrate the various parts. These
teachers, however, considered it quite beneath them to use the knife
themselves. The faultiness of this method can be readily understood.
Vesalius began a new era in the history of anatomy by insisting on
doing the dissections himself. It was not long, however, before he
realized that Paris could not afford him such opportunities as he
desired. Altogether he did not remain there more than a year, and then
returned to the Low Countries.
At Louvain he continued his anatomical work, finding it difficult
enough to procure human material, but using such as might come to
hand. The story is told of his first attempt to get a complete
skeleton. A felon had been executed just outside the walls of Louvain,
and his remains were, as was the custom at that time, allowed to swing
on the gibbet until the birds of the air had eaten his flesh and the
wind and rain had bleached his bones. As might be thought, these bones
were a great temptation to Vesalius. Finally, one night he and a
fellow student stole out of the town and robbed the gibbet of its
treasure. In order to accomplish their task--no easy one, because the
skeleton was fastened to the beams of the scaffold by iron
shackles--they had to remain out all night. They buried it and later
removed it piecemeal, and when they had finally assembled the parts
again it was exhibited as a skeleton brought from Paris.
Even this story has been made to do duty as showing the ecclesiastical
opposition to dissection and the advancement of anatomical knowledge.
It is hard to understand, however, why men will not look at such an
incident from the standpoint of our own experience in {105} the modern
time. There are men still alive in certain states of the Union who
recall how much trouble they had to go to as medical students in order
to procure a skeleton. If we go back fifty years, nearly every
skeleton that physicians had in their offices was obtained in some way
almost as surreptitious as that just described, or was purchased
through some underhand channel. They were dug up from potter's field,
or sometimes procured from complacent prison officials, or
occasionally stolen from respectable cemeteries. In this respect
Vesalius was not much worse off than were his medical colleagues for
nearly three centuries and a half after his time in the northern
countries. It was easier to procure such material in Italy.
Vesalius had that precious quality that makes the investigator desire
to see and know things for himself. He could not get opportunities for
definite anatomical knowledge in the western part of Europe, so he
gave up his practice, though Louvain, his native town, was a most
promising place, having nearly 200,000 inhabitants and business
relations with all the world at the moment, and went down into Italy
where he knew that he could pursue his anatomical studies to his
heart's content. The tradition of the work that Zerbi and Achillini
had done, and especially what Benivieni and Berengar had accomplished
within a few decades before this time, was commonly known in all the
medical schools of Europe, and many an ardent young anatomist in the
West yearned for the opportunities and the incentive that he could
obtain down there. Church influence was predominant; the ecclesiastics
were the actual rulers of the universities, but medical science, and
above all anatomy, was being studied very ardently. Vesalius thus
prompted, {106} came and found what he looked for. At the end of ten
short years of work down there, he had completed his text-book of
anatomy which was to earn for him deservedly the title of Father of
Anatomy.
At first Vesalius seems to have spent some time in Venice, where he
attracted considerable attention by his thorough, practical anatomical
knowledge and independent mode of thinking. After only a short period
in Venice, however, he proceeded to Padua, where he spent some months
in preparation for his doctor's examination. It is known that, having
completed his examination in the early part of December, 1537, he was
allowed within a few days to begin the teaching of anatomy, and,
indeed, was given the title of professor by the university
authorities.
The next six years were spent in teaching at Padua, Bologna and Pisa,
and in fruitful investigation. Every opportunity to make dissections
was gladly seized, and Vesalius's influence enabled him to obtain a
large amount of excellent anatomical material. He began at once the
preparations for the publication of an important work on the anatomy
of the human body. This was published in 1543 at Basel, at a time when
its author was not yet thirty years of age. It is one of the classics
of anatomical literature. Even at the present day it is often
consulted by those who wish to see the illustrative details of
Vesalius's wonderful dissections as given in the magnificent plates
that the work contains. It has become one of the most precious of
medical books, and is eagerly sought for by collectors.
For ten years more Vesalius devoted himself to his favorite studies in
anatomy and physiology, for it must not be forgotten that he was
constantly applying his {107} knowledge of form and tissue to
function, and came to be looked upon as the leading medical
investigator of the world. It is apparently sometimes not realized,
however, that Vesalius was no mere laboratory or dissecting room
investigator. After the publication of his great work on anatomy he
set himself seriously to the application of what he had discovered to
practical medicine and surgery. He was an intensely practical man. As
a consequence, it was not long before consultations began to pour in
on him, and he came to be considered as one of the greatest medical
practitioners of his time. Ruling princes in Italy, visitors of
distinction, high ecclesiastics--all wished to have Vesalius's opinion
when their cases became puzzling. This is a side of his character that
many of his modern biographers have missed. Even Sir Michael Foster,
whose knowledge of the history of medicine, and especially of
physiology, makes one hesitate to disagree with him, seems not to have
appreciated Vesalius's interest in practical medicine. A laboratory
man himself, he was apparently not able to appreciate why Vesalius
should have given up his scientific research in Italy to accept the
post of Royal Physician to the Emperor Charles V.
Professor Foster thinks it necessary, then, to find some other reason
than the temptation of the importance of the position to account for
Vesalius's acceptance of it. He concludes that it was because of
discouragement in his purely scientific studies as a consequence of
the opposition of the Galenists. Opposition on the part of the old
conservative school of medicine there was, and some of it was rather
serious. This was not enough, however, to have discouraged Vesalius.
Professor Foster goes so far as to wax almost sentimental over the
{108} fact that the acceptance of the post of physician to Charles V.
ended Vesalius's scientific career; "for though in the years which
followed the Father of Anatomy from time to time produced something
original, and in 1555 brought out a new edition of his Fabrica,
differing chiefly from the first one, so far as the circulation of the
blood is concerned, in its bolder enunciation of its doubts about the
Galenic doctrines touching the heart, he made no further solid
addition to the advancement of knowledge. Henceforward his life was
that of a court physician much sought after and much esteemed--a life
lucrative and honorable and in many ways useful, but not a life
conducive to original inquiry and thought. The change was a great and
a strange one. At Padua he had lived amid dissections; not content
with the public dissections in the theatre, he took parts, at least,
of corpses to his own lodgings and continued his labors there. No
wonder that he makes in his Fabrica some biting remarks to the effect
that he who espouses science must not marry a wife; he cannot be true
to both. A year after his arrival at the Court he sealed his divorce
from science by marrying a wife; no more dissections at home, no more
dissections indeed at all; at most, some few post-mortem examinations
of patients whose lives his skill had failed to save. Henceforth his
days were to be spent in courtly duties, in soothing the temporary
ailments, the repeated gouty attacks of his imperial master, in
healing the maladies of the nobles and others round his throne, and
doubtless in giving advice to more humble folk, who were from time to
time allowed to seek his aid. Whither his master went, he went too,
and we may well imagine that in leisure moments he entertained the
Emperor and {109} the Court with his intellectual talk, telling them
some of the fairy tales of that realm of science which he had left,
and of the later achievements of which news came to him, scantily,
fitfully and from afar."
Professor White has gone much farther than Sir Michael Foster. The
English physiologist knew too much about the history of medicine in
Italy even to hint at any ecclesiastical opposition with regard to
Vesalius. President White, however, has no scruples in the matter.
This makes an excellent opportunity to write the kind of history that
is to be found in his book. Apparently forgetful of the thought that
the Emperor Charles V. was not at all likely to take as his body
physician a man who had been in trouble with the ecclesiastical
authorities in Italy, he insists that the reason why Vesalius
dedicated his great work on anatomy to the Emperor Charles V. was "to
shield himself as far as possible in the battle which he foresaw must
come." Later he suggests that it was only the favor of the Emperor
saved him from the ecclesiastical authorities.
All that has been said by historians with regard to the reasons for
Vesalius's acceptance of the post of physician to the Emperor Charles
V. can only have come from men who either did not know or had for the
moment forgotten the story of Vesalius's ancestry. The family
tradition of having one of its members as physician to the Court of
the German Emperor was four generations old when Vesalius accepted the
position.
Vesalius's great-grandfather occupied the position of
physician-in-ordinary to Marie of Burgundy, the wife of the German
Emperor Maximilian I., the distinguished patron of letters in the
Renaissance period. He lived to an advanced age as a professor of
medicine at Louvain. {110} From this time on Vesalius's family always
continued in official medical relation to the Austrian-Burgundy ruling
family. His grandfather took his father's place as physician to Mary
of Burgundy, and wrote a series of commentaries on the aphorisms of
Hippocrates. Vesalius's father was the physician and apothecary to
Charles V. for a while, and accompanied the Emperor on journeys and
campaigns. What more natural than that his son, having reached the
distinction of being the greatest medical scientist alive, should be
offered, and as a matter of course accept the post of imperial
physician!
The simple facts of the matter are that Vesalius came down into Italy
in order to study anatomy, because in that priest-ridden and
ecclesiastically-ruled country he could get better opportunities for
anatomical study and investigation than anywhere else in Europe. He
spent ten years there and then wrote his classical work on anatomy.
After that he spent some years applying anatomy to medicine. Then when
he had come to be the acknowledged leader of the medical profession of
the world, the Emperor Charles V., at that time the greatest ruler in
Europe, asked him to become his court physician. Vesalius accepted, as
would any other medical investigator that I have ever known, under the
same circumstances. His position with Charles V. gave him
opportunities to act as consultant for many of the most important
personages of Europe, and it must not be forgotten that when the King
of France was injured in a tournament Vesalius was summoned all the
way from Madrid, and gave a bad prognosis in the case.
In the light of this simple story of Vesalius's life in Italy, and of
the reasons for his going there and his departure, it is intensely
amusing to read the accounts of {111} this portion of Vesalius's life,
written by those who must maintain at all costs the historical
tradition that the Church was opposed to anatomy, that the Popes had
forbidden dissection, and that the ecclesiastical authorities were
constantly on the watch to hamper, as far as possible at least, if not
absolutely to prevent, all anatomical investigation, and were even
ready to put to death those who violated the ecclesiastical
regulations in this matter. Dr. White, for instance, has made a great
hero of Vesalius for daring to do dissection. He was only doing what
hundreds of others were doing and had been doing in Italy for hundreds
of years; but to confess this would be to admit that the Church was
not opposed to anatomy or the practice of dissection, and so perforce
Vesalius must be a hero as well as the Father of Anatomy. To read Dr.
White's paragraph in the History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology, one cannot but feel sure that Vesalius must practically have
risked death over and over again in order to pursue his favorite
practice of dissection and his original researches in anatomy. I would
be the last one in the world to wish to minimize in any way Vesalius's
merits. He was a genius, a great discoverer--above all an inspiration
to methods of study that have been most fruitful in their results, and
withal a devout Christian and firm adherent of the Roman Catholic
Church. He was not a hero in the matter of dissection, however, for
there was no necessity for heroism. Dissection had been practiced very
assiduously before his time in all the universities of Italy,
especially in Bologna, which was a Papal city from the beginning of
the sixteenth century, and also in Rome at the medical college of the
Roman University under the very eye of the Popes.
{112}
In the light of this knowledge read President White's paragraph with
regard to Vesalius:
"From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the search for
real knowledge he _risked the most terrible dangers, and especially
the charge of sacrilege, founded upon the teachings of the Church
for ages._ As we have seen, even such men in the early Church as
Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy in abhorrence, and the
decretal of Pope Boniface VIII. was _universally construed as
forbidding all dissection, and as threatening excommunication
against those practicing it. Through this sacred conventionalism
Vesalius broke without fear; despite ecclesiastical censure,_ great
opposition in his own profession and popular fury, he studied his
science by the only method that could give useful results. No peril
daunted him. To secure material for his investigations, he haunted
gibbets and charnel-houses, _braving the fires of the Inquisition_
and the virus of the plague." (The italics are mine.)
A very interesting commentary on the expressions of Professor White
with regard to Vesalius is to be found in a paragraph of Von Töply's
article on the History of Anatomy in the second volume of Puschmann's
History of Medicine, already quoted. "Out of the fruitful soil so well
cultivated in the two preceding centuries, there developed at the
beginning of the sixteenth century the Renaissance of anatomy, with
all the great and also with all the unpleasant features which belong
to the important works of art of that period. One has only to think of
Donatello, Mantegna, Michel Angelo, and Verochio to realize these. The
Renaissance of anatomy developed in a field of human endeavor which,
if it did not owe all, at least owed very much to the art-loving and
{113} culture-fostering rulers, Popes and cardinals of the time. Older
historians have told the story of the rise of anatomy in such a way
that it seemed that the Papal Curia had set itself ever in utter
hostility to the development of anatomy. As a matter of fact, the
Papal Court placed scarcely any hindrances in its path. On the
contrary, the Popes encouraged anatomy in every way."
In the page and a half following this quotation Von Töply has
condensed into brief form most of what the Popes did for medicine and
the medical sciences, though more especially for anatomy, during the
centuries from the sixteenth down to the beginning of the nineteenth.
Some excerpts from this, with a running commentary, will form the best
compendium of the history of the Papal relations to medical education
and will show that they are strikingly different from what has usually
been said. Von Töply begins with Paul III., who is known in history
more especially for his issuance of the Bull founding the Jesuits. It
might ordinarily be presumed by those who knew nothing of this Pope,
that the Head of the Church, to whom is due an institution such as the
Jesuits are supposed to be, would not be interested to the slightest
degree in modern sciences, and would be one of the last ecclesiastical
authorities from whom patronage of science could possibly be expected.
It was he, however, who founded special departments for anatomy and
botany and provided the funds for a salary for a prosector of anatomy
at Rome.
After this practically every Pope in this century has some special
benefaction for anatomy to his credit. Pope Paul IV. (1555-59) called
Columbus to Rome and gave him every opportunity for the development of
his original genius in anatomical research. Columbus had {114}
succeeded Vesalius at Padua and had been tempted from there to Pisa by
the duke who wished to create in that city a university with the most
prominent teachers in every department that there was in Italy, yet it
was from this lucrative post that Pope Paul IV. succeeded in winning
Columbus. Quite apart from what we know of Columbus's career at Rome
and his successful investigation on the cadaver of many anatomical
problems, perhaps the best evidence of the friendly relations of the
Popes to him and to his work is to be found in the fact that, first
Columbus himself, and then after his death his sons, in issuing their
father's magnificent work De Re Anatomica, dedicated it to the
successor of Pope Paul IV., the reigning Pope Pius IV. In the meantime
Cardinal Della Rovere had brought Eustachius to Rome to succeed
Columbus.
Under Sixtus V., who was Pope from 1585 to 1590, the distinguished
writer on medicine, and especially on anatomy, Piccolomini, published
his lectures on anatomy with a dedication to that Pope. It is well
known that the relations between the professor of anatomy at the Papal
Medical School and the Pope were very friendly. As was the case with
regard to Colombo or Columbus, so also with Caesalpinus. Columbus was
the first to describe the pulmonary circulation. Caesalpinus is
generally claimed by the Italians to have made the discovery of the
circulation of the blood throughout the body before Harvey. Columbus
had been at Pisa and was tempted to come to Rome. Caesalpinus had also
been at Pisa until Clement VIII. held out inducements that brought him
to Rome. Clement is the last Pope of the century, but Von Töply
mentions five Popes in the next century who were in intimate relations
with {115} distinguished investigators into medical subjects and whose
names are in some way connected with some of the most noteworthy
teaching and writing in medical matters during the seventeenth
century.
It will be readily seen what a caricature of the life of Vesalius is
Prof. White's paragraph, if one compares it with the following
paragraph taken from so readily available an historical source as the
article on the History of Anatomy, by Prof. Turner, of Edinburgh, in
the first volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The distinguished
Scotch anatomist who so worthily filled the chair of anatomy at the
University of Edinburgh says with regard to Berengar of Carpi, who was
the professor of anatomy at Bologna thirty-five years before
Vesalius's time, that, "In the annals of medicine Berengar's name will
be remembered as one of the most zealous and eminent in cultivating
the anatomy of the human body. It was long before the anatomists of
the following age could boast of equalling him. His assiduity was
indefatigable, and he declares that he dissected above one hundred
human bodies." This should be enough, it seems to me, to settle the
question that anatomy was permitted very freely before Vesalius's
time. Professor Turner's authority in such a matter is above all
suspicion. He knew the history of anatomy.
If more evidence be needed, compare with President White's fantastic
sketch of Vesalius the following sketch of his great contemporary,
Columbus or Colombo, to whose anatomical investigations we owe the
discovery of the pulmonary circulation:
"The fame of Columbus as an anatomical teacher was exceedingly great
and widespread. Students were attracted to the universities where he
professed, from all {116} quarters and in large numbers. He was an
ardent student of his favorite science and was imbued with the
genius and enthusiasm of an original investigator. He was not
satisfied with the critical examination of mere structure, but
extended his researches into the more subtle, difficult and
important investigation of the physiological function. He has been
most aptly styled the Claude Bernard of the sixteenth century. The
work of Columbus is a masterpiece of method and purity of style, as
well as on account of its richness in facts and observations. He
spent over forty years in these studies and researches. _He
dissected an extraordinary number of human bodies. It must have been
an age of remarkable tolerance for scientific investigation, for in
a single year he dissected no less than fourteen bodies._ He also
entered the crypts and catacombs of ancient churches, where the
bones of the dead had been preserved and had accumulated century
after century, and there, with unwearied care, he handled and
compared over a half million of human skulls."
This account was written by Dr. George Jackson Fisher in his
"Historical and Bibliographical Notes" for the _Annals of Anatomy and
Surgery_ (Brooklyn, 1878-1880). All the material that Dr. Fisher used
in his sketch is to be found in Roth's "Life of Vesalius," p. 256.
Now, Columbus was a contemporary of Vesalius, and worked with him at
Bologna. The years of their lives correspond almost exactly. When
Vesalius left Padua to become the royal physician to Charles V., it
was Columbus who succeeded him. Later he taught also at Pisa. Then,
strange as it may seem for those who have put any faith in Dr. White's
excursion into medical science, he was invited to become Professor of
{117} Anatomy at the Papal University at Rome, and it was while there
that he had as many as three hundred students present at his
demonstrations in anatomy and there that he did fourteen dissections
in one year. The pretense that there was any ecclesiastical objection
to dissection becomes absolutely farcical when one compares the life
of Vesalius sketched by President White with a motive, and the life of
his contemporary and successor, Columbus, by an unbiased physician,
whose only idea was to bring out the facts.
According to Prof. White's opinion, Vesalius dedicated his work to
Charles V. to shield himself as far as possible, and after this gave
up his anatomical studies in Italy to put himself under the protection
of Charles V.
Vesalius's successor, Columbus, did not have to do any such thing.
Instead, he went down to Rome, and under the protection of the Popes
continued to carry on his anatomical work there.
When Charles V. died, however, according to President White, a new
weapon was forged against Vesalius. Vesalius was charged with
dissecting a living man. President White hints that "the forces of
ecclesiasticism united against the innovators of anatomy, and either
from direct persecution or from indirect influences Vesalius became a
wanderer." Just what that means I do not know. President White does
not say that he was exiled, though that idea is implied. There is a
great deal of doubt about this charge of Vesalius having made an
autopsy on a living person. Roth discusses various versions. The whole
thing seems to be a trumped-up story; but supposing it true, would it
not be only proper that a man who made an autopsy on a living person
should be brought before the court? He certainly would {118} in our
day in any civilized country. Professor Foster, of the University of
Cambridge in England, following the lead of President White in this
matter, blames the Inquisition for instituting the prosecution. If
this were true, no more proof would be needed that the Inquisition was
a civil and not a religious institution, since after all the killing
of a man by a premature autopsy is a plain case of homicide.
The fact of the matter seems to be that Vesalius, who had not been
very well in the unsuitable climate of Madrid, made the trip to the
Holy Land, partly for reasons of health, but partly also for reasons
of piety. While returning he was shipwrecked on the island of Zante
and died from exposure. Vesalius had been born in Brabant, at that
time one of the most faithful Catholic countries in Europe. Like most
of the other great men of his time, the reformation utterly failed to
tempt him from his adhesion to the Catholic Church. His greatest
colleagues in anatomy and in medicine were Italians, most of whom were
in intimate relations with the Catholic ecclesiastics of the time and
continued this intimacy in spite of the disturbing influences that
were abroad. Many of these men will be mentioned in our account of the
Papal Medical School and of the Papal Physicians during the next two
or three centuries. The distinguished anatomists and physicians of
France in Vesalius's time were quite as faithful Catholics as he was.
Even Paracelsus, the Swiss, whose thorough-going independence of mind
would, it might naturally seem, have tempted him to take up with the
reformed doctrines, had no sympathy with them at all. He recognized
the abuses in the Church, but said that Luther and the so-called
reformers were doing much more harm {119} than good, and that until
they were gotten rid of no improvement in ecclesiastical matters could
be looked for. When Paracelsus came to die he left his money mainly to
the Shrine of the Blessed Virgin in his native town of Einsiedeln and
for masses for his soul. Since their time most of the distinguished
medical scientists have been quite as faithful in their Catholicity as
these two great medical colleagues of the Renaissance period. While
medicine is supposed to be unorthodox in its tendencies, the really
great thinkers in medicine, the men to whose names important
discoveries in the science were attached, were not only faithful
believers in the doctrines of Christianity, but were much more often
than has been thought even devout Catholics.
At the death of Vesalius the Golden Age of the development of anatomy
was not at its close, but was just beginning. Eustachius, Caesalpinus,
Harvey and Malpighi were during the course of the next century to make
anatomy a science in the strict sense of that word. After Vesalius's
time the history of anatomy in Italy centers around the Papal Medical
School to a great extent. During Vesalius's lifetime his greatest
rival became the professor of anatomy there. The anatomical school of
Bologna, in connection with that city, became an important focus of
anatomical investigation. At this time Bologna was a Papal city. It
was in the dominions of the Popes, then, as we shall see, that anatomy
was carried on with the most success and with the most ardor. Far from
there being any opposition to the development of the science, every
encouragement was given to it, and it was the patronage of the Popes
and of the higher ecclesiastics that to a great degree made possible
the glorious evolution of the science during the next century.
{120}
SUPPOSED PAPAL PROHIBITION OF CHEMISTRY.
A false impression, exactly corresponding to that with regard to
anatomy, has been created and fostered by just the same class of
writers as exploited the anatomy question, with reference to the
attitude of the Popes and the Church of the Middle Ages toward the
study of chemistry. This is founded on a similar misrepresentation of
a Papal document. When it was pointed out that this Papal document,
like Pope Boniface's bull, had no such purport as was suggested, just
the same subterfuge as with regard to anatomy was indulged in. If the
Papal document did not forbid chemistry directly, as was said, at
least it was so misinterpreted, and chemistry failed to develop
because of the supposed Papal opposition. These expressions were used,
in spite of the fact that, just as in the case of anatomy, it is not
hard to trace the rise and development of chemistry, or its
predecessor, alchemy, during the years when it is supposed to be in
abeyance. Certainly there was no interruption of the progress of
chemical science at the date of the supposed Papal prohibition, nor at
any other time, as a consequence of Church opposition.
The similarity of these two history lies is so striking as to indicate
that they had their birth in the same desire to discredit the Popes at
all cost, and to make out a case of opposition on the part of
ecclesiastical authorities to scientific development, whether it
actually existed or not. The surprise is, however, that the same form
of invention should have been used in both cases. One {121} might
reasonably have expected that the ingenuity of writers would have
enabled them to find another basis for the story on the second
occasion. Still more might it have been expected that when the error
with regard to the tenor of the Papal document was pointed out to
them, a different form of response would be made in the latter
instance. The whole subject indicates a dearth of originality that
would be amusing if it were on a less serious matter, and does very
little credit either to those who are responsible for the first draft
of the story, but still less to those who have swallowed it so readily
and given it currency.
The story of the Supposed Papal Prohibition of Chemistry was
characteristically told by William J. Cruikshank, M. D., of Brooklyn,
New York, in an address bearing the title, "Some Relations of the
Church and Scientific Progress," published in The Medical Library and
Historical Journal of Brooklyn for July, 1905. The writer called
emphatic attention to the fact that chemistry, during the Middle Ages,
had come under the particular ban of the ecclesiastical authorities,
who effectually prevented its cultivation or development. "The
chemist," Dr. Cruikshank says, "was called a miscreant, a sorcerer,
and was feared because of his supposed partnership with the devil. He
was denounced by Pope and priest and was persecuted to the full extent
of Papal power. Pope John XXII. was especially energetic in this
direction, and in the year 1317 A.D., issued a bull calling on all
rulers, secular and ecclesiastical, to hunt down the miscreants who
were afflicting the faithful, and he thereupon increased the power of
the Inquisition in various parts of Europe for this purpose."
At the suggestion of the editor of the Medical Library {122} and
Historical Journal, I answered these assertions of Dr. Cruikshank,
pointing out that the Papal document which he mentioned had no such
purport as he declared, and that the history of chemistry or alchemy
presented no such break as his assertions would demand. Dr. Cruikshank
immediately appealed by letter to his authority on the subject, whose
words, in the History of the Warfare of Theology with Science in
Christendom, though I did not realize it at the time, he had repeated
almost literally. In his chapter on From Magic to Chemistry and
Physics, Dr. Andrew D. White says: "In 1317, Pope John XXII. issued
his bull _Spondent pariter,_ levelled at the alchemists, but really
dealing a terrible blow at the beginning of chemical science. He
therefore called on all rulers, secular and ecclesiastical, to hunt
down the miscreants who thus afflicted the faithful, and he especially
increased the power of inquisitors in various parts of Europe for this
purpose." It will be seen that, as I have said, Dr. Cruikshank's words
are almost a verbatim quotation from this paragraph. It is true that
he has strengthened the expressions quite a little and added some
trimmings of his own, still I suppose his expressions could be
justified if those of President White had a foundation in fact. A
little comparison of the two sets of phrases will show how a history
lie grows as it passes from pen to pen. _Crescit eundo_--like rumor,
it increases in size as it goes.
In defense of this passage in the History of the Warfare of Science
with Theology in Christendom, Dr. White wrote a letter of reply to Dr.
Cruikshank, which was incorporated into Dr. Cruikshank's response to
my article in the Medical Library and Historical Journal. I presume
that this was done with Dr. White's permission. {123} In this letter
he admitted that Pope John's decretal had no such significance as he
originally claimed for it, but he still maintained his previous
opinion, that this decretal, like Boniface's bull for anatomy, had
actually prevented, or at least greatly hampered the study of
chemistry. To this I replied with a brief story of chemistry in the
fourteenth century, and though that article was published more than a
year ago, no admission has been made and nothing further has been
published on the subject. The material of the reply to Dr. White, to
which as yet there has been no answer, is comprised in this chapter.
As I have already hinted, the most surprising thing about this
citation of a Papal decree forbidding chemistry, is that it proves on
investigation to be founded on just exactly the same sort of
misinterpretation of a Papal document as happened with regard to
anatomy. The bull of Pope Boniface VIII. forbidding the boiling of
bodies and their dismemberment for burial in distant lands, did
nothing to hinder the progress of anatomy, had no reference to any
preparations required for dissection, and was not misinterpreted in
any such sense until the nineteenth century, and then only for the
purpose of discrediting the Popes and their relations to science. Pope
Boniface's bull, far from being harmful in any way to education or to
the people, was really beneficial, and constituted an excellent
sanitary regulation which doubtless prevented, on a number of
occasions, the carriage of disease from place to place.
The decree of Pope John XXII., which has been falsely claimed to
forbid chemistry, was another example of Papal care for Christendom,
and not at all the obscurantist document it has been so loudly
proclaimed. Pope {124} John learned how much imposition was being
practiced on the people by certain so-called alchemists who claimed to
be able to make silver and gold out of baser metals. In order to
prevent this, within a year after his elevation to the pontificate he
issued not a bull, but a very different form of document--a
decretal--forbidding any "alchemies" of this kind. The punishment to
be inflicted, however, instead of being the penalty of death, as Dr.
Cruikshank, Dr. White and many others have declared, or at least let
it be understood from their mode of expression, was that the person
convicted of pretending to make gold and silver and selling it to
other people, should pay into the public treasury an amount equal to
the supposed amount of gold and silver that he had made. _The money
thus paid into the public treasury was to be given to the poor._
The best way to show exactly what Pope John intended by his decree is
to quote the decree. It does not occur in the ordinary collection of
the bulls of John XXII., for it was not, as we have said, a bull in
the canonical sense of the term, but a Papal document of minor
importance. There is an important distinction between a decree and a
bull, the former being but of lesser significance, usually referring
only to passing matters of discipline. The decretal may be found in
the Corpus Juris Canonica, Tome II., which was published at Lyons in
1779. It is among the decrees or constitutions known as Extravagantes.
[Footnote 14]
[Footnote 14: The meaning of this term we discussed in the previous
chapter on Anatomy in relation to the bull of Boniface and Liber VI.
The motto of the publisher of the volume in which it occurs deserves
quotation because of its apt application in the present circumstance.
It is in Latin: "Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris"--"What
you would not have done to yourself, don't do to another." If writers
about the Popes were as careful to substantiate accusations against
them as fully as they would like any accusations against themselves to
be corroborated before being accepted and circulated, we should hear
much less of Papal intolerance and of Church opposition to science.
Even a dead Pope must be considered as a man whose reputation one
should not malign without good reason and substantial proof. I must
add that, as with regard to the other Papal documents mentioned, I owe
the copy of this decree to Father Corbett, of St. Charles Borromeo
Seminary, Overbrook, Pennsylvania, and am indebted to him besides for
many helpful suggestions.]
{125}
We quote the decree as it is found in Canon Law:
The Crime of Falsification.
"Alchemies are here prohibited and those who practise them or
procure their being done are punished. They must forfeit to the
public treasury for the benefit of the poor as much genuine gold and
silver as they have manufactured of the false or adulterate metal.
If they have not sufficient means for this, the penalty may be
changed to another at the discretion of the judge, and they shall be
considered criminals. If they are clerics, they shall be deprived of
any benefices that they hold and be declared incapable of holding
others." (See also the Extravagant of the same John which begins
with the word 'Providens' and is placed under the same title.)
[Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: The decree referred to here was issued by John XXII.
against the counterfeiting of the money of France. The fact that the
two decrees should be considered by canonists as connected in subject
shows just what was thought to be the purport of the first, namely, to
prevent the debasement of the currency by the admixture of adulterate
gold as well as to protect the ignorant from imposition.]
"Poor themselves, the alchemists promise riches which are not
forthcoming; wise also in their own conceit they fall into the ditch
which they themselves have digged. For there is no doubt that the
professors of this art of alchemy make fun of each other because,
conscious of their own ignorance, they are surprised at those who
say anything of this kind about themselves; when the truth sought
does not come to them they fix on a day [for their experiment] and
exhaust all their arts; then they dissimulate [their failure] so
that finally, though there is no such thing in nature, they pretend
to make genuine gold and silver by a sophistic transmutation; to
such an extent does their damned and damnable temerity go that they
stamp upon the base metal the characters of {126} public money for
believing eyes, and it is only in this way that they deceive the
ignorant populace as to the alchemic fire of their furnace. Wishing
to banish such practices for all time, we have determined by this
formal edict that whoever shall make gold or silver of this kind or
shall order it made, provided the attempt actually follows, or
whoever shall knowingly assist those engaged (actually) in such a
process, or whoever shall knowingly make use of such gold or silver
either by selling it or giving it for debt, shall be compelled as a
penalty to pay into the public treasury, to be used for the poor, as
much by weight of genuine gold and silver as there may be of
alchemic metal, provided it be proved lawfully that they have been
guilty in any of the aforesaid ways; for those who persist in making
alchemic gold, or, as has been said, in using it knowingly, let them
be branded with the mark of perpetual infamy. But if the means of
the delinquents are not sufficient for the payment of the amount
stated, then the good judgment of the justice may commute this
penalty into some other (as, for example, imprisonment, or another
punishment, according to the nature of the case, the difference of
individuals, and other circumstances.) Those, however, who in their
regrettable folly go so far as not only to sell moneys thus made but
even despise the precepts of the natural law, pass the bounds of
their art and violate the laws by deliberately coining or casting or
having others coin or cast counterfeit money from alchemic gold or
silver, we proclaim as coming under this animadversion, and their
goods shall be confiscate, and they shall be considered as
criminals. And if the delinquents are clerics, besides the aforesaid
penalties they shall be deprived of any benefices they shall hold
and shall be declared incapable of holding any further benefices."
[Footnote 16]
[Footnote 16: The Latin text of this decretal will be found entire in
the appendix.]
It is evident that John's decree against "The Crime of Falsification"
did not directly forbid chemistry, nor alchemy in the proper sense of
the word, nor did it in any way interfere with the study of substances
to {127} determine their composition, or the synthesis of materials to
produce others, provided there was no pretense of making gold and
silver in order to obtain genuine gold and silver from ignorant dupes.
There seems to be no doubt that had the famous scheme to obtain gold
from sea water, which caused serious loss to so many foolish and even
poor people a few years ago, come up during the time of John XXII., he
would have prevented it from being so lucrative to its promoters, by
publicly denouncing them and promulgating a law for their punishment.
It may be considered that excommunication was not a very severe
penalty for such dishonest practices, and that the sharpers who gave
themselves to such a profession, which would be about that of the
confidence or green goods men of our time, were not likely to be
affected much by this merely religious deprivation. It must not be
forgotten, however, that in those ages of faith, excommunication
became an extremely telling social punishment. It was forbidden that
anyone, even nearest and dearest friends, should have anything to do
with the one excommunicated until the ban was removed. It was bad
enough in a town where everyone belonged to the same church, and all
went to church frequently, to be forbidden to go there; it was
infinitely worse, however, to have everybody who passed refuse to
greet you or have relations of any kind with you. President Hadley, of
Yale, said, not long since, that social ostracism is the only
effective punishment for such manifest extra legal irregularities,
which are yet not so essentially criminal as to bring those guilty of
them under legal punishment. The sentence of excommunication was an
effective social ostracism--the {128} completest possible. This is an
aspect of excommunications usually missed, but well deserving of study
by those who resent the use of such an instrument by ecclesiastical
authorities. Just as soon as the man repented of what he had done and
promised to do so no more, he was received back into the Church, and
the ostracism ceased, so long as he did not relapse into his forbidden
ways.
When the eminently beneficial character of this Papal document is thus
appreciated, it is indeed painful to have to realize, that for its
issuance John has been held up more to scorn and ridicule than perhaps
has ever been the case for any other single formal document that has
ever been issued by an ecclesiastical or political authority. He was
simply correcting an abuse in his day, the existence of which we
recognize and would like to be able to correct in ours. For this
eminently proper exercise of the Papal power, however, his whole
character has been called into question, and a distinguished modern
educator has used every effort to place him in the pillory of history,
as one of the men who have done most to hamper progress in science and
education in all world history. The amusing thing is the utter
inequality between the document itself and its supposed effects. Of
course it had no such effect as President White claims for it, and,
indeed, he seems never to have seen the document in its entirety
before it was called forcibly to his attention long after his
declarations with regard to it were published. The real attitude of
Pope John XXII. with regard to education and the sciences, which was
exactly the reverse of that predicated of him by his modern colleague
in education, will be the subject of the next chapter.
{129}
There is another document of John XXII., the bull _Super Illius
Specula_, that has been sometimes quoted, or rather misquoted, and
which indeed at first I was inclined to think was the bull referred to
by Dr. Cruikshank. This second Papal document, however, was not issued
until 1326. It is concerned entirely with the practice of magic. The
Pope knew that many people, by pretended intercourse with the devil or
with spirits of various kinds, claimed to be able to injure, to obtain
precious information, to interpret the future and the past, and to
clear up most of the mysteries that bother mankind. We have them still
with us--the palmist, the fortune-teller, the fake-spiritist. In order
to prevent such impostures, John issued a bull forbidding such
practices under pain of excommunication. It is almost needless to say
that this Papal document must have effected quite as much good for the
people at large as did the previous one forbidding "alchemies," which
must have prevented the robbing of foolish dupes who were taken with
the idea that the alchemists whom they employed could make gold and
silver. Of this second Papal document, this time really a bull, we
shall, because President White has given it an even falser
construction than the one we have just been discussing, have more to
say in the next chapter.
We must return, however, to the decretal _Spondent pariter,_--the
decree supposed to have forbidden chemistry; for as with regard to the
bull of Boniface VIII., previously discussed, it seems that it is
necessary not only to show that the decree was not actually intended
by the Popes to prohibit chemistry, but also it will have to be made
clear that it was not misinterpreted so as to hamper chemical
investigation. This is indeed a very {130} curious state of affairs in
history. First, it is solemnly declared, that certain bulls and Papal
documents were directed deliberately against the sciences of anatomy
and chemistry by the Head of the Church, who wished to prevent the
development of these sciences lest they should lessen his power over
his people. Then, when it is shown that the documents in question have
no such tenor, but are simple Papal regulations for the prevention of
abuses which had arisen, and that they actually did accomplish much
good for generations for which they were issued, the reply is not an
acknowledgement of error, but an insistence on the previous
declaration, somewhat in this form: "Well, the Popes may not have
intended it, but these sciences, as a consequence of their decrees,
did not develop, and the Popes must be considered as to blame for
that." Then, instead of showing that these sciences did not develop,
this part is assumed and the whole case is supposed to be proved.
Could anything well be more preposterous. And this is history! Nay, it
is even the history of science.
When I called attention to the fact that this decretal contained none
of the things it was said to, and published the text of it, Dr. White
very calmly replied: "Dr. Walsh has indeed correctly printed it, and I
notice no flaw in his translation." Instead of conceding, however,
that he had been mistaken, he seemed to consider it quite sufficient
to add, "I have followed what I found to be the unanimous opinion of
the standard historians of chemistry." He did not mention any of the
historians, however. I asked him by letter to name some of the
standard historians of chemistry who made this declaration, but though
I received a courteous reply, it contained no names, and, indeed,
avoided the question {131} of chemistry entirely. It is not too much
to expect that an historian shall quote his authorities. Dr. White
seems to be above this. Some documents that he quotes are distorted,
and prove on examination, as we have seen, to have quite a different
meaning to that which he gives them. As might be expected, his
supposed facts prove to have as little foundation. It will be
remembered that he completely ignored or was ignorant of the history
of anatomy. He seems to have been just as ignorant of the history of
chemistry, in spite of his confident assurance in making far-reaching
statements with regard to it. In order to satisfy myself, I went
through all of the standard histories of chemistry in German, English
and French that are available in the libraries of New York City, and I
failed to find a single one of them which contains anything that might
be supposed even distantly to confirm President White's assertion.
I may have missed it, and shall be glad to know if I have. I cannot do
more than cite certain of them that should have it very prominently,
if Dr. White's assertion is to be taken at its face value. Here are
some standard historians whom I have searched in vain for the
declaration that all of them should have.
Kopp, who is the German historian of chemistry, mentions the fact that
there was much less cultivation of chemistry during the fourteenth
century than during the thirteenth, but makes no mention of the bull
of Pope John as being responsible for it. There are curious cycles of
interest in particular departments of science, with intervals of
comparative lack of interest that can only be explained by the
diversion of human mind to other departments of study. This seems to
have happened with regard to chemistry in the fourteenth century.
{132}
Hoefer, the French historian of chemistry, mentions the fact that Pope
John XXII. took severe measures against the alchemists who then
wandered throughout the country, seeking to enrich themselves at the
expense of the credulity of the people. He evidently knew of this
decree then, but he says nothing of its forbidding or being
misinterpreted, so as to seem to forbid chemical investigation.
Thomson, the English historian of chemistry, has no mention of any
break in the development of chemical science, caused by any action of
the Popes, though, to the surprise doubtless of most readers, he
devotes considerable space to the history of chemical investigation
during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Ernst von Meyer
mentions the fact that alchemy was abused by charlatans, in order to
make pretended gold and silver, and notes that there was not so much
interest in chemistry in the fourteenth as in the thirteenth century,
but does not ascribe this fact to the bull of Pope John.
I expected at least that I should find something with regard to the
question of the possible influence of the bull in Berthelot's "History
of Chemistry in the Middle Ages." [Footnote 17] But though there are
various historical topics treated that would seem to imply the
necessity for saying something about the bull, if it had any such
effect as described, yet there is no mention of it. He mentions the
Franciscan alchemists of northern Italy, who lived about this time,
and discusses the "Rosarium," written very probably after the date of
the bull by a Franciscan monk, but there is no suggestion as to any
hampering of alchemy by Papal or other ecclesiastical restrictions.
[Footnote 17: Berthelot's Histoire de la Chimie au Moyen Age. Paris,
1893.]
{133}
The French Grande Encyclopedie does not mention it, nor does a German
encyclopaedia, also consulted. Even the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in
its article on alchemy, makes no mention of the prohibition of alchemy
by Pope John XXII., and when the Encyclopaedia Britannica does not
mention any scandal with regard to the Popes, then the scandal in
question must have an extremely slight or no foundation.
Of course this is what might be expected. Anyone who reads the Papal
decree can see at once that it has nothing to do with, or say about,
chemistry or chemical investigation. Since, however, an aspersion has
been cast upon the progress of chemistry during the Middle Ages, and
since it will surely be thought by many people that, if chemistry did
not happen to interest mankind at that time, it must have been because
the Pope was opposed to it (for such seems to be the curious chain of
reasoning of certain scholars), it has seemed well to review briefly
the story of chemistry during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. More will be said about it in the chapter on Science at the
Medieval Universities, and here the only idea is to bring out the fact
that men were interested in what we now call chemical problems; that
whatever interest they had was absolutely unhampered by ecclesiastical
opposition; that indeed the very men who did the best work in this
line, and their work is by no means without significance in the
history of science, were all clergymen; and that most of them were in
high favor with the Popes, and some of them have since received the
honor of being canonized as saints.
Take for a moment the example of the great English medieval scientist
who wrote near the end of the {134} thirteenth century a work on
science, which was undertaken at the command of the Pope of his time,
to show him the character of the teaching of science at the University
of Oxford. Roger Bacon defined the limits of chemistry very accurately
and showed that he understood exactly what the subject and methods of
investigation must be, in order that advance should be made in it. Of
chemistry he speaks in his "Opus Tertium" in the following words:
"There is a science which treats of the generation of things from
their elements and of all inanimate things, as of the elements and
liquids, simple and compound, common stones, gems and marble, gold and
other metals, sulphur, salts, pigments, lapis lazuli, minium and other
colors, oils, bitumen, and infinite more of which we find nothing in
the books of Aristotle; nor are the natural philosophers nor any of
the Latins acquainted with these things."
The thirteenth century saw the rise of a number of great physical
scientists, who made observations that anticipated much more of our
modern views on scientific problems than is usually thought. One of
the greatest of the chemists of the thirteenth century was Albert the
Great, or Albertus Magnus, as he is more familiarly called, who taught
for many years at the University of Paris. He was a theologian as well
as a physician and a scientist. His works have been published in
twenty-one folio volumes, which will give some idea of the immense
industry of the man. Those relating to chemistry are as follows:
Concerning Metals and Minerals; Concerning Alchemy; A Treatise on the
Secrets of Chemistry; A Brief Compend on the Origin of the Metals; A
Concordance, that is, a Collection, of Observations from Many Sources,
with Regard to the Philosopher's {135} Stone; A Treatise on Compounds;
a book of eight chapters on the Philosopher's Stone. Most of these are
to be found in his works under the general heading "Theatrum
Chemicum." Thomson, in his "History of Chemistry," says, that they
are, in general, plain and intelligible. Albertus Magnus's most famous
pupil was the celebrated Thomas Aquinas. Three of his works are on
chemistry: The Intimate Secrets of Alchemy; on the Essence and
Substance of Minerals; and finally, later in life, the Wonders of
Alchemy. It is in this last work, it is said, that the word _amalgam_
occurs for the first time. While Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus
were working in France and Germany, Roger Bacon was doing work of
similar nature at Oxford in England. Altogether, he has eighteen
treatises on chemical problems. Some of these contain wonderful
anticipations of modern chemistry. After Roger Bacon came Raymond
Lully, who wrote, in all, sixteen treatises on chemical subjects. At
about the same time, Arnold of Villanova was teaching medicine at
Paris and paying special attention to chemistry. From him there are
twenty-one treatises on chemical subjects still extant. Arnold of
Villanova died on the way to visit Pope Clement V., the immediate
predecessor of John, who lay sick unto death at Avignon.
It is evident, then, that there was no spirit of opposition to
chemistry gradually forming itself in ecclesiastical circles, and
about to be expressed in a decree by John. The chemists of the
thirteenth century had been among the most distinguished churchmen of
the period. One of them at least, Thomas Aquinas, had been declared a
saint. Another, Albertus Magnus, has been given the title of Blessed,
signifying that his life and {136} works are worthy of all veneration.
Pope John XXII. had as a young man been a student of these men at the
University of Paris, and would surely have imbibed the tradition of
their interest in the physical sciences. That he should have unlearned
all their lessons seems out of the question.
It remains, then, to see whether there was any diminution of the
interest in chemistry after the issue of this decree by John. In the
fourteenth century we find the two Hollanduses, probably father and
son, whose lives run during most of the century, doing excellent work
in science. They frequently refer to the writings of Arnold of
Villanova, so that they certainly post-date him. From them altogether,
we have some eleven treatises on various chemical subjects. Some of
these, especially with regard to minerals, have very clear
descriptions of processes of treatment which serve to show that their
knowledge was by no means merely theoretical or acquired only from
books.
Probably before the end of the fourteenth century there was born a man
who must be considered the father of modern pharmaceutical chemistry.
This was Basil Valentine, the German Benedictine monk, whose best
known work is the "The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony." Its influence
can be best appreciated from the fact that it introduced the use of
antimony into medicine definitely, and that substance continued to be
used for centuries, so that it was not until practically our own
generation that the true limitations of its usefulness were found.
Valentine described the process of making muriatic acid, which he
called the spirit of salt, and taught how to obtain alcohol in
concentrated form. Altogether, this monk-alchemist, who was really the
{137} first of the chemists, left twenty-three treatises, some of them
good-sized books, on various subjects in chemistry. [Footnote 18] It
does not look, then, as though chemistry was much neglected during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
[Footnote 18: For a brief sketch of his career see my Catholic
Churchmen in Science. Dolphin Press, Philadelphia. 1906.]
One step more in the history remains to be taken, which brings us down
to a man who is more familiar to modern physicians--Paracelsus.
Paracelsus received his education just at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, before the Reformation began. He was not a man, as
those who know his character will thoroughly appreciate, to confess
that he had received much assistance from others. He does mention,
however, that he was helped in his chemical studies by the Abbot
Trithemius, of Spanheim; by Bishop Scheit, of Stettbach; by Bishop
Erhardt, of Lavanthol; by Bishop Nicholas, of Hippon; and by Bishop
Matthew Schacht.
We have been able to follow, then, the development of chemistry during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries down to the time of the
Reformation, and find nowhere any lessening of the ardor for chemical
studies, though most of the great names in the science continue to be,
as they were before the decree was issued, those of distinguished
ecclesiastics. John's decree, then, was neither intended to hamper the
development of chemistry, nor did it accidentally prevent those who
were most closely in touch with the ecclesiastical authorities from
pursuing their studies. Those, of course, who knew anything of the
character of the author, would not expect it to interfere with the
true progress of science. As we shall see in the next chapter, Pope
John XXII. was really one of the most liberal patrons of education and
of science in history.
{138}
A PAPAL PATRON OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE.
The question of the Papal bull supposed to forbid chemistry, or at
least its mother science, alchemy, has necessarily brought into
prominence in this volume the name of Pope John XXII. Few Popes in
history have been the subject of more bitter denunciation than John.
Writers on the history of the Papacy who were themselves not members
of the Catholic Church, have been almost a unit in condemning him for
many abuses of Papal power, especially such as were associated with
the employment of Church privileges for the accumulation of money.
Certain Catholic historians even have not found themselves able to rid
their appreciation of the character of Pope John from similar
objections. It is acknowledged that he was one of the most learned men
of his time. It is confessed that he was one of the most abstemious of
men. Indeed, in this respect he has been very appropriately compared
with Pope Leo XIII. He did succeed in setting the Papacy on a firm
foundation in Avignon, and did arrange the financial economy of the
Church in such a way that large amounts of money were bound to
accumulate in the Papal treasury.
This has been the main element of the accusations against him. A
prominent American encyclopaedia summed up his character very
trenchantly as follows: "He was learned in Canon Law and was
remarkable for avarice." Many have not hesitated to say that even his
condemnation of alchemy had for its main purpose {139} the idea of
added revenues for the Papal See, by the fines inflicted, and by the
confiscation of the goods of those condemned as well as by the Court
fees in the matter, though there is nothing in the decree to justify
such an opinion, and we have pointed out that the fines collected
were, according to the document itself, to be given to the poor.
With the ecclesiastical aspects of Pope John's character we have
nothing to do here. It would require a large volume by itself properly
to tell the story of his life, for he was one of the most influential
men of an important time, and though he ascended the Papal throne when
he was past seventy, he lived to be ninety, and his pontificate is
filled with evidence of his strenuous activity till the end of his
life. There is no doubt that the regulations for which he is
responsible with regard to the Papal finances eventually led to very
serious abuses in the Church. It is easy to understand, however, how
special arrangements had to be made for the support of the Holy See at
Avignon. Pope John XXII.'s predecessor, Clement, was the first Pope
who, because of the unsettled state of affairs in Italy and the
influence of the French King, resolved to live at Avignon instead of
Rome. Under these circumstances, the ordinary sources of revenue for
the support of the Papal Court, which required comparatively as
expensive an establishment then as now, were more or less cut off.
During the first pontificate at Avignon, this proved a serious
drawback to ecclesiastical efficiency. In Pope John's time the
necessity for providing revenues became acute. Besides, he wished to
make the new Papal City as worthy of the Holy See as the old one had
been. To him is largely due the development of Avignon, which {140}
occurred during the fourteenth century. The abuses which his
regulations in this matter led to did not culminate in his time, but
came later. The revenues obtained by him were, as we shall see, used
to excellent purpose, and were applied to such educational and
missionary uses as would eminently meet the approval of the most
demanding of critics in modern times.
John was a liberal and discriminating patron of learning and of
education in his time. He helped colleges in various parts of the
world, established a college in the East, and sent out many
missionaries at his own expense. These missionaries proved as
efficient as modern travelers in adding to the knowledge of the East
at that time, and practically laid the foundations of the science of
geography. [Footnote 19]
[Footnote 19: Those who are interested in the wonderful things
accomplished for geography by these missionary travelers of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, will find a brief account of them
in the chapter on Geography and Exploration in my book on The
Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries.]
What is of special interest to us here, however, in this volume, is
the fact that Pope John gave all the weight of the Papal authority,
the most important influence of the time in Europe, to the
encouragement of medical schools, the maintenance of a high standard
in them, and the development of scientific medicine. At this time
medicine included many of the physical sciences as we know them at the
present time. Botany, mineralogy, climatology, even astrology, as
astronomy was then called, were the subjects of study by physicians,
the last named because of the supposed influence of the stars on the
human constitution. Because of his encouragement of medical schools
and his emphatic insistence on their maintaining high standards, Pope
John must be commended as a patron of science and as {141} probably
having exerted the most beneficial influence in his time on education.
This is of course very different from what is usually said of this
Pope, Prof. White can scarcely find words harsh enough to apply to
him, because of his supposed superstition and the influence which he
had upon his time in leading men's minds away from science and into
the foolish absurdities of superstitious practices. Pope John XXII. is
one of the special bêtes noires of the sometime President of Cornell.
Yet, I am sure that when the formal documents which Pope John has left
relating to education and science are read by modern educators, they
cannot help but consider him as one of their most enterprising
colleagues in the realm of education. Indeed, a number of his bulls
read very much like the documents that issue occasionally from college
presidents with regard to the maintenance of standards in education,
and his encouragement of the giving of the best possible opportunities
for scientific and literary studies, and especially that the smaller
colleges shall be equal as far as possible to the greater institutions
of learning, will arouse the sympathetic interest of every educator of
the modern day.
The documents that I shall quote in translations (the originals may be
found in the appendix) will show that the Pope wanted the doctorates
in philosophy and in medicine to be given only after seven years of
study, at least four of which were to be devoted to the post-graduate
work in the special branch selected. He wished, moreover, to insist on
the necessity for preliminary education. He wanted the permission to
teach these branches, which in that day was equivalent to our term of
doctorate, to be given in all institutions for {142} the same amount
of work and after similar tests. These are just the matters that have
occupied the thoughts of university presidents for the last quarter of
a century, and have been the subjects of discussion in the meetings of
various college and university associations. Pope John's bulls would
be interesting documents to have read before such associations even at
the present time, and would form excellent suggestive material on
which the discussion of the necessity for maintaining college
standards might well be founded. This is so different from what is
usually thought in the matter, that personally I have found it even
rather amusing. It is not amusing, however, to think that this great
progressive, yet conservative educator should have been so
misrepresented by modern educators and historians, simply because they
did not study the man in his own writings, but knew him only at second
hand from those who judged his character from another standpoint.
All this will show John as really one of the greatest Popes not only
in the century in which he lived, but as distinguished as only a
comparatively small number have been among the successors of Peter.
Though he ascended the Papal throne at the age of seventy, the next
twenty years were full of work of all kinds, and John's wonderful
capacity for work stamps him as one of the great men of all time. It
is a well-known rule, constantly kept in mind by Catholic students of
history, that the Popes against whom the most objections are urged by
non-Catholic historians are practically always found, on close and
sympathetic study, to be striking examples of men who at least labored
to accomplish much. As a rule, they strove to correct abuses, and as a
consequence made bitter enemies, who left behind them {143} many
contemporary expressions of disapproval. Any contemporary authority is
somehow supposed to be infallible. We forget, when a man tries to do
good he is likely to meet with bitter opposition from many. If their
expressions are taken seriously by historians who write with the
purpose of finding just as little good and just as much evil as
possible in a particular character, the resulting appreciation is
likely to be rather far from the truth. If some of the criticisms of
our present President are only preserved long enough, how easy it will
be for a future historian who may have the purpose of showing how much
of evil began as the result of his policy, to find material on which
to build up his thesis. Men who do nothing make no enemies and also
make no mistakes. Fortunately, however, doing things is its own
justification.
John XXII. had had eminent opportunities for the acquisition of an
education as thorough, and a culture as broad, as any that might be
afforded even by our educational opportunities at the present time. He
had been many years at the University of Paris; he had traveled in
England, a rare occurrence in those days, and had spent most of his
time while there at Oxford; he had also passed several years in Italy
and was familiar with educational conditions down there. He certainly
did more for education than any man of his generation. He had the
greatest of opportunities, but it cannot but be said that he took
them, very wonderfully. There are very few in all the history of
education who have insisted as he on the important principles of the
necessity for careful training, for the maintenance of high standards
in examination and degree-giving, and for the endeavor to bring the
large universities in intimate contact with the {144} small ones, to
the benefit especially of the latter, though, as we know now, always
also to the reactionary advantage of the important institutions. All
this is to be found in the documentary history of a man who has been
set up as an object of scorn and derision by modern educators, who
surely, if they knew the actual facts, would be sympathetic, and not
antipathetic as they have been.
It seems too bad that it was just this man that should have been
picked out for the slander that he had prevented the development of
chemistry by a Papal decree, which proves on examination to be only an
added evidence of his beneficent care for his people. But this is not
the only charge that has been brought against Pope John XXII.
President White has painted his character in the worst possible
colors. Even after his attention was called to the fact that the
document supposed to prohibit chemistry did not have any of the
meaning which he attributed to it in his History of the Warfare of
Science With Theology in Christendom, he still could find terms
scarcely black enough in which to paint Pope John, and recurs to other
documents issued by that Pope to prove his assertions. Strangely
enough, especially after the warning of having had to acknowledge that
one quotation from him was entirely wrong, he proceeds to quote
another bull by the same Pope, that he has evidently never read, and
his remarks with regard to it show that he never took the trouble to
learn anything about this Pope by reading any of the original
documents that he issued, but depends entirely on second-hand
authorities. He says:--
"It is a pity that Dr. Walsh does not quote in full Pope John's
other and much more interesting bull, _Super illius specula_, of
1326. One would suppose from the {145} doctor's account that this
Pontiff was a kindly and rational scholar seeking to save the people
from the clutch of superstition. The bull of 1326 shows Pope John
himself, in spite of his infallibility, sunk in superstition, the
most abject and debasing; for, in this bull, supposed to be inspired
from wisdom from on high, Pope John complains that both he and his
flock are in danger of their lives by the arts of the sorcerers. He
declares that such sorcerers can shut up devils in mirrors,
finger-rings and phials, and kill men and women by a magic word;
that they had tried to kill him by piercing a waxen image of him
with needles, in the name of the devil. He therefore, not only in
this bull, but in brief after brief, urged bishops, inquisitors and
other authorities, sacred and secular, to hunt down the miscreants
who thus afflicted the faithful, and he especially increased the
power of the inquisitors in various parts of Europe for this
purpose. This bull it was indeed, and others to the same purpose,
which stimulated that childish fear and hatred against the
investigation of nature which was felt for centuries and which
caused chemistry to be known more and more as one of the 'seven
devilish arts.'"
There can be no doubt that this is an awful arraignment of a Pope. The
bull in question is quoted so confidently under its Latin title that
anyone who reads this paragraph must necessarily conclude that it
contains all that President White says, and that he was fresh from the
reading of it. I may say that, though I had already found that two
other Papal documents had been utterly misrepresented in President
White's references, I could not bring myself to think that the same
thing might be true with regard to this third Papal document cited by
him. After having had two lessons in the necessity for {146} careful
collation of his references to his authorities, I did not think it
possible for him to make another misquotation, if possible, more
serious than the preceding examples. Though I had by me, thanks to my
good friend Father Corbett, of St. Charles Seminary, Overbrook, Pa., a
copy of this bull at the time I wrote an answer to some of President
White's curious wanderings into the history of anatomy and chemistry,
I did not consult it, for I felt sure that it must contain the
expressions which were so confidently quoted. My surprise can be
better imagined than described when on reading the bull I found that
it contained practically no foundation for the awful charges made by
President White. I had been given another lesson in the difference
between traditional and documentary history, the significance of which
will, I hope, be appreciated by others. It led me to consult further
bulls of John XXII., which bring out his character better than any
modern historian possibly can, and which serve to show that, far from
being an obscurantist in any sense of the word, he was deeply
interested in education, expressed his appreciation for it on many
occasions in the highest terms, encouraged his people to seek it, in
any and every form, scientific as well as literary and philosophic,
and stated confidently that education would surely redound to the
benefit of the Church and deserved to be the special object of
ecclesiastical favor.
First, however, let me quote the bull _Super illius specula_, of which
President White has said so much. I present a close, almost literal,
translation of the document as it is to be found in the collections of
Thomassetti and Coquelines. As President White conceded that my
translation of the previous document of Pope John {147} with regard to
alchemy was flawless, I shall be careful not to undo his compliment.
[Footnote 20]
[Footnote 20: The full Latin text of this bull will be found in the
appendix.]
"Seeking to discover how the sons of men know and serve God by the
practice of the Christian religion, we look down from the
watch-tower where, though unworthy, we have been placed by the
favoring clemency of Him who made the first man after His own image
and likeness; setting him over earthly things; adorning him with
heavenly virtues; recalling him when a wanderer; bestowing on him a
law; freeing him from slavery; finding him when he was lost; and
finally ransoming him from captivity by the merit of His passion.
With grief we discover, and the very thought of it wrings our soul
with anguish, that there are many Christians only in name; many who
turn away from the light which once was theirs, and allow their
minds to be so clouded with the darkness of error as to enter into a
league with death and a compact with hell. They sacrifice to demons
and adore them, they make or cause to be made images, rings,
mirrors, phials or some such things in which by the art of magic
evil spirits are to be enclosed. From them they seek and receive
replies, and ask aid in satisfying their evil desires. For a foul
purpose they submit to the foulest slavery. Alas! this deadly malady
is increasing more than usual in the world and inflicting greater
and greater ravages on the flock of Christ.
"Section I.--Since, therefore, we are bound by the duty of our
pastoral office to bring back to the fold of Christ the sheep who
are wandering through devious ways and to exclude from the Lord's
flock those who are diseased lest they should infect the rest, We,
by this edict, which, in accordance with the counsel of our brother
bishops, is to remain in perpetual vigor, warn all and in virtue of
holy obedience and under pain of anathema enjoin on all those who
have been regenerated in the waters of baptism not to inculcate or
study any of the perverse teachings we have mentioned, or, what is
more to be condemned, practise them in any manner upon any one.
{148}
"Section II.--And because it is just that those who by their deeds
make mockery of the Most High should meet with punishments worthy of
their transgressions we pronounce the sentence of excommunication
which it is our will they shall _ipso facto_ incur, who shall
presume to act contrary to our salutary warnings and commands. And
we firmly decree that in addition to the above penalties a process
shall be begun before competent judges for the infliction of all and
every penalty which heretics are subject to according to law, except
confiscation of goods, against such as being duly admonished of the
foregoing or any of the foregoing practices, have not within eight
days from the time when the admonition was given amended their lives
in the aforesaid matters.
"Section III.--Moreover, since it is proper that no opportunity or
occasion should be given for such flagitious practices, We, in
conformity with the advice of our brother bishops, ordain and command
that no one shall presume to have or to hold books or writing of any
kind containing any of the before-mentioned errors or to make a study
of them. On the contrary, we desire and in virtue of holy obedience
we impose the precept upon all, that whoever shall have any of the
aforesaid writings or books shall, within the space of eight days
from their knowledge of our edict in this matter, destroy and burn
them and every part thereof absolutely and completely; otherwise, we
decree that they incur the sentence of excommunication _ipso facto_
and, when the evidence is clear, that other and greater penalties
shall be inflicted upon culprits of this kind."
Now here is a Papal document that, far from containing any of the
superstitions that President White so outspokenly declares it to
contain, is a worthy expression of the fatherly feelings of the head
of Christendom that might well have been issued at even the most
enlightened period of the world's history. The two sentences on which
all of President White's serious accusation is founded are simple
expressions of the Pope's solicitude for his flock on hearing of some
of the practices that {149} some are said to give themselves up to. He
does not say even that sorcerers can shut up devils in mirrors,
finger-rings and phials, but uses the hypothetical expression that in
these things, by magic art, evil spirits are to be enclosed. The bull
has no reference at all to the killing of men and women by a magic
word, and where President White found that Pope John declares in this
bull that sorcerers had tried to kill him by piercing a waxen image of
him with needles in the name of the devil, it is impossible to
understand; I should like very much to know what his authority is,
because then it could be refuted in its source. As it is, Dr. White
said it was in the bull, and now every one can see for himself that it
is not.
Let us go a step further and take President White's single sentence,
"One would suppose from the doctor's (Dr. Walsh's) account that this
Pontiff was a kindly and rational scholar seeking to save the people
from the clutch of superstition," and let us illustrate the phrase "a
kindly and rational scholar" by some documents issued by Pope John
XXII. Take for instance the special bull issued by him for the
confirmation of the establishment of chairs in canon and civil law,
and the founding of masterships in medicine and in arts in the
University of Perugia by which he also conveyed the authority to
confer the degrees of doctor and bachelor in all these faculties on
those who were found worthy after careful examinations. In the
preamble of this bull we shall find abundant evidence of Pope John's
kindly and rational scholarship, of his eminent desire to encourage
education in all its forms, literary and scientific, and to make the
people of his time understand how valuable he considered education,
not only for the sake of the {150} individuals who might acquire it,
but also for the Church and for the cause of religion.
This bull was issued Feb. 18, 1321:
"While with deep feelings of solicitous consideration we mentally
resolve how precious the gift of science is and how desirable and
glorious is its possession, since through it the darkness of
ignorance is put to flight and the clouds of error completely done
away with so that the trained intelligence of students disposes and
orders their acts and modes of life in the light of truth, we are
moved by a very great desire that the study of letters in which the
priceless pearl of knowledge is found should everywhere make
praiseworthy progress, and should especially flourish more
abundantly in such places as are considered to be more suitable and
fitting for the multiplication of the seeds and salutary germs of
right teaching. Whereas some time ago, Pope Clement of pious memory,
our predecessor, considering the purity of faith and the excelling
devotion which the city of Perugia belonging to our Papal states is
recognized to have maintained for a long period towards the church,
wishing that these might increase from good to better in the course
of time, deemed it fitting and equitable that this same city, which
had been endowed by Divine Grace with the prerogatives of many
special favors, should be distinguished by the granting of
university powers, in order that by the goodness of God men might be
raised up in the city itself pre-eminent for their learning, decreed
by the Apostolic authority that a university should be situated in
the city and that it should flourish there for all future time with
all those faculties that may be found more fully set forth in the
letter of that same predecessor aforesaid. And whereas we
subsequently, though unworthy, having been raised to the dignity of
the Apostolic primacy, are desirous to reward with a still richer
gift the same city of Perugia for the proofs of its devotion by
which it has proven itself worthy of the favor of the Apostolic See,
by our Apostolic authority and in accordance with the council of our
brother bishops, we grant to our venerable brother the Bishop of
Perugia and to those who may be his successors in {151} that diocese
the right of conferring on persons who are worthy of it the license
to teach (the Doctorate) in canon and civil law, according to that
fixed method which is more fully described and regulated more at
length in this our letter.
"Considering, therefore, that this same city, because of its
conveniences and its many favoring conditions, is altogether
suitable for students and wishing on that account to amplify the
educational concessions hitherto made because of the public benefits
which we hope will flow from them, we decree by Apostolic authority
that if there are any who in the course of time shall in that same
university attain the goal of knowledge in medical science and the
liberal arts and should ask for license to teach in order that they
may be able to train others with more freedom, that they may be
examined in that university in the aforesaid medical sciences and in
the arts and be decorated with the title of Master in these same
faculties. We further decree that as often as any are to receive the
degree of Doctor in medicine and arts as aforesaid, they must be
presented to the Bishop of Perugia, who rules the diocese at the
time or to him whom the bishop shall have appointed for this
purpose, who having selected teachers of the same faculty in which
the examinations are to be made, who are at that time present in the
university to the number of at least four, they shall come together
without any charge to the candidate and, every difficulty being
removed, should diligently endeavor that the candidate be examined
in science, in eloquence, in his mode of lecturing, and anything
else which is required for promotion to the degree of doctor or
master. With regard to those who are found worthy their teachers
should be further consulted privately, and any revelation of
information obtained at such consultations as might redound to the
disadvantage or injury of the consultors is strictly forbidden. If
all is satisfactory the candidate should be approved and admitted
and the license to teach granted. Those who are found unfit must not
be admitted to the degree of doctor, all leniency or prejudice or
favor being set aside.
"In order that the said university may in the aforesaid studies of
medicine and the arts so much more fully {152} grow in strength,
according as the professors who actually begin the work and teaching
there are more skillful, we have decided that until four or five
years have passed some professors, two at least, who have secured
their degree in the medical sciences at the University of Paris,
under the auspices of the Cathedral of Paris, and who shall have
taught or acted as masters in the before-mentioned University of
Paris, shall be selected for the duties of the masterships and the
professional chairs in said department in the University of Perugia
and they shall continue their work in this last-mentioned university
until noteworthy progress in the formation of good students shall
have been made.
"With regard to those who are to receive the degree of doctor in
medical science, it must be especially observed that all those
seeking the degree shall have heard lectures in all the books of
this same science which are usually required to be heard by similar
students at the universities of Bologna or of Paris and that this
shall continue for seven years. Those, however, who have elsewhere
received sufficient instruction in logic or philosophy having
applied themselves to these studies for five years in the aforesaid
universities, with the provision, however, that at least three years
of the aforesaid five or seven-year term shall have been devoted to
hearing lectures in medical science in some university, and
according to custom, shall have been examined under duly authorized
teachers and shall have, besides, read such books outside the
regular course as may be required may, with due observation of all
the regulations which are demanded for the taking of degrees in
Paris or Bologna, also be allowed to take the examination at
Perugia."
Here is a bull issued within five years after the bull which President
White so falsely impugns and which tells a very different story with
regard to the relationship of the Popes to education in general, and
especially to scientific education, from that which unfortunate
misrepresentations have accorded to them. Perugia was a city of the
Papal States, though really scarcely more {153} than under the
dominion of the Popes in name. The citizens exercised a large freedom
not only in all civic matters, but even in regard to their
relationships with neighboring cities and political powers. One of the
things which Pope John seems to have been especially solicitous about,
however, as we shall see in a subsequent bull, was that the
educational institutions in the Papal States should be maintained at a
high standard. A university had been established at Perugia by his
predecessor, and Pope John not only confirmed this establishment, but
gave the additional privilege of conferring degrees in Canon and Civil
Law as well as in Medicine and the Arts.
Lest there should be any thought that the fact that the conferring of
such privileges by the Pope might seem to be a limitation of
university privilege, it may be said at once that practically all
universities have at all times been under the supervision of
Government and have derived their privileges from the political
authorities. During the Middle Ages the universities were really
developments of Cathedral schools, and as such were usually under the
authority of the Chancellor of the Cathedral. As an ecclesiastical
person he looked to the Pope as the source of his authority, and in
order that uniformity of requirement for various degrees and of
educational methods might be maintained, there was practically
universal agreement that such centralization of the power to grant
privileges for the erection of universities and the conferring of
degrees was the most practical way. With regard to Perugia besides
there was the additional reason that the Pope represented the
political as well as the ecclesiastical authority in the matter, and
that very naturally the {154} encouragement for the good educational
work already being done in the Umbrian City should come from him.
This premised, certain features of this bull are especially noteworthy
in the light of modern educational experiences. The Pope was
confirming the establishment of a new university. It was to be as he
realized, a smaller university in size, but he did not want its
standard of education to be lower than that of the great universities.
For this reason he insists specifically in the bull that the license
to teach--the equivalent of our modern doctorate in law, letters and
science, shall not be given except after the completion of a course
equivalent to those given in these subjects in Paris or Bologna, the
great universities of the time, and that the examination shall be
quite as rigid and shall be conducted under conditions that, as far as
human foresight can arrange, shall preclude all possibility of
favoritism of any kind entering into the promotion of candidates for
these degrees. The fact that oaths were required in the hope that
standards would be thus maintained shows how seriously the subject of
education was taken at this time, when, if we would believe some of
those who depreciate the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical efforts were
mainly occupied with the attempt to keep the people as ignorant as
possible.
This phase of the Papal decree is all the more interesting when it is
viewed in the light of some modern educational developments. A few
years ago there was a very general complaint that the doctorate in
philosophy was conferred too easily, especially by the minor
universities, and that as a consequence this degree had come to mean
very little. It required a distinct crusade of effort to raise
standards in this matter, and even at {155} the present time the
situation is not entirely satisfactory. A very curious element in the
situation lies in the fact that, in comparison to the number of
students, certain of the smaller universities confer this distinction
much more frequently than the larger universities. This was found to
be true even among the German universities, where I believe that
according to statistics the little University of Rostock, in
Mecklenberg, confers the degree proportionately oftener than any other
German university. Pope John XXII. was evidently endeavoring to
prevent any such development as this, or perhaps he was trying to
remedy an abuse which he knew had already crept in, for all of his
bulls on educational matters insist with no little emphasis on the
necessity for the maintenance of a high standard of educational
requirements as regards the length of time in years and the books to
be read and lectures attended, as well as on the rigor, yet absolute
fairness of examinations.
I am sure that the bulls of John XXII. must never have come under
President White's eyes, or he, as an experienced educator who has had
to meet most of these problems in our time, would have been more
sympathetic with this medieval ecclesiastic, who did all in his power
to maintain university standards. Pope John's career deserves study by
all modern educators for this reason, and the surprise of it will be
that in education, as practically in everything else, in spite of our
present-day self-complacency in the matter of educational progress,
there is nothing new under the sun, certainly nothing new in the
problems university authorities have to meet in order to maintain
their standards.
The best possible proof that Pope John XXII. was not opposed in any
way to the development of science nor {156} to the study of sciences
at the universities is to be found in his establishment of this
medical school at Perugia. We may say at once that this is not the
only medical school with whose encouragement he was concerned since
the erection of the University of Cahors, his birthplace, and the
establishment of a medical school there, as well as the provision of
funds for certain medical chairs in the University at Rome, shows the
reality and the breadth of his interest in medicine. It must be
remembered that under the term medicine at this time most of the
physical sciences as we know them now were included. It is the custom
sometimes to think that the students of medicine in the Middle Ages
knew very little about medicine itself or the sciences related to
medicine. This thought was excusable some years ago when the old
medical text-books of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had not
as yet been printed.
At the present time, such a mistake would be unpardonable for any
scholar who pretends to first-hand knowledge of this period. In the
chapter on Science at the Medieval Universities I call special
attention to the fact that medicine and surgery developed in such a
wonderful way at the medical schools of the universities of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, that many presumed discoveries of
much later times were marvelously anticipated. A short catalogue of
them here may not be out of place, though the reader is referred to
other chapters for further details. In the medical schools which Pope
John XXII. was then fostering, they taught the ligature of arteries,
the prevention of bleeding by pressure, the danger of wounds of the
neck, the relation of dropsy to hardening of the kidneys, the true
origins of the venereal diseases, the methods of treating {157} joint
diseases, the suture of divided nerves, the use of the knife rather
than the cautery because it made a cleaner wound which healed more
readily, and even, wonder of wonders, healing by first intention.
Anyone who was fostering this kind of education in medicine was
advancing the cause of one of the applied sciences in a very wonderful
way.
If we add that, at this same time the proper use of opium in medicine
was a feature of medical teaching which had just been introduced by a
Papal physician, while a form of anaesthesia was being practically
developed and very generally employed, the question will be why we, in
the twentieth century, do not know ever so much more than we actually
do, rather than why these earnest students of the thirteenth century
knew so little, which is the absurd thought that most authorities in
education seem to entertain at the present time with regard to our
forbears of early university history. The student of medicine during
the thirteenth century had to devote himself very nearly to the same
department of science as those which occupy his colleagues of the
present century.
The prospectus of a medical school of the time would announce very
probably some such program of studies as this. Besides learning
something of astrology (the astronomy of the day) the student would be
expected to know much about climate and its influence on disease, and
about soil in its relation to pathology (these were supposed to be
fruitful causes of disease). Certain minerals, among them very
probably antimony, were beginning to be used in medical practice, and
so mineralogy was a special subject of study. Of plants they were
expected to know in a general way much more than the modern {158}
medical student, to whom botany is not considered of much importance,
and of zoology they probably had at least as great practical
knowledge, since many of their dissections were made on animals, and
the differences in structure between them and man were pointed out
when the annual anatomies or human dissections at the universities
were made. Of pharmacology and the allied subject, chemistry, they had
to know all that would enable them to use properly the several hundred
vegetable remedies then used in medicine. This will give an idea,
then, what were in general the studies which Pope John was trying to
foster with so much care in the University of Perugia.
There is another phase of his regulations with regard to medical
schools which cannot but prove of the greatest interest to members of
our present-day medical faculties. It has been realized for some time,
that what is needed more than anything else to make good physicians
for the present generation is that medical students should have a
better preliminary education than has been the case in the past. In
order to secure this, various states have required evidence of a
certain number of years spent at high school or college before a
medical student's certificate allowing entrance into a medical school
will be granted. Some of the most prominent medical schools have gone
even farther than this, and have required that a degree in arts should
be obtained in the undergraduate department before medical studies may
be taken up. Something of this same kind was manifestly in Pope John's
mind when he required that seven years should have been spent at a
university, at least three years of which should have been entirely
devoted to medical studies, before the candidate might {159} be
allowed to go up for his examination for the doctor's degree.
As we begin the twentieth century, we note that the presidents of our
American universities are trying to secure just exactly the same
number of years of study for candidates for the degree of Doctor of
Medicine, as this medieval Pope insisted on as a prerequisite for the
same degree in a university founded in the Papal States at the
beginning of the fourteenth century. After the year 1910 most of the
large universities in this country will not admit further students to
their medical departments unless they have a college degree or its
equivalent, that is, unless they have devoted four years to college
undergraduate work. It is generally understood, that in the last year
of his undergraduate course the student who intends to take up
medicine may elect such scientific studies in the college department
as will obtain for him an allowance of a year's work in the medical
school. He will then be able to complete his medical course in three
years, so that our modern institutions will, if our plans succeed,
require just exactly the same amount of time for the doctorate in
Medicine as Pope John demanded, and not only demanded, but required by
legal regulation, for this bull was a law in the Papal States, just
six centuries ago. The coincidence is so striking that, only that it
is supported by documentary evidence of the best kind, we could
scarcely believe it.
Yet it is the Pope who encouraged devotion to science in all forms as
it was studied in his day, who insisted that the standards of
education in the universities of the Papal States, over which he had
direct control, should be equal to those of Paris and Bologna, who
suggested that teachers should be brought from the famous {160}
universities for the purpose of introducing the best educational
methods, who is now declared by President White to have "stimulated
the childish fear and hatred against the investigation of nature which
was felt for centuries, and whose decrees and briefs are said to have
caused chemistry to be known more and more as one of the 'seven
devilish arts.'" Here is the striking difference between traditional
and documentary history.
There are other bulls of Pope John which serve to bring out his
interest in education quite as clearly as this one, and show that the
ecclesiastics of the time were encouraged to think and act up to the
thought, that education of all kinds was sure to be of benefit to the
Church and her members. In extending the privileges of the University
of Perugia on another occasion by the bull _Inter ceteras curas_, John
declared that among the other cares which were enjoined on him from on
high by his Apostolic office and amongst the many projects which were
constantly in his mind for the betterment of religion, his thoughts
were directed more frequently and more ardently to this conclusion
than to any other, that the professors of the Catholic faith whom the
true light of the true faith illuminates should be imbued with the
deepest wisdom and should become erudite in all the studies that bring
profitable knowledge. For, he adds, this gift cannot be bought by any
price, but is divinely granted to minds that are of good will. For the
possession of knowledge is evidently desirable, since by it the
darkness of ignorance and the gloom of error are entirely done away
with and the intelligence of students is increased so as to direct all
their acts and deeds in the light of truth. "It is for this reason
(and no wonder)," he adds, "that I am led to encourage the study of
{161} letters in which the priceless pearl of knowledge is to be
found, and especially in such places as may bear worthy fruit for the
Church itself and for its members."
The expressions that he here uses are almost word for word, though not
quite the same as occur in other bulls, showing that a sort of formula
was constantly used to express the opinion of the Holy See with regard
to the desirableness of knowledge and the benefit that might be
expected to flow from education. Not all of the bull, however, is a
formula, since in the rest of it Pope John insists that at least five
years must be required at the university for the study of Canon and
Civil Law, and detailed injunctions are set forth as to the method of
examination so as to secure two things, first that a proper standard
shall be maintained and that those who have completed the course shall
have the right to examinations without further payment of fees, and
secondly, that such examinations shall be absolutely fair, without any
favor being shown to the applicant in any way, and at the same time
without any prejudice being allowed to influence his examiners against
him.
Lest readers should be tempted to think of Perugia as a town of very
slight importance from a political and civil standpoint, and therefore
consider anything done for it as amounting to very little in the
culture or influence of the period, a short sketch of it will not be
out of place. This little town has had the distinction of being the
center of interest in at least four marvelous epochs of human
development. Long before Roman civilization in Italy arose, the
Etruscans did some of their greatest art-work in the country around
Perugia, the remains of which have been unearthed in recent years.
Seven centuries later, the Romans left some magnificent {162}
architectural monuments of their occupation of this neighborhood.
Somewhat more than a thousand years passed, and St. Francis breathed
his profound spirit of love for nature in all its forms into the world
almost within sight of its walls, and with him the Renaissance began.
The great Umbrian school of painters in the Renaissance period came
from this district, and they include such names as Raphael and his
great master Perugino, who received his name from his birthplace.
Before John XXII. did so much to make it a center of culture and
education for this portion of Italy, it had been noted in the early
part of the thirteenth century for possessing a library of Canon and
Civil Law to which scholars often traveled from great distances for
consultation purposes. The Pope, then, though in distant Avignon, was
greatly helping on that movement which was to culminate and mean so
much for Umbria, that great center of culture and influence in the
Renaissance time.
In erecting the University of Cahors, Pope John took occasion to say
that he did so because the city promised to provide facilities and
proper conditions for the university and he believed that the
existence of such an institution would in very many ways be of benefit
to the commonwealth. He wished, therefore, that in Cahors, "a copious,
refreshing fountain of science should spring up and continue to flow,
from whose abundance all the citizens might drink, and where those
desirous of education might become imbued with knowledge so that the
cultivators of wisdom might sow seed with success and all the student
body become learned and eloquent and in every way distinguished,
bearing abundant fruit which the Lord in His own good time would give
them if they applied themselves with good will." He wished that {163}
the erection of the university should be considered as a special
reward for their devotion to the Holy See and should always stand as a
memorial of that.
The thought may possibly occur to some that Pope John, after having
issued these noteworthy documents in the cause of education in the
early years of his pontificate, might subsequently have changed his
mind and considered with advancing years that the repression of the
enthusiasm for learning would be better for his people from a
spiritual standpoint. There is, however, no sign of this to be found
in the important documents of his pontificate, nor would anyone think
of it who realized that John became Pope at the age of 72, after
having a very wide personal experience in political affairs as well as
ecclesiastical matters, an experience which took him over many parts
of Europe and must have greatly broadened his intellectual horizon,
and that he remained in full possession of his wonderful intellectual
powers until he was well past 90. Within two years before his death he
issued the bull which laid the foundation of the University of Cahors,
his native place. This he did at the request of the citizens of the
town, who pleaded that no better memorial of their great fellow
citizen who had become Pope could be raised among them than a
university.
In the light of these other bulls it is not surprising to find that
John should also have endeavored to maintain the standard of the
University of the City of Rome. It must be remembered that at this
time the Popes were at Avignon, and that as a consequence the
population of the city of Rome had greatly decreased and there were so
many civic dissensions that very little attention could be given to
educational matters. Pope John issued a {164} bull, however, from
Avignon, confirming the erection of the University of the City of Rome
by his predecessor of happy memory, Boniface VIII. (the same who is
said, though falsely, to have hampered the development of anatomy),
and further laying down regulations for the maintenance of the
standard of education in the Roman University. In this bull John says
that he considers that a Pope could confer no greater favor on the
City of Cities so closely attached to the Roman Church, than to bring
about the re-establishment of the university there, so that the
inhabitants and the visitors to Rome might all have the opportunity
and also the incitement to seek after wisdom, for this is a gift which
comes from on high, which cannot be bought for a price, but which is
only granted to those who seek it with good will.
John proceeds to say that he hopes that the city of Rome shall, under
the favor of Providence, produce men of pre-eminent worth in science,
and that in order that the wishes of Pope Boniface VIII. in this
matter may be fulfilled he confirms and extends all the privileges
which had been originally granted. In the University at Rome there
were also professors of medicine, and there is good historical
authority for the assertion that John himself offered to pay out of
the Papal revenues the salary of the professor of physic, in order
that this department of the university might become established as
firmly as were the other departments. In a word, in the documentary
evidence so readily available to any one who wishes to consult it, we
find John manifesting that he was "a kindly and rational scholar," to
use President White's expression, "seeking," surely if education shall
have any such effect, and in modern times we have been led {165} to
believe that it can, "to save the people from the clutch of
superstition." President White has employed the expression
satirically. I think that any one who reads the contemporary documents
in the case must acknowledge that it is literally true.
The life of Pope John XXII. is a striking example of the difference
between traditional and documentary history. According to the
traditions that have gathered around his name, John has been declared
by many to be one of the banes of civilization and education in the
Middle Ages. A little study of the documents issued by him shows him
in quite a different light. He was not only interested in educational
matters of every kind, but he was deeply intent, and as far as the
Papal power enabled him he succeeded in carrying out his intention, of
making education thoroughly effective in every department. It is by a
man's intentions that he must be judged. John meant to do everything
for the best. Unfortunately, some of his actions in the matter of the
provision of revenues became subject later to abuse. For this it is
hard to understand how he should be held responsible. In the meantime,
for educators, the study of the actual documents issued by him and
their utterly different significance from what might be expected
according to the usually accepted notion of his character, cannot but
prove a lesson in historical values. It illustrates very well a phase
of history that has recently been called to attention.
As we have said, one hundred years ago De Maistre declared that
history had been a conspiracy against the truth. At last a universal
recognition is coming of the fact that history has been written
entirely too much from the personal standpoint of the historian
without {166} due reference to contemporary documents and authorities,
or with the citation of only such references from these as would
support the special contention of the writer. Even the writers of
history whose reputation has been highest have suffered from this
fault, and the consequence is that on disputed points it is more
important to know what party a historian belongs to than what he
writes.
Is it not time that at least our educators should cease accepting this
old traditional opinion with regard to the times before the
reformation so-called, and get at the truth in the matter, or as near
it as possible. These educators of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were zealous and earnest beyond cavil. That everyone admits.
It is supposed, however, that they were ridiculously ignorant and
superstitious. Only those who are themselves ridiculously ignorant and
superstitious, for the real meaning of superstition is persistence in
accepting a supposed truth that is a survival (_superstes_) from a
previous state of knowledge, after the reasons for its acceptance have
been shown to be groundless, will continue to believe this absurd
proposition. If the educator of the modern day will only study with
the sympathy they deserve, the lives of the earliest educators of
modern times, the professors, the officials, and the ecclesiastical
authorities as well as the Papal patrons of the universities of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we shall hear no more of the
Church during the Middle Ages having been opposed to education, nor to
science, nor to any other department of human knowledge.
{167}
THE CHURCH AND SURGERY DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.
It is with regard to surgery that the opposition of the Church is
sometimes supposed to have been most serious in its effects upon the
progress of medical science and its applications for the relief of
human suffering. President White has stated this, as usual, very
emphatically in certain paragraphs of his chapter on From Miracles to
Medicine, especially under the caption of Theological Discouragement
of Medicine. He says, for instance:--
"As to surgery, this same amalgamation of theology with survivals of
pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution of medical science
down to the modern epoch. The nominal hostility of the Church to the
shedding of blood withdrew, as we have seen, from surgical practice
the great body of her educated men; hence surgery remained down to
the fifteenth century a despised profession, its practice continued
largely in the hands of charlatans, and down to a very recent period
the name 'barber-surgeon' was a survival of this. In such surgery,
the application of various ordures relieved fractures; the touch of
the hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled poison;
friction with a dead man's tooth cured toothache."
In another and earlier portion of the same chapter, under the heading
"Theological Opposition to Anatomical Studies," he states the reasons
why this low state of surgical practice existed. Once more it is
declared to be {168} because of a prohibitory decree, or several of
them, directed against the practice of surgery by ecclesiastical
authorities. These decrees, we shall find, as was true of previous
supposed prohibitions, are entirely perverted from their real meaning
by President White, who has the happy faculty of lighting upon mares'
nests of Papal decrees and decrees of councils and neglecting to pay
any attention to the real history of the science of which he writes.
President White says:
"To those arguments against dissection was now added another one
which may well fill us with amazement. It is the remark of the
foremost of recent English philosophical historians, that of all
organizations in human history, the Church of Rome has caused the
greatest spilling of innocent blood. No one conversant with history,
even though he admit all possible extenuating circumstances and
honor the older Church for the great circumstances which can
undoubtedly be claimed for her, can deny this statement. Strange is
it, then, to note that one of the main objections developed in the
Middle Ages against anatomical studies was the maxim that 'The
Church abhors the shedding of blood.'"
"On this ground, in 1248, the Council of Le Mans forbade surgery to
monks. Many other councils did the same, and at the end of the
thirteenth century came the most serious blow of all: for it was
then that Pope Boniface VIII., without any of that foresight of
consequences which might well have been expected in an infallible
teacher, issued a decretal forbidding a practice which had come into
use during the Crusades, namely, the separation of the flesh from
the bones of the dead whose remains it was desired to carry back to
their own country." Note always the return to Pope Boniface's {169}
bull and always the perversion of the meaning of the word
infallibility.
I have already stated the real significance of Boniface's bull. It
neither forbade, nor did its interpretation in any way hamper, the
development of anatomy. Just exactly the same thing is true with
regard to the Papal regulations or decrees of councils that are
claimed to have hampered surgery. President White and others have
insisted that the prohibition of surgery to monks and priests
prevented the development of surgery or was responsible for the low
state of surgical practice. Here once more we are in the presence of a
deduction, and not of an induction that represents the actual facts in
the case. Most students at the universities were clerks, that is, had
the privileges of clergymen, and were, as a rule, in minor orders. All
the great surgeons of this time, and they were many, were
ecclesiastics.
The climax of President White's treatment of the relationship of the
Church to surgery and of the intense opposition manifested by
ecclesiastics to surgical progress, and, I may add, the climax of
absurdity as far as the real history of surgery is concerned, comes in
the last paragraph of this portion of his chapter on From Miracles to
Medicine, which President White has placed under the title Theological
Opposition to Anatomical Studies. He says:
"So deeply was the idea rooted in the mind of the Universal Church
that for over a thousand years surgery was considered dishonorable;
the greatest monarchs were often unable to secure an ordinary
surgical operation; and it was only in 1406 that a better beginning
was made, when the Emperor Wenzel of Germany ordered that dishonor
should no longer attach to the surgical profession."
{170}
President White insists over and over again that whatever surgery
there was, and especially whatever progress was made in surgery, was
due to the Arabs, or at least to Arabian initiative. Gurlt, in his
History of Surgery, [Footnote 21] which we have referred to elsewhere,
is very far from sharing this view. I need scarcely say that Gurlt is
one of our best authorities in the history of surgery. In his sketch
of Roger, the first of the great Italian surgeons of the thirteenth
century who came after the foundation of the universities, Gurlt says
that, "though Arabian writings on surgery had been brought over to
Italy by Constantine Africanus a hundred years before Roger's time,
those exercised no influence over Italian surgery in the next century,
and there is not a trace of the surgical knowledge of the Arabs to be
found in Roger's work." His writing depends almost entirely upon the
surgical traditions of his time, the experience of his teachers and
colleagues, to whom in two places he has given due credit, and on the
Greek writers. There are no traces of Arabisms to be found in Roger's
writing, while they are full of Grecisms. Roger represents the first
important writer on surgery in modern times, and his works have been
printed several times because of their value as original documents.
[Footnote 21: Geschichte der Chirurgie und ihrer Ausübung. Von Dr. E.
Gurlt, Vol. I., p. 701.]
It is wonderfully amusing to anyone who knows Gurlt's History of
Surgery, [Footnote 22] that the distinguished old professor of the
University of Berlin, looked up to as so well informed as to the
history of the branch of medical science to which he had devoted a
long life, should have wasted some three hundred pages of his first
volume on the {171} History of Surgery in Middle and West Europe
during the Middle Ages, for they are mainly taken up with the
consideration of the period when President White asserts that there
was no surgery in Europe. Gurlt even protests that he has not as much
space as he would like to devote to these old-time masters of surgery,
who did so much to lay the foundation of modern surgical practices.
Those who have paid any attention to President White's assertion with
regard to surgery at this time, should at least look over Gurlt. They
will thus realize what a dangerous thing it is to attempt large
conclusions in the history of a department of knowledge of which one
knows nothing. They will also realize how easy it is for a writer with
some prestige, to lead others astray in a matter of history, by simply
making assertions without taking the trouble to see whether they are
supported by the facts in the case or not.
[Footnote 22: Geschichte der Chirurgie und ihrer Ausübung. Von Dr. K.
Gurlt, Geh. Med. Rath, Prof, der Chirurgie an der Königlichen
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin. Berlin, 1898.]
The modern American historian of Theology and Science says, "for over
a thousand years surgery was considered dishonorable." For the sake of
contrast with this opinion of President White's, read for a moment the
following remarks which constitute the opening sentences of Pagel's
paragraphs on Surgery from 1200 to 1500, in Puschmann's Handbuch of
the History of Medicine, already referred to. Before making the
quotation, let me recall attention to the fact that Professor Pagel is
the best informed living writer on the history of medicine. This book
was issued in 1902. It is universally conceded to contain the last
words on the history of medical development. There is no doubt at all
about its absolute authoritativeness. President White has been calling
on his imagination; Professor Pagel has consulted original documents
in the history of surgery. He says:
{172}
"A more favorable star shone during the whole Middle Ages over
surgery than over practical medicine. The representatives of this
specialty succeeded earlier than did the practical physicians in
freeing themselves from the ban of scholasticism. In its development
a more constant and more even progress cannot fail to be seen. The
stream of literary works on surgery flows richer during this period.
While the surgeons are far from being able to emancipate themselves
from the ruling pathological theories, there is no doubt that in one
department, that of manual technics, free observation came to occupy
the first place in the effort for scientific progress. Investigation
is less hampered and concerns itself with practical things and not
with artificial theories. Experimental observation was in this not
repressed by an unfortunate and iron-bound appeal to reasoning." I
am tempted to add as a reflection, deduction was not allowed to
replace attention to facts, though it has in some supposed surgical
history of this period.
Pagel continues: "Indeed, the lack of so-called scholarship, the
freshness of view free from all prejudice with which surgery,
uninfluenced by scholastic presumption, was forced to enter upon the
objective consideration of things, while most of the surgeons
brought with them to their calling an earnest vocation in union with
great technical facility, caused surgery to enter upon ways in which
it secured, as I have said, greater relative success than did
practical medicine."
President White has evidently never bothered to look into a history of
surgery at all, or he would not have fallen into the egregious error
of saying that the period from 1200 to 1400 was barren of surgery, for
it is really one of the most important periods in the development of
{173} modern surgery. Further evidence as to this is rather easy to
obtain.
I have cited two German authorities in the history of medicine and
surgery. Here is an English writer who is quite as authoritative. In
the address on The Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery to the
end of the Sixteenth Century, which Professor Clifford Allbutt, the
Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge, delivered
by special invitation at the Congress of Arts and Sciences of St.
Louis in 1904, this distinguished authority in the history of medicine
had much to say with regard to the wonderful development of surgery in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, that is, during the period
when, if we were to accept President White's declarations, surgery
either did not exist, or else had been relegated to such mere
handicraftsmen that no real scientific progress in it could possibly
be expected. As Professor Allbutt was trying only to give a twentieth
century audience some idea of the magnificent work that had been
accomplished by fellow members of his profession of medicine seven
centuries before, and had no idea of discussing the influence,
favorable or otherwise, of the Church upon the progress of medical
science, I have preferred to quote directly from this address for
evidence of the surgery of these centuries, than to gather the details
from many sources, when it might perhaps be thought that I was making
out a more favorable case than actually existed, for the sake of the
Church and the Popes.
"Both for his own great merits as an original and independent
observer and as the master of Lanfranc, William Salicet (Gugliemo
Salicetti of Piacenza, in Latin G. Placentinus or de Saliceto--now
Cadeo) was eminent {174} among the great Italian physicians of the
latter half of the thirteenth century. Now, these great Italians
were as distinguished in surgery as in medicine, and William was one
of the protestants of the period against the division of surgery
from inner medicine--a division which he regarded as a separation of
medicine from intimate touch with nature. Like Lanfranc and the
other great surgeons of the Italian tradition, and unlike Franco and
Paré, he had the advantage of the liberal university education of
Italy; but, like Paré and Würtz, he had large practical experience
in hospital and in the battlefield. He practiced first at Bologna,
afterwards in Verona. William fully recognized that surgery cannot
be learned from books only. His surgery contains many case
histories, for he rightly opined that good notes of cases are the
soundest foundation of good practice; and in this opinion and method
Lanfranc followed him. William discovered that dropsy may be due to
a "durities renum"; he substituted the knife for the Arabist abuse
of the cautery; he investigated the causes of the failure of healing
by first intention; he described the danger of wounds of the neck;
he sutured divided nerves; he forwarded the diagnosis of suppurative
disease of the hip; and he referred chancre and phagedaena to "their
proper causes."
Anyone who knows the history of surgery and of supposed modern
progress in medicine will recognize at once that many of these ideas
of Salicet are anticipations of discoveries supposed to have been made
in the nineteenth century. The connection between dropsy and hardening
of the kidneys is a typical example of this. The fact that William
should have insisted that surgery cannot be learned from books is an
open contradiction {175} of what is so frequently said about
scholasticism having invaded the realm of medicine, and the study of
books having replaced the study of patients. It is not surprising that
with his study of cases William should have recognized the danger of
wounds of the neck, nor that he should have taught the suture of
divided nerves. It cannot fail to be a matter of surprise, however,
that he should have any hint of the possibility of union by first
intention, for that is supposed to be quite recent, and the knowledge
he displays of venereal diseases is supposed to have come into
medicine and surgery at least two centuries later.
Allbutt next takes up Salicet's great pupil Lanfranc. "Lanfranc's
'Chirurgia Magna' was a great work, written by a reverent but
independent follower of Salicet. He distinguished between venous and
arterial hemorrhage, and used styptics (rabbit's fur, aloes, and
white of egg was a popular styptic in older surgery), digital
compression for an hour, or in severe cases ligature. His chapter on
injuries of the head is one of the classics of medieval surgery.
_Clerk as he was_, Lanfranc nevertheless saw but the more clearly
the danger of separating surgery from medicine. 'Good God!' he
exclaims, 'why this abandoning of operations by physicians to lay
persons, disdaining surgery, as I perceive, because they do not know
how to operate ... an abuse which has reached such a point that the
vulgar begin to think that the same man cannot know medicine and
surgery... I say, however, that no man can be a good physician who
has no knowledge of operative surgery; a knowledge of both branches
is essential.' (Chir. Magna.) Is it not strange that this ancient
was wiser than most of us are even yet."
{176}
Striking as all this is, much more that is of interest might be added
to it from Pagel's account of Lanfranc's work. Pagel says that he has
excellent chapters on the affections of the eyes, the ears and mouth,
the nose, even the teeth, and treats of hernia in a very practical,
common sense way. He warns against the radical operation, and says in
phrases that have often been repeated even in our own time, that many
surgeons decide on operations too easily, not for the sake of the
patient, but for the sake of the money there is in them. He believes
that most of the danger and inconvenience of the hernia can be removed
by means of a properly fitting truss. He treats of stone in the
kidney, but insists that the main thing for this affection is
prophylaxis. He suggests that stone in the bladder should first be
treated by internal remedies; but in severe cases advises extraction.
Lanfranc's discussion of cystotomy, Pagel characterizes "as prudent,
yet rational," for he considers that the operation should not be
feared too much nor delayed too long. In patients suffering from the
inconvenience which comes from large quantities of fluid in the
abdomen, he advises _paracentesis abdominis_. He warns, however,
against putting the patient in danger from such an operation without
due consideration and only when symptoms absolutely demand it.
Pagel says that Lanfranc must be considered as one of the greatest of
the surgeons of the Middle Ages and the real founder of the French
School of Surgery which continued to be the most prominent in the
world down to the nineteenth century. Lanfranc had equalled, if not
surpassed, his great master William Salicet. His own disciple,
Mondeville, accomplished almost as much for surgery as his master,
however. Both of them were {177} destined to be thrown into the shade
for succeeding generations by another great French surgeon of the next
half-century, Guy de Chauliac. Pagel can scarcely say enough of the
capacity as a teacher of Lanfranc. The seeds of surgical doctrine
which he sowed bore fruit richly. His important successors in French
surgery walked for the most part in his tracks and thus furnished the
best proof of the enduring character of his capacity as a teacher.
The next great name in thirteenth century surgery, for we are not yet
out of that fruitful period, is Henri de Mondeville. He was known by
his contemporaries and immediate successors as the most cultured of
the surgeons. Whatever he wrote bears the traces of his wide reading
and of his respect for authority, yet shows also his power to make
observations for himself, and his name is due much more to his
independent work both in the technics and the diagnostics of surgery,
than to his reputation for scholarship or the depth of his culture.
Lanfranc (whose name was Lanfranchi) had been an Italian. Mondeville
was born in Normandy sometime about the beginning of the last quarter
of the thirteenth century. The place of his education is not
absolutely sure, but there is good authority for saying that he was,
for a time at least, in Bologna. On his return from Italy he passed
some time, just at the beginning of the fourteenth century, in
Montpelier. He seems to have looked for a professorship at Montpelier,
but instead received the appointment as surgeon to the French king,
Philip Le Bel. This brought him to Paris, where the first portion of
his book on surgery was written about 1306. This was not completed
until 1312. His work was interrupted by several campaigns on which he
attended {178} the king along the Northern coast. When he again took
up his work of writing, he revised what he had written at first by the
light of the experience that he had acquired in the campaign. Pagel
says that his style is lively and clear and often full of meat. Many
of his own opinions and experiences are incorporated in his work, and
in spite of his tendency to display his erudition by quotations, his
originality is not seriously interfered with.
Some of his remarks are very curiously interesting to the modern. He
seems to have had the idea that portions of metal which had penetrated
the body as the result of explosions, for gun-powder was already being
used, might be removed by means of a magnet. He would not have been a
distinguished surgeon without inventing a needle-holder, and
accordingly we find that he was one of the first of a long line of
such inventors. He invented certain instruments also for the removal
of arrow-heads, which because of their form and hooks become firmly
imbedded in the tissues. Mondeville had no such fear of trephining as
Lanfranc had, though he did not hesitate to emphasize the value of
expectant treatment in most of these cases of injury to the head that
might seem at first to demand the trephine.
Pagel notes the fact that when he prescribed drinks for his patients
this medieval surgeon suggested that certain verses of the psalms
which were usually recited, according to the custom of the times,
whenever anything was administered to a patient, should be said. Pagel
considers it quite natural that as a believing physician he should
have realized how much his believing patients would be influenced for
the better by such a procedure. He did not place any supreme faith in
its efficacy, but {179} knew that it could do no harm, and had
probably seen, as has many a physician and surgeon of the modern time,
that such a practice does good, if not by the direct interference of
Providence, then at least by the calmness of mind which it
superinduces in the patient. In the same way Mondeville was not averse
to his patients going on pilgrimages. He did not expect that they
would all be cured miraculously, but according to Pagel, his
discussion of this subject is quite modern. Travel and change of scene
would do good anyhow in many cases, expectancy would help the
patient's condition, and the hope aroused was also good. The best
merit, however, of this French surgeon is undoubtedly the immense
influence which he exerted over his great successor, Guy de Chauliac.
We are really only beginning to accumulate knowledge with regard to
the surgery of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Pagel has
devoted three very full pages, in his compressed account of surgery,
to John Yperman, a surgeon of the early fourteenth century of whom
practically nothing was known until about twenty-five years ago, when
the Belgian historian Broeck brought to light his works and gathered
some details of his life. He was a pupil of Lanfranc's, and at the end
of the thirteenth century studied at Paris on a scholarship provided
by his native town of Ypres, which deliberately sent him in order that
he might become expert in surgery. This may seem a strange thing for a
medieval town to do, at least it may seem so to those who have been
accustomed to think little of the Middle Ages, but it will not to
anyone who knows anything about the wonderful civic spirit of the Free
Towns. In the chapter on Science at the Medieval Universities I have
quoted {180} from Prince Kropotkin's work on Mutual Aid in the
Medieval Towns, and further consultation of that as a ready reference,
would make all cause for ignorant surprise with regard to the culture
and the enterprise of medieval towns disappear. Ypres, while a town of
only fifteen thousand inhabitants now, was one of the most important
towns of Flanders in the Middle Ages, noted for its manufacture of
linens and fine laces, and has a handsome cathedral dating from the
thirteenth century and a town hall, the famous Cloth Hall, from the
same period, which is one of the most beautiful architectural
monuments in Europe and one of the finest municipal buildings in the
world.
After his return Yperman settled down in his native town and practiced
surgery until his death, which probably took place about 1330. He
obtained a great renown, and this has been maintained so that in that
part of the country even yet, an expert surgeon is spoken of as an
Yperman. He is the author of two works in Flemish. One of these is
what Pagel calls an unimportant compilation on internal medicine, but
the headings of the chapters as he gives them can scarcely fail to
attract the attention of the modern physician. He treats of dropsy,
rheumatism, under which occur the terms coryza and catarrh, icterus,
phthisis (he calls the tuberculous, tysiken), apoplexy, epilepsy,
frenzy, lethargy, fallen palate, cough, shortness of breath, lung
abscess, hemorrhage, blood-spitting, liver abscess, hardening of the
spleen, affections of the kidney, bloody urine, diabetes, incontinence
of urine, dysuria, strangury, gonorrhoea and involuntary seminal
emissions--all these terms are quoted directly from Pagel.
All this would seem to show that Yperman was a {181} thoroughly
representative medical man. When I add that Pagel says he shows a well
marked striving to free himself from the bondage of authority and that
most of his therapeutic prescriptions rest upon his own experience, it
will be seen that he deserves the greatest possible credit. His work
in medicine, however, Pagel considers as nothing compared to his work
in surgery. A special feature of this is the presence of seventy
illustrations of instruments of the most various kinds, together with
a plate showing the anatomical features of the stitching of a wound of
the head. The work as we have it is only a fragment. The last part of
it which treated of the extremities is defective. If anyone thinks for
a moment that surgery was a neglected specialty at the end of the
thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, he should
consult the text of this, or even Pagel's brief account of its
contents. Some of the features of it are noteworthy. There is a
chapter devoted to intoxications, which includes the effects of
cantharides as well as alcohol, and treats of the bites of snakes,
scorpions, and of hydrophobia due to the bites of mad hounds. There is
scarcely a feature of modern surgery of the head that is not touched
upon very sensibly in this work.
The best proof, however, at once of the flourishing state of surgery
during the fourteenth century and of the utter absurdity of saying
that surgery did not develop because of the opposition of the Church
or of ecclesiastics, and above all of the Popes, is to be found in the
life of Guy de Chauliac, who has been deservedly called the Father of
Modern Surgery and whose contributions to surgery occupy a prominent
place in every history of medicine that one picks up. While the works
of other {182} great writers in surgery of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries have as a rule only come to be commonly known
during the latter part of the nineteenth century, Guy de Chauliac's
position and the significance of his work and his writings have been a
commonplace in the history of medicine for as long as it has been
written seriously. We have already stated in several places in this
volume his relations to the Popes. He was a chamberlain of the Papal
Court while it was at Avignon, and while he was teaching and
developing surgery at the University of Montpelier he was also body
physician to three of the Popes, and the intimate friend and
influential adviser to whom they turned for consultation in matters
relating to medical education and to science generally.
In the present chapter, then, we shall only discuss the contributions
to surgery of this surgeon of the Popes, at a time when, according to
President White, because of Church opposition, surgery was considered
dishonorable; "_when the greatest monarchs were often unable to secure
an ordinary surgical operation, and when it required an edict of the
German Emperor in order that dishonor should no longer attach to the
surgical profession._" This is what Chauliac accomplished, according
to Professor Allbutt:
"Of his substantial advances in surgery no sufficient account is
possible; but some chief points, with the aid of Haeser, Malgaigne,
and Nicaise, I may briefly sum up thus: He pointed out the dangers
of surgery of the neck, among them that of injuring the voice by
section of the recurrent laryngeal nerve, a precaution he probably
learned from Paul. He urges a low diet for the wounded, as did
Mondeville and many others. He uses sutures well and discreetly (p.
9), but with far too many salves. {183} On fractures of the skull he
is at his best; he noted the escape of cerebro-spinal fluid, and the
effect of pressure on the respiration. It is somewhat strange that
in days of war the study of chest wounds had been rather neglected
by Galen, Haly, and Avicenna; their practice, however, was to leave
them open, lest pus should gather about the heart. Theodoric and
Henry ordered chest wounds to be closed 'lest the vital spirits
escape.' Guy also closed these wounds, unless there were any
effusion to be removed. In empyema he objects to caustics and
prefers the knife. For haemorrhages he used sutures--a little too
closely perhaps--styptics, cautery or ligature. Sinuses he dilated
with tents of gentian root, or he incised them upon a director. On
ulcers his large experience is fully manifest. He describes the
carcinomatous kind as hopeless, unless the mass can be excised at a
very early stage and the incision followed by caustics. If in
fractures and dislocations he tells us nothing new, these sections
testify to a remarkable fulness of knowledge at a period when the
Hippocratic treatises were unknown. Haeser says that in respect of
position in fractured femur he was the best physician in the Middle
Ages."
[Illustration: Guy de Chauliac's Cauteries:--5, 6, 7, 8, cauteries
called from their shapes: knife, sword, olive, date kernel; 9, cautery
with protective nail to be inserted cold; 10, protective plate for
cauteries.]
[Illustration: Guy de Chauliac's Cauteries:--11, 12, long, smooth
cautery and canula protector; 13, 14, ring cautery with five buttons
and the protective plate with five openings.]
This is the period, it must not be forgotten, when, according to
President White, surgery was in such a state that _the application of
various ordures relieved fractures; the touch of the hangman cured
sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled poison; friction with a dead
man's tooth cured a toothache._ [Footnote 23]
[Footnote 23: Quite as curious notions as these which President White
mentions still exist in popular medicine in our own day. I have myself
known a man to blow the dried excrement of the dog into the throat of
his child suffering from diphtheria, and _he assured me that it cured
him_. In the country districts they still use ordure poultices for
sprains of various kinds, and I have known doctors prescribe them. I
have seen an intelligent woman smoking dried angleworms in a pipe for
toothache. I sincerely hope, however, that no serious(!) historian of
the twenty-fifth century will gather up side remarks like the present
with regard to such curious customs--real superstitions that have
nothing to do with religion, as most supersititions have not--and
state them as showing the ignorance of our generation, and above all
as indicating the low state of medicine in our time.]
{184}
Lest it should be thought that possibly Professor Allbutt had been
rather partial to the great Father of Modern Surgery in his enthusiasm
for these medieval surgeons, it seems worth while to compress here
something of what Pagel has to say with regard to this great man, who
represents in himself a full hundred years of progress in surgery. He
wrote an immense text-book of surgery, from which his teaching may be
learned with absolute authenticity. The great significance attached to
Guy's writings by his contemporaries and successors will be readily
appreciated from the immense number of manuscript copies, original
editions in print, and the many translations which are extant. This
monument of scientific surgery has for dedication a sentence that
would alone and of itself obliterate all the nonsense that has been
talked about Papal opposition to the development of surgery. It runs
as follows:--
(I dedicate this work) "To you my masters, physicians of Montpelier,
Bologna, Paris, and Avignon, especially you of the Papal Court with
whom I have been associated in the service of the Roman Pontiffs. The
exact words as given by Pagel are "Vobis dominis meis medicis
Montispessulani, Bononiae, Parisiis atque Avinionis, praecipue
papalibus, quibus me in servitio Romanorum pontificum associavi."
Pagel has three closely printed pages in small type of titles alone of
subjects which Chauliac treated with {185} distinction. His
description of instruments and methods of operation is especially full
and suggestive. He knew how to prescribe manipulations and set forth
the principles on which they were founded. Scarcely anything was added
to his method of taxis for hernia for five centuries after his time.
He describes the passage of a catheter with the accuracy and complete
technic of a man who knew all the difficulties of it in complicated
conditions. He recognizes the dangers that arise for the surgeon from
the presence of anatomical anomalies of various kinds, and describes
certain of the more important of them. He did not hesitate to suggest
some very serious operations. For instance, for empyema he advises
opening of the chest. He has very exact indications for trephining. He
recognizes the absolute fatality of wounds of the abdomen, in which
the intestines were opened, if they were left untreated, and describes
a method of suturing wounds of the intestines in order to save the
patient's life. In a word, there is nothing that has been attempted in
these modern times, with our aseptic precautions and the advantage of
anaesthesia, which this father of surgery did not discuss very
practically and with excellent common sense as well as surgical
acumen.
Chauliac's career is interesting because it is that of a self-made man
of the Middle Ages, which brings out the fact that men do not differ
so much as might be thought at this distance of time, and shows that
there were chances for a man to rise by his own genius from a lowly to
a lofty position at this time of the Middle Ages, when it is usually
supposed that men were excluded from such opportunities. Allbutt says
of him:
"Still, Guy of Chauliac, who flourished in the second {186} half of
the fourteenth century, was enabled to feed his virile and
inquisitive spirit on rich sources of learning. While he succeeded
to the stores of Arnold (of Villanova) and Gordon with his just and
cautious reason and wealth of experience, he cast out of them much
of the sorcery, jugglery, astrology and mysticism which were their
reproach. Chauliac is a village in the Auvergne, and Guy was but a
farmer's lad. It was by the aid of powerful friends that he studied
at Toulouse and Montpelier, took orders and the degree of Master of
Medicine; in his time there was no degree of Doctor of Medicine in
France. Then he studied anatomy at Bologna under Bertruccio, the
successor of Mondino, a study which, with Henry (de Mondeville) he
regarded as the foundation of surgery. The surgeon ignorant of
anatomy, he says, "carves the human body as a blind man carves
wood." [Footnote 24]
[Footnote 24: This is a very striking reflection on the necessity for
the study of anatomy for the practice of surgery to have been made
within a half century after the supposed prohibition of dissection by
the Popes, and at a time when, according to President White, "even
such serious matters as fractures, calculi and difficult parturition,
in which modern science has achieved some of its greatest triumphs,
were dealt with by relics," and when "there were religious scruples
against dissection," and surgery "was denounced by the Church," and
when "pastoral medicine had checked all scientific effort in medical
science." And the reflection was made by a chamberlain of the Papal
household.]
"Thence he paid a brief visit to Paris, where for a moment, by the
renown of Lanfranc, Jean Pitard, and Henry of Mondeville, surgery
was in the ascendant. For the moment the Church and the faculty had
not succeeded in paralyzing the scientific arm of medicine.
[Footnote 25] {187} Guy began practice in Lyons, whence he was
called to Avignon by Clement VI. as 'venerabilis et circumspectus
vir, dominus Guido de Cauliaco, canonicus et propositus ecclesiae
Sancti Justi Lugduni, medicusque domini nostri Papae.' In Avignon he
stayed, while other physicians fled, to minister to the victims of
the plague (A.D., 1348), and he may have attended Laura in spite of
Petrarch's tirades against all physicians and even against Guy
himself. His description of this epidemic is terrible in its naked
simplicity. He did not, indeed, himself escape, for he had an attack
with bubo, and was ill for six weeks. He gave succor also in a later
epidemic in Avignon, in 1360. His 'Chirurgia Magna' or Inventarium
seu Collectorium Artis Chirurgicalis Medicinae--so called in
distinction to the meagre little handbooks or Chirurgiae Parvae
compiled from the larger treatises--was in preparation in 1363.
This great work I have studied carefully, and not without prejudice;
and yet I cannot wonder that Fallopius compared the author to
Hippocrates, or that John Freind calls him the Prince of Surgeons.
It is rich, aphoristic, orderly and precise. _As a clerk_ he wrote
in Latin, in the awkward hybrid tongue that medical Latin then was,
containing many Arabian, Provençal and French words, but very little
Greek."
[Footnote 25: It is worthy of remark, how even Prof. Allbutt, in a
passage like this, where he is providing abundant material for the
contradiction of the English Protestant tradition of the supposed
opposition of the Church to science, and especially to surgery, yet
cannot break away from the influence of that tradition entirely. It
has been bred in him, and even while showing its falsity he is not
entirely convinced himself, because the old mode of view has so firm a
hold on him that he is not open to conviction. A little later in this
same passage he speaks of taking up the study of Chauliac, prejudiced
against him, and being convinced of his greatness against his
will. Verily history has been a conspiracy against the truth, in which
many people have joined almost unconsciously, led astray by feeling,
not intellect.]
[Illustration:
Guy de Chauliac's Instruments:--15, 16, cautery apparatus with canula
for cauterizing the uvula and tonsils; 17, bistoury; 18, amputation
knife; 19, small sickle knife for opening abscesses and fistulas.]
[Illustration: Guy de Chauliac's Instruments:--21, bow for extracting
arrows the head of which had penetrated a limb; 22, mechanical
trephine revolved by up-and-down movement of cross-bar.]
We have seen that there was great surgery in Italy, in France, and in
the Netherlands, but it had also crossed the channel into England.
There was a famous English surgeon during the {188} fourteenth century
by the name of John Ardern. He was educated at Montpelier and
practiced surgery for a time in France. About the middle of the
century, however, according to Pagel, he went back to his native land
and settled for some twenty years at Newark, in Nottinghamshire, and
then for nearly thirty years longer, until nearly the end of the
century, was in London. He is the chief representative of English
surgery during the Middle Ages. His Practice, as yet unprinted,
contains, according to Pagel, a short sketch of internal medicine, but
is mainly devoted to surgery. Contrary to the usual impression with
regard to works in medicine and surgery at this time, the book abounds
in references to case histories which Ardern had gathered, partly from
his own and partly from others' experience. The therapeutic measures
that he suggests are usually very simple, in the majority of cases
quite rational, though, of course, there are many superstitions among
them; but Ardern always furnished a number of suggestions from which
to choose. He must have been an expert operator, and had excellent
success in the treatment of diseases of the rectum. He seems to have
been the first operator who made statistics of his cases, and was
quite as proud as any modern surgeon, of the large numbers that he had
operated on, which he gives very exactly. He was the inventor of a new
clyster apparatus.
Daremberg, the medical historian, who saw a copy of Ardern's
manuscript in St. John's College, Oxford, says that it contains
numerous illustrations of instruments and operations. His work seems
really to be a series of monographs or collection of special articles
on different subjects, which Ardern had made at various times, rather
than a connected work. Pagel bewails the fact {189} that a more
thorough consideration of Ardern's work is impossible, because the
greater part of what he wrote remains as yet unprinted.
In general, when we consider how difficult was the task of making
copies of works on surgery by hand, and especially such as contain
numerous illustrations, the wonder grows that we should have so much
about the surgery of these centuries rather than so little. Some of
these works have been preserved for us by the merest chance. There
have been many centuries since their time, when what these surgeons
wrote would have been thought of very little value because physicians
were not educated up to them. In spite of this liability to loss,
which must have caused the destruction of many valuable works, we
still have enough to show us what wonderful men were these surgeons of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, who anticipated our best
thinking of the modern times in many of the most difficult problems.
It is only during the last twenty-five years that anything like
justice has been done them. The only way to know what these men did
and taught is to read their own works, and these have been buried in
manuscript or hidden away in large folio volumes, printed very early
in the history of printing, and considered so valuable that
consultation of them was almost resented by librarians. Anyone who
talks about the lack of surgery in Europe during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries is supremely ignorant of the real course of
history at this time, and when in addition he attributes the failure
of surgery to develop to a trumped-up opposition of the Church or
ecclesiastics, he is simply making a ridiculous exhibition of
intolerance and of foolish readiness to accept anything, however
groundless, that may {190} enable him to make out a case against the
ecclesiastical authorities.
It is curious to reflect that in spite of all this wonderful progress
in surgery, somehow there has crept in the tradition which has been
very generally accepted by historians not acquainted with the details
of medical history, that surgery was neglected during the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. The existence of this tradition, and its
acceptance by men who had no idea that they were being influenced by
that peculiar state of mind which considers that nothing good can come
out of the Nazareth of the times before the reformation so-called, is
of itself a warning with regard to the way history has been written,
especially for the Teutonic and English-speaking peoples, that should
carry weight in other departments of history beside medicine and
surgery.
Even Pagel could not get entirely away from the old tradition which
has existed for so long, that the Church, if she did not oppose, at
least hampered the progress of surgery. While his first paragraph
shows that he recognized the important advances that were made in the
Middle Ages, he cannot rid himself of the prejudice that has existed
so long and has tinged so much of the historical writing of the last
four centuries. He furnishes an abundance of material himself to
disprove the old opinion, and evidently has been influenced by this
evidence, but cannot give up notions that have been part and parcel of
his education from his earliest days in Protestant Germany. He says:--
"A set-back must also be recognized to some extent in surgery,
especially attributable to the fact that as a consequence of the
pressure of the Church upon scientific medicine, the representatives
of medical {191} science felt themselves bound to neglect the
practical art of surgical operation. Church regulations forbade the
shedding of blood to churchmen, and not a few physicians were more
than inclined to accept this prohibition as in accordance with their
own feelings. For this reason the practice of surgery was left for
the most part to the lower orders of those engaged in healing. This
went to such an extent, that physicians even came to look upon
surgery as an unworthy occupation. Even venesection, which was so
commonly employed and which came to be indispensable to the practice
of internal medicine, made it necessary to call for the services of
a barber-surgeon."
As we shall see, there were many other and much more important factors
at work in the degradation of surgery than the supposed repression of
the Church. The time to which Pagel refers is in the earlier centuries
of the Middle Ages, and not the later ones; yet it is from these later
centuries that the supposed prohibitory decrees are all quoted. The
contempt for surgery was due rather to the general lack of culture
before the foundation of the universities than to any ecclesiastical
repression. Just as soon as the great medical schools were opened--and
that at Salerno came into existence in the early part of the tenth
century if not earlier--surgery began to be in honor. Pagel himself
confesses this in the very next paragraph of this brief conspectus of
surgery, and shows how generally was the uplift of surgery made
possible by university education, though there still remained many
drawbacks to progress because of the jealousy of physicians.
"Gradually, however, a beneficial transformation of customs in this
matter began to be manifest. Physicians {192} who were
scientifically trained began to take up surgery with enthusiasm, and
from that time (end of twelfth century) dates the visible uplift of
this specialty. Eventually the most noteworthy literary events and
remains of the representatives of the great schools of the Middle
Ages--Salerno, Bologna, Paris and Montpelier--concern quite as much
the department of surgery as of practical medicine. These medieval
literary contributions constitute the principal steps in the
historical development of scientific surgery. The Crusades represent
an extremely important influence upon the perfecting of the surgery
of wounds. Italian surgeons in large numbers took prominent parts
therein. They took the abundant opportunities afforded them to
gather experience, which they used to great advantage in their
practice and in their teaching after their return home. From Roger,
the first and most important of the representatives of the
Salernitan school (whose life occupies the end of the twelfth and
the beginning of the thirteenth century), and down to Guy de
Chauliac (who died toward the end of the fourteenth century), in a
space therefore of not quite two hundred years, a complete breach
with the blood-fearing traditions of the Arabs was made. In no
European land does one fail to find evidence of intense as well as
successful scientific occupation with surgery."
As a reflection that throws a brilliant light on the true conditions
that brought about the diminished estimation in which surgery came to
be held, Guy de Chauliac has an interesting passage in which he
suggests an explanation for it, which is surely much nearer the truth
than any modern explanation is likely to be. He says that, after the
time of the Arabs, who were all both physicians and surgeons, either
because of the lack of interest of {193} physicians or their laziness,
for the practice of surgery is a difficult matter, or because they
came to be too much occupied with the ills which they might hope to
cure by medicines alone, surgery became separated from medicine and
passed down into the hands of mere mechanics. This is a complaint not
infrequently heard even at the present day, that medicine and surgery
are drawing too much apart for the good of either specialty. Both the
Regius Professors of medicine in England have recently insisted that
physicians must oftener be present at operations if they would really
appreciate the value of diagnosis, while there has been for many years
a feeling that surgery would be benefitted if surgeons did not always
wish to have recourse to the knife, but appreciated how much good
might be accomplished by other remedial measures. The great French
Father of Surgery, then, was only expressing what was to be a
perennial complaint in the domain of medicine and surgery when he
explained the separation of the two departments of healing. He has
nothing whatever to say of the evil influence upon surgery of any
Church regulations, though he must have been in a position to realize
their significance very well in this respect if they actually had any.
He was himself, as we have said, a member of the Papal household; he
was even a cleric, and seems to have encountered no difficulty at all
not only in devoting himself to surgery, but even in lifting up that
department of medicine from the slough of neglect into which it had
fallen because of the lack of initiative of preceding generations in
his native land.
It may be wondered, then, how the tradition of opposition to surgery,
which is so common in history, had its origin. Nearly always for these
exaggerated stories {194} there is some basis of truth. For instance,
with regard to the opposition to Vesalius, the origin of the stories
of persecution by the Church and ecclesiastical authorities is
evidently the fact that he was very much opposed by the old-time
physicians and surgeons, who believed in Galen and thought it worse
than heresy to break with him. It is the opposition of scientists, or
pseudo-scientists, to scientific progress that constitutes the real
bar to advance, and has over and over again been attributed to
religious motives, when it is really due to that very human
overconservatism, which so constantly places men in the position of
opponents to novelties of any kind, no matter how much of value they
may eventually prove to have. There has always existed a certain
prejudice against surgery on the part of physicians--meaning by that
term, for the moment, those who devote themselves to internal
medicine. This feeling has never quite died out. There were times in
the Middle Ages when it was very marked. Not a little of the feeling
is due to professional jealousy, and that, it is to be feared, like
the poor, we shall have always with us.
Professor Allbutt has in the address at St. Louis, already quoted
from, a very interesting passage with regard to the College of St.
Côme at Paris, in which this jealousy between physicians and surgeons
is very well brought out. I quote it here in order to illustrate once
more that opposition of scientists to scientific advance, for personal
reasons, which has always existed, is still one of the features of the
history of science, and will probably always continue to be a
noteworthy phase of scientific progress. It will serve at the same
time to furnish to those who cannot think that these stories with
regard to the hampering of surgical development are {195} entirely
without foundation, some basis for them that will account for their
universality, but will only render clearer the intolerance of those
who have constantly perverted the meaning of this opposition to
persecution on the part of Church authorities. Ecclesiastics not only
had nothing to do with this, but more often than not were the active
factors in such amelioration of the conditions it brought about as
very much to lessen its effects.
Allbutt's story of the College of Surgeons of St. Côme at Paris is,
as we have said, interesting from this standpoint. "Some of my
readers may wonder how it is that in discoursing of medieval surgery
I have not dwelt upon the Surgical College of St. Côme of Paris.
Well, St. Côme did no great things for surgery. The truth is that,
infected with the exclusiveness and dialectical conceits of all the
schools of Paris, St. Côme was almost ready to sacrifice surgery
itself if thereby it might choke off its parasites, the barbers.
Lest they should be suspected of mixing their philosophy with facts,
its members went about with their hands ostentatiously tied behind
them. If perhaps Malgaigne speaks too contemptuously of St. Côme, it
must be admitted that the college was in a false position
throughout. In aping the Faculty of Medicine, it lost the touch of
mother earth without gaining any harbourage in the deep waters of
the proud. Nay, such is the Nemesis of pride, the barbers came to
command the position. It did not suit the Faculty to see the barbers
weakened; for in their weakness lay the strength of the surgeons of
St. Côme, who sought incessantly to appear as lettered clerks, to
attach their college to the university, and even to claim a place
beside the Faculty itself. To bring St. Côme to its knees, and to
check the presumptuous claims of this corporation on the {196}
privileges of the Faculty of Medicine, on a liberal education in
arts and medicine, on a place in the university, on the suppression
of unqualified surgical practice, and less, honourably, on relief
from handicraft and urgent calls, the Faculty had to coquette with
the barbers. Medicine, proclaimed the Faculty when it suited its
purpose, contains the theoretical and the practical side of surgery;
a surgeon is therefore but the servant of a physician. If St. Côme
sought to provide lectures in surgery, the Faculty, which kept
possession of teaching licenses and desired in the surgeon a docile
assistant, took the teaching from the college and invited the
barbers to lectures of its own. In their duplicity and conceit of
caste, physicians of the Faculty condescended even to publish books
on surgery, books as arid and as insincere as their lectures. On the
other hand, in the person of the King's Barber, the barbers had a
secret and potent influence at Court. The Faculty persisted in
denying to St. Côme all 'esoteric' teaching, all diagnosis, and all
use of medical therapeutics. Aristotle was pronounced to be
unfavorable to the 'vulgarizing of science.' Joubert was attacked
for editing Guy, but replied with dignity (in the notes of his
edition). While the Faculty thus tried to prevent the access to
letters of a presumptuous body of artisans, St. Côme in mimic
arrogance disdained the barbers, sought to deny them the name of
surgeon, and was jealous of the diffusion of technical knowledge
among them in the vernacular tongue." [Footnote 26]
[Footnote 26: As showing how professional jealously may exist in
such ways in the modern times as to hinder progress, the following
paragraph, which is the opening portion of Professor Allbutt's
address, has seemed to me to deserve quotation here. It will
illustrate a phase of the subject that is probably utterly
unexpected by those unfamiliar with the inner history of medicine
in our time, but which is not so surprising to physicians who know
the jealousy with which men guard their specialties from what they
consider the interference of others, in hospital work and in
teaching, though this exclusiveness often proves detrimental both
to the breadth of development of the student and to the good
health of the patient.
"It was, I think, in the year 1864, when I was a novice on the
Honorary Staff of the Leeds General Infirmary, that the unsurgical
division of us was summoned in great solemnity to discuss a method
of administration of drugs by means of a needle. This method
having obtained some vogue, it behooved those who practiced 'pure'
medicine to decide whether the operation were consistent with the
traditions of purity. For my part, I answered that the method had
come up early, if not originally, in St. George's Hospital, and in
the hands of a house physician--Dr. C. Hunter; that I had
accustomed myself already to the practice and proposed to continue
it; moreover, that I had recently come from the classes of
Professor Trousseau, who, when his cases demanded such treatment,
did not hesitate himself to perform paracentesis of the pleura, or
even incision of this sac, or of the pericardium. As, for lack not
of will but of skill and nerve, I did not intend myself to perform
even minor operations, my heresy, as one in thought only, was
indulgently ignored, and we were set free to manipulate the drug
needle if we felt disposed to this humble service."]
{197}
In conclusion, we may say that, in the Middle Ages, once men had
lifted themselves up from the condition into which they had been
plunged by the incursions of the barbarians, there was nothing like
the neglect of surgery which is sometimes said to have existed.
Surgery had its normal development, and reached as high a stage as
medicine in that beginning Renaissance, which is the characteristic
feature of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The
traditions of a low state of surgery at this time are all false and
founded on insufficient knowledge of the real conditions, which have
been so clearly revealed to us by the investigation of original
documents in the last twenty-five years. This was, in fact, one of the
greatest periods in the history of surgery that the world has ever
known. Whatever of difficulty in development surgery encountered was
due not to any Church opposition, but to unfortunate conditions that
arose in the practice of medicine. Professional jealousy and
shortsightedness was the main element in it. Even this, however, did
not prevent the very wonderful development of surgery that came {198}
during the Middle Ages, and that made this department of human
knowledge quite as progressive and successful as any other, in that
marvelous period when the universities came into existence in the form
which they have maintained ever since.
{199}
PAPAL PHYSICIANS.
Most of what historical writers generally, who follow the old
traditions of the medieval eclipse of medicine, have to say with
regard to the supposed Papal opposition to the development of medical
science, is founded on the assumption that men who believed in
miracles and in the efficacy of prayer for the relief of disease could
not possibly be interested to any serious degree in scientific
medicine. As Dr. White says, "out of all these inquiries came
inevitably that question whose logical answer was especially injurious
to the development of medical science: why should men seek to build up
scientific medicine and surgery, when relics, pilgrimages, and sacred
observances, according to an overwhelming mass of concurrent
testimony, have cured and are curing hosts of sick folk in all parts
of Europe." He goes even farther than this, however, when he suggests
that "it would be expecting too much from human nature to imagine that
Pontiffs who derived large revenues from the sale of the Agnus Dei, or
priests who derived both wealth and honors from cures wrought at
shrines under their care, or lay dignitaries who had invested heavily
in relics, should favor the development of any science which
undermined their interests."
On the strength of assumptions such as these, that "medieval belief in
miracles of healing must have checked medical science," and that
therefore it did actually prevent the development of scientific
medicine, statements are made with regard to the history of {200}
medicine that are utterly at variance with the plain facts of history.
Once more, as in the case of the supposed failure of surgery to
develop during the Middle Ages, it is a deduction that has been made
from certain supposed principles, and not an induction from the actual
facts as we know them. Such historians would be the first to emphasize
the narrowness of the schoolmen for their supposed dependence on
deduction, but what they have to say on medical history is entirely
deductive, and unfortunately from premises that will not stand in the
presence of the story of the wonderful rise and development of medical
science and medical education, mainly under the patronage of
ecclesiastics, in the Middle Ages.
The argument may be stated formally with perfect fairness as follows:
When men believe in miracles they cannot build up scientific medicine
and surgery; but men believed in miracles in the Middle Ages,
therefore they did not build up scientific medicine and surgery. When
stated thus baldly in formal scholastic form, the argument loses most
of the glamor that has been thrown around it. This is one of the
advantages of the old scholastic method--it strips argument to its
naked significance. Logic asserts herself and rhetoric loses its
force.
With regard to the major premise that when men believe in miracles
they will not successfully pursue investigations in the medical
science, there are two answers. One of these concerns the actual
attitude of mind towards scientific medicine of men who believe in
miracles, for we have such men still with us, and have always had them
all during the past seven centuries. The other portion of the answer
concerns what men who were distinguished scientific investigators
thought of {201} miracles, and how much they accomplished for the
medical sciences while all the time maintaining their belief in the
possibility of miraculous intervention for the cure of disease.
Apparently the writers who insist on the incompatibility of the belief
in miracles with devotion to scientific medicine do not realize that
the greater number of thinking physicians during the last seven
centuries, and quite down to our own day, have been ready to confess
their belief in the possibility of miraculous healing, yet have tried
to do everything in their power to relieve suffering and cure human
ills by the natural means at their command. Their attitude has been
very much that attributed to Ignatius of Loyola, who said to the
members of his order: "Do everything that you can with the idea that
everything depends on you, and then hope for results just as if
everything depended on God." There is no lack of logic in this; and
the physician of the present day who realizes his impotency in the
presence of so many of the serious ailments of mankind is not a
scoffer at the attitude of mind that looks for help from prayer; but
if he is sensible, welcomes the placidity of mind this will give his
patient, even if he does not, as many actually do, however, believe in
the possible interposition of supernatural forces.
If Prof. White knew anything about the lives of the men whose names
are most distinguished in the history of medicine during the
thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we would have heard
nothing of his almost incomprehensible negation of the existence of
scientific medicine, during centuries when so many men who have
stamped their names indelibly on the history of the medical sciences
were doing their work and {202} writing. If he had taken any pains to
learn even a few details of the personal relations of these old-time
makers of medicine to the Popes, we would have heard none of this
utter absurdity of Papal opposition to medicine or ecclesiastical
hampering of medical science. To answer Prof. White's argument, that
"it would be expecting too much from human nature to imagine that
Pontiffs should favor the development of any science which undermined
their interests," the simple story of the men the Popes choose as
their own medical advisers, and who because of the prestige of their
appointment as Papal Physicians helped to raise up in the eyes of the
people the dignity of the medical profession which they represented,
will be quite enough. It will also serve to show how different is
history founded on an assumption from history founded on actual facts.
The best, most easily obtainable, and most impressive data for the
inductive method of reaching the truth as regards the relation of the
Popes to medical science and (because of the fact that physicians were
the scientists _par excellence_ of the Middle Ages) to all science,
will be found in a brief consideration of the lives of the men who
occupied the position of Papal Physician during the last seven
centuries. I do not think that this group of men has ever been treated
together before; at least I have been unable to find any work on the
subject. While I am able to present a considerable amount of
interesting material in brief form with regard to them, I am sure that
there are many of them whom I have omitted. Practically up to the day
of going to press I have been finding new references that led to
further precious information with regard to this most wonderful group
of men in medical history. It will be well {203} understood, then,
that impressive as the consideration of the work and character of the
men whose names I have found must be, this does not represent all the
truth in the matter, but can be supplemented without much difficulty
from other sources.
If the Popes had been interested only in the miraculous healing of
disease, and had wished to teach the lesson that men should depend
solely for their recovery from serious symptoms and ailments of all
kinds on prayers and relics and pilgrimages, then they would either
have had no physicians at all in regular attendance on them, or at
least their physicians would not have been selected from among the men
who were doing most to advance the cause of practical and scientific
medicine and of medical education. The very opposite of this is the
case. The Papal physicians were as a rule the most scientific medical
men of their time. This is not a pious exaggeration, but is literally
true for seven centuries of history, as we shall see presently. The
wonder of it is that there were not some charlatans among them. The
physicians whom educated people select are not, as physicians we'll
know, always worthy examples of progressive medical men. Literary folk
particularly seem to have a distinct tendency to want to be different
from other people, and their physicians are often the veriest
theorizers. A medical friend who occasionally quotes, but perverts the
old line, "the people people have for friends are often very queer,"
says, half in jest of course, but alas! more than half in earnest,
that "the people literary folk and the clergy have for doctors are the
queerest ducks (docs.) of all."
It is only too true that clergymen are especially prone to be erratic
in the choice of their medical advisers and {204} lacking in a
critical judgment as to the remedies and methods of treatment of which
they become the willing recipients, and occasionally even the sponsors
as regards other people, who look up to their judgment for other
reasons with confidence. Prof. Osler once said that the nearer to the
Council of Trent the clergyman, the nearer he was likely to be to
truth and common sense in medical matters; but then perhaps all would
not agree with him. It is all the more surprising under the
circumstances, and very greatly to their credit, that the Popes should
have had as their physicians a list of men whose names are the
brightest on the roll of great contributors to medical literature and
some of the most distinguished among the great discoverers in medical
science.
This fact alone constitutes the most absolute contradiction of the
declarations as to supposed Church opposition to medicine that could
possibly be given. No better means of encouraging, fostering, and
patronizing medical science could be thought of than to give the
prestige and the emoluments of physician to the head of the Church to
important makers of medicine in every generation. The physicians to
the rulers of Europe have not always been selected with as good
judgment, and, as I have already said, there is no list of physicians
to any European Court, nor indeed any list of names of medical men
connected together by any bond in history--no list, for instance, of
any medical faculty of a university--which can be compared for
prestige in scientific medicine with the Papal Physicians.
Before the beginning of the thirteenth century very little is known of
the medical attendants of the Popes. We point out in the following
chapter that the Papacy was closely in touch with the medical school
at Salernum. {205} It seems not unlikely, and indeed there are some
traditions to that effect, that in cases of severe illnesses of the
Popes, important members of the medical faculty were sometimes
summoned from the South of Italy to Rome. The relations of the Popes
to the neighboring abbey of Monte Cassino might, as we have said,
suggest this. We have, however, very few details in this matter. With
the beginning of the great thirteenth century, however, the records of
human achievement in every line are better kept, and at once we begin
to know something definite about Papal Physicians. The first one of
decided prominence was Guy or Guido of Montpelier, who was summoned to
Rome by Pope Innocent III. in order that he might re-establish the
hospital of the Santo Spirito at Rome, in accordance with what were
considered to be the latest ideas in the matter of hospital building
and the enlightened care of the sick. How well he accomplished this
work, and how well he deserves to head the glorious roll of Papal
Physicians, will be seen in the chapter on The Popes and City
Hospitals.
The next of the Papal Physicians of whom much is known in the history
of medicine was Richard the Englishman, usually spoken of as Ricardus
Anglicus. He was the physician to the famous Pope Gregory IX.
(1237-1241). Richard, who was born in England not long before the
beginning of the thirteenth century, died shortly after the middle of
that century. For a time he was at Paris, and accordingly is sometimes
spoken of as Ricardus Parisiensis. According to Gabriel Naudé he was
at Paris after the death of his patient, Gregory IX., and towards the
end of his life retired to the Abbey of St. Victor, to spend his last
days in recollection and prayer. In this he anticipated another great
English physician {206} with a European reputation--Linacre--who,
three centuries later, after having been the royal physician for many
years to King Henry VIII., became a clergyman. It is interesting to
realize that, early in history as Richard's life occurs, some works
attributed to him contain definite information with regard to anatomy.
Most of this, it is true, is taken from Hippocrates, Galen, and the
Arabs, but some of it seems to be the result of his own personal
experience, on the living, if not on the dead.
After Richard, the next of the physicians to the Popes who has an
important place in the history of medicine is the famous Thaddeus
Alderotti, who lived for more than eighty years during the thirteenth
century. He has the added interest for this generation of having been
a self-made man, for he was the son of very poor parents of the lowest
rank. Up to his thirtieth year he remained without any special
education. He made his living, it is said, by selling candles. Having
acquired a little competency, at the age of thirty he began with great
zeal the study of philosophy and of medicine, two sciences which in
the old days were supposed to go very well together, though,
unfortunately, they are often rigidly separated from each other in
later times. Fifteen years after he began the study of medicine we
hear of him as a medical teacher, and then ten years later he began to
be famous as a writer on all sorts of medical topics. He became the
physician of Pope Honorius IV., himself one of the most liberal and
broadly educated of men, and as the result of the confidence awakened
by his occupancy of this honorable position, he secured an immense
success in practice and made an enormous fortune. Alderotti's work
represents what is best in medicine for the whole of the thirteenth
century.
{207}
A curiously interesting episode that deserves a place in the history
of Papal Physicians occurred during Alderotti's life. One of the Popes
elected to fill the Papal chair had been earlier in life a physician.
This was the famous Peter of Spain, though he was really a Portuguese,
who, under the name of John XXI., occupied the Papal throne during the
years 1276-1277. Peter of Spain had been one of the most distinguished
natural scientists of this interesting century. Dr. J. B. Petella, in
an article published in Janus about ten years ago, entitled A Critical
and Historical Study of the Knowledge of Ophthalmology of a
Philosopher Physician who became Pope, gives an excellent account of
the life of Pope John XXI. [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: Janus, Archives International es pour l'histoire de la
Medicine et pour la Geographie Medicale, paraissant tous les deux
mois. Amsterdam, 1897-1898.]
Petella does not hesitate to say of him that he was "one of the most
renowned personages of Europe during the thirteenth century, from the
point of view of the triple evolution of his extraordinary mind, which
caused him to make his mark in the physical sciences, in the
metaphysical sciences, and in the religious world. In him there was an
incarnation of the savant of the time, and he must be considered the
most perfect encyclopedist of the Middle Ages in their first
renascence."
Anyone who reads Dr. Petella's account of this book by Pope John XXI.
will be surprised at how much was known about diseases of the eye at
the middle of the thirteenth century. For instance, hardening of the
eye is spoken of as a very serious affection, so that there seems to
be no doubt that the condition now known as glaucoma was recognized
and its bad prognosis appreciated. His account of the external anatomy
of the eye, eight coats of which he describes, beginning with the
{208} conjunctiva and ending with the retina, is quite complete. The
eye is said to have eight muscles, the levator of the upper eyelid and
the sphincter muscle of the eye being counted among them. The other
muscles are picturesquely described as reins, that is, guiding ribbons
for the eye. Cataract is described as water descending into the eye,
and two forms of it are distinguished--one traumatic, due to external
causes, and the other due to internal causes. Lachrimal fistula is
described and its causes discussed. Various forms of blepharitis are
touched upon. Many suggestions are made for the treatment of
trichiasis. That a man who was as distinguished in medicine as Peter
of Spain should have been elected Pope, is the best possible proof
that there was no opposition between science and religion during the
thirteenth century.
But to return to the Papal Physicians in our original meaning of the
term. Alderotti's successor as physician to the Papal Court was
scarcely, if any, less distinguished. This was Simon Januensis, the
medical attendant to Pope Nicholas IV., whose pontificate lasted from
1288-1292. Simon did much to make the use of opium more scientific
than it had been, and he established definite rules for its
administration. Before this the anodyne effects of the drug had been
well known, but the difficulty had been to regulate its dosage
properly and prevent the use of too large quantities, while at the
same time securing the administration of sufficient of the drug to
relieve pain. At the beginning there was much prejudice with regard to
opium. Indeed, as every physician knows, this prejudice has not
entirely died out even in our own day. How much of good, then, Simon
was able to accomplish because the prestige of his position as {209}
Papal Physician helped to break down this prejudice, and how much
human suffering he saved as a consequence, it is easy to understand.
Simon is best known in the history of medical science as the author of
what was probably the first important dictionary of medicine. This was
called the Synonyma Medicinae or Clavis Sanationis, the Key of Health.
Steinschneider has declared this book to be one of the most important
works in the field of Synonymies. Julius Pagel, in his chapter on
Therapeutics in the Middle Ages, in Puschmann's Handbook of the
History of Medicine, already quoted, says that this Papal Physician
succeeded in solving very happily the problem which he set himself, of
gathering together the information that had been collected during past
centuries with regard to medical words, and especially those relating
to the use of various remedial measures. The industry of the writer
may be very well appreciated from the fact that his glossary contains
some six thousand articles. Its place in the history of science, as
given by Meyer, the German historian of botany, is that for the
understanding of the older words in natural science, no better aid
than this can be found. He considers it the best work of its kind
until Caspar Bauhin's similar volume came to replace it, but that was
not until well on in the seventeenth century. Simon was greatly
encouraged in this work by Popes Nicholas IV. and Boniface VIII., to
both of whom he was body physician and at the same time an intimate
friend.
The custom of having for medical attendant one of the leading
physicians of the day, if not actually the most prominent medical
scientist of the time, which had obtained at Rome during the
thirteenth century, was maintained at Avignon during the
three-quarters of a {210} century in which the Papal See had its seat
there. Just who the regular medical attendant of Clement V., the first
of the Avignon Popes, was is not very sure. When he became seriously
ill toward the end of his life, however, Arnold of Villanova, one of
the professors of physic at Paris and probably the most distinguished
living physician of the time, was summoned in consultation, and began
his journey down to Avignon. This summons attracted widespread
attention, which was still further emphasized by the fact that Arnold
of Villanova died on the journey. It is not difficult to appreciate
even at this distance of time how much weight the summoning of a
physician from a long distance to attend His Holiness would have on
the minds of the people, and how much it would tend to call their
attention to the important medical school from which the great man
came. People generally, who heard the facts, would want at least to
have in attendance on them, if possible, a physician who had been
graduated at the school from which Arnold of Villanova was summoned on
his important medical mission. How much this would mean for the
encouragement of scientific medicine as it was developing at the
University of Paris can scarcely be overestimated.
The distinct tendency of the Popes to keep in touch with the best men
in medicine and surgery in their time is well illustrated by the case
of Guy de Chauliac. This great French surgeon and professor at the
University of Montpelier is hailed by the modern medical world as the
Father of Modern Surgery. There is no doubt at all of his intensely
modern character as a teacher, nor of his enterprise as a progressive
surgeon. Few men have done more for advance in medicine, and his name
is {211} stamped on a number of original ideas that have never been
eclipsed in surgery. After studying anatomy very faithfully,
especially by means of dissections, in Italy, where he tells us that
his master at Bologna, Bertrucci, made a larger number of dissections
scarcely more than thirty years after the supposed Papal decree of
prohibition, he returned to Montpelier to become the professor of
surgery there, and introduced the Italian methods of investigation
into the famous old university.
At this time the Popes were at Avignon, not far distant from
Montpelier. From them Guy received every encouragement in his
scientific work. He insisted that no one could practice surgery with
any hope of success unless he devoted himself to careful dissection of
the human body. If we were to believe some of the things that have
been said with regard to the Popes forbidding dissection, this should
have been enough to keep the French surgeon from the favor of the
Popes, but it did not. On the contrary, he was the intimate friend and
consultant medical attendant of two of the Avignon Popes, and was the
chamberlain to one of them. The good influence of Chauliac on the
minds of the Popes is reflected in their interest in the medical
department of the University of Montpelier. About this time Pope Urban
VI. founded the College of Twelve Physicians at Montpelier. He was an
alumnus of the university, and had been appealed to to enlarge the
opportunities of his Alma Mater. He did so in the manner just related.
One of the Papal Physicians of the Avignon times was unfortunate. This
was the ill-fated Cecco di Ascolo, who was distinguished as a poet and
a philosopher as well as a physician. But for his sad end, one might
be tempted to say, that he had so many irons in the fire {212} that it
was scarce to be wondered at that he suffered the fate of many another
tender of too many irons, and eventually got his fingers burnt. He was
body physician of Pope John XXII. during a good part of the long
pontificate of that strenuous old man, who became Pope when over
seventy, lived to be ninety, yet accomplished important work in every
year of his career. After leaving Avignon Cecco went to Italy and
became the Professor of Astrology at Bologna. The term astrology had
none of the unfortunate or derisory signification that it has at the
present time. It was, as the etymology of the word implies, the
science of the stars, though it was cultivated with due reference to
the influence of these heavenly bodies on human fate and human
constitutions. Hence a physician's interest in it. This continued to
be a characteristic of astrology down to the time of Tycho-Brahe, the
Danish astronomer, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Cecco
and another distinguished physician of the time, Dino de Garbo, became
involved in a public controversy, as the result of which Cecco was
denounced to the public authorities as undermining the basis of
government and virtually teaching anarchy, though it was called
heresy, and as a result of the bitter feud he suffered the penalty of
death by fire.
The last of the Papal Physicians connected with the Pontifical Court
at Avignon was almost as illustrious as any of his predecessors. He
was the well-known Joannes de Tornamira, who was the body physician to
Gregory XI. until that Pontiff brought the Papal Court back to Rome.
Then Tornamira became the chancellor of the University of Montpelier.
He wrote an introduction to the study of medicine, meant for the use
of students and young physicians, called a Clarificatorium, which,
{213} according to Puschmann's History of Medicine, was the most used
text-book of medicine during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Besides this he wrote a long and important work On Fevers and the
Accidents of Fevers, in which he sums up all the medical knowledge of
the time on these subjects.
That the policy of the Popes did not change as regards the selection
of their physicians on their return from Avignon to Rome, is to be
seen from the physician of the Popes whose See was in both places.
This was the famous Francis of Siena, who is known best in history as
the intimate friend of Petrarch, and who was physician to Pope Gregory
XI. and to his successor, Urban VI. He had been a professor of
medicine at the University of Pisa, and by special invitation went to
fill the same position in the University of the Papal City, and became
at the same time the medical adviser of the Popes. His influence on
medicine was not very important, but he occupied a very prominent
position among the learned men of the time, and his personal prestige
did much to add to the dignity of the profession. In our own time, the
medical men who have been best known and whose membership in the
profession has added greatly to its popular estimation, have at times
not been distinguished for great things in medicine. Francis of Siena
was such a man, and the fact that he was medical adviser to the Popes
at the same time must be counted as an important factor in the
evolution of medical dignity.
One of the first writers on medical cases who did not indulge much in
theory was Baverius de Baveriis, of Imola, who died about 1480, and
who was the physician to Pope Nicholas V. shortly before and after the
middle of the fifteenth century. In the light of the fact that a {214}
recent Papal physician, Dr. Lapponi, has written a book on hypnotism
and spiritism, it is interesting to find that his predecessor in the
post of Papal Physician four centuries and a half ago, discussed the
differential diagnosis of hysteria, catalepsy, epilepsy and syncope.
He also discusses certain interesting cases of vertigo due to stomach
trouble, and in general anticipates very unexpectedly neurotic
conditions that are supposed to have been recognized in medicine much
later than his time. Perhaps the most startling thing to be found in
his works is his recommendation of iron for chlorosis, which he
claimed to have treated with the greatest success by means of this
remedy. Of course, there was no idea at the time that chlorosis was
due in any sense to a lack of iron in the system, and its value as a
therapeutic agent must have come entirely from empiric considerations;
but then most of our advances in drug therapeutics have come by no
better way.
Another of the distinguished Papal Physicians of the fifteenth century
was John of Vigo (1460-1520), who, as Professor Allbutt notes, was
attached to the court of the fighting Pontiff, Julius II., and as a
consequence saw much of field surgery. His text-book of surgery,
printed at Rome in the early part of the sixteenth century, went
through an enormous number of editions. No standard surgical treatise
had appeared since that of Guy de Chauliac, and Vigo's continued to be
the standard for the next full century. He was a shrewd and skilful as
well as a learned physician. His surgical acumen deserves to be noted.
He recognized that fracture of the inner table of the skull might take
place without that of the outer, and made some very practical remarks
with regard to gangrene and its causes. He attributed {215} gangrene
in certain cases to faulty bandaging in fractures, and discussed its
origin also as the result of severe cold. He treated syphilis with
mercurial inunctions, a practice still followed by the best
specialists in this line. His greatest claim to fame, however, is
founded on the fact that he was the first to write a surgical treatise
on wounds made by firearms.
At this time, during the first half of the sixteenth century, the
Papal Medical School begins to assume an importance in the history of
medicine which it was to continue to hold for the next two centuries.
After the refoundation of the Sapienza by Pope Alexander VI., and its
development under Pope Leo X., special care was taken and no expense
spared by their successors, to secure the greatest teachers in anatomy
in the world for the medical department of the Papal University. At
this time all the great physicians were distinguished for their
attainments in anatomy, somewhat as in the nineteenth century great
physicians obtained their prestige by original work in pathology. The
situations in the two centuries had much more in common than the
casual reader of history or even the ordinary student of medicine
would appreciate. The list of Papal Physicians, then, becomes to a
great extent the roll of the professors of anatomy at the Papal
University Medical School. The Popes of this period were wise enough
in their generation to realize that the men who devoted themselves to
original research in increasing the knowledge of the human body, were
also those likely to know most about the diseases of the body and
their treatment. These scientific anatomists, with the chastening
knowledge of the complexity of the human body before them, probably
made less claims to power to cure diseases than many an {216}
enthusiastic therapeutist of the time, who thought, as have
representatives of this specialty in every generation, that he has
many infallible remedies for the cure of disease, though subsequent
generations have not agreed with him.
The true significance of the lives of the men who occupied the post of
Papal Physician after this time will be best appreciated from our
treatment of them in the chapter on The Papal Medical School. It will
be sufficient here simply to recall the names of the distinguished men
who, besides being professors in the Papal Medical School, were the
medical advisers of the Popes.
The first and most important of the great Renaissance professors of
anatomy of the Roman Medical School who were also Papal Physicians was
Columbus. He had been Vesalius's assistant at Padua and later his
successor. He had lectured also at Bologna. When a special effort was
made to give prestige to the University of Pisa, he was tempted by
particularly liberal offers to become the professor of anatomy in that
city. It was from here, by still more generous patronage, that the
Popes obtained him for their medical school. On treating of the Papal
Medical School, we shall have more to say of him and his successor in
the professorship of anatomy and medicine as well as in the post of
Papal Physician, who was the third of the first anatomists of the
time--Eustachius. He with Columbus and Vesalius constitute the trinity
of great original investigators in anatomy about the middle of the
sixteenth century. It is extremely interesting, with the traditions
that exist in the matter, to find that the Popes secured two of these
great anatomists for their personal physicians as well as for their
medical school. The third one, Vesalius, became the body {217}
physician first to the Emperor Charles V. and then to his son Philip
II., whom many would declare to be as Catholic as the Popes themselves
in religious tendencies.
After Eustachius came Varolius, whose name is engraved in the history
of medicine because the Pons Varolii or bridge of Varolius, an
important structure in the brain now often simply called the pons, was
named after him. To Varolius we owe one of the earliest detailed
descriptions of the anatomy of the brain. He was the Papal Physician
to Gregory XIII., who will be remembered as the Pope under whom the
reform of the calendar was made by the great Jesuit mathematician and
astronomer, Father Clavius. Pope Gregory's enlightened patronage of
medicine in the person of Varolius will be better appreciated if we
add that he was chosen as Papal Physician when he was not yet thirty
years of age, though he had already given abundant evidence of his
talent for original investigation in anatomy. He died at the early age
of thirty-two, but not until after he had accomplished a life's work
sufficient to give him an enduring place in the history of anatomy.
After Varolius as Papal Physician came Piccolomini and then
Caesalpinus, whom the Italians hail as the discoverer of the
circulation of the blood before Harvey, and of whom we shall have much
to say in the next chapter. Piccolomini was not as great an original
thinker and worker as many of his predecessors and successors, but he
was a man whose prestige in medicine was scarcely less than theirs.
That this same liberal patronage of distinguished physicians was
continued in the next century may be realized from the fact that
Malpighi, the great founder of comparative anatomy, became one of the
Papal Physicians. His intimate friend, Borelli, to whom we owe the
{218} introduction of physics into medicine, had spent some years in
Rome, where, having been robbed by his servants, with the consent of
the Pope he took up his abode with the Society of the Pious Schools of
San Pantaleone. Here he finished his important work De Motu Animalium,
in which the principles of mechanics were first definitely introduced
into anatomy and physiology. The preface to this book was written by
an ecclesiastic, who praises the piety of Borelli during his stay in
Rome and chronicles his encouragement by the Popes in his medical
work. Malpighi was succeeded as Papal Physician by Tozzi, who is
famous for his commentaries on the ancients rather than for original
observation, but who was looked upon in his time as one of the most
prominent physicians in Italy, and at this period that meant one of
the most prominent physicians in the world. At the beginning of the
next century, the eighteenth, Lancisi, by many considered the Father
of Modern Clinical Medicine, became the Papal Physician.
Among the consultant physicians to the Popes of the eighteenth
century, though he never occupied the post of regular medical
attendant, was Morgagni. His advice was often sought by a succession
of Popes not only with regard to their personal health, but also with
regard to the teaching of medicine and other questions of like nature.
Virchow has called Morgagni the Father of Modern Pathology, because he
was the first to point out, that for a knowledge of disease it is
quite as important to know where the disease has been as to try to
learn what it has been. All of the Popes, five in number, of the
latter part of Morgagni's life were on terms of intimacy with him.
Pope Benedict XIV., one of the very great Popes of the century, a
native of Bologna, was {219} an intimate friend of Morgagni. His
scarcely less famous successor, Pope Clement XIII., had known Morgagni
before his elevation to the Papacy, and after his election he wrote
assuring Morgagni of his continued esteem and friendship, and asks him
to consider the Papal palace always open to him on his visits to Rome.
In an extant letter Clement praises his wisdom, his culture, his
courtesy, his piety toward God, his charity toward men, and holds him
up as an example to all others for the special reason that,
notwithstanding all his qualities, he had not aroused the enmity or
envy of those around him, thus showing what a depth of humanity there
was in him in addition to his scientific attainments.
At this time Morgagni was looked upon by all the medical world as
probably the greatest of living medical scientists. Visitors who came
to Italy who were at all interested in science, always considered that
their journey had not been quite complete unless they had had an
opportunity of meeting Morgagni. He had more personal friends among
the scientists of all the countries of Europe than any other man of
his time. The fact that this leader in science should be at the same
time a great personal friend of the Popes of his time is the best
possible evidence of the more than amicable relations which existed
between the Church and medicine during this century. Morgagni's life
of nearly ninety years indeed, covers most of the eighteenth century,
and is of itself, without more ado, an absolute proof that there was
not only no friction between religion and medicine, but shows on the
contrary that medical science encountered patronage and encouragement
as far as ecclesiastics were concerned, while success in it brought
honor and emolument. {220} Morgagni's personal relations to the Church
are best brought out by the fact that, of his fifteen children, ten of
whom lived to adult life, eight daughters became members of religious
orders and one of his two surviving sons became a Jesuit. The great
physician was very proud and very glad that his children should have
chosen what he did not hesitate to call the better part.
After Morgagni's time, the days of the French Revolution bring a cloud
over the Papacy. There were political disturbances in Italy and the
Popes were shorn of their temporal power. As a consequence their
medical school loses in prestige and finally disappears. The Papal
Physicians after this, while distinguished among their fellow members
of the Roman medical profession, were no longer the world-known
discoverers in medicine that had so often been the case before. So
long as the Popes had the power and possessed the means, they used
both to encourage medicine in every way, as the list of Papal
Physicians shows better than anything else, and a study of this
chapter of their history will undo all the false assertions with
regard to the supposed opposition between the Church and science.
We have already said, and it seems to deserve repetition here, that
during most of these centuries in which the Papal Physicians were
among the most distinguished discoverers in medicine, the term
medicine included within itself most of what we now know as physical
science. Botany was studied as a branch of medicine, and as we have
seen, one of the Papal Physicians, Simon Januensis, compiled a
dictionary that a modern German Historian of Botany finds excellent.
Astrology, under which term astronomy was included, was studied for
the sake of the supposed influence of the stars on {221} men's
constitutions.--Chemistry was a branch of medical study. Mineralogy
was considered a science allied to medicine, and the use of antimony
and other metals in medicine originated with physicians trying to
extend the domain of knowledge to minerals. Comparative anatomy was
founded by a Papal Physician. These were the principal physical
sciences. To talk of opposition between science and religion, then,
with the most distinguished scientists of these centuries in friendly
personal and official relations with the Popes, is to indulge in one
of those absurdities common enough among those who must find matter
for their condemnation of the Popes and the Church, but that every
advance in modern history has pushed farther back into the rubbish
chamber of outlived traditions.
{222}
THE POPES AND MEDICAL EDUCATION AND
THE PAPAL MEDICAL SCHOOL.
After the story of the Papal Physicians, the most important phase of
the relations of the Popes to the medical sciences is to be found in
the story of the Papal Medical School. While it seems to be generally
ignored by those who are not especially familiar with the history of
medical education, a medical school existed in connection with the
Papal University at Rome during many centuries--according to excellent
authorities, from the beginning of the fourteenth century--and this
medical school had, as we have said elsewhere, during nearly two
centuries some of the most distinguished professors of medicine in its
ranks, and boasts among its faculty some of the greatest discoverers
in the medical sciences, and especially in anatomy. For these two
centuries it had but two important rivals, Padua and Bologna. Both of
these were in Italy, and one, that of the University of Bologna, was
in a Papal city, that is, was under the political dominion of the
Popes. The best medical teaching, then, was to be found in the Papal
States and under conditions such, that if there had been the slightest
opposition, or indeed anything but the most cordial encouragement for
medical study, the medical schools of Rome and Bologna would surely
have languished instead of flourishing beyond all others.
Just about the beginning of the fourteenth century {223} Pope Boniface
VIII., who was himself one of the distinguished scholars of his time,
determined that, besides the university of the Papal Court, which had
existed for nearly a century at Rome, but which was mainly occupied
with philosophy and theology and mainly attended by ecclesiastics,
there should also be a university of the City of Rome for the people
of his capital. This determination was reached only a short time
before the culmination of the difficulty between Pope Boniface and the
King of France, which eventually resulted in what has been called the
outrage of Anagni and the subsequent death of the Pope within a short
time. It has usually been thought, then, that in spite of certain
extant Papal documents creating the University of the City of Rome,
this university had not been organized before Pope Boniface's death,
and as his successor did not take his seat at Rome, but at Avignon, it
has usually been assumed that the University of the City came into
existence at most only in an abortive form. Denifle, whose History of
the Universities of the Middle Ages is looked upon as the best
authority in such matters, however, insists that a complete university
of the City of Rome did come into existence as a result of Boniface's
decree.
All during the time when the Popes were at Avignon this university
continued to exist, and in spite of the fact that at one time, as a
consequence of a great earthquake followed by a pestilence, and then
serious political troubles because of the absence of the Popes, Rome
had only something less than ten thousand inhabitants, the university
continued its work. Denifle calls attention to the fact that there are
letters of Pope John XXII. which show that he paid out of the Papal
revenues {224} the salary of a teacher of physic at the University of
the City of Rome while the Papal Court was at Avignon. It is rather
interesting to find the names of the two Popes, Boniface VIII. and
John XXII., whose Papal decrees are supposed to have prevented the
study of anatomy and chemistry, thus cropping up on unquestionable
authority as the founder and the patron of medical teaching in the
City of Rome. Pope Boniface VIII. is now generally credited with
having been the founder of the Sapienza, the medical school of which,
at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was to develop into one of
the most important schools of its kind in Europe, and to have on its
faculty list the greatest teachers of their time, who had been tempted
to come to Rome because the Popes wished to enhance the prestige of
the medical school of their capital.
While it may be a surprise for those who have been accustomed to think
of the Popes as inalterably opposed to all science, and especially to
medical science, thus to find them encouraging and fostering medical
teaching, it will only be what would naturally be expected by those
who know anything of the real history of medicine in the earlier
Middle Ages. There is no doubt at all, that during the so-called "dark
ages," that is, when the invasion of the barbarians had put out the
lights of the older civilizations, it was mainly ecclesiastics who
preserved whatever traditions there were of the old medical learning
and carried on whatever serious teaching of medicine, in the sense of
medical science, that existed during this time. The monks were the
most prominent in this; and the Benedictines, after their foundation
in the sixth century, added to their duties of caring for the other
temporal needs of the poor, who so {225} often appealed to them, that
of helping them as far as they could in any bodily ailments with which
they might be afflicted. There are even definite traditions that a
certain amount of training in medicine, or at least in the care of the
sick, was one of the features of the Benedictine monasteries.
Dr. Payne in his article on the History of Medicine in the
Encyclopaedia Brittanica said: "In civil history there is no real
break. A continuous thread of learning and practice must have
connected the last period of Roman medicine with the dawn of science
in the Middle Ages. But the intellectual thread is naturally traced
with greater difficulty than that which is the theme of civil history;
and in periods such as that from the fifth to the tenth century in
Europe, it is almost lost. The chief homes of medical as of other
learning in these disturbed times were the monasteries. Though the
science was certainly not advanced by their labors, it was saved from
total oblivion, and many ancient medical works were preserved in Latin
or the vernacular versions. It was among the Benedictines that the
monastic studies of medicine first received a new direction and aimed
at a higher standard. The study of Hippocrates, Galen, and other
classics was recommended by Cassiodorus (sixth century), and in the
original mother abbey of Monte Cassino medicine was studied, though
there was probably not what could be called a medical school there;
nor had this foundation any connection (as has been supposed) with the
famous school of Salerno."
A review of some of the interesting features of the early history of
medical education will serve to show that, not only was there no
ecclesiastical interference with the new developing science, but, on
the contrary, {226} without the personal aid and the intelligent
patronage of ecclesiastics of all degree, and especially of
archbishops and Popes, the development of medical teaching that took
place at Salerno would probably not have had the significance in
history that it now enjoys. While there was no institutional
connection between the medical school of Salerno and the Benedictine
Monastery at Monte Cassino, it is known that at the end of the seventh
century there was a branch Benedictine monastery at Salerno, and some
of the prelates and higher clergy occupied posts as teachers in the
school, and even became distinguished for medical acquirements.
Though the Salernitan medical school proper was a secular institution,
there is no doubt that the Benedictines had great influence in it and
had fostered its formation. How close the monks of Monte Cassino were
allied to the Popes, everyone knows. The Benedictines considered
themselves the special wards of the Papacy, and a number of the Abbots
of Monte Cassino, or monks belonging to the community, and of men who
had been educated in the monastery, had been raised to the Papacy
during the Middle Ages. The origin of modern medical teaching is thus
closely associated not only with the Benedictines, but through them
with the Popes, without whose encouragement and sanction the work
would not have flourished as it did.
In advance of the formal establishment of medical schools, in the
modern sense of the word, two Popes were distinguished before their
elevation to the Papacy for their attainments in all the sciences, and
especially in medicine, one of whom actually founded an important
school of thought in medicine, while the other was a professor at
Salerno. The first of these is the famous {227} Gerbert, who, under
the name of Sylvester II., was Pope at the end of the millenium and
carried Christianity over what was supposed to be the perilous period
of the completion of the first thousand years, when the end of the
world was so universally looked for. Gerbert was famous for his
attainments in every branch of science, and indeed so many wonderful
traditions have collected around his name in this matter that one
hesitates to accept most of them. There seems to be no doubt, however,
that he was the beloved master of Fulbert of Chartres, who did much
for medicine in France at the beginning of the eleventh century and
who was the founder of the so-called school of Chartres and himself
the teacher of John of Chartres, who became the physician to King
Henry I., of France, and of Peter of Chartres and Hildier and
Goisbert.
Before the end of the eleventh century Pope Victor III., who had been
the Abbot of Monte Cassino, was elected Pope much against his will. He
occupied the Papal throne only for about a year and a half. He had
been especially recommended by Pope Gregory VII., the famous
Hildebrand, as a very suitable successor. Desiderius, as he was called
before becoming Pope, was one of the best scholars of his time, and
had taught for some years with great distinction at Salerno. It is not
known absolutely that he taught medicine, but, as the university of
Salerno is usually considered not to have been founded until the
middle of the next century, and as before that time the main teaching
faculty was that of the medical school and all other teaching was
subordinated to it, Desiderius must surely be considered as a teacher
at least of medical students. At that time a physician was expected to
know something more than merely his {228} profession. Mathematics and
philosophy were the two favorite subjects to which, besides medicine,
they devoted themselves. The presence of the future Pope at Salerno
is, moreover, the best possible index of the sympathy between the
ecclesiastical authorities and the medical school.
Besides there are definite records of the friendship which existed
between Alphanus, Archbishop of Salerno, and Desiderius, while they
were both members of the Benedictine Community of Monte Cassino.
Alphanus subsequently taught medicine at Salerno, and some of his
writings on medicine have been preserved for us. He was the author of
a work bearing the title _De Quatuor Elementis Corporis Humani_, a
treatise on the four elements of the human body, which is a compendium
of most of the knowledge of anatomy and physiology of the time, though
it also contains much more than the information with regard to the
merely physical side of man's being. The fact that Alphanus should
have been promoted from the professorship in the medical faculty to
the Archbishopric of Salerno is only another proof of the entire
sympathy which existed between the Church and the professors of
medical science at that time.
During the thirteenth century universities were founded in some twenty
important cities in Europe, and in connection with most of them a
medical school was established. These educational institutions were
the result of the initiative of ecclesiastics; their officials all
belonged to the clerical body, most of their students were considered
as clerics--and indeed this was the one way to secure them against the
calls for military service which would otherwise have disturbed the
enthusiasm for study--and the Popes were considered the supreme {229}
authority over all the universities. In spite of this thoroughly
ecclesiastical character of the universities and educational
institutions, there is not a hint of interference with the teaching of
medical science and abundant evidence of its encouragement. Indeed,
for anyone who knows the story of the universities of the thirteenth
century, it is practically impossible to understand how there could
have arisen any tradition of ecclesiastical opposition to education in
any form, and there is not a trace of foundation for the stories with
regard to ecclesiastical intolerance of science, which are supposed to
be supported by certain Papal decrees.
The best possible demonstration of the maintenance of the most
amicable relations between churchmen and physicians during the century
in which these decrees were issued is also the most interesting fact
in the history of medicine during the thirteenth century. It is not
generally known that one of the most distinguished physicians of the
thirteenth century, one who wrote a book on the special subject of eye
diseases that is still a classic, afterwards became Pope under the
name of John. He is variously known as John XIX., John XX., or John
XXI., according as certain occupants of the Papal throne are
considered to be of authority or not. He was educated at Paris, and
probably spent some time at Montpelier. Under the name of Peter of
Spain, though he was what we should now call a Portuguese, he
subsequently taught physic at the University of Sienna. Here he wrote
the famous little work on the Diseases of the Eye, which was reviewed
by Dr. Petella, physician-in-chief of the Royal Italian Marine, in
Janus, the International Archives for the History of Medicine and for
Medical Geography in 1898. Petella does not {230} hesitate to proclaim
him one of the greatest men of his time. Daunou, one of the
continuators of the Benedictines' literary history of France,
[Footnote 28] says that this Peter of Spain was one of the most
notable persons in Europe in his generation.
[Footnote 28: Histoire Litteraire de la France, Vol. XVI. This is the
famous work begun by the Benedictines of St. Maur.]
Pope John XXI., before his accession to the Papacy, had certainly
accomplished remarkable work in medicine, and of a kind that makes his
writings of great interest even at the present day. There is scarcely
an important pathological condition of the eye which does not receive
some consideration in this little book, and it is a constant source of
surprise in reading it to find, with their limited knowledge and lack
of instruments, what good diagnosticians the ophthalmologists of the
thirteenth century were. Cataract is described, for instance, under
the name of "water that descends into the eye," and a distinction is
made between cataract from internal and external causes. Hardening of
the eye is mentioned and is declared to be very serious in its
effects. There seems no doubt that this was glaucoma. Conditions of
the lids, particularly, were differentiated and treated by rational
measures, some of them quite modern in substance. A curious
anticipation of modern therapeutics is the frequent recommendation of
extracts of the livers of various fishes for external and internal
use, that is a reminder of the present employment of cod-liver oil.
The book is acknowledged to be a classic in medicine. The fact that
its author should have become Pope later, is the best proof that
instead of opposition there was the greatest sympathy between medicine
and ecclesiasticism in his time.
{231}
With these thoroughly amicable relations between the Church and the
medical schools during the thirteenth and preceeding centuries, it
will not be so much of a surprise as it might otherwise be, to learn
of the foundation of the Medical School of Rome and of the
continuation of Papal patronage of it even while the Popes were absent
at Avignon. University records do not say much about it during the
next two centuries. With the coming of the Renaissance, however, and
the entrance of a new spirit into education, the Popes also were
touched by the educational time-spirit, and there came a rejuvenation
of the University of the City, which now acquired a new name, that of
the Sapienza, and became the home of some of the most distinguished
teaching in Europe in every department. Early in the sixteenth century
the medical department of the Sapienza, or Papal University at Rome,
became one of the most noteworthy institutions of Europe because of
the work in medicine accomplished there, and had among its faculty the
most distinguished investigators in medical science, and especially in
that department of medicine--anatomy--which by an unfortunate
tradition the Popes are said to have hampered.
The most important event in the history of the institution, after its
foundation, was its establishment in the home which it was to occupy
down to our own time. Its new habitation was prepared for it by the
Pope who has probably been the most maligned in history--Alexander VI.
A magnificent site was appropriated for it, and the construction of
suitable buildings begun. A little more than a decade later, Leo X.,
another one of the misunderstood Popes, came to the conclusion that
the two universities in Rome, that of the Papal Court and that of
{232} the City, would do better work if combined into one, and
accordingly this combination was effected. This made provision for one
very strong teaching faculty in Rome. The final steps for the
completion of the union of the two universities were taken by Pope
Alexander VII., and the buildings which the new university was to
occupy were finished in a manner worthy of the great institution of
learning which it was hoped to create in Rome.
The first of the great professors who made the Papal Medical School
famous was Realdo Colombo, often spoken of as Columbus simply, who was
invited to teach in Rome by Pope Paul III., the same Pope who issued
the bull founding the Jesuits. Some people might consider the two
actions as representing contrary tendencies in education, but they are
not such as know either the history of the Jesuits, or of the constant
endeavor of the Popes to foster education. Columbus came to Rome, as
we have said, with the prestige of having succeeded Vesalius at Padua,
and later having been specially tempted by the reigning prince in
Pisa, who wanted to create a great medical school in connection with
his university in that city, which he was at that moment trying to
raise to distinction, to accept the professorship of anatomy there.
Vesalius was still alive at this time, and the period when, if we
would credit certain historians who emphasize the opposition between
the Church and science, it was dangerous to dissect human bodies had
not yet passed. It is interesting to read the account of Columbus's
reception in Rome, and the interest manifested in his work by all
classes in the Roman University at this time. His course in anatomy
was so enthusiastically {233} attended that, as he himself tells in a
letter to a friend, he often had several hundred persons in his
audience when he gave his anatomical demonstrations on the cadaver.
These were not all medical students, but many of them were
ecclesiastics, and some of them important members of the hierarchy.
Even cardinals manifested their interest in anatomy, and occasionally
attended the public dissections--public, that is, as far as the
University is concerned--which were made by Columbus.
Columbus's enthusiasm for anatomy was such that, as Dr. Fisher said of
him in the Annals of Anatomy and Surgery, Brooklyn, 1878-1880, "he
dissected an extraordinary number of human bodies, and so devoted
himself to the solution of problems in anatomy and physiology that he
has been most aptly styled the Claude Bernard of the sixteenth
century." In one year, for instance, he is said to have dissected no
less than fourteen bodies, demonstrating, as Dr. Fisher has said, that
"it was an age of remarkable tolerance for scientific investigation."
Besides being an investigator, Columbus was a great teacher, and many
of our modern methods of instruction in medical schools had their
origin in the system of demonstrations introduced by him. His
descriptions of the demonstrations for students upon living animals,
show that some of the most recent ideas in medical teaching were
anticipated by this Roman professor of anatomy and medicine in the
Renaissance period. His demonstrations of the heart and blood-vessels
and of the actions of the lungs are particularly complete, and must
have given his students a very practical working knowledge of these
important physiological functions. In a word, the medical teaching of
the Roman {234} University, under him at this time, far from being
merely theoretic and distant from actual experience and demonstration,
was thoroughly modern in its methods.
It is no wonder, then, that practically all the ecclesiastical
visitors who came in such numbers to Rome, made it a custom at this
time to attend one or more of Columbus's anatomical lectures. They
were looked upon as one of the features of the Roman university life
of the time. How much good was accomplished by this can scarcely be
estimated. The example must have had great influence especially on
members of faculties of various educational institutions who came to
the Papal See. To some degree at least these interesting teaching
methods must have aroused in such men the desire to see them emulated
in their own teaching institutions, and therefore must have done much
to advance medical education. The fact that these things were done in
the Papal Medical School only emphasized the significance of them for
ecclesiastics, and made them more ready to bring about their imitation
in other teaching centers.
How well the Popes were justified in their estimation of Columbus's
genius as an anatomical investigator will be best appreciated from his
discovery of the pulmonary circulation, which formed, as Harvey
confesses at the beginning of his work on the circulation, the
foundation on which Harvey's great discovery naturally arose. It is
probable that Columbus would not have come to Rome, in spite of the
flattering offers held out to him, only that he was already the
personal friend of a number of high ecclesiastics, and even of the
Pope who extended the invitation. How well the Popes continued to
think of Columbus after his years of work in the {235} Roman Medical
School will be well understood from the fact that, when his great work
_De Re Anatomica_ was published after his death by his sons, Pope Pius
IV. accepted the dedication of it. This was of course not an unusual
thing, for many books on other sciences were dedicated to the Popes,
and the example thus set was subsequently imitated. Twenty-five years
later, Professor Piccolomini dedicated his Anatomical Lectures to Pope
Sixtus V. Subsequent anatomical publications of the Papal Medical
School were issued under like patronage. The famous edition of
Eustachius's anatomical sketches, published under the editorship of
Lancisi, is a notable example of this, and went to press mainly at the
expense of Pope Clement XI., who realized how valuable they were
likely to be for the teaching of anatomy.
These two great discoverers in anatomy, Columbus and Eustachius, were
succeeded, as is so often the case in the history of university
faculties, by a man more capable of writing about great discoveries
than of making them himself. This was Piccolomini, who devoted himself
to showing how much the ancients had taught about anatomy, though at
the same time he also made clear the place occupied by modern
anatomical discoveries. While his name is not attached to any great
discovery in the science of anatomy, he is generally acknowledged to
have been one of the great teachers of his time and one who was needed
just then in order to make people realize how the old and the new in
anatomy must be coordinated. Piccolomini's successor in the chair of
anatomy at Rome was another original genius and investigator whose
name, however, and fame has never been as great among English-speaking
people as in Italy, or among the Latin races generally. The fact that
he was a rival {236} of Harvey's in the matter of the discovery of the
circulation of the blood has always made the Italians exaggerate his
position in medical history, while it has undoubtedly made English
writers of medical history diminish the importance of his work.
Historians of science consider him worthy to be called the greatest
living scientist of his time--the end of the sixteenth century. He was
not only a scientific physician, but he was an authority in all the
sciences related to medicine, and indeed had profound interests in
every branch of physical science. His contemporaries looked up to him
as a leader in scientific thought. To anyone who examines the question
of the discovery of the circulation of the blood with freedom from
bias, there can be no doubt but that the honor for this discovery has
been unduly taken away from Caesalpinus in English-speaking countries,
to be conferred solely on Harvey. Not that there is any wish to lessen
the value of Harvey's magnificent original work, nor make little of
his wonderful powers of observation, nor of the marvelous experimental
and logical method by which he followed out his thoughts to their
legitimate conclusion, but that I would insist on giving honor where
honor is due, though most writers in English refuse to give
Caesalpinus's claims a proper share of attention.
The Italians have always declared that Caesalpinus was the real
discoverer of the circulation, and there is no doubt that his career
occurs just at that point in the evolution of the medical sciences,
and especially anatomy and physiology in Italy, where this discovery
would naturally come. Lest it should be thought, however, that my
interest in the Popes and the Papal Medical School has led me to
exaggerate the claims of {237} Caesalpinus as a great naturalist and
medical scientist, I prefer to quote the description of him given by
Professor Michael Foster in his lectures on the History of Physiology,
delivered in this country as the Lane Lectures, at the Cooper Medical
College in San Francisco, and published by the Cambridge University
Press, 1901. Professor Foster was not one to exaggerate the claims of
any Italian, and least of all of any Italian who might be supposed to
have a claim that would stand against Harvey's. The soupçon of
Chauvinism in his treatment of Servetus and Columbus in this regard is
indeed rather amusing. He said:--
"Of a very different stamp to Columbus was Andreas Caesalpinus. Born
at Arezzo in 1519, he was for many years Professor of Medicine at
Pisa, namely, from 1567 to 1592, when he passed to Rome, where he
became Professor at the Sapienza University and Physician to Pope
Clement VIII., and where at a ripe old age he died in 1603.
"If Columbus lacked general culture, Caesalpinus was drowned in it.
Learned in all the learning of the ancients and an enthusiastic
Aristotelian, he also early laid hold of all the new learning of the
time. Naturalist as well as physician, he taught at Pisa botany as
well as medicine, being from 1555 to 1575 Professor of Botany, with
charge of the Botanic garden founded there in 1543, the first of its
kind--one remaining until the present day."
Professor Foster admits that Caesalpinus had a wonderful power of
synthetising knowledge already in hand and anticipating conclusions in
science that were to be confirmed subsequently. In his Medical
Questions, though the work is written in rambling, discursive vein, he
enunciated views which, however he arrived at them, certainly
foreshadowed or even anticipated those which {238} were later to be
established on a sound basis. Foster quotes a passage in which
Caesalpinus made it very clear that he thoroughly understood the
mechanism of the circulation and grasped every detail essential to it.
After quoting this passage, which it must be confessed is rambling,
Foster thus sums up what Caesalpinus has to say with regard to the
circulation:--
"He thus appears to have grasped the important truth, hidden, it
would seem, from all before him, that the heart, at its systole,
discharges its contents into the aorta (and pulmonary artery), and
at its diastole receives blood from the vena cava (and pulmonary
vein)."
"Again, in his Medical Questions he seems to have grasped the facts
of the flow from the arteries to the veins, and of the flow along
the veins to the heart."
That there was no change of Papal policy in the next century can be
gathered from an interesting phase of Papal interest in science which,
though not directly concerned with medicine, eventually resulted in
important theoretic advances in medical science. This was the
encouragement of Father Kircher's work at Rome. Father Kircher was the
Jesuit who made the first scientific museum. As the result of his
general interest in things scientific he wrote a little book on the
pest. In this book he stated in very clear terms the modern doctrine
of the origin of disease from little living things, which he called
corpuscles. Because of this Tyndall attributes to Father Kircher the
first realization of the role that bacteria play in disease. Even more
wonderful than this, however, was Father Kircher's anticipation of
modern ideas with regard to the conveyance of disease. He insisted
that contagious diseases, as a rule, were not carried, as had been
thought, by the air, but {239} were conveyed from one person to
another, either directly, or by the intermediation of some living
thing. He considered that cats and dogs were surely active in
conveying diseases, and he even reached the conclusion that insects
were also important in this matter. His expressions with regard to
this are not of the indefinite character which one often encounters in
the supposed anticipation of important principles in medicine, but are
very precise and definite. Father Kircher is quoted by Dr. Howard
Kelly, of Baltimore, in his life of Major Walter Reed, whose work in
showing that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes is well known,
as saying in one place, "Flies carry the plague," and in another
place, "There can be no doubt that flies feed on the internal
secretions of the diseased dying, then flying away they deposit their
excretions on the food in neighboring dwellings, and persons who eat
it are thus infected." It is interesting to find that the Professor of
the Practice of Medicine in the Papal University at Rome when this
book was published, far from resenting, as many professors of medicine
might, the excursion of an outsider into his science, said Father
Kircher's book "not only contains an excellent resume of all that is
known about the pest or plague, but also many valuable hints and
suggestions on the regional spread of the disease which had never
before been made." He did not hesitate to add that it was marvelous
for a man, not educated as a physician, to have reached such
surprising conclusions, which seemed worthy of general acceptance. All
this, it may be said in passing, was within a few years after the
trial of Galileo. In this next century the Popes continued their
special efforts to secure the greatest teachers of anatomy and
physiology for their Roman medical school. One of the {240} results
was the appointment of Malpighi, whose name has deservedly become
attached to more structures in the human body because of tissues which
he first studied in detail, than any other man in the history of
medicine. Malpighi represents the beginning of most of the comparative
biological sciences, and his original observations upon plants, upon
the lower animals, on fishes and then on the anatomical structure of
man and the higher animals, stamp him as an investigating genius of
the highest order. He was the personal friend of Innocent XI., who
wished to have him near him at Rome as his own medical adviser, and
besides desired the prestige of his fame and the stimulating example
of his investigating spirit for the students of the medical school of
the Sapienza. The closing years of Malpighi's life were rendered
happier, and his wonderful researches were as well rewarded as such
work can be, by the estimation in which he was held at Rome.
Malpighi was succeeded as Papal Physician and Professor in Rome by
Tozzi, who is distinguished in the history of medicine for his
commentaries on the ancients rather than for original observation, but
who was looked upon in his time as one of the most prominent
physicians in Italy. Tozzi had been the Professor of Medicine and
Mathematics at the University of Naples, where he became famous. From
here he received a flattering invitation to the chair of physic at
Padua. In order that he might not desert Naples, his salary was raised
and he was given the post of Protomedicus or Chief Physician to the
Court. It was after this that the death of Malpighi left an important
chair vacant in Rome, and there being no one apparently more worthy
than this man for whom other important universities were contending,
he {241} was offered the chair on such excellent conditions that he
accepted it. It is another case of the Popes being not only willing
and even anxious, but also able because of their position, to secure
the best talent available for their medical school at the Roman
University.
Undoubtedly one of the greatest members of the faculty that the Papal
Medical School ever had is Lancisi, one of the supreme medical
teachers of history, who is usually considered one of the founders of
modern clinical medicine. When at the beginning of the eighteenth
century Boerhaave attracted the attention of the world by his bedside
teaching of medicine at Leyden, there were two occupants of thrones in
Europe who proved to have particular interest in this new departure.
They were perhaps the last two who might ordinarily be expected to
have much use for such improvements in medical education. One of them
was the Empress Maria Theresa, of Austria, whose patronage of
Boerhaave 's pupil, Van Swieten, secured the establishment of that
system of clinical teaching which has since made the Vienna Medical
School famous. The other was the Pope. With his approbation Lancisi
established clinical teaching at Rome, and thus did much to maintain
at Rome a great center of medical progress during the eighteenth
century.
Lancisi was graduated at the Sapienza, the Roman University, at the
early age of eighteen. When only twenty-two he became assistant
physician at the Santo Spirito Hospital and began to show the first
hint of the brilliant genius he was to display later in life.
Some ten years later, as the result of a competitive examination which
still further demonstrated his talents, he was chosen Professor of
Anatomy in his Alma Mater, {242} the Sapienza. He was only
thirty-three at the time, and the fact that he should be chosen shows
that the Papal University was ready to take advantage of talent
wherever it found it and did not allow itself to be won only by
notoriety at a distance. The excellence of the choice was demonstrated
before long by Lancisi's brilliant career as a teacher and an original
investigator. Some of the most distinguished medical men from all over
the world came to listen to his lectures (according to Hirsch's
Biographical Lexicon of the Most Prominent Physicians of All Times and
Peoples), and even Malpighi and Tozzi, the Papal physicians during the
time, were among his auditors. [Footnote 29]
[Footnote 29: Most of these details are taken from Hirsch's
Biographisches Lexicon der hervorragenden Aertzte aller Zeiten und
Völker. Wien und Leipzig, 1886.]
After the departure of Tozzi from Rome Lancisi became the Papal
physician. He continued to be the medical adviser of Popes Innocent
XI. and XII. and of Clement XI. until his death in 1720. It was under
Clement that he had the new clinic built, in which teaching after the
manner of Boerhaave was to be established. At his death Lancisi left
his fortune and his library to Santo Spirito Hospital, on condition
that a new portion of the hospital should be erected for women. There
is no doubt that he belongs among the most distinguished of
contributors to medical science, and Hirsch declares that anatomy,
practical medicine, and hygiene are indebted to him for notable
achievements. His books are still classics. The one on Sudden Death
worked a revolution in the medical diseases of the brain and heart.
His work _De Motu Cordis et Aneurysmatibus_ has been pronounced
epoch-making, and his suggestion of percussion over the sternum in
order to {243} determine the presence of an aneurysm, made him almost
an anticipator of Auenbrugger and prompted Morgagni's famous book _De
Sedibus et Causis Morborum_, which appeared after his death. Lancisi's
work on Aneurysms was not published until after his death.
Two others of his books deserve mention because they show how broad
were the interests of the man in many phases of progress in medicine.
Their titles are Diseases and Infections of Domestic Animals and The
Climate of Rome.
The next great name in Italian medicine is that of Morgagni. He was
not a regular Papal physician, nor a member of the faculty of the
Papal Medical School, but he was often consulted, as we told in the
chapter on Papal Physicians, both as to the health of the Popes and
the methods of teaching at the Roman Medical School. His life brings
us down almost to the nineteenth century, and the cordial relations of
the Popes to him, far from being an exception in the history of
medicine, are only typical of the attitude of the Roman Pontiffs to
medical and all other scientists from the dawn of the history of
science in modern times.
While the Papal Medical School at Rome, attached to the university of
the city and directly under the control of the Papal Curia, more
especially deserves the name thus given it, it must not be forgotten
that there was in the Papal States a series of medical schools in
various cities. One of these, at Perugia, founded by a bull of Pope
John XXII., has come under consideration in the chapter on A Papal
Patron of Medical Education. Another medical school, that of Ferrara,
which also was in the Papal States, had considerable prestige. Some
distinguished professors taught there before going to {244} Padua or
Bologna. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Bologna, after
having been during the preceding three centuries under the domination
of one powerful family or another, from the Pepoli to the Bentivogli,
and then to the Visconti and back again to the Bentivogli, was
incorporated in the Papal States under Pope Julius II. At this time
the Medical School of Bologna was at the height of its reputation and
was one of the two greatest medical schools in Italy. Padua was its
only rival. Shortly after this Rome became a serious competitor in
medical education. Practically, then, this was a second Papal medical
school, almost as directly under the control of the Popes as the Roman
Medical School. Far from there being any diminution in the glory or
the efficiency of the Bolognese Medical School, its reputation even
became enhanced after the city came under the control of the Popes.
This is all the more surprising because, as we have shown, just about
this time the Popes began the work of making their Medical School at
Rome the most important center for medical education, especially in
the scientific phases of medicine--anatomy, physiology, and
comparative anatomy--that there was at that time in the world. In
spite of this rivalry, however, nothing was done directly to hurt the
prestige of the school of Bologna, and indeed the rivalry seems to
have been more of an encouraging competition than in any sense a
destructive struggle for existence. When the Popes took possession of
Bologna, Alexander Achillini was professor of anatomy and medicine in
the Bolognese school, and his discoveries and methods of investigation
attracted the attention of students from all over the world. His
assistant for many years and his successor in the {245} post was
Berengar of Carpi, of whom we have already said much in the chapter
Anatomy Down to the Renaissance. For some time Vesalius lectured on
medicine and anatomy at Bologna, and one of Berengar's most
distinguished successors in the sixteenth century was Aranzi, who
occupied the post of anatomical professor for thirty-two years and who
corrected a number of errors in anatomical detail that had been made
by Vesalius and others of the preceding generation. He confirmed
Columbus's discoveries at Rome with regard to the course which the
blood follows in passing from the right to the left side of the heart,
and made many important additions to the knowledge of the anatomical
relations of the cavities of the heart, the valves, and the great
blood vessels. There are a number of important structures in the brain
which owe their names to him, and his descriptions of them are better,
according to Prof. Turner, than those of other anatomists for a
century after his time.
The tradition of great teachers thus carried on during the first
century after the absorption of Bologna into the Papal States,
continued uninterruptedly in the next century, when we find on the
list of professors at Bologna such names as those of Malpighi, the
greatest mind in the medical sciences of the seventeenth century, and
his colleague Fracassati, who, though over-shrouded by Malpighi, still
claims a prominent place in the history of medicine. Bologna has a
special feature of medical development to its credit which, because of
its importance for science in general as well as for medicine,
deserves to be mentioned here. During the century after the Popes
became the rulers of the city scientific societies were founded here,
and as the professors and {246} students of the medical school were
also the most interested in science in general, the membership of
these societies was largely made up of individuals connected with the
medical school. A special society for the cultivation of anatomical
knowledge, the first of its kind ever founded, was established in
Bologna scarcely more than a century after the city came under the
Papal dominion. It was called the Coro Anatomico, or anatomical choir,
and had at first only nine members. Among these, however, were such
distinguished men as Malpighi, Fracassati, Capponi, and Massari, to
the last of whom the initiative of the foundation of the society is
said to have been due. Bologna was noted during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries for the number of foreign students of medicine
who were attracted to its hospitable medical school and who carried
the tradition of science for its own sake, so characteristic of this
Papal Medical School, to all parts of the world.
After this consideration of the relation of the Popes to medical
science during many centuries when medicine practically included all
the physical sciences, it may seem utterly inexplicable to any
fair-minded person that the tradition of the opposition of the Popes
to science and scientific educational development should have
apparently become a commonplace in history. This will not be a
surprise, however, to those who know how perversive and influential
has been the Protestant tradition which from the beginning of the
sixteenth century has devoted itself to blackening the reputation of
the Church, the Popes, and Catholic ecclesiastics generally. Nowhere
is this more true than in history as written for English-speaking
people. Those who left the old Church and their immediate descendants,
justified their {247} withdrawal to themselves as well as others, by
taking every possible excuse and inventing every possible pretext, to
show how unworthy of their continued allegiance the old Church had
been. The point of view thus assumed was taken quite seriously by
succeeding generations, until at length a whole body of historical
traditions, utterly unfounded in fact, accumulated, especially in
England, where it must be remembered that for several centuries
Catholics were not in a position to impugn and eradicate it. This
unfortunate state of affairs, and not real opposition on the part of
the Popes to science, is the source of the tradition with regard to
the supposed opposition between the Church and science.
{248}
THE FOUNDATION OF CITY HOSPITALS.
Probably the most important work that the Popes did for medical
science in the Middle Ages was their encouragement of the development
of a hospital system throughout Christianity. The story of this
movement is not only interesting because it represents a coordination
of social effort for the relief of suffering humanity, but also
because it represents the provision of opportunities for the study of
disease and the skilled care of the ailing such as can come in no
other way. Those who are familiar with the history of medicine, and
especially of surgery, know that a great period of progress in these
departments came during the thirteenth century. The next two centuries
indeed represent an epoch of surgical advance such as was probably
never surpassed and only equalled by the last century. This seems much
to say of a medieval century 700 years ago, but our chapter on surgery
will, I think, amply justify the assertion. The reasons for this great
development in surgical knowledge are properly understood only when we
come to realize that there was a corresponding development in hospital
organization. These two features of medicine always go hand in hand.
The hospitals, as might be expected, preceded the surgical
development, and owed their great progress at this time mainly to the
Popes.
The city hospital as we have it at the present time, that is, the
public institution meant for the reception of those suffering from
accidents, from acute diseases of various kinds, and also for
providing shelter for those {249} who have become ill and have no
friends to take care of them, is an establishment dating from the
beginning of the thirteenth century. It will doubtless be a surprise
to most people to be told that the modern world owes this beneficent
institution to the fatherly watchfulness, the kindly foresight, and
the very practical charity of one of the greatest of the Popes, whose
name is usually associated with ambitious schemes for making the
Papacy a great political power in Europe, rather than as the prime
mover in what was probably the most far-reaching good work of supreme
social significance that was ever accomplished.
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, mainly as the result of
those much abused sources of many benefits to mankind in the Middle
Ages, the Crusades, the people of Europe had begun to dwell together
in towns much more than before. It is closeness of population that
gives rise to the social needs. While people were scattered throughout
the country diseases were not so prevalent, epidemics were not likely
to spread, and the charitable spirit of the rural people themselves
was quite sufficient to enable them to care for the few ailing persons
to be found. With the advent of even small city life, however, came
the demand for hospitals in the true sense of the word, and this need
did not long escape the watchful eye of Innocent III. He recognized
the necessity for a city hospital in Rome, and in accordance with his
very practical character and wonderful activity, at once set about its
foundation.
As was to be expected from his wise foresight, he did not do so
without due consideration. He consulted many visitors to Rome and many
distinguished medical authorities as to what they considered to be the
best conducted {250} and most ably managed institution for the care of
the sick in Europe at that time. Almost by common consent he was
assured that the most successful hospital management was to be found
at Montpelier. This French town near the shores of the Mediterranean
had succeeded to the medical prestige formerly held by Salerno, and
was now the favorite place of pilgrimage for the nobility and reigning
sovereigns of Europe, whenever they became so ill that their ordinary
medical attendants seemed to be able to do nothing for them. Pope
Innocent was further told that the institution at Montpelier which was
best conducted was undoubtedly the Hospital of the Fathers of the Holy
Spirit.
Accordingly, the Pope extended an invitation which, under the
circumstances, must have been practically a command, to Guy or Guido
of Montpelier, the administrative head to whom the hospital there owed
its successful organization, to come to Rome and establish a hospital
of his order in the Papal capital. He provided the order with a
sufficient foundation in what is now known as the Borgo, not far from
the present Vatican. On this was erected, at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, a hospital of the Holy Spirit, which still exists
there, though, of course, the building has been many times renewed
since the original foundation. This hospital of the Holy Spirit soon
attained a world-wide reputation for careful nursing and medical
attendance and for the discretion with which its surgical cases were
treated. It was understood that all the ailing picked up on the
streets should be brought to the hospital, and that all the wounded
and injured would be welcomed there. Besides, certain of the
attendants of the hospital went out every day to look for any patients
who might {251} be neglected or be without sufficient care, especially
in the poorer quarters of the city, and these were also transported to
the hospital. This old Santo-Spirito hospital then was exactly the
model of our modern city hospitals.
Pope Innocent's idea, however, was not to establish a hospital at Rome
alone, but his fatherly solicitude went out to every city in
Christendom. In accordance with this pre-determined plan, by personal
persuasion, by the display of an interest in hospital work, and by
official Papal encouragement he succeeded in having, during his own
pontificate, a number of hospitals established in all parts of the
then civilized world on the model of this hospital of the Holy Ghost
at Rome. The initiative thus given proved lasting, and even after the
Pontiff's death hospitals of the Holy Ghost continued to multiply in
various parts of Europe, until scarcely a city of any importance was
without one.
It is no less a person than Virchow, the greatest of modern medical
scientists, who has traced the origins of the modern German city
hospitals back to Innocent and given us a list of those which were
established during the century following his pontificate. Here are the
names of those towns from Virchow's list in which hospitals were
founded during the thirteenth century in Germany alone, which will
show very convincingly how widespread the hospital establishment
movement was: Zurich, St. Gallen, Bern, Basel, Constanz, Villingen,
Pfullendorf, Freiburg, Breisch, Stephansfelden, Oppenheim, Mainz,
Speyer, Coblenz (an der Leer), Cologne, Crefeld, Ulm, Biberach,
Rothenburg, Kirchheim, Mergentheim, Wimpfen, Reutlingen, Memmingen,
Augsburg, Rothenburg a. Tauber, München, Frankfort a. M., {252}
Hoxter, Dortmund, Brandenburg, Spandau, Salzwedel, Stendal, Berlin,
Perleberg, Pritzwalk, Halberstadt, Halle, Quedlinburg, Helmstedt,
Magdeburg, Sangerhauson, Eisenach, Naumburg, Hanover, Gottingen,
Northeim, Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, Parchim, Wismar, Rostock, Schwerin,
Mollen, Oldeslo, Ratzelburg, Ribnitz, Stettin, Stralsund, Greifswald,
Demmin, Anclam, Breslau, Bunzlau, Gorlitz, Brieg, Glatz, Sagan,
Steinau, Glogau, Inowraclaw, Wien, Meran, Brixen, Sterzing, Elbing,
Thorn, Königsberg, Danzig, Marienburg, Riga.
Many of these towns were comparatively small. In fact, there were no
cities that we moderns would call large in the thirteenth century.
London had probably not more than some twenty thousand; Paris, even at
the most flourishing period of the university, under fifty thousand.
Most of the German towns had less than ten thousand, and of these
which are the sites of hospital foundations mentioned by Virchow,
probably not more than a dozen, if that many, had more than five
thousand inhabitants. Since the movement spread even to such small
towns, it can be readily understood how far-reaching in its effects
was the policy initiated by Innocent III. and how thoroughly he laid
the secure foundations of a great Christian hospital system.
[Illustration: Holy Ghost Hospital (Lübeck)]
Since the Papal example and recommendations produced so much effect
upon Germany, which was not so closely united to the Holy See as were
the Latin nations, it is easy to understand what an impetus to the
hospital movement must have been given in the southern countries, even
though we have not had the advantage of so patient a collector of
information as Virchow to give us all the details. In the larger
cities hospitals were already in existence, and these took on a new
life because of the {253} hospital movement. In Paris, for instance,
the Hotel Dieu, which had been in existence for some time, became so
cramped for room in its original location, just beyond the Petit Pont,
that at this time it had to be transferred to its present commodious
quarters next to the Cathedral, on the square of Notre Dame. The
hospital became a city hospital in the genuine sense of the word, and
the citizens became interested in it to a noteworthy degree. It began
to be the subject of bequests and benefactions of all kinds on the
part of the clergy and laity, and many interesting details of these
benefactions are still at hand in documents contained in the hospital
archives of Paris. [Footnote 30]
[Footnote 30: Bordier, Archives Hospitalières De Paris, Paris;
Champion, Publications for the Society of the History of Paris, 1877.]
There are some curious historical details in these old documents,
since they serve to show the method in use for designating houses at
that time when, it must be recalled, street numbers had not as yet
been invented. Most of the houses had on their facades some image or
figure by which they were known. The Hotel Dieu, for instance,
acquired during the thirteenth century the houses with the image of
St. Louis, with the sign of the golden lion of Flanders, with the
image of the butterfly with that of the wolf, with the images of the
three monkeys, with the image of the iron lion, with the cross of
gold, with the three chimneys, etc. A certain amount for the support
of the hospital was allowed out of the city revenues, and a favorite
method was to permit, in times of special stress upon the hospital,
the collection of a tax on all of a certain commodity that came into
the city. For a time, for instance, during an epidemic or other period
of necessity, a hospital would obtain {254} permission to collect a
tax on all the salt, or, occasionally, on all the wheat that entered
Paris. This serves to show the renewed interest in city hospital
affairs that had arisen mainly as the result of Papal initiative and
encouragement.
In the smaller towns in France there was the same hospital movement as
characterized the situation in Germany. In the south, the closeness of
Montpelier made the example of the hospital of the Holy Ghost of that
city especially forceful. In other portions of France it is well known
that the Sisters of the Holy Ghost very early established separate
hospitals from those founded by the Brothers of the Holy Ghost. There
are records of such separate hospitals entirely under the control of
Sisters in Bar-Sur-Aube, in Neuf-Chateau, and, according to Virchow,
at many other places. At the same time, however, there still continued
to be hospitals of the Holy Ghost as at Besancon, where the Brothers
and Sisters of the Holy Ghost had their institutions in common, though
there was a distinct separation of the communities and allotment of
tasks. The Brothers cared rather for the surgical cases, while the
care of the children and the pregnant women was confided to the
Sisters. This of itself was rather an advantage, since the separation
of the women and the children from the ordinary hospital patients,
must have proved an important preventive of infection and an
ameliorating factor as regards that hospital atmosphere especially
likely to be unfavorable to these delicate, sensitive cases. We know
now what hospitalism means for them.
That the influence of the movement initiated by Innocent III. was felt
even in distant England is very clear, from the fact that practically
all of the famous old {255} British hospitals date their existence as
institutions for the care of the ailing from the thirteenth century.
The famous St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London had been a priory
founded at the beginning of the twelfth century, which took care of
the poor and the destitute sick, but at the beginning of the
thirteenth century it became, in imitation of the Hospital of the Holy
Spirit at Rome, frankly a hospital in the modern sense of the word.
St. Thomas's Hospital, which continues to be down to the present time
one of the great medical institutions of London, was founded by
Richard, Prior of Bermondsey, in 1213. Bethlehem, or as the name was
softened in the English speech of the people, Bedlam, was founded
about the middle of the thirteenth century. Originally it was a
general hospital for the care of the sick of all kinds, though in
later times it became, as its name has come to signify in modern
English, a place exclusively for the care of the insane. Bedlam, in
the fourteenth century, and probably also in the later years of the
thirteenth, made provision for a certain number of the insane in
addition to other patients, so that it presented the accomplishment of
that desideratum for which we are striving in the twentieth century--a
city general hospital with psychopathic wards. This arrangement, as we
have said in the chapter on the Church and the Mentally Afflicted, has
many advantages over the special hospital for the insane, entrance to
which, as a rule, requires tedious formalities.
Bridewell and Christ's Hospital, the other two of the institutions
long known as the five royal hospitals of London, were either actually
founded or received a great stimulus and a thorough reorganization
during the thirteenth century. In the succeeding centuries Bridewell
{256} ceased to be a hospital and became a prison, while Christ's
Hospital, though retaining its name, became a school. With some of
these institutions the name of Edward VI. has become associated, but,
as pointed out by Gairdner, the English historical writer, without any
due warrant. Gairdner says in his History of the English Church in the
Sixteenth Century, "Edward has left a name in connection with
charities and education which critical scholars find to be little
justified by fact." The supposed foundation of St. Thomas's Hospital,
as he points out, was only the re-establishment of this institution,
"and even when it was granted by Edward to the citizens of London, it
was not without their paying for it." Many institutions, charitable
and educational, had been destroyed by Henry VIII., and the crying
need for them became so great under Edward's reign that the government
was compelled to provide for their re-establishment.
It is no wonder, with all this activity of the hospital foundation
movement, that Virchow should have been unstinted in his praise of the
Pontiff and of the Church responsible for the great charity. He said:
"It may be recognized and admitted that it was reserved for the Roman
Catholic Church, and above all for Innocent III., not only to open the
bourse of Christian charity and mercy in all its fulness, but also to
guide the life-giving stream into every branch of human life in an
ordered manner. For this reason alone the interest in this man and in
this time will never die out."
Even this was not all that he felt bound to say, and in his admiration
he quite forgot the constant opposition he manifested toward the
Papacy on all other occasions. This happened to be the one feature of
Papal influence {257} and endeavor that he had investigated most
thoroughly, and one is tempted to wonder if like investigation in
other directions would not have shown him the error of prejudiced
views he harbored with regard to other phases of the beneficent
influence of the Popes in history. More knowledge is all that is
needed, as a rule, to overcome all the anti-Papal prejudices founded
on supposed historical grounds.
Indeed, Virchow's tribute to Pope Innocent III. as the initiator of
all this humanitarian work is so frank and outspoken that, coming as
it does from a man whose sympathies with the Papacy were well known to
be the slightest, it deserves to be recalled in its completeness, in
order that another factor for the vindication of Innocent's character
may be better known. The great pathologist said: "The beginning of the
history of all of these German hospitals is connected with the name of
that Pope who made the boldest and farthest-reaching attempt to gather
the sum of human interests into the organization of the Catholic
Church. The hospitals of the Holy Ghost were one of the many means by
which Innocent III. thought to hold humanity to the Holy See. And
surely it was one of the most effective. Was it not calculated to
create the most profound impression to see how the mighty Pope, who
humbled emperors and deposed kings, who was the unrelenting adversary
of the Albigenses, turned his eyes sympathetically upon the poor and
sick, sought the helpless and the neglected upon the streets, and
saved the illegitimate children from death in the waters! There is
something at once conciliating and fascinating in the fact, that at
the very time when the fourth crusade was inaugurated through his
influence, the thought of founding a great {258} organization of an
essentially humane character, which was eventually to extend
throughout all Christendom, was also taking form in his soul; and that
in the same year (1204) in which the new Latin Empire was founded in
Constantinople, the newly erected hospital of the Holy Spirit, by the
old bridge on the other side of the Tiber, was blessed and dedicated
as the future centre of this organization." [Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: Virchow's article on the German hospitals is to be found
in the second volume of his collection of essays on Public Medicine
and the History of Epidemics, which is, unfortunately, not translated
into English, so far as I know, but will have to be consulted in the
original Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der Oeffentlichen
Medicin und der Seuchenlehre von Rudolf Virchow, Berlin, 1879. August
Hirschwald.]
The quotation from Virchow gives a good and quite comprehensive idea
of the scope of these institutions. The ailing of all kinds were
received beneath their hospitable roof. In many cases the regulations
for the reception of pregnant women and for the care of the foundlings
are still extant, besides the hospital rules for the care of the
various kinds of patients. The department set aside for the foundlings
was in most places rather an allied institution than an integral part
of the hospital itself. While these were called findel or foundling
houses in Germany, in Italy this harsh name was not used, but the
institutions were termed hospitals for the innocents, thus emphasizing
the most pitiable feature of the cases of the little patients, and not
branding them for life with a name that suggested their having been
abandoned by those who should have cared for them.
The regulations for the admission and care of patients are interesting
as showing how much these medieval institutions tried to fulfill the
ideal of hospital work. The people of the Middle Ages had not as yet
suffered all {259} the disillusionments that come from the abuse of
charity at the hands of those who least deserve help, and besides, the
attendants at the hospitals were expected to do their work for its own
sake and from the highest motives of Christian benevolence rather than
for any lesser reward. At the beginning, at least, there seems to be
no doubt that this lofty purpose was accomplished very satisfactorily;
but men and women are only human, and after a time there was
deterioration. Even Virchow, however, was so struck by the ideal
conditions that existed in these early hospitals that he discussed the
necessity for having in modern times hospital attendants with as
unselfish motives as those of the medieval period. It seems worth
while then to give some of the details of this supremely Christian
management of hospital work.
In an article on the medieval hospitals in the Dublin Review for
October, 1903, Elizabeth Speakman quotes from the statutes of various
hospitals sufficient to show how the internal government of these
charitable institutions was regulated. There was always a porter at
the main door, usually one of the Brothers or Sisters, who had the
power to receive patients applying for admission. At certain places,
however, it seems to have been necessary to inform the superior; and
the statutes of the French Hospital at Angers say, that the prioress
is to go herself without delay to receive patients or to send one of
the Sisters for that purpose, "not severe or hard, but kind of
countenance." At the same place the statutes say, "the number of the
sick is not to be defined, for the house is theirs, and so all
indifferently shall be received as far as the resources of the house
allow."
From many of the hospitals members of the community were sent out from
day to day to find out if there {260} were any lying sick who needed
care and who should be sent to the hospital. They were expected also
to pick up any of the infirm whom they might find along the streets
and bring them to the hospital. The attitude which the religious
attendants at the hospitals were to assume toward the patients upon
whom they wait is clearly stated. In nearly all of the French
hospitals of the thirteenth century, at least, the statutes in this
matter do not differ much from this specimen:
"When the patient arrives he shall be received thus: First, having
confessed his sins to the priest, he shall be communicated religiously
and afterward be carried to bed and treated there as our Lord,
according to the resources of the house; each day, before the repast
of the brethren, he shall be given food with charity, and each Sunday
the epistle and gospel shall be read and aspersion with holy water
made with procession."
As is noted by Miss Speakman, all through the hospital statutes of
these times the name of Masters or Lords is applied to the patients.
The expression in Old French is Les Seignors Malades. The ordinary
name for hospital was Maison Dieu, which has been well translated
"God's Hostelry." It is evident, then, though the origin of the phrase
"Our Lords the Poor," as applied to hospital patients, has been said
to be obscure, that it is only a re-echo of the scriptural expression,
"Whatsoever ye shall do, even to the least of these, behold ye do it
unto Me." A quotation which was emphasized in the old rule of St.
Benedict, promulgated for the treatment of those received into the
hospitality of the Benedictine monasteries, "All guests shall be
received as Christ, who Himself has said, 'I was a stranger and ye
took Me in.'"
{261}
In modern times, the necessity for providing for patients whatever
within reason they may long for has often been insisted on. It is
curiously interesting to find a striking anticipation of this very
modern rule in the customs of these old-time hospitals. As a result of
the attitude of supreme good will toward patients, there is an
injunction in many hospital statutes, that whatever the patient may
desire, if it can be obtained and is not bad for him, shall be given
to him until he is restored to health. The Knights Hospitalers of St.
John of Jerusalem followed the injunction so carefully and endeavored
to satisfy even whims of their patients that might seem unreasonable
to such an extent, that their conduct in the matter became proverbial
and gave rise to at least one pretty legend, the hero of which is no
less a personage than the famous Eastern Sultan of the later Crusade
period.
"Saladin desiring to prove for himself this reputed indulgence of
the knights to their patients, disguised himself as a pilgrim and
was received among the sick in the hospital in Jerusalem. He refused
all food, declaring that there was only one thing that he fancied,
and that he knew they would not give him. On being pressed, he
confessed that it was one of the feet of the horse of the Grand
Master. The latter, on being acquainted with this fact, ordered that
the noble animal should be killed and the sick stranger's desire
satisfied. Saladin at this point, thinking the experiment had gone
far enough, declared himself taken with a repugnance to it, so the
animal was spared."
Virchow studied very faithfully the management of these medieval
hospitals, and was evidently quite impressed with the success with
which difficulties had been {262} met and overcome. None knew better
than he all the difficulties there were in hospital management, for
during nearly fifty years he had been identified with many hospitals,
from city charity institutions to the various kinds needed for war and
those erected in connection with universities for teaching purposes.
He had very little patience with religious formulas, and was indeed a
typical agnostic. Notwithstanding this, he has been perfectly frank in
confessing how much is accomplished by the religious management of the
hospitals, and even did not hesitate to declare that if hospitals for
the poor particularly, are to be successfully managed, there must be a
change in the view-point of those who take up the work of hospital
nursing, and the attendants must come from better social classes than
is at present the custom. (This is of course for Germany.)
The question as to whether secular or religious management of
hospitals shall prevail has not been as yet absolutely decided, and
this adds to the value of Virchow's opinion. No one knew better than
he of the many sacrifices required if the patients are to be properly
cared for. Himself, as I have said, utterly without religion, it is
curious to see how he recognizes the benefit that religious motives
confer upon the management of a hospital, and how much better the work
is likely to be done by those who give themselves up to the care of
the sick as a Christian duty. He says:
"The general hospital is the real purpose of our time, and anyone
who takes up service in it must give himself up to it from the
purest of humanitarian motives. The hospital attendant must, at
least morally and spiritually, see in the patient only the helpless
and suffering man, his brother and his neighbor; and in order to be
able to {263} do this he must have a warm heart, an earnest
devotion, and a true sense of duty. There is in reality scarcely any
human occupation that brings so immediately with it its own reward,
or in which the feeling of personal contentment comes from thorough
accomplishment of purpose.
"But so far as the accomplishment of the task set one is concerned,
the attendant in the hospital has ever and anon new demands made
upon him and a new task imposed. One patient lies next the other,
and when one departs another comes in his place.
"From day to day, from week to week, from year to year, always the
same work, over and over again, only forever for new patients. This
tires out the hospital attendant. Then the custom of seeing
suffering weakens the enthusiasm and lessens the sense of duty.
There is need of a special stimulus in order to reawaken the old
sympathy. Whence shall this be obtained--from religion or from some
temporal reward? In trying to solve this problem we are standing
before the most difficult problem of modern hospital management.
Before us lie the paths of religious and simple care for the sick.
We may say at once that the proper solution has not yet been found.
"It may be easy, from an impartial but one-sided view of the
subject, to say that the feeling of duty, of devotion, even of
sacrifice, is by no means necessarily dependent on the hope of
religious reward, nor the expectation of material remuneration. Such
a point of view, however, I may say at once, such a freedom of good
will, such a warmth of sympathy from purely human motives as would
be expected in these conditions, are only to be found in very
unaccustomed goodness of {264} disposition, or an extent of ethical
education such as cannot be found in most of those who give
themselves at the present time to the services of the sick in the
hospitals. If pure humanity is to be a motive, then other circles of
society must be induced to take part in the care of the sick. Our
training schools for nurses must teach very differently to what they
do at present, if the care of the sick in municipal hospitals shall
compare favorably with that given them in religious institutions.
Our hospitals must become transformed into true humanitarian
institutions."
While some of this striking opinion of Virchow's was derived from
personal experience with hospitals managed by religious, it must not
be forgotten that such hospitals are rarer in Germany, at least in the
north, than almost anywhere else in the world. His opportunities then
were limited, and undoubtedly much of his favorable persuasions in
this regard was founded on his investigation of conditions as he had
learned to know them in the old-time hospitals of the later Middle
Ages. The traditions as to the treatment of patients in these early
times are such as to make us believe that hospital attendants did take
their work seriously from a very lofty motive, and that while medicine
and surgery were much less effective than in more modern times, the
tender care of patients did as much as was possible to make inevitable
suffering more bearable, and to keep the sight of painfully
approaching death from being a source of discouragement and even of
despair.
We have the best evidence, that of a contemporary, as to the
conditions which obtained in these medieval hospitals, and the
dispositions of the attendants as regards their religious duties would
seem to be an unmistakable {265} index as to their willingness to
sacrifice their own comfort for the sake of the patients. The well
known Jacques de Vitry, who had been Bishop of Acre and afterwards
Cardinal, and whose wide travel had given him many opportunities to
judge for himself, said:
"There are innumerable congregations, both of men and women,
renouncing the world and living regularly in leper houses and
hospitals of the poor, humbly and devoutly ministering to the poor
and the infirm. They live according to the rule of St. Augustine,
without property and in community and under obedience to one above
them; and having assumed the regular habit, they promise to God
perpetual continence. The men and women, with all reverence and
chastity, eat and sleep apart. The canonical hours, as far as
hospitality and the care of the poor of Christ allow, by day and
night they attend. In houses where there is a large congregation of
brethren and sisters, they congregate frequently in chapter for the
correction of faults and other causes. Readings from Holy Scriptures
are frequently made during meals, and silence is maintained during
meals in the refectory and other fixed places and at certain times.
.... Their chaplains, ministering in spiritual matters with all
humility and devotion to the infirm, instruct the ignorant in the
word of divine preaching, console the faint-hearted and weak, and
exhort them to patience and to correspond to the action of grace.
They celebrate divine office in the common chapel assiduously by day
and night, so that the sick can hear from their beds. Confession and
extreme unction and the other sacraments they administer diligently
and solicitously to the sick, and to the dead they give due burial.
These ministers of Christ, sober and sparing to themselves and {266}
very strict and severe to their bodies, overflowing with charity to
the poor and infirm and ministering with tender heart to their
necessities according to their powers, are all the more lowly in the
House of God as they were of high rank in the world. They bear for
Christ's sake such unclean and almost intolerable things, that I do
not think any other can be compared to this martyrdom, holy and
precious in the sight of God."
It might perhaps be thought that these hospitals of the Middle Ages
would be of very little interest to the modern student of things
social and medical except for the fact, surprising enough in itself at
this time of supposed neglect of social duties, when the paternal
spirit of the municipality is presumed scarcely to have developed as
yet, that such institutions were provided. It would ordinarily be
assumed that they were, in accordance with the lack of knowledge of
the time as regards the influence of light and air on the ailing,
dingy and unventilated, lacking most of the qualities that distinguish
our modern hospital. As a matter of fact, however, just as our
architects go back to the Middle Ages to get models for our churches
and municipal buildings, and even our millionaires' palaces and public
institutions, they also find that in the matter of hospitals much
valuable guidance is to be obtained from what was accomplished by
these people of the Middle Ages, of whom we ordinarily think so
little. Mr. Arthur Dillon, an architect, writing in the "Mail and
Express" for May 7th, 1904, described the hospital founded by
Marguerite of Bourgogne, the sister of St. Louis, at Tanierre in
France in 1293. It consisted of a ward, a building attached to it by a
covered passage in which Marguerite herself lived for many years, and
_separate buildings_ for {267} kitchens, for storage of provisions and
for the lodging of the twenty monks and nuns who had charge of the
sick. A feature that perhaps we would not admire very much, was that
adjacent to the buildings there was a cemetery. They were not so
fearful about death in the Middle Ages, however, as we are apt to be;
and who shall say that the contemplation of it did not often give that
restful sense of submission to whatever would come, that sometimes
means so much in serious illness, and keeps the patient from still
further exhausting vitality by worrying as to the outcome? The
medicine was stronger than our degenerate generation might be able to
bear, but then all their medicines were apt to be stronger in that
time.
The situation of the hospital might well be thought ideal. The
princess had gardens about her lodging, and the whole property was
surrounded by a high wall, along which flowed the branches of a small
stream, which doubtless tempered the atmosphere and served as a
carrier off of much undesirable material. The hospital ward itself was
55 feet wide and 270 feet long and had a high arched ceiling of wood.
It was lighted by large pointed windows high up in the walls. At the
level of the window-sills, some twelve feet from the floor, a narrow
gallery ran along the wall, from which the ventilation through the
windows might be readily regulated and on which convalescent patients
might walk or be seated in the sunshine. The beds were placed each in
a little room formed by low partitions. Privacy was thus secured much
better than in the modern hospital wards, and as there were only forty
beds, the ventilation was abundant.
Mr. Dillon, from the standpoint of the architect, says
of it:
{268}
"It was an admirable hospital in every way, and it is doubtful if we
to-day surpass it. It was isolated, the ward was separated from the
other buildings, it had the advantage we so often lose of being but
one story high, and more space was given to each patient than we can
now afford.
"The ventilation by the great windows and ventilators in the ceiling
was excellent; is was cheerfully lighted, and the arrangement of the
gallery shielded the patients from dazzling light and from draughts
from the windows and afforded an easy means of supervision, while
the division by the roofless, low partitions isolated the sick and
obviated the depression that comes from the sight of others in pain.
"It was, moreover, in great contrast to the cheerless white wards of
to-day. The vaulted ceiling was very beautiful; the woodwork was
richly carved, and the great windows over the altars were filled
with colored glass. Altogether, it was one of the best examples of
the best period of Gothic architecture."
Probably the most interesting feature of the early history of the
hospital movement is the spirit of evolution to meet growing needs and
developing ideals which it manifested. In spite of the judicious
consideration devoted to the establishment of the original hospital of
the Holy Ghost at Rome, it was not long before it proved inadequate
for its purpose. One of the eminently noteworthy things that
constantly repeat themselves in history is that where a social need is
discovered and a remedy found for it, it is not long before the need
increases to such a degree as to outstrip the original remedy. Before
half a century had passed Innocent's successors declared in
unmistakable terms that the original hospital was entirely too cramped
and crowded.
[Illustration: Hospital Ward of Tonnerre, France (_Viollet-le-Duc,
Dictionnaire de l' Architecture Française, XI au XVI Siècle_). This
was built by the sister of Louis IX of France, Marguerite of
Bourgogne, who retired to it herself to spend her life caring for the
ailing poor.]
{269}
Accordingly, a much larger and handsomer building was erected.
Visitors to Rome admired the new building, and it proved an incentive
for larger plans for hospitals in other important cities. At the end
of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries some
really imposing edifices were erected as hospitals, especially in
towns of Italy. It was at this time that the artistic Italian mind
seems to have realized the truth, which has only come to be recognized
again in quite recent times, that a hospital building should be as
fine a structure as the finances of a city will permit. It was felt
that nothing was too good for the ailing citizens and that the city
honored itself by making its public buildings a monument of artistic
purpose. The earliest example of how well this was accomplished is to
be found at Siena, whose hospital continues to be down to the present
time one of the most interesting objects of admiration for the
visitor. Portions of this Siena hospital as it now exists were built
as early as the last decade of the thirteenth and the first decade of
the fourteenth century. It was during the first half of the fourteenth
century that it was resolved to make the building as beautiful in the
interior by means of great artistic decoration and frescoes as it was
imposing on the exterior. It was not for a century and a half later
that Milan's magnificent hospital took on its modern shape, though the
city had been always famous for its care of the sick. The hospital
movement of the thirteenth century, however, culminated in monuments
as famous and as architecturally beautiful as any that have been built
in recent years.
To take, for example, that of Siena, a good {270} description of which
may be found in The Story of Siena, by G. Gardner. (Dent, London,
1902.) The buildings occupy the whole side of the Piazzo del Duomo,
directly opposite the facade. They constitute almost as striking a bit
of architecture as any edifice of the period, and contain a
magnificent set of frescoes, some of them of the fourteenth century,
many others of later centuries. The Siena school of painting in the
fourteenth century was doing some of the best art work of the time,
and as a consequence the hospital has been of perennial interest.
Artists and amateurs and dilettante visitors have gladly spent time in
studying and admiring its artistic treasures at nearly all times, but
more especially in recent years. The sympathetic admiration for its
art has led to a better appreciation of the motives of the generation
that built it, than even the sublime humanitarian purpose which
dictated it or the work for suffering humanity which it accomplished.
It is typical of the times in many ways. We have only just begun again
in very modern times, as we have already said, to consider that some
of the best of our buildings in any large city should be those
intended for the sick and the poor of the community. The city must
respond nobly to its civic duties. The idea, however, came so
naturally to the medieval mind that apparently there was no question
about it. Only in very recent years has come the additional thought
that these buildings must be appropriately decorated, and that the
work of the greatest artists of the time can have no better place for
its display than the walls of a hospital or a great charitable
institution. Bartolo's frescoes, on the walls of the hospital at
Siena, tell the story of the work that was done for foundlings and
pilgrims as well as for {271} the sick in the early days of its
establishment. The first picture of the series represents the baptism
of the children that had been picked up and brought to the hospital.
It is characteristic of the times, too, that one of the greatest
pictures on the hospital walls is not something that makes for the
glory of the trustees or the founders, nor that is some fancy of the
painter, some study of myth or landscape, in which he might have been
especially interested. Probably the masterpiece of the old painters is
the Scala del Paradiso (the stairs to heaven), by Vecchietta. The
picture was evidently painted for the department of the foundlings,
and its subject is the ascent of these little children to heaven and
their welcome by the angels and saints and by the Heavenly Father. A
more inspiring vision to be impressed upon the minds of these growing
children who had been abandoned by their own, and who must have felt
all of their loneliness in spite of their favorable surroundings,
could scarcely have been imagined.
The dedication of the hospital is expressed in terms very typical of
the Middle Ages, or as they might better be called, "The Ages of
Faith." It reminds one of the formal terms of wills, as they used to
be worded in olden times: "In the Name of God, Amen. To the honor,
praise and reverence of God and of His Mother, Madonna, Holy Mary
Virgin, and of all the saints of God, and to the honor and exaltation
of Holy Mother Church and of the Commune and of the people of the city
of Siena, and to its good and pacific state, and to the increase of
the Hospital of Madonna, Holy Mary Virgin, of Siena, which is placed
in front of the chief church of the city, and to the recreation of the
sick and {272} the foundlings of the said hospital." This dedication
is to be found at the beginning of the statutes of the hospital as
they were formulated in 1305.
The hospital did excellent service, and most of the original building
has remained down to our own day. It has seen many times of trial for
the citizens of Siena, and has proved its usefulness. Twice during the
fourteenth century it saw the coming of the Black Death, and its wards
and corridors and every room were filled with the dead and the dying.
During the fourteenth century St. Catherine of Siena spent much of her
time in the hospital, and it was her work here that gave her the
glorious prestige that came so unlooked for. The special confraternity
with which she was associated met in one of the smaller rooms of the
hospital. Attached to the hospital there was a special house for
lepers, and this was one of the favorite places for St. Catherine's
visitations. It is not surprising to find that she was, at the
beginning at least, very much opposed by her family in her choice of
such an occupation as this personal devotion to the poor and the sick.
In reading the story, one is reminded of the opposition that is
sometimes evoked at the present time when young women feel the
necessity for some occupation other than so-called social duties, and
take to slum visiting, or the care of the cancer poor, or some other
form of practical aid for the needy, apart from the giving of money,
or of doing a little sewing in a Lenten class, supposed to be the
limit of their charitable work in their special social circle.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL, MEXICO (FOUNDED BEFORE 1524) This hospital
was founded by Cortez prior to 1524 "in recognition of the graces and
mercies that God had bestowed upon him by the discovery and conquest
of New Spain and as an exoneration or satisfaction for any forgotten
fault or load which might weigh on his conscience and for which he
could not make special or particular atonement." After his death the
endowment was administered by a superintendent and has continued to be
under private management. It now belongs to the Dukes of Terranova y
Montaleone, Cortez' Italian descendants, who nominate and maintain an
agent to supervise the hospital (_A History of Nursing, Nutting and
Dock_).]
It is of curious interest, though not surprising, to find that in the
midst of the organization of new hospitals and reorganization of old
hospital foundations in the thirteenth century, attempts were made to
correct {273} abuses which still continue to be some of the thorny
problems of hospital management. For instance, the danger was
recognized of having the expenses of administration outrun those of
the hospital proper, and of having the number of attendants, or at
least of persons living upon the hospital revenues, greater than was
absolutely needed for the care of patients. There are various Papal
decrees and decisions of diocesan synods in this matter. Pope Honorius
III., who occupied the Papal See from 1216 to 1227, and must be
considered as a very worthy successor of the first great Pope of the
century, Innocent III., in approving the union of two hospital
foundations at Ghent, required that only a certain limited number of
Brothers and Sisters for nursing purposes should be received, in order
that the community expenses proper might not impair to too great a
degree the resources of the hospital for its real purpose of taking
care of patients. Previously, he had insisted by a decree that the
number of Brothers and Sisters in the hospital community at Louvain
should not exceed the proportion of more than one to nine of the
patients. Synodal decrees in various bishoprics allowed only board and
clothing, but nothing more, to attendants in hospitals. In the
thirteenth century the personal satisfaction of accomplishing a
charitable work in attendance upon the sick was expected to make up
for any further remuneration.
The other serious problem of hospital management was to keep those not
really suffering from serious disease, malingerers of various kinds,
from occupying beds and claiming attention, to the deprivation of
those who were genuinely ill. Various regulations were made looking to
the careful examinations of such persons, {274} though in most places
with the affirmation of a standing rule, that all those complaining of
illness were to be received into the hospital for at least one day,
until their cases could be examined with sufficient care to decide how
much of reality and how much of simulation there might be in their
pretended symptoms. The tramp, of course, has always been in the
world, and probably always will be, and so what are called the sturdy
vagrants (validi vagrantes) received the special attention of those
wishing to eliminate hospital abuses, and various decrees were made in
order to prevent them from receiving sustenance from the hospitals, or
in any other way abusing the privileges of these charitable
institutions.
A hospital movement, quite distinct from that of Innocent III., which
attracted so much attention shortly after the general hospital became
common as to deserve particular consideration, was the erection of the
leproseries or special institutions for the care of lepers. Leprosy
had become quite common in Europe during the Middle Ages, and the
continued contact of the West with the East during the crusades had
brought about a notable increase of the disease. It is not definitely
known how much of what was called leprosy at that time, really
belonged to the specific disease now known as lepra. There is no doubt
that many affections, which have since come to be considered as quite
harmless and non-contagious, were included under the designation
leprosy by the populace and even physicians incapable as yet of making
a proper differential diagnosis. Probably severe cases of eczema and
other chronic skin diseases, especially when complicated by the
results of wrongly directed treatment or of lack of cleansing, were
not infrequently pronounced to be true leprosy.
{275}
There is no doubt at all, however, of the occurrence of real leprosy
in many of the towns of the West from the twelfth to the fifteenth
centuries, and the erection of these hospitals proved the best
possible prophylactic against the further spread of the disease.
Leprosy is contagious, but only mildly so. Years of intimate
association with a leper may, and usually do, bring about the
communication of the disease to those around them, especially if they
do not exercise rather carefully, certain precise precautions as to
cleanliness after personal contact or after the handling of things
which have previously been in the leper's possession. As the result of
the existence of these houses of segregation, leprosy disappeared
during the course of the next three centuries, and thus a great
hygienic triumph was obtained by sanitary regulation.
This successful sanitary and hygienic work, which brought about
practically the complete obliteration of leprosy in the Middle Ages,
furnished the first example of the possibility of eradicating a
disease that has once become a serious scourge to mankind. That this
should have been accomplished by a movement that had its greatest
source in the thirteenth century is all the more surprising, since we
are usually accustomed to think of the people of the times as sadly
lacking in any interest in sanitary matters. The role of the Popes in
the matter is another striking feature well worthy of note. The
significance of the success of this segregation method was lost upon
men down almost to our own time. This was unfortunately because it was
considered that most of the epidemic diseases were conveyed by the
air. They were thought infectious and due to a climatic condition
rather than contagious, that is, conveyed by actual {276} contact with
the person having the disease or something that had touched him, which
is the view now held. With the beginning of the crusade against
tuberculosis in the later nineteenth century, however, the most
encouraging factor for those engaged in it was the history of the
success of segregation methods and careful prevention of the spread of
the disease, which had been pursued against leprosy. In a word, the
lessons in sanitation and prophylaxis of the thirteenth century are
only now bearing fruit because the intervening centuries did not have
sufficient knowledge to realize their import and take advantage of
them.
Pope Innocent III. was not the only occupant of the Papal throne whose
name deserves to be remembered with benedictions in connection with
the hospital movement of the thirteenth century. His successor took up
the work of encouragement where Innocent had left it at his death, and
did much to bring about the successful accomplishment of his
intentions in the ever wider spheres. Honorius III. is distinguished
by having made into an order the Antonine Congregation of Vienna,
which was especially devoted to the care of patients suffering from
the "holy fire" and from various mutilations. The disease known as the
holy fire seems to have been what is called in modern times
erysipelas. During the Middle Ages it received various titles, such as
St. Anthony's fire, St. Francis's fire, and the like, the latter part
of the designation evidently being due to the striking redness which
characterizes the disease, and which can be compared to nothing better
than the intense erythema consequent upon a rather severe burn. This
affection was much more common in the Middle Ages than in later times,
though it must not be forgotten that its {277} disappearance has come
mainly in the last twenty-five years. It is now known to be a
contagious disease, and indeed, as Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out
over half a century ago, may readily be carried from place to place by
the physician in attendance. It does not always manifest itself as
erysipelas when thus carried, however, and the merit of Dr. Holmes's
work was in pointing out the fact that physicians who attended
patients suffering from erysipelas and then waited on obstetrical
cases, were especially likely to carry the affection, which manifested
itself as puerperal fever. A number of cases of this kind were
reported and discussed by him, and there is no doubt that his warning
served to save many precious lives.
Of course nothing of this was known in the thirteenth century; yet the
encouragement given to this religious order which devoted itself
practically exclusively to the care in special hospitals of
erysipelas, must have had no little effect in bringing about a
limitation of the spread of the disease. In such hospitals patients
were not likely to come in contact with many persons, and consequently
the contagion-radius of the disease was limited. In our own time,
immediate segregation of cases when discovered has practically
eradicated it, so that many a young physician, even though ten years
in practice, has never seen a case of it. It was so common during the
Civil War and for half a century before that here in America, that
there were frequent epidemics of it in hospitals, and it was generally
recognized that the disease was so contagious, that when it once
gained a foothold in a hospital ward nearly every patient suffering
from an open wound was likely to be affected by it.
It is interesting then to learn that these people of the {278} Middle
Ages attempted to control the disease by erecting special hospitals
for it, though unfortunately we are not in a position to know just how
much was accomplished by these means. A congregation devoted to the
special care of the disease had been organized, as we have said, early
in the thirteenth century. At the end of this century this was given
the full weight of his amplest approval by Pope Boniface VIII., who
conferred on it the privilege of having priests among its members It
will be remembered that Pope Boniface VIII. is said to have issued the
bull which forbade the practice of dissection. That bull only
regulated, as I have shown, the abuse which had sprung up of
dismembering bodies and boiling them in order to be able to carry them
to a distance for burial, which was in itself an excellent hygienic
measure. His encouragement of the special religious order for the care
of erysipelas must be set down to his credit as another sanitary
benefit conferred on his generation.
Many orders for the care of special needs of humanity were established
during the thirteenth century. It is from this period that most of the
religious habits worn by women originate. They used to be considered
rather cumbersome for such a serious work as the nursing and care of
the sick, but in recent years quite a different view has been taken.
The covering of the head, for instance, and the shearing of the hair
must have been of distinct value in preventing the communication of
contagious diseases. There has been a curious assimilation in the last
few years of the dress required to be worn by nurses in operating
rooms to that worn by most of the religious communities. The head must
be completely covered and the garments worn are of material that can
be washed. {279} It will be recalled that the head-dress of religious
being, as a rule, of white, on which the slightest speck shows, must
be renewed frequently, and therefore must be kept in a condition of
what is practically surgical cleanliness. While this was not at all
the intention of those who adopted the particular style of head-dress
worn by religious, yet their choice has proved, in what may well be
considered a Providential way, an excellent protective for the
patients on whom they waited, against certain dangers that would
inevitably have been present, if their dress had been the ordinary one
of the women of their class, during these many centuries of hospital
nursing by religious women.
In a word, then, all the features which characterize our modern
hospitals, found a place in the old-time institutions for the care of
the ailing, which we owe to the initiative of the Church and religious
orders, and above all, the Popes. While we are accustomed to hear
these old-time institutions spoken of slightingly, that is because our
knowledge of them was not as detailed as it should be, until the
recent interest in things medieval revealed many details previously
misunderstood. The hospitals of the thirteenth, fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries were much better than those of subsequent
centuries down practically to our own time. The reason for this
decadence is rather complex, but it evidently occurred in spite of the
Church and the Popes. Much of it was due to the fact that,
particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the political
governments interfered in the work of charity and hospital management,
and always to the detriment of it. The greatest triumph of the Church
during the earlier centuries is to be found in the magnificent
organization of the {280} hospital system and the anticipation of so
many things in the organization of hospital work, the care of patients
and even the prevention of contagious disease, that we are apt to
think of as essentially modern.
{281}
THE CHURCH AND THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD.
There is a very generally accepted false impression with regard to the
attitude maintained by the Church during the Middle Ages, especially
toward what is known as the experimental method in the gaining of
knowledge, or as we would now say, in the study of science. It is
commonly supposed that at least before the sixteenth century, though
of course in modern times it has had to change its attitude to accord
with the advances of modern science, the Church was decidedly opposed
to the experimental method, and that the great ecclesiastical scholars
of the wonderful period of the rise of the universities were all
absolute in their confidence in authority and their dependence on the
deductive method as the only means of arriving at truth. This
widespread false impression owes its existence and persistence to many
causes.
It is supposed by many of those outside the Church that there is a
distinct incompatibility between the state of mind which accepts
things on faith and that other intellectual attitude which leads man
to doubt about his knowledge and consequently to inquire. This
doubting frame of mind, which is readily recognized to be absolutely
necessary for the proper pursuit of experimental science, is supposed
quite to preclude the idea of the peaceful settlement of the doubts
that assail men's minds as to the significance of life, of the
relation of man to man and to his Creator, and the hereafter, which
comes {282} with the acceptance of what revelation has to say on these
subjects. Somehow, it is assumed by many people that there is
something mutually and essentially repellent in these two forms of
assent. If a man is ready to accept certain propositions on authority
and without being able to understand them, and still more, if he
accept them, realizing that he cannot understand them, it is
considered to be impossible for him to be able to assume such a mental
attitude towards science as would make him an original investigator.
It is almost needless to say to anyone who knows anything about the
history of modern science--even nineteenth century science, that there
is absolutely no foundation for this prejudice. Most of our greatest
investigators even in nineteenth century science have been faithful
believers not only in the ordinary religious truths, in a Providence,
in a hereafter, and in this life as a preparation for another, but
also in the great mysteries of revelation. I have shown this amply
even with regard to what is usually considered so unorthodox a science
as medicine, in my volume on the Makers of Modern Medicine. Most of
the men who did the great original work in last century medicine were
Catholics. The same thing is true for electricity, for example. All
the men after whom modes and units of electricity are named--Galvani,
Volta, Coulomb, Ampere, Ohm--were not only members of the Church, but
what would be even called devout Catholics.
A second and almost as important a reason for the superstition--for it
is a supposed truth accepted without good reasons therefor--that
somehow the Church was opposed to the inductive or experimental
method, is the persistent belief which, in spite of frequent {283}
contradictions, remains in the minds of so many scientists, that the
inductive or experimental method was introduced to the world by
Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. Bacon himself was a Protestant; he did not do his
writing until the reformation so-called had been at work in Europe for
nearly a century, and somehow it is supposed that these facts are
linked together as causes and effects. The reason why such a
formulation of the inductive method had not come before was because
this was forbidden ground! Nothing could be less true than that Lord
Bacon had any serious influence in bringing about the introduction of
the inductive method into science. At most he was a chronicler of
tendencies that he saw in the science of his day. It is true that his
writings served to give a certain popular vogue to the inductive
method, or rather a certain exaggerated notion of the import of
experiment to those who were not themselves scientists. Bacon was a
popular writer on science, not an original thinker or worker in the
experimental sciences. Popularizers in science, alas! have from
Amerigo Vespucci down reaped the rewards due to the real discoverers.
Induction in the genuine significance of the word had been recognized
in the world long before Bacon's time and been used to much better
effect than he was able to apply it. Personally, I have always felt
that he has almost less right to all the praise that has been bestowed
on him for what he is supposed to have done for science, than he has
for any addition to his reputation because of the attribution to him
by so many fanatics of the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. It is
rather difficult to understand how his reputation ever came about.
Lord {284} Macaulay is much more responsible for it than is usually
thought; his brilliancy often overreached itself or went far beyond
truth; his favorite geese were nearly always swans, in his eyes.
De Maistre, in his review of Bacon's Novum Organum, points out that
this work is replete with prejudices; that Bacon makes glaring
blunders in astronomy, in logic, in metaphysics, in physics, in
natural history, and fills the pages of his work with childish
observations, trifling experiments, and ridiculous explanations. Our
own Professor Draper, in his Intellectual Development of Europe, has
been even more severe, and has especially pointed out that Bacon never
received the Copernican System, but "with the audacity of ignorance he
presumed to criticise what he did not understand, and with a superb
conceit disparaged the great Copernicus."--"The more closely we
examine the writings of Lord Bacon," he says farther on, "the more
unworthy does he seem to have been of the great reputation which has
been awarded to him. . . The popular delusion, to which he owes so
much, originated at a time when the history of science was unknown.
This boasted founder of a new philosophy could not comprehend and
would not accept the greatest of all scientific discoveries when it
was plainly set before his eyes."
As a student of the history of medicine, it has always been especially
irritating to me to hear Francis Bacon's name heralded as the Father
of Experimental Science. Literally hundreds of physicians had applied
the experimental method in its perfect form to many problems in
medicine and surgery during at least three centuries or more before
Bacon's time. They did not need to have the principles of it set forth
for them by this {285} publicist, who knew how to write about
scientific method, but did not know how to apply it, so far as we know
anything about him; and who was utterly unable to see the great
discoveries that had been made by the experimental method in the
century before his time, and refused to accept such great advances in
science as were made by Copernicus and others. Some two score of years
before Bacon wrote, in England itself, the great Gilbert of
Colchester, who was elected the president of the Royal College of
Physicians for the year 1600, and who was physician-in-ordinary to
Queen Elizabeth, had applied the experimental method to such good
purpose that he well deserves the title that has been conferred upon
him of Father of Electricity.
There was never a more purely experimental scientist than Gilbert. His
work, De Magnete, is one of the great contributions to experimental
science. Anyone who thinks that experiments came only after Lord
Bacon's time should read this wonderful work, which is at the
foundation of modern electricity. For twenty years, from 1580 to 1600,
Gilbert spent all the leisure that he could snatch from his
professional duties, in his laboratory. He notes down his
experiments--his failures as well as his successes--discusses them
very thoroughly, suggests explanations of success and failure, hits
upon methods of control, but pursues the solution of the problems he
has in hand ever further and further. As a biographer said of him, "we
find him toiling in his work-shop at Colchester quite as Faraday
toiled, more than two hundred years later, in the low dark rooms of
the Royal Institution of Great Britain." Faraday was actuated by no
more calm, persevering, inquiring spirit than was Gilbert. To say that
any Englishman invented {286} or taught the world the application of
the experimental method in science after Gilbert's time is to talk
nonsense.
Yet it was of this great scientific observer that Lord Bacon, carried
away by ill-feeling and jealousy of a contemporary, went so far as to
say in his _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, that Gilbert "had attempted to
found a general system upon the magnet, and endeavored to build a ship
out of materials not sufficient to make the rowing-pins of a boat."
When Bacon refused to accept Copernicus's teachings, he did not commit
a greater error, nor do a greater wrong to mankind, than when he made
little of Gilbert of Colchester's work. Poggendorf called Gilbert the
"Galileo of Magnetism" and Priestley hailed him as the "founder of
modern electricity." When Gilbert did the work on which these titles
are founded, however, he was only following out the methods which had
been introduced into England long before, and which had been
exemplified so thoroughly all during the life of Friar Bacon, and of
Friar Bacon's great teacher, Albertus Magnus. One would expect that at
least in science credit would be given properly, and that the false
notions introduced by litterateurs and historians of politics should
not be allowed to dominate the situation.
The position popularly assigned to Bacon in the history of science is
indeed one of those history lies, as the Germans so bluntly but
frankly call them, which, though very generally accepted, is entirely
due to a lack of knowledge of the state of education and of the
progress of scientific investigation long before his time. The reason
for this ignorance is the unfortunate tradition which has been so long
fostered in educational circles, {287} that nothing worth while ever
came out of the Nazareth of the Middle Ages, or the centuries before
the so-called reformation and the Renaissance. The ridiculously utter
falsity of this impression we shall be able properly to characterize
at the end of the next chapter.
As a matter of fact, it would have been much truer to have attributed
the origin of experimental science to his great namesake, Roger Bacon,
the Franciscan friar, whose work was done at Paris and at Oxford
during the latter half of that wonderful thirteenth century that saw
the rise and the development of the universities to that condition in
which they have practically remained ever since. Even Bacon, however,
is not the real originator of the inductive method, since, as we shall
see, the writings of his great teacher, the profoundest scholar of
this great century, whose years are almost coincident with it, Albert
Magnus, the Dominican, who afterwards became Bishop of Ratisbon,
contained many distinct and definite anticipations of Bacon as regards
the inductive method.
The earlier Bacon, the Franciscan, laid down very distinctly the
principle, that only by careful observation and experimental
demonstration could any real knowledge with regard to natural
phenomena be obtained. He not only laid down the principle, however,
but in this, quite a contrast to his later namesake, he followed the
route himself very wonderfully. It is for this reason that his name is
deservedly attached to many important beginnings in modern science,
which we shall have occasion to mention during the course of this and
the next chapter. His general attitude of mind toward natural science
can be best appreciated from the famous passage with regard to his
friend, Petrus Peregrinus, {288} who did such excellent work in
magnetism in the thirteenth century, and sent to Friar Bacon the
details of it with the loving solicitude of a pupil to a master.
In his Opus Tertium, Bacon thus praises the merits of Peregrinus: "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
work of wisdom. Therefore, what others grope after blindly, as bats in
the evening twilight, this man contemplates in all 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."
Brother Potamian's reflections on this unexpected passage of Bacon are
the best interpretation of it for the modern student of science.
"This last statement is worthy of the best utterances of the
twentieth century. Say what they will, the most ardent pleaders of
our day for original work and laboratory methods, cannot surpass the
Franciscan monk of the thirteenth century in his denunciation of
mere book-learning, or in his advocacy of experiment and research;
{289} while in Peregrinus, the medievalist, they have Bacon's
impersonation of what a student of science ought to be. Peregrinus
was a hard worker, not a mere theorizer, preferring,
Procrusteanlike, to make theory fit the facts rather than facts fit
the theory; he was a brilliant discoverer, who knew at the same time
how to use his discoveries for the benefit of mankind; he was a
pioneer of science and a leader in the progress of the world."
[Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: The letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the Magnet, A. D.
1269, translated by Bro. Arnold, M. Sc, with an Introductory Note by
Bro. Potamian, N.Y., 1904.]
This letter of Roger Bacon contains every idea that the modern
scientists contend for as significant in education. It counsels
observation, not theory, and says very plainly what he thinks of much
talk without a basis of observation. It commends a mastery in
experiment as the most important thing for science. It suggests, of
course, by implication at least, that a man should know all sciences
and all applications of them; but surely no one will object to this
medieval friar commending as great a breadth of mental development as
possible, as the ideal of an educated man, and especially with regard
to the experimental sciences. Finally, it has the surprising phrase,
that Peregrinus pursues knowledge for its own sake. Friar Bacon
evidently would have sympathized very heartily with Faraday, who at
the beginning of the nineteenth century wanted to get out of trade and
into science, because he thought it unworthy of man to spend all his
life accumulating money, and considered that the only proper aim in
life is to add to knowledge. He would have been in cordial accord with
Pasteur, at the end of the century, who told the Empress Eugenie, when
she asked him if he would not exploit his discoveries in fermentation
for the purpose of building up a great {290} brewing industry in
France, that he thought it unworthy of a French scientist to devote
himself to a mere money-making industry.
For a man of the modern time, perhaps the most interesting expression
that ever fell from Roger Bacon's lips is his famous proclamation of
the reasons why men do not obtain genuine knowledge more rapidly than
would seem ought to be the case, from the care and time and amount of
work which they have devoted to its cultivation. This expression
occurs in Bacon's Opus Tertium, which, it may be recalled, the
Franciscan friar wrote at the command of Pope Clement, because the
Pope had heard many interesting accounts of all that 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. Friar Bacon starts out with the principle that there are
four grounds of human ignorance.
"These are: first, trust in adequate authority; second, that force of
custom which leads men to accept too unquestioningly what has been
accepted before their time; third, the placing of confidence in the
opinion of the inexperienced; and fourth, the hiding of one's own
ignorance with the parade of superficial knowledge." These reasons
contain the very essence of the experimental method, and continue to
be as important in the twentieth century as they were in the
thirteenth. They could only have emanated from an eminently practical
mind, accustomed to test by observation and by careful searching of
authorities every proposition that came to him.
It is very evident that modern scientists would have more of kinship
and intellectual sympathy with Friar {291} Bacon than most of them are
apt to think possible. A faithful student of his writings, who was at
the same time in many ways a cordial admirer of medievalism, the late
Professor Henry Morley, who held the chair of English literature at
University College, London, whose contributions to the History of
English Literature are probably the most important of the nineteenth
century, has a striking paragraph with regard to this attitude of
Bacon toward knowledge and science--two words that have the same
meaning etymologically, though they have come to have quite different
connotations. In the third volume of his English Writers, page 321,
Professor Morley, after quoting Bacon's four grounds of human
ignorance, said:--
"No part of that ground has yet been cut away from beneath the feet
of students, although six centuries ago the Oxford friar clearly
pointed out its character. 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. Substitute honest
research, original and independent thought, strict truth in the
comparison of only what we really know with what is really known by
others, and the strong redoubt of ignorance is fallen."
This attitude of mind of Friar Bacon toward the reasons for ignorance,
is so different from what is usually predicated of the Middle Ages and
of medieval scholars, that it seems worth while insisting on it.
Authority is supposed to have meant everything for the scholastics,
{292} and experiment is usually said to have counted for nothing. They
are supposed to have been accustomed to swear to the words of the
master--"_jurare in verba magistri_"--yet here is a great leader of
medieval thought insisting on just the opposite. As clearly as ever it
was proclaimed, Bacon announces that an authority is worth only the
reasons that he advances. These thirteenth century teachers are
supposed, above all, to have fairly bowed down and worshipped at the
shrine of Aristotle. Many of them doubtless did. In every generation
the great mass of mankind must find someone to follow. As often as
not, their leaders are much more fallible than Aristotle. Bacon,
however, had no undue reverence for Aristotle or anyone else, and he
realized that the blind following of Aristotle had done much harm. In
his sketch of Gilbert of Colchester, which was published in the
"Popular Science Monthly" for August, 1901, Brother Potamian calls
attention to this quality of Roger Bacon in a striking passage.
"Roger Bacon, after absorbing the learning of Oxford and Paris,
wrote to the reigning Pontiff, Clement IV., urging him to have the
works of the Stagirite burnt in order to stop the propagation of
error in the schools. The Franciscan monk of Ilchester has left us,
in his Opus Majus, a lasting memorial of his practical genius. In
the section entitled, "Scientia Experimentalis," he affirms that
"Without experiment, nothing can be adequately known. An argument
proves theoretically, 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 it by way of experiment." And in his Opus
Tertium: "The strongest arguments prove nothing, so long as the
conclusions are not verified by {293} experience. Experimental
science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation."
Lest it should be thought that these expressions of laudatory
appreciation of the great thirteenth century scientist are dictated
more by the desire to magnify his work and to bring out the influence
in science of the churchmen of the period, it seems well to quote an
expression of opinion from the modern historian of the inductive
sciences, whose praise is scarcely if any less outspoken than that of
others whom we have quoted and who might be supposed to be somewhat
partial in their judgment. This opinion will fortify the doubters who
must have authority, and at the same time sums up very excellently the
position which Roger Bacon occupies in the history of science.
Dr. Whewell says that Roger Bacon's Opus Majus is "the encyclopedia
and Novum Organon of the thirteenth century, a work equally wonderful
with regard to its general scheme and to the special treatises with
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 a
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 by a
prospect of the best 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 {294} 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."
The open and inquiring attitude of mind toward the truths of nature is
supposed usually to be utterly at variance with the intellectual
temper of the Middle Ages. We have heard so much about the submission
to authority and the cultivation of tradition on the part of medieval
scholars that we forget entirely how much they accomplished in adding
to human knowledge, and though they had their limitations of
conservatism, they were no more old fogies clinging to old-fashioned
ruts than are the older men of each successive generation down even to
our own time, in the minds of their younger colleagues. It might seem
to be difficult to substantiate such a declaration. It may appear to
be a paradox to talk thus. It is not hard to show good reasons for it,
and far from being a far-fetched attempt to bolster up an opinion more
favorable to the Middle Ages, it is really a very simple expression of
what the history of these generations shows that they actually tried
to accomplish. Roger Bacon must not be thought to be alone in this. On
the contrary, he was only a leader with many followers. Even before
his time, however, these ideas as to the necessity for observation had
been very forcibly expressed by many, and by no one more than Roger's
distinguished teacher, Albertus Magnus, whose name is now becoming
familiar to scholars as Albert the Great.
Albert's great pupil, Roger Bacon, is rightly looked upon as the true
father of inductive science, an honor that history has unfortunately
taken from him to confer {295} it undeservedly on his namesake of four
centuries later; but the teaching out of which Roger Bacon was to
develop the principles of experimental science can be found in many
places in the master's writings. In Albert's tenth book, wherein 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 give certainty"--_experimentum solum
certificat in talibus_. "Such an expression," says his biographer,
"which might have proceeded from the pen of (Francis) Bacon, argues in
itself a prodigious scientific progress, and shows that the medieval
friar was on the track so successfully pursued by modern natural
philosophy. He had fairly shaken off the shackles which had hitherto
tied up discovery, and was the slave neither of Pliny nor of
Aristotle."
Albert was a theologian rather than a scientist, and yet, deeply
versed as he was in theology, he declared in a treatise concerning
Heaven and Earth, [Footnote 33] that "in studying nature we have not
to enquire 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 enquire what nature with its immanent causes can naturally
bring to pass." This can scarcely fail to seem a surprising
declaration to those who have been accustomed to think of medieval
philosophers as turning by preference to miraculous explanations of
things, but such a notion is founded partly on false tradition, with
regard to the real teaching of the medieval {296} scholars, and even
more on the partisan declarations of those who thought it the proper
thing to make as little as possible of the intelligence of the people
of the Middle Ages, in order to account for their adhesion to the
Catholic Church.
[Footnote 33: De Coelo et Mundo, I. tr. iv., X.]
As a matter of fact, Albert's declaration, far from being an
innovation, was only in pursuance of the truly philosophic method
which had characterized the writings of the great Christian thinkers
from the earlier time. Unfortunately, the declarations of lesser minds
are sometimes accepted as having represented the thoughts of men and
the policy of the Church. It is not these lesser men, however, who
have been in special honor. No one, for instance, can possibly be
looked upon as representing Church teaching better than Augustine, who
because of the depth of his teaching, yet his wonderful fidelity to
Christian dogma, received the formal title of Father of the Church,
which carried with it the approval of everything that he had written.
There is a well-known quotation from St. Augustine which shows how
much he deprecated the attempt to make Scriptures an authority in
science, and how much he valued observation as compared with
authority, in such matters as are really within the domain of
investigation by experiment and observation.
He says: "It very often happens that there is some question as to the
earth or the sky, or the other elements of this world, respecting
which one who is not a Christian has knowledge derived from most
certain reasoning or observation" (that is, from the ordinary means at
the command of an investigator in natural science), "and it is very
disgraceful and mischievous, and of all things to be carefully
avoided, that a {297} Christian speaking of such matters as being
according to the Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an
unbeliever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving him
to be as wide from the mark as east from west, can hardly restrain
himself from laughing." It is the opinions of such men as Augustine
and Albert that must be taken as representing the real attitude of
theologians and churchmen toward science, and not those of lesser men,
whose zeal, as is ever true of the minor adherents of any cause,
always is prone to carry them into unfortunate excesses.
Albert the Great was indeed a thoroughgoing experimentalist in the
best modern sense of the term. He says in the second book of his
treatise On Minerals (De Mineralibus): "The aim of natural science is
not simply to accept the statements of others, that is, what is
narrated by people, but to investigate the causes that are at work in
nature for themselves." When we take this expression in connection
with the other, that "we must endeavor to find out what nature can
naturally bring to pass," the complete foundation of experimentalism
is laid. Albert held this principle not only in theory, but applied it
in practice.
It is often said that the scholastic philosophers, and notably
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, almost idolatrously worshipped at
the shrine of Aristotle, and were ready to accept anything that this
great Greek philosopher had taught. We have already quoted Roger
Bacon's request to the Pope to forbid the study of the Stagirite. It
is interesting to find in this regard, that while Albert declared that
in questions of natural science he would prefer to follow Aristotle to
St. Augustine--a declaration which may seem surprising to many people
{298} who have been prone to think that what the Fathers of the Church
said medieval scholars followed slavishly--he does not hesitate to
point out errors made by the Greek philosopher, nor to criticise his
conclusions very freely. In his Treatise on Physics, [Footnote 34] he
says, "whoever believes that Aristotle was a god must also believe
that he never erred. But if one believe that Aristotle was a man, then
doubtless he was liable to err just as we are." In fact, as is pointed
out by the Catholic Encyclopaedia in its article on Albertus Magnus,
to which we are indebted for the exact reference of the quotations
that we have made, Albert devotes a lengthy chapter in his Summa
Theologiae [Footnote 35] to what he calls the errors of Aristotle. His
appreciation of Aristotle is always critical. He deserves great credit
not only for bringing the scientific teaching of the Stagirite to the
attention of medieval scholars, but also for indicating the method and
the spirit in which that teaching was to be received.
[Footnote 34: Physica, lib. VIII., tr. i., xiv.]
[Footnote 35: Summa Theologiae, Pars II., tr. i., Quaest iv.]
With regard to Albert's devotion to the experimental method and to
observation as the source of knowledge in what concerns natural
phenomena, Julius Pagel, in his History of Medicine in the Middle
Ages, which forms one of the parts of Puschmann's Handbook of the
History of Medicine, has some very interesting remarks that are worth
while quoting here: "Albert," he says, "shared with the naturalists of
the scholastic period the quality of entering deeply and thoroughly
into the objects of nature, and was not content with bare superficial
details concerning them, which many of the writers of the period
penetrated no further than to provide a nomenclature. While Albert was
a churchman and an {299} 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 as 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."
"Albert's efforts" Pagel says, "to set down the limits of natural
science shows already the seeds of a more scientific treatment of
natural phenomena, and a recognition of the necessity to know things
in their causes--_rerum cognoscere causas_--and not to consider
that everything must simply be attributed to the action of
Providence. He must be considered as one of the more rational
thinkers of his time, though the fetters of scholasticism still
bound him quite enough, and his mastery of dialectics, which he had
learned from the strenuous Dominican standpoint, still made him
subordinate the laws of nature to the Church's teaching in ways that
suggested the possibility of his being less free than might
otherwise have been the case. His thoroughgoing piety, his profound
scholarship, his boundless industry; the almost uncontrollable
impulse of his mind after universality of knowledge; his
many-sidedness in literary productivity; and finally the 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."
Perhaps in no department of the history of science {300} has more
nonsense been talked, than with regard to the neglect of experiment
and observation in the Middle Ages. The men who made the series of
experiments necessary to enable them to raise the magnificent Gothic
cathedrals; who built the fine old municipal buildings and abbeys and
castles; who spanned wide rivers with bridges, and yet had the
intelligence and the skill to decorate all of these buildings as
effectively as they did,--cannot be considered either as impractical
or lacking in powers of observation. As I show in the chapter The
Medieval University Man and Science, Dante, the poet and literary man
of the thirteenth century, had his mind stored with quite as much
material information with regard to physical science and nature study,
as any modern educated man. It is true that the men of the Middle Ages
did not make observations on exactly the same things that we do, but
to say either that they lacked powers of observation, or did not use
their powers or failed to appreciate the value of such powers, is
simply a display of ignorance of what they actually did.
On the other hand, when it comes to the question of the principles of
experimental science and the value they placed on them, these men of
the medieval universities, when sympathetically studied, prove to have
been quite as sensible as the scientists of our own time. The idea
that Francis Bacon in any way laid the foundation of the experimental
sciences, or indeed did anything more than give a literary statement
of the philosophy of the experimental science, though he himself
proved utterly unable to apply the principles that he discussed to the
scientific discoveries of his own time, is one of the inexplicable
absurdities of history that somehow get in and {301} cannot be got
out. The great thinkers of the medieval period had not only reached
the same conclusions as he did, but actually applied them three
centuries before; and the great medieval universities were occupied
with problems, even in physical science, not very different from those
which have given food for thought for subsequent generations. We shall
see in the next chapter how successfully they applied these great
principles of the experimental method, and how much they anticipated
many phases of science that we are apt to think of as distinctly
modern.
{302}
CHURCHMEN AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE AT THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES.
There can be no doubt at all in the minds of those who know anything
about the early history of the universities, but that the Popes were
entirely favorable to the great educational movement represented by
these institutions. It is ordinarily supposed, however, that the
medieval universities limited their attention to philosophy and
theology, and that even these subjects were studied from such narrow
religious standpoints, as to make them of very little value for the
development of human knowledge or the evolution of the human mind. Any
such supposition is the result of ignorance on the part of those who
entertain it, as to the actual curriculum of studies at the early
universities, though it is not surprising that it should be very
common, because, unfortunately, it has been fostered by many writers
on educational subjects, especially in English. Scholasticism is often
said to have been the very acme of absurdity in teaching, and its real
import is entirely missed. Students and professors are supposed to
have been limited in their interests to dialectics and metaphysics in
the narrowest sense of these terms, and much time was, according to
even presumably good authorities, frittered away in idle speculations
with regard to things that are absolutely unknowable. [Footnote 36]
[Footnote 36: Much of the remainder of this chapter is taken from the
chapter on What and How They Studied at the Universities, in my book
The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries. (Catholic Summer School Press,
N. Y.) Some of the sources from which the material is obtained will be
found more fully referred to there, and further information with
regard to scientific studies at these universities will be found in
the chapter on Post-graduate Work in the same book, from which a
certain amount of material is used again here.]
{303}
Anyone who studies the works of the professors at these medieval
universities can scarcely fail to become entirely sympathetic toward
these scholars, who devoted themselves with so much ardor to every
form of learning that interested them, and who did not fail to
accomplish at least as much for future generations, as any other
generation of university men in history. Professor George Saintsbury
in his book On the Rise of Romance and the Flourishing of Allegory,
which is really the story of thirteenth century literature in Europe,
in the series of Periods of European Literature, [Footnote 37] in
summing up the contributions of these medieval professors to human
knowledge, said:
[Footnote 37: Scribners, 1896.]
"Yet, there has always, in generous souls who have some tincture of
philosophy, subsisted a curious kind of sympathy and yearning over
the work of these generations of mainly disinterested scholars, who,
whatever they were, were thorough, and whatever they could not do,
could think. And there have 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."
Nothing could well be less true than the impression that philosophy
and theology were the exclusive subjects of the medieval university
curriculum. If because our modern universities devote a great amount
of time to physical science in its various forms, and more of their
publications concern this department of educational work than any
other, it were to be said by some future generation that our
universities occupied themselves {304} with nothing but physical
science, it would be much more true than the expressions which stamp
medieval university teaching as limited to dialectics and metaphysics.
Besides science in the modern universities, philosophy in all its
branches is the subject of ardent devotion, and the classics and
languages are not neglected, and medicine and law are important
post-graduate departments, and even theology comes in for a goodly
share of attention and occupies the minds of many deep students. In
the medieval universities, medicine particularly occupied a very large
share of attention; but all the physical sciences were the subject not
only of distant curiosity, but of careful investigation, many of them
along lines that are supposed to be distinctly modern, yet which are
really as old as the university movement.
Turner in his History of Philosophy [Footnote 38] summed up the books
most commonly used, the method of examination and of conferring
degrees, in a way that shows the character of university teaching
during the thirteenth century, and brings out not only its
thoroughness, but also the fact that a good deal of time was devoted
to what we now call physical or natural science, since the treatises
on animals, on the earth and on meteors, under which all the phenomena
of the Heavens were included, represent almost exactly those questions
in physical science that most men who do not intend to devote
themselves particularly to science care to know something about at the
present time. He says:
[Footnote 38: Ginn & Co., Boston and New York, 1903.]
"By statutes issued at various times during the thirteenth century,
it was provided that the professor should read, that is, expound,
the text of certain standard {305} authors in philosophy and
theology. In a document published by Denifle (the distinguished
authority on medieval universities), and by him referred to the year
1252, we find the following works among those prescribed for the
Faculty of Arts: Logica Vetus (the old Boethian text of a portion of
the Organon, probably accompanied by Porphyry's Isagoge); Logica
Nova (the new translation of the Organon); Gilbert's Liber Sex
Principiorum; and Donatus's Barbarismus. A few years later (1255),
the following works are prescribed: Aristotle's Physics,
Metaphysics, De Anima, De Animalibus, De Caelo et Mundo, Meteorica,
the minor psychological treatises and some Arabian or Jewish works,
such as the Liber de Causis and De Differentia Spiritus et Animae."
As time went on in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the
attention to physical sciences was increased rather than diminished.
Much of Albertus Magnus's work, and practically all of that of Aquinas
and Roger Bacon, was done after the date here given (1255).
The medieval workers at the universities were under the obligation of
having to lay the foundations for modern thought, instead of being
able to build up the magnificent superstructure which has risen in the
seven centuries since the universities were founded. Without the
foundation, however, the building would indeed not be worthy of
admiration. Their work is concealed beneath the surfaces of things,
but is not the less important for that, and is in most ways more
significant than many portions of the structure that have risen above
it. Unless one digs down to see how broad and deep and firm they laid
the foundations, the modern critic will not be able to appreciate
their work at its true value. Very few men are able to do this; still
fewer have the time or the inclination. The consequence is a sad lack
of sympathy with these old-time workers, who nevertheless did their
work so well, and whose accomplishment meant so much for the modern
time. It is not hard to {306} show that their minds were occupied with
just the same problems that interest us, and the wonderful thing is
that they anticipated so many of our conclusions, though these
anticipations are wrapped up not infrequently in a terminology that
obscures their meaning for any but the patient, sympathetic student.
In his Harveian Lecture, Science and Medieval Thought, Professor
Clifford Allbutt, of the University of Cambridge, England, said:--
"Each period of human achievement has its phases of spring,
culmination, and decline; and it is in its decline that the leafless
tree comes to judgment. In the unloveliness of decay, the Middle
Ages are as other ages have been; as our own will be; but in those
ages there was more than one outburst of life; more than once the
enthusiasm of the youth of the West went out to explore the ways of
the realm of ideas; and if we believe ourselves at last to have
found the only thoroughfare, we owe this knowledge to those who
before us traveled the uncharted seas. If we have inherited a great
commerce and dominion of science, it is because their argosies had
been on the ocean and their camels on the desert. _Discipulus est
prioris posterior dies;_ man cannot know all at once; knowledge must
be built up by laborious generations. In all times, as in our own,
the advance of knowledge is very largely by elimination and
negation; we ascertain what is not true, and we weed it out. To
perceive and respect the limits of the knowable, we must have sought
to transgress them. We can build our bridge over the chasm of
ignorance with stored material in which the thirteenth century was
poor indeed; we can fix our bearings where then was no foundation;
yet man may be well engaged when he knows not the ends of his work;
and the schoolmen in digging for treasure cultivated the field of
knowledge, even for Galileo and Harvey, for Newton and Darwin. Their
many errors came not of indolence, for they were passionate workers;
not of hatred of light, for they were eager for the light; not of
fickleness, for they wrought with unparalleled devotion; nor indeed
of ignorance of particular things, {307} for they knew many things.
They erred because they did not know, and they could not know the
conditions of the problems which, as they emerged from the cauldron
of war and from the wreck of letters and science, they were
nevertheless bound to attack, if civil societies worthy of the name
were to be constructed."
We are very prone to think that the interests of the men of the Middle
Ages were very different to our own, and that they had not the
slightest inkling of what were to be the interests of the future
centuries. Ordinarily students of science, for instance, would be sure
to think that electricity and magnetism, interest in which is supposed
to be a thing of comparatively recent years, or at most of the last
two centuries, would not be mentioned at all in the thirteenth
century. Such an idea is not only absolutely false to the history of
science as we know it, but is utterly unjust to the powers of
observation of men who have always noted, and almost necessarily tried
to investigate, the phenomena which are now grouped under these
sciences. Perhaps no better idea of the intense interest of this first
century of university life in natural phenomena can be obtained, than
will be gleaned at once from the following short paragraph, in which
Brother Potamian, of Manhattan College, in his brief, striking
introduction to the letter of Petrus Peregrinus describing the first
conception of a dynamo, condenses the references to magnetic
manifestions that are found in the literature of the time. [Footnote
39]
[Footnote 39: The Letter of Petrus Peregrinus, N. Y., 1904.]
Most of the writers he mentions were not scientists in the ordinary
sense of the word, but were literary men; and the fact that these
references occur, shows very clearly that there must have been
widespread interest in such scientific phenomena, since they had
attracted the {308} attention of literary writers, who would not have
spoken of them doubtless, but that they knew that in this they would
be satisfying as well as exciting public interest.
"Abbot Neckam, the Augustinian (1157-1217), distinguished between
the properties of the two ends of the lodestone, and gives in his De
Utensilibus what is perhaps the earliest reference to the mariner's
compass that we have. Albertus Magnus, the Dominican (1193-1230),
in his treatise De Mineralibus, enumerates different kinds of
natural magnets and states some of the properties commonly
attributed to them; the minstrel, Guyot de Provins, in a famous
satirical poem written about 1208, refers to the directive quality
of the lodestone and its use in navigation, as do also Cardinal de
Vitry in his Historia Orientalis (1215-1220); Brunetto Latini, poet,
orator and philosopher (the teacher of Dante), in his Tresor des
Sciences, a veritable library, written in Paris in 1260; Raymond
Lully, the enlightened Doctor, in his treatise, De Contemplatione,
begun in 1272; and Guido Guinicelli, the poet-priest of Bologna, who
died in 1276."
All of these writers, it may be said, with a single exception, were
clergymen, and some of them were very prominent ecclesiastics in their
time.
The present generation has not as yet quite got over the bad habit of
making fun of these medieval thinkers for having accepted the idea of
the transmutation of metals and searched so assiduously for the
philosopher's stone. This supposed absurdity has for most scientific
minds during the nineteenth century been quite enough of itself,
without more ado, to stamp the generations of the Middle Ages who
accepted it, as utterly lacking, if not in common sense, at least in
serious reasoning power. At the present moment, however, we are in the
full tide of a set of opinions that tend to make us believe not {309}
only in the possibility, but in the actual occurrence of the
transmutation of metals. Observations made with regard to radium have
revolutionized all the scientific thinking in this matter. Radium has
apparently been demonstrated changing into helium, and so there is a
transmutation of metals. On the strength of this and certain other
recently investigated physical phenomena, there is a definite tendency
in the minds of many serious students of physics and chemistry to
consider that other metals possibly change into one another, and that
all that is needed is careful observation to discover it, for this
change is supposed to be going on around us all the time. Not very
long since, a professor of physical science at an important American
university suggested that it would be extremely interesting to take a
large specimen of lead ore, say several tons, and having removed from
it carefully all traces of silver that might be contained in it, put
it away for twenty years, and then see whether any further traces of
silver could be found. The idea that possibly lead occasionally
changes into silver by some slow chemical process is evidently
deep-seated in his mind. It would remind one of Newton's expression
some two centuries ago, that he had seen copper and gold ores
occurring together in specimens, and that he looked upon this as
evidence that copper in the course of time changes into gold. Certain
it is that lead ores constantly occur in connection with silver, or at
least that silver is found wherever lead is; that a corresponding
relationship between gold and copper has also been noted; and that
Newton's idea was not near so absurd, in the light of what we now
know, or still more, what we surmise on good scientific grounds, as
the nineteenth century scientists would have had us believe.
{310}
As I go over this manuscript for the last time just before going to
press, there comes the announcement that Sir William Ramsay has
probably solved the problem of the transmutation of metals. He has
shown apparently that lithium, when acted upon by radium emanations,
changes to some extent to copper. It is true that the change is only
in small quantities, and that there is no question as yet of any
commercial value to the process; but we all know that it is by such
small scientific announcements as this that the entering wedges of
large industrial processes are introduced. The fact that this
announcement should have been made before the British Association for
the Advancement of Science and by a thoroughly conservative English
chemist, probably settles forever the question of the transmutation of
metals, in the way that the people of the Middle Ages looked at the
problem rather than as the intervening centuries did.
The old medieval thinkers, then, were only ridiculous to a few
generations of nineteenth century scientists who, because they knew a
little more about certain details in science than preceding
generations had done, thought that they knew all that there was to be
known about this immense subject, and made fun of thinkers quite as
great as themselves in preceding centuries. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, instead of making ourselves ludicrous by raising a
laugh at the expense of these fellow students in science of the olden
time, we should rather feel like congratulating them upon the
perspicacity which enabled them to anticipate a great truth with
regard to the relationships of chemical elements, especially the
metals, to each other. The present-day idea of thinking physicists and
chemists is {311} that the seventy odd elements described in our
textbooks on chemistry, are not so many essentially independent forms
of matter, but are rather examples of one kind of material exhibiting
special dynamic energies which it possesses under varying conditions,
as yet not well understood. This was exactly the idea that the old
scholastic philosophers had of the constitution of matter. They said
that matter was composed of two principles, prime matter and form.
When this doctrine of theirs is properly elucidated, it proves to be
an anticipation of what is most modern in the thoughts of twentieth
century physicists. A re-statement of the old-time views would read
not unlike many a contribution to a discussion of this subject at an
annual meeting of the British or American Associations for the
Advancement of Science.
This doctrine of prime matter and form, which the scholastics adopted
and adapted from the Greeks, and especially from Aristotle, cannot
fail to be of interest even to modern scientists. According to it,
prime matter was an indeterminate something which made up the
underlying substratum of all material things. Form was the dynamic
element which entered into the composition of matter and made it
exhibit its specific qualities. We have heard much of ionization in
recent times, and in many ways this would remind one even only
slightly familiar with the old scholastics, of their theories of form
entering into matter. Prime matter was supposed to be absolutely
without distinguishing characteristics of its own. It was indifferent,
and had no influence on other material unless when associated with
form. Form was the dynamic and energizing element.
This, of course, still remains in the realm of theory; {312} but it is
interesting to realize that in the olden time they theorized about the
constitution of matter at the universities of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries just as we do now, and most surprisingly came to
conclusions quite like ours. Their thoughts not only concerned the
same subject, but were worked out in the same way. It is idle to say
that they knew nothing about it and hit on their theory by chance. As
a matter of fact, they knew very little, if any less about it than we
do, for our ignorance on this subject is monumental, and they
anticipated our latest thinking by seven centuries. Many have been the
divagations of thought since that time, but now we return to their
conclusions. It is chastening to the modern mind, so confident of the
advances that have been made by these latter generations, "the heirs
of all the ages in the foremost files of time," to find that we are so
little farther on in an important problem than these men of the
thirteenth century.
Other basic problems with regard to matter and force filled the minds
of the medieval schoolmen quite as they do those of the modern
generations. For instance, they occupied themselves with the question
of the indestructibility of matter, and also, strange as it may seem,
with the conservation of energy. We have presumably learned so much by
experimental demonstration and original observation in the physical
sciences in the modern times, and especially during the precious
nineteenth century, that any thinking of the medieval mind along these
lines might, in the opinion of those who know nothing of what they
speak, be at once set aside without further question as preposterous,
or at best nugatory. The opinions of medieval scholars in these
matters would be presumed, without more ado, to have been so entirely
{313} speculative as to deserve no further attention. Nothing could
well be farther from the truth than this. Nowhere will more marvelous
anticipations of what is most modern in science be found than in some
of these considerations of basic principles in the physical sciences.
For instance, Thomas Aquinas, usually known as St. Thomas, in a series
of lectures given at the University of Paris toward the end of the
third quarter of the thirteenth century, stated as the most important
conclusion with regard to matter that _"Nihil omnino in nihilum
redigetur._--Nothing at all will ever be reduced to nothingness." By
this, as is very evident from the context, he meant to say that matter
would never be annihilated and could never be destroyed. It might be
changed in various ways, but it could never go back into the
nothingness from which it had been taken by the creative act.
Annihilation was pronounced as not being a part of the scheme of
things as far as the human mind could hope to fathom its meaning.
In this sentence, then, Thomas of Aquin was proclaiming the doctrine
of the indestructibility of matter. It was not until well on in the
nineteenth century that the chemists and physicists of modern times
realized the truth of this great principle. The chemists had seen
matter change its form in many ways, had seen it disappear apparently
in the smoke of fire or evaporate under the influence of heat, but
investigation proved that if care were taken in the collection of the
gases that came off under these circumstances, of the ashes of
combustion and of the residue of evaporation, all the original
material that had been contained in the supposedly disappearing
substance could be recovered, or at least {314} completely accounted
for. The physicists on their part had realized this same truth, and
finally there came the definite enunciation of the absolute
indestructibility of matter. St. Thomas's conclusion, "Nothing at all
will ever be reduced to nothingness," had anticipated this doctrine by
nearly seven centuries. What happened in the nineteenth century was
that there came an experimental demonstration of the truth of the
principle. The principle itself, however, had been reached long before
by the human mind, by speculative processes quite as inerrable in
their way as the more modern method of investigation.
When St. Thomas used the aphorism, "Nothing at all will ever be
reduced to nothingness," there was another signification that he
attached to the words quite as clearly as that by which they expressed
the indestructibility of matter. For him _nihil_ or nothing meant
neither matter nor form, that is, neither the material substance nor
the energy which is contained in it. He meant, then, that no energy
would ever be destroyed as well as no matter would ever be
annihilated. He was teaching the conservation of energy as well as the
indestructibility of matter. Here once more the experimental
demonstration of the doctrine was delayed for over six centuries and a
half. The truth itself, however, had been reached by this medieval
master-mind, and was the subject of his teaching to the university
students in Paris in the thirteenth century. These examples should, I
think, serve to illustrate that the minds of medieval students were
occupied with practically the same questions as those which are now
taught to the university students of our day, and that the content of
the teaching was identical with ours.
{315}
The scholars of the Middle Ages are usually said to have been
profoundly ignorant as regards the shape of the earth, its size, and
the number of its inhabitants, and to have cherished the queerest
notions, when they really permitted themselves any ideas at all, as to
the antipodes. This is very true if the ideas of the ignorant masses
of the people and the second-rate authors and thinkers be taken as the
standard of medieval thought. Unfortunately, such sources as these
have only too often served as authorities for modern historians of
education and modern essayists on the history of science. This state
of affairs would painfully suggest the curiously inverted notion of
the supposed ideas entertained with regard to science in our day, that
would be obtained by some thirtieth century student, were he to judge
our scientific opinions from some of the queer books written by
pretentiously ignorant writers, who have pet scientific hobbies of
their own and exploit them at the expense of a long-suffering world,
if by some accident of fortune these books should be preserved and the
really great contributions to science be either actually lost or lost
to sight. It is from Albert the Great and such men, and not from their
petty contemporaries, that the true spirit of the science of the age
must be deduced. Albert's biographer said:
"He treats as fabulous the commonly-received idea, in which
Venerable Bede had acquiesced, that the region of the earth south of
the equator was uninhabitable, and considers, that from the equator
to the South Pole, the earth was not only habitable, but in all
probability actually inhabited, except directly at the poles, where
he imagines the cold to be excessive. If there be any animals there,
he says, they must have very thick skins to defend them from the
rigor of the climate, and they are probably of a white color. The
intensity of cold is, {316} however, tempered by the action of the
sea. He describes the antipodes and the countries they comprise, and
divides the climate of the earth into seven zones. He smiles with a
scholar's freedom at the simplicity of those who suppose that
persons living at the opposite region of the earth must fall off, an
opinion that can only rise out of the grossest ignorance, _'for when
we speak of the lower hemisphere, this must be understood merely as
relatively to ourselves.'_
"It is as a geographer that Albert's superiority to the writers of
his own time chiefly appears. Bearing in mind the astonishing
ignorance which then prevailed on this subject, it is truly
admirable to find him correctly tracing the chief mountain chains of
Europe, with the rivers which take their source in each; remarking
on portions of coast which have in later times been submerged by the
ocean, and islands which have been raised by volcanic action above
the level of the sea; noticing the modification of climate caused by
mountains, seas and forests, and the division of the human race,
whose differences he ascribes to the effect upon them of the
countries they inhabit. In speaking of the British Isles, he alludes
to the commonly-received idea that another distant island called
Thile, or Thule, existed far in the Western Ocean, uninhabitable by
reason of its frightful climate, but which, he says, has perhaps not
yet been visited by man."
In only needs to be said in addition to this, that Albert had more
than a vague hint of the possible existence of land on the other side
of the globe. He gives an elaborate demonstration of the sphericity of
the earth, and it has been suggested by more than one scholar that his
views on this subject led eventually to the discovery of America.
Humboldt, the distinguished German natural philosopher of the
beginning of the nineteenth century, who was undoubtedly the most
important figure in scientific thought in his own time, and whose own
work was great enough to have an enduring influence even down to our
{317} day, in spite of the immense progress made during the nineteenth
century, has praised Albert's work very highly. Almost needless to
say, Humboldt was possessed of a thorough critical faculty and had a
very wide range of knowledge, so that he was in an eminently proper
position to judge of Albert's work. He has summed up his appreciation
briefly as follows:
"Albertus Magnus was 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 incidence of the sun's rays
in heating the ground, _which have excited my surprise._"
I have thought that perhaps the best way to bring out properly
Albert's knowledge in the physical sciences would be to take up
Humboldt's headings in their order and illustrate them by quotations
from the great scholar's writings--the only scholar to whom the
epithet has been applied in all history--and from condensed accounts
as they appear in his life written by Sighart. [Footnote 40] These
will serve to show at once the extent of Albert's knowledge and the
presumptuous ignorance of those who make little of the science of the
medieval period.
[Footnote 40: Sighart, Albertus Magnus: Sein Leben und Seine
Wisenschaft, Ratisbon, 1857, or its translation by Dixon; Albert the
Great, his life and scholastic labors. London, 1870.]
When we have catalogued, for instance, the many facts with regard to
astronomy and the physics of light that are supposed to be of much
later entrance into the sphere of human knowledge that were grasped by
{318} Albert, and evidently formed the subject of his teaching at
various times at both Paris and Cologne, since they are found in his
authentic works, we can scarcely help but be amused at the pretentious
lack of knowledge that has relegated their author to a place in
education so trivial as is that which is represented in many minds by
the term scholastic.
"He decides that the Milky Way is nothing but a vast assemblage of
stars, but supposed, naturally enough, that they occupy the orbit
which receives the light of the sun. The figures visible on the
moon's disc are not, he says, as hitherto has been supposed,
reflections of the seas and mountains of the earth, but
configurations of her own surface. He notices, in order to correct
it, the assertions of Aristotle that lunar rainbows appear only
twice in fifty years; 'I myself,' he says, 'have observed two in a
single year.' He has something to say on the refraction of a solar
ray, notices certain crystals which have a power of refraction, and
remarks that none of the ancients and few moderns were acquainted
with the properties of mirrors."
Botany is supposed to be a very modern science, and to most people
Humboldt's expression that he found in Albertus Magnus's writings some
"exceedingly acute remarks on the organic structure and physiology of
plants," will come as an supreme surprise. A few details with regard
to Albert's botanical knowledge, however, will serve to heighten that
surprise, and to show that the foolish tirades of modern sciolists,
who have often expressed their wonder that with all the beauties of
nature around them these scholars of the Middle Ages did not devote
themselves to nature study, are absurd; because if the critics but
knew it, there was profound interest in nature and all her
manifestations, and a series of discoveries that anticipated not a
little of what we {319} consider most important in our modern science.
The story of Albert's botanical knowledge has been told in a single
very full paragraph by his biographer. Sighart also quotes an
appreciative opinion from a modern German botanist, which will serve
to dispel any doubts with regard to Albert's position in botany that
modern students might perhaps continue to harbor, unless they had good
authority to support their opinion, though, of course, it will be
remembered that the main difference between the medieval and the
modern mind is only too often said to be that the medieval required an
authority, while the modern makes its opinion for itself. Even the
most skeptical of modern minds, however, will probably be satisfied by
the following paragraph:
"He was acquainted with the sleep of plants, with the periodical
opening and closing of blossoms, with the diminution of sap through
evaporation from the cuticle of the leaves, and with the influence
of the distribution of the bundles of vessels on the folial
indentations. His minute observations on the forms and variety of
plants intimate an exquisite sense of floral beauty. He
distinguished the star from the bell-floral, tells us that a red
rose will turn white when submitted to the vapor of sulphur, and
makes some very sagacious observations on the subject of
germination. . . . The extraordinary erudition and originality of
this treatise (his tenth book) has drawn from M. Meyer the following
comment: 'No botanist who lived before Albert can be compared to
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 Gesner and Caesalpino.' All
honor, then, to the man who made such astonishing progress in the
science of nature as to find no one, I will not say to surpass, but
even to equal him for the space of three centuries."
Pagel in Puschmann's History of Medicine gives a list {320} of the
books written by Albert which are concerned with the physical
sciences. These were: Physica, Books VIII., that is, eight treatises
on Natural Science, consisting of commentaries on Aristotle's Physics
and on the underlying principles of natural philosophy, and of energy
and movement; four treatises concerning the Heavens and the Earth,
which contain the general principles of the movement of the heavenly
bodies. Besides there is a treatise On the Nature of Places,
consisting of a description of climates and natural conditions. This
volume contains, according to Pagel, numerous suggestions with regard
to ethnography and physiology. There is a treatise on the causes of
the properties of the elements, which takes up the specific
peculiarities of the elements, according to their physical and
geographical relations. To which must be added two treatises on
generation and corruption; six books on meteors; five books on
minerals; three books on the soul, in which is considered the vital
principle; a treatise on nutrition and nutritives; a treatise on the
senses; another on the memory and the imagination; two books on the
intellect; a treatise on sleep and waking; a treatise on youth and old
age; a treatise on breath and respiration; a treatise on the motion of
animals, in two books, which concerns the voluntary and involuntary
movements of animals; a treatise on life and death; a treatise in six
books on vegetables and plants; a treatise on breathing things. His
treatise on minerals contains, according to Pagel, besides an
extensive presentation of the ordinary peculiarities of minerals, a
description of ninety-five different kinds of precious stones, among
them the pearl, of seven metals, of salt, vitriol, alum, arsenic,
marcasite, nitre, tutia, and amber. Albert's {321} volumes on the
vegetables and plants were reproduced under the editorship of Meyer,
the historian of botany in Germany, and published in Berlin (1867).
All Albert's books are available in modern editions.
In a word, there was scarcely a subject in natural science which
Albert did not treat, in what would now be considered a formal serious
volume, and no department of science that he did not illuminate in
some way, not only by the collection of information that had
previously been in existence, but also by his own observations, and
especially by his interpretations of the significance of the various
phenomena that had been observed. His work is especially noteworthy
for its lack of dependence on authority and the straightforward way in
which the great pioneer of modern science made his observations.
Some of Albert's contemporaries, and especially his pupils, were
almost as distinguished as he was himself in the physical sciences.
In a previous chapter we spoke particularly of Roger Bacon's attitude
toward the physical sciences, above all in what concerns the
experimental method. He was typically modern in the standpoint that he
assumed, as the only one by which knowledge of the things of nature
can be obtained. It will be interesting now to see the number of
things which Friar Bacon succeeded in discovering by the application
of the principle of testing everything by personal observation, of not
accepting things on second-hand authorities, and of not being afraid
to say, "I do not know," in trying to learn for himself. His
discoveries will seem almost incredible to a modern student of science
and of education who has known nothing before of the progress of
science made {322} by this wonderful man, or who has known only
vaguely that Friar Bacon was a great original thinker in science, in
spite of the fact that his life-history is bounded by the thirteenth
century. I may say that the material of what I have to say of him, and
also of his great contemporaries, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas
Aquinas, is taken almost literally from the chapter of my book, The
Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries, on What They Studied at the
Universities.
Roger Bacon has been declared to be the discoverer of gunpowder, but
this is a mistake, since it was known many years before by the Arabs
and by them introduced into Europe. He did study explosives very
deeply, however, and besides learning many things about them,
realized how much might be accomplished by their use in the
after-time. He declares in his Opus Magnum: "That one may cause to
burst forth from bronze, thunderbolts more formidable that those
produced by nature. A small quantity of prepared matter occasions a
terrible explosion accompanied by a brilliant light. One may
multiply this phenomenon so far as to destroy a city or an army."
Considering how little was know about gunpowder at this time, this
was of itself a marvelous anticipation of what might be accomplished
by it.
Bacon anticipated, however, much more than merely destructive
effects from the use of high explosives, and indeed it is almost
amusing to see how closely he anticipated some of the most modern
usages of high explosives for motor purposes. He seems to have
realized that some time the apparently uncontrollable forces of
explosion would come under the control of man and be harnessed by
him for his own purposes. He foresaw that one of the great
applications of such a force would be for transportation.
Accordingly he said: "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." {323} When we recall
that the very latest thing in transportation are motor-boats and
automobiles driven by gasoline, a high explosive, Roger Bacon's
prophecy becomes one of those weird anticipations of human progress
which seem almost more than human.
It was not with regard to explosives alone, however, that Roger
Bacon was to make great advances and still more marvelous
anticipations in physical science. He was not, as is sometimes
claimed for him, either the inventor of the telescope or of the
theory of lenses. He did more, however, than perhaps anyone else to
make the principles of lenses clear and to establish them on a
mathematical basis. His traditional connection with the telescope
can probably be traced to the fact that he was very much interested
in astronomy and the relations of the heavens to the earth. He
pointed out very clearly the errors which had crept into the Julian
calendar, calculated exactly how much of a correction was needed in
order to restore the year to its proper place, and suggested the
method by which future errors of this kind could be avoided. His
ideas were too far beyond his century to be applied practically, but
they were not to be without their effect, and it is said that they
formed the basis of the subsequent correction of the calendar in the
time of Pope Gregory XIII., about three centuries later.
It is rather surprising to find how much besides the theory of
lenses Friar Bacon had succeeded in finding out in the department of
optics. He taught, for instance, the principle of the aberration of
light, and, still more marvelous to consider, taught that light did
not travel instantaneously, but had a definite rate of motion,
though this was extremely rapid. It is rather difficult to
understand how he reached this conclusion, since light travels so
fast that, as far as regards any observation that can be made upon
earth, the diffusion is practically instantaneous. It was not for
over three centuries later that Römer, the German astronomer,
demonstrated the motion of light and its rate by his observations
upon the moons of Jupiter at different phases of the earth's orbit,
which showed that the light of these moons took a definite and quite
appreciable time to reach the earth after their eclipse by the
planet was over.
{324}
Albertus Magnus's other great pupil besides Roger Bacon was St.
Thomas Aquinas. If any suspicion were still left that Thomas did not
appreciate just what the significance of his teachings in physics
was, when he announced that neither matter nor force could ever be
reduced to nothingness, it would surely be removed by the
consideration that he had been for many years in intimate relations
with Albert, and that he had probably also been close to Roger
Bacon. In association with such men as these, he was not likely to
stumble upon truths unawares, even though they might concern
physical science. St. Thomas himself has left three treatises on
chemical subjects, and it is said that the first occurrence of the
word amalgam can be traced to one of these treatises. Everybody was
as much interested then, as we are at the present time, in the
transformation of metals and mercury with its silvery sheen; its
facility to enter into metallic combinations of all kinds, and its
elusive ways, naturally made it the center of scientific interest
quite as radium is at the present moment.
These three men, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Roger Bacon,
were all closely associated with ecclesiastical authorities, and
indeed all three of them had intimate personal relations with the
Popes of their time. Albertus Magnus had been highly honored by the
Dominican Order, to which he belonged. He had been chosen as
Provincial--that is, the superior of a number of houses--in the
German part of Europe at least once, and he had been constantly
appealed to by his superiors for advice and counsel. Although it was
almost a rule that members of religious orders should not be chosen as
bishops, he was made Bishop of Ratisbon, and his appointment was
considered to be due to his surpassing merit as a great scholar and
teacher. In spite of his devotion to scientific studies during a long
life, he lost nothing of the ardor of his faith, and is universally
considered to have been a saint. He has been formally raised to the
{325} altars of the Catholic Church, as the expression is--that is, he
had the title of "Blessed" conferred on him, and his prayers may be
invoked as one of those who are considered to stand high in the favor
of Heaven.
Of Thomas Aquinas the same story may be told only in much more
emphatic words. He was honored by his own order, the Dominican, in
many ways. Early in his life they recognized his talent and sent him
to Cologne to study under the great Albert. When the Dominicans
realized the necessity for not only making a significant exhibition of
the talents of their order at the University of Paris, which had
become the most prominent educational institution in the world, but
also wished to influence as deeply as possible the cause of education,
Albert was sent to Paris, and Thomas Aquinas accompanied him. When
there were difficulties between Dominicans and the university, it was
to Thomas that his order turned to defend them and maintain their
rights. He did so not only with intellectual acumen, but with great
tact and successfully. After this he was sent on business of his order
to England and was for some time at Oxford. His reputation as a
philosopher and a scientist had now spread over the world and he was
invited to teach at various Italian universities where ecclesiastical
influences were very strong. The Popes asked, and their request was
practically a command, that he should teach for some time at least at
their own university at Rome. Later he taught also at the University
of Naples.
While here, one of the Popes wishing to confer a supreme mark of favor
on him, his name was selected for the vacant archbishopric of Naples.
The bulls and formal documents creating him Archbishop were already on
the way when Thomas was informed of it, and he asked {326} to be
allowed to continue his studies rather than to have to take up the
unwonted duties of an archbishop. His plea was evidently so sincere
that the Pope relented and respected Thomas's humility and his desire
for leisure to finish his great work, the Summa Theologiae. He
continued to be the great friend of the Popes and their special
counsellor. When the Council of Lyons was summoned, a number of
important questions concerning the most serious theological problems
were to be discussed. Thomas was asked to go to Lyons as the
theologian for the Papacy. It was while fulfilling this duty that he
came to his death, at a comparatively early age, though not until the
Council, consisting of the bishops of all the world, had shown their
respect for him, had listened to his words of wisdom, and had
acknowledged that he was the greatest scholar of his time and worthy
of the respect and admiration of all of them. Because of all that his
kindness to them had meant for their uplift, the workmen of Lyons
craved and obtained the permission to carry his coffin on their
shoulders to his tomb.
Like his great teacher Albert, Thomas was respected even more for his
piety than for his learning. Not long after his death, people began to
speak of him as a saint. Though he was the most learned man of his
time, he was considered to have given an example of heroic virtue. A
careful investigation of his life showed that there was nothing in it
unworthy of the highest ideals as a man and a religious. Accordingly
he was canonized, and has ever since been considered the special
patron, helper and advocate of Catholic students. All down the
centuries his teaching has been looked upon as the most important in
the whole realm of theology. There has never been {327} a time when
his works have not been considered the most authoritative sources of
theological lore. At the end of the nineteenth century Leo XIII.
crowned the tributes which many Popes had conferred upon Thomas by
selecting him as the teacher to whom Catholic schools should ever turn
by formulating the authoritative Papal opinion--the nearer to Thomas,
the nearer to Catholic truth. When it is recalled that this is the man
who gave the great modern impulse to the doctrine of matter and form,
who taught the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of
energy, and declared with St. Augustine that the Creator had made only
the seeds of things, allowing these afterwards to develop for
themselves, which is the essence of the doctrine of evolution, it is
hard to understand how there should be question of opposition between
the Church and science in his time. With regard to the third of these
great physical scientists, the story of his relation to the
ecclesiastical authorities is not quite so simple. Roger Bacon was in
his younger years very much thought of by his own order, the
Franciscans. They sent him to Paris and provided him opportunities to
study under the great Albert, and then transferred him to Oxford,
where he had a magnificent opportunity for teaching. Many years of his
life were spent in peace and happiness in the cloister. A friend and
fellow student at Paris became Pope Clement, and his command was the
primary cause of the composition of Bacon's great works. All three of
his books, and especially the Opus Majus, were written at the command
of the Pope, and were highly praised by the Pontiff himself and by
those who read them in Rome. Unfortunately, difficulties occurred
within Friar Bacon's own order. It is not quite clear now just how
these {328} came about. The Franciscans of the rigid observance of
those early times took vows of the severest poverty. There had been
some relaxation of the rule, however, and certain abuses crept in. The
consequence was the re-assertion after a time of the original rule of
absolute poverty in all its stringency. It was Friar Bacon himself who
had chosen this mode of life and had taken the vows of poverty. Paper
was a very dear commodity, if indeed it was invented early enough in
the century for him to have used it. Vellum was even more expensive.
Just what material Bacon employed for his writings is not now known.
Whatever it was, it seems to have cost much money, and because of his
violation of his vow of poverty Roger Bacon fell under the ban of his
order. He was ordered to be confined to his cell in the monastery and
to be fed on bread and water for a considerable period. It must not be
forgotten that this was within a century after the foundation of the
Franciscans, and to an ardent son of St. Francis the living on bread
and water would not be a very difficult thing at this time, since his
ordinary diet would, at least during certain portions of the year, be
scarcely better than this. There is no account of how Roger Bacon took
his punishment. He might easily have left his order. There were many
others at that time who did. He wished to remain as a faithful son of
St. Francis, and seems to have accepted his punishment with the idea
that his example would influence others of the order to submit to the
enforcement of the regulation with regard to poverty, which superiors
now thought so important, if the original spirit of St. Francis was to
be regained.
It is sometimes said that Friar Bacon indulged in scientific
speculations which seemed subversive of {329} Christian mysteries, and
that this was one reason for his punishment. Recently he has been
declared the first of the modernists since he attempted to rationalize
religious mysteries. Whatever truth there may be in this, of one thing
we are certain, that before his death Bacon deeply regretted some of
his expressions and theories, and did not hesitate to confess humbly
that he was sorry to have even seemed to hint at supposed science
contrary to religious truth.
Of course, it may well be said, even after all these communities of
interest between the medieval and the modern teaching of the general
principles of science have been pointed out, that the universities of
the Middle Ages did not present the subjects under discussion in a
practical way, and their teaching was not likely to lead to directly
beneficial results in applied science. It might well be responded to
this, that it is not the function of a university to teach
applications of science, but only the great principles, the broad
generalizations that underlie scientific thinking, leaving details to
be filled in in whatever form of practical work the man may take up.
Very few of those, however, who talk about the purely speculative
character of medieval teaching, have manifestly ever made it their
business to know anything about the actual facts of old-time
university teaching by definite knowledge, but have rather allowed
themselves to be guided by speculation and by inadequate second-hand
authorities, whose dicta they have never taken the trouble to
substantiate by a glance at contemporary authorities on medieval
matters, much less by reading the old scholastics themselves.
How much was accomplished in applied science during the Middle Ages,
that is, in those departments of science {330} which are usually
supposed to have been least cultivated, since educators are prone to
ridicule the over-emphasis of speculation in education and the
constant preoccupation of mind of the scholars of these generations
with merely theoretic questions, may be appreciated from any history
of the arts and architecture during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth centuries. Some of the most difficult problems in mechanics
as applied to the structural work of cathedrals, palaces, castles,
fortresses, and bridges, were solved with a success that was only
equaled by the audacity with which they were attempted. Men hesitated
at nothing. There is no problem of mechanical engineering as applied
to structural work which these men did not find an answer for in their
wonderful buildings. This has been very well brought out by Prince
Kropotkin in certain chapters of his book, Mutual Aid a Factor of
Evolution, [Footnote 41] in which he treats of mutual aid in the
medieval cities. He says:
[Footnote 41: New York, McClure, Philips & Co., 1902.]
"At the beginning of the eleventh century the towns of Europe were
small clusters of miserable huts, adorned with but low clumsy
churches, the builders of which hardly knew how to make an arch; the
arts, mostly consisting of some weaving and forging, were in their
infancy; learning was found in but a few monasteries. Three hundred
and fifty years later, the very face of Europe had been changed. The
land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls
which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of
art itself. The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely
decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a
purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly
strive to attain. The {331} crafts and arts had risen to a degree of
perfection which we can hardly boast of having superseded in many
directions, if the inventive skill of the worker and the superior
finish of his work be appreciated higher than rapidity of
fabrication. The navies of the free cities furrowed in all
directions the Northern Seas and the Southern Mediterranean; one
effort more and they would cross the oceans. Over large tracts of
land, well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown
and spread; the methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of
natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved
for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so
proud."
The period for which Prince Kropotkin is thus enthusiastic in the
matter of applied science, is all before the date usually given as the
beginning of the Renaissance--the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The
three centuries and a half from the beginning of the eleventh century
represent just the time of the rise of scholasticism and the beginning
of its decline. Few periods of history are so maligned as regards
their intellectual feebleness, and in nothing is that quality supposed
to be more marked than in applied science; yet here is what a special
student of the time says of this very period in this particular
department.
Kropotkin has shown just what were the limitations of scientific
progress in the Middle Ages while emphasizing how much these wonderful
generations accomplished. In this I am inclined to the opinion that he
does not allow as much to the Middle Ages as he should. I have been
able to point out, I think, in this chapter many evidences of
important principles in science that were fully reached during the
Middle Ages. Because of {332} his more conservative opinion in this
matter, however, Kropotkin's opinion should carry all the more weight
with those who are now called upon to realize for the first time, how
much these despised generations accomplished in matters that were to
prove a precious heritage for subsequent generations, and the
foundation-stones of that great edifice of science which has been
built up in more recent years. Kropotkin says:
"True that no new principle was illustrated by any of these
discoveries, as Whewell said; but medieval science had done
something more than the actual discovery of new principles. It had
prepared the discovery of all the new principles which we know at
the present time in mechanical sciences; it had accustomed the
explorer to observe facts and to reason from them. It had inductive
science, even though it had not yet fully grasped the importance and
the powers of induction; and it had laid the foundations of both
mechanical and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon, Galileo, and
Copernicus were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and a
Michael Scot, as the steam engine was a direct product of the
researches carried on in the Italian universities on the weight of
the atmosphere, and of the mathematical and technical learning which
characterized Nuremberg."
"But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of
science and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to
the cathedrals in the domain of skill, and to the Italian language
and the poem of Dante in the domain of thought, to give at once the
measure of what the medieval city created during the four centuries
it lived?"
We are prone to think of evolution in human affairs as being the
ruling principle. As a consequence of this, {333} we are apt to
consider that since intervening periods between the nineteenth century
and the Middle Ages were lacking in education, in applied science, and
in interest in physical science to a great degree, beyond doubt, then,
the Middle Ages must have been still more lacking in these desirable
qualities of education and human knowledge. This is the sort of
deduction that greets one constantly in so-called histories of
education, and especially in such supposed contributions to the
history of the relationship of science to religion or theology as have
been made here in America. This deduction, as I have said before, is
made by men who are the first to asperse the medieval scholars for
having used deduction too freely, and who are ever ready to praise
induction. The induction in this matter--that is, the story of the
actual history of science in the Middle Ages--is the direct
contradiction of the deduction from false principles. Intervening
centuries not only failed to progress beyond the Middle Ages, but some
of them were far behind the achievements of that unfortunately
despised period. Once more Prince Kropotkin has touched this matter
very suggestively. After describing the achievements of applied
science in the Middle Ages, he says:
"Such were the magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than
four hundred years. And the losses which Europe sustained through
the loss of its free cities can only be understood when we compare
the seventeenth century with the fourteenth or thirteenth. The
prosperity which formerly characterized Scotland, Germany, the
plains of Italy, was gone. The roads had fallen into an abject
state, the cities were depopulated, labor was brought into slavery,
art had vanished, commerce itself was decaying."
{334}
In the meantime the reformation so-called had come, and had carried
away with it in its course nearly everything precious that men had
gained during the four centuries immediately preceding. Art,
education, science, liberty, democracy--everything worth while had
been hurt; most of them had been ruined for the time. Even the
nineteenth century did not succeed in bringing us back to a level with
the earlier centuries in all the intellectual and esthetic
accomplishments.
Another striking evidence of the deep interest of these generations in
science of all kinds and in details of information with regard to
which they are generally said to have been quite incurious, was the
publication of the famous encyclopedia, the first work of its kind
ever issued, which was written about the middle of the thirteenth
century by Vincent of Beauvais. It is only when a generation actually
calls for it, and when the want of it has been for a good while felt,
that such a work is likely to be undertaken. This immense literary
undertaking was completed under the patronage of King Louis IX. by
Vincent, a Dominican friar, who died at the beginning of the last
quarter of the thirteenth century. His Majus Speculum is not the first
book of general information, but it is the first deserving the name of
Encyclopedia in the full sense of the word that we have. It is divided
into three parts--the Speculum Naturale, Doctrinale, and Historiale.
The only one which interests us here is the Speculum Naturale, which
fills a huge folio volume of nearly a thousand pages, closely printed
in double columns. It is divided into 32 books and some 4,000
chapters. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica says of it:--
"It was, as it were, the great temple of medieval {335} science,
whose floor and walls are inlaid with an enormous mosaic of
skilfully arranged passages from Latin, Greek, Arabic, and even
Hebrew authors. To each quotation, as he borrows it, Vincent
prefixes the name of the book and the author from which it is taken,
distinguishing, however, his own remarks by the word 'actor.'"
The interest aroused by Vincent's compilation outside of professional
and educational circles strictly so-called, can be very well
appreciated from the fact that, besides King Louis's interest, his
Queen Margaret, their son Philip and son-in-law, King Theobald V., of
Champagne and Navarre, were, according to tradition, among those who
encouraged him in the work and aided him in bearing the expenses of
it. It is rather curious to find that the method of compilation was
nearly the same as that employed at the present day. Young men, mainly
members of Vincent's own order of the Dominicans, were engaged in
collecting the material, collating references, and verifying
quotations. The main burden of the work, however, fell upon Vincent
himself, and he accordingly deserves the reputation for wonderful
industry which he has enjoyed. Much as he wrote, however, it does not
exceed much in amount what was written by others of the great
scholastics, and theirs was original material and not merely the
collection of information.
If we had no other evidence of interest in nature and in natural
science than this great work of Vincent of Beauvais, it would be ample
to show the absurdity of the general impression that exists in the
minds of most scientists, and, unfortunately, also in the minds of
many educators, with regard to the barrenness of interest of {336} the
Middle Age in natural phenomena. It might easily be imagined that this
work of Vincent would have very little of interest for a modern
scientist. Any such anticipation is entirely due, however, to the
false impression that exists with regard to the supposed ridiculously
absurd views in matters of science entertained by the medieval
scholars. Those who do not take their opinions on theory, but actually
consult the books with regard to which they are ready to express
themselves, have no such opinion. There has been much more interest in
this class of books and in the scientific side of the literature of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries during the last few years, and
the consequence has been a complete reversal of opinions with regard
to them, among German and French scholars.
An excellent example of this is to be noted in Dr. Julius Pagel, who,
in his chapter on Medicine in the Middle Ages, in Puschmann's Handbook
of the History of Medicine, says: "There were three writers whose
works were even more popular than those of Albertus Magnus. These
three were: Bartholomew the Englishman, Thomas of Cantimprato, and
Vincent of Beauvais, the last of whom must be considered as one of the
most important contributors to the generalization of scientific
knowledge, not alone in the thirteenth, but in the immediately
succeeding centuries. His most important work was really an
encyclopedia of the knowledge of his time. It was called the Greater
Triple Mirror, and there is no doubt that it reflected very thoroughly
the knowledge of his period. He had the true scientific spirit, and
constantly cites the authorities from whom his information was
derived. He cites hundreds of authors, and there is scarcely a subject
that he does not {337} touch on. One book of his work is concerned
with human anatomy, and the concluding portion of it is an
abbreviation of history carried down to the year 1250."
It might be considered that such a compend of information would be
very dry-as-dust reading and that it would be fragmentary in character
and little likely to be attractive except to a serious student. Dr.
Pagel's opinion does not agree with this _a priori_ impression. He
says with regard to Vincent's work: "The language is clear, readily
intelligible, and the information is conveyed usually in an excellent,
simple style. Through the introduction of interesting similes the
contents do not lack a certain taking quality, so that the reading of
the work easily becomes absorbing." This is, I suppose, almost the
last thing that might be expected of a scientific teacher in the
thirteenth century, because, after all, Vincent of Beauvais must be
considered as one of the schoolmen, and they are supposed to be
eminently arid, but evidently, since we must trust this testimony of a
discerning modern German physician, only by those who have not taken
the trouble to read them.
Vincent of Beauvais was not the only one to occupy himself with work
of an encyclopedic character during the thirteenth century. At least
two other clergymen gave themselves up to the life-long work of
collecting details of information so as to make them available for
ready reference in their own times and for succeeding generations. The
very fact that three men should have taken up such a task, shows that
there must have been a loud call for this sort of writing, and that
there must have been a veritable thirst for information among the
educated classes of the time. Such books, as we have said, are not
created without a demand for them, though {338} they undoubtedly serve
in turn to awaken a greater thirst for the information which they
purvey. The other two encyclopedists of the time are Thomas
Cantipratano and Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the Englishman.
Thomas of Cantimprato's work was probably published about 1260. Von
Töply, in his Studies in Anatomy in the Middle Ages, has the most
readily available information with regard to Thomas's work. [Footnote
42] The work of most interest to us is the De Natura Rerum, a single
large volume in twenty books. It required some fifteen years of work,
and for some fifteen years before he began his work on it Thomas had
been writing various historical and biographical works. Thomas's
encyclopedic volume contains one book with regard to anatomy, one with
regard to human monsters, and books with regard to quadrupeds, birds,
marine monsters, fishes, serpents, worms, ordinary trees, aromatic and
medicinal plants and the virtues of herbs, and of curative waters of
various kinds. Then there are books on precious stones and their
cutting, on the seven regions and the humors of the air, on the earth
and the seven planets, and on the four elements and the Heavens and
eclipses of the sun and moon. When such a work was published for
general reading, it is easy to understand that no phase of information
with regard to nature failed to be of interest to readers of the
thirteenth century. Much that is absurd is contained in the book. But
when we compare it with books written in the early part of the
eighteenth century, we are apt to wonder rather at how little advance
had taken place in the four centuries of interval, than at the
ignorance of the medieval writer.
[Footnote 42: Studien zur Geschichte der Anatomie im Mittelalter von
Robert Ritter von Töply, Leipzig und Wien. Franz Deuticke, 1898.]
{339}
We have been able, of course, in this limited space to give only a
modicum of the evidence for the cultivation of the Physical Sciences
at the Medieval Universities, and their records in monumental works
still extant; but this will probably be enough to enable those who are
interested in the subject to realize its significance and to gather
further material if they so wish. The universities were ecclesiastical
institutions. Most of them derived their authority to give degrees
directly from the Popes. Appeals were frequently made to the Popes
with regard to the discipline and the teaching at the universities.
Most of the great teachers of physical science were ecclesiastics.
Nearly all the students were clerics. Many of those who were most
successful in science reached high preferment in the Church. Evidently
the pursuit of science did not prejudice their advancement, either in
their orders, when they belonged to any of the various religious
orders, or in the Church itself. They were the near and dear friends
of archbishops, cardinals and Popes. This is entirely contrary to the
ordinary impression in the matter; but this is the plain truth, while
the contrary opinions are founded on the false assumption of Church
opposition to science.
{340}
THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY MAN AND SCIENCE.
Even after the series of demonstrations which we have given that the
great thinkers and teachers at the medieval universities were deeply
interested in the problems of what we now call natural or physical
science, most people will still not be open to conviction that
interest in nature was quite as lively in the Middle Ages as at any
subsequent period, even our own. In spite of the fact that the
scholastics faced scientific questions in nearly the same mood as we
do ourselves, and, curiously enough, anticipated very closely many of
the doctrines now current in science, not a few of those who are most
interested in the history of education will continue to think that
science occupied the minds of the students at the medieval
universities very little, and that while the great thinkers may have
known something about it, the rank and file of the university men of
the time gave scarcely any thought to it. Besides, they will be almost
sure to conclude that, whatever they did think was likely to be inept,
and in most cases quite ridiculous. Such thoughts are a part of that
unfortunate educational tradition which stamps the Middle Ages as
neglectful of nature study, as we would call it now, and as lacking in
interest in natural phenomena. Nothing could well be less true, and it
will require, I think, but the simple tracing of the life and
erudition of a single well-known student of these medieval
universities, to show how utterly absurd and unfounded is the popular
belief.
{341}
I have chosen Dante for this purpose, mainly because so much more is
known about the personal details of his life than of anyone else, and
we are able to glean from his writings and the contemporary comments
on them, a good idea of what the general information on scientific
subjects of the educated man of his period was. The fact that Dante
was a member of the Guild of the Apothecaries in Florence, an
association that included also the physicians of the city, has added
an adventitious interest to his attractions as one of the few greatest
of poets of all time, and has made details of his career and evidence
of the breadth of his education and culture of special import, so that
I have frequently taken occasion to call the attention of physicians
to the honor implied by Dante's fraternal relation to us. His
membership in the Guild of the Apothecaries, however, did not call for
any special knowledge of science on his part. He had nothing to do
with the sale of drugs, much less with the science of medicine.
Originally the Italian apothecaries, as the Greek origin of the word
indicates, were shop-keepers selling all sorts of things--edible,
adorning, or useful for personal service. They sold drugs also, and as
some of these were imported from the East, they commonly added to
their stock certain other Eastern specialties--perfumes, gems and the
like. In this way they soon became wealthy, as a rule, and indeed the
name of the rich Florentine family who came eventually to rule their
native city--the Medici--is said to be derived from similar
connections. It was the sons of these men who became the upper middle
classes in Florence. Perhaps one should say they became the upper
classes, for Florence had no nobility, in the proper sense of the
word, and men made their own positions. Their {342} descendants became
the men of culture, until finally the Florentine Guild of the
Apothecaries represented the most intelligent class of the population
of the city. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, then,
most of the artists, the literary men, the architects, the sculptors,
were members of the guild. Dante's occupation when he was a peaceful
citizen of Florence was, according to tradition, that of architect,
and one building designed by him is supposed to be still in existence
in Florence.
Dante should represent for us, then, what an architect in Florence at
the end of the thirteenth century knew about natural science, as the
result of his school and university training. In our time, architects
are likely to know more about certain forms of physical science than
most other people, and due allowance would have to be made for this in
Dante's case. It will be found, though, as we discuss his erudition,
that the sciences in which he was particularly interested--astronomy
and various phases of biology with physical geography--were not those
which appeal especially to an architect, and certainly have no
relation to his occupation. His knowledge of flowers might be thought
to be due to his wish to use floral forms for structural decorative
purposes, but Dante is rather weak for a poet in the matter of the
description of flowers, and it is only from the side of their color
that they made any special appeal to him.
Most people have been led to think of Dante as not a student of
nature, because that impression would inevitably be gathered from
certain passages of John Ruskin with regard to him. Ruskin was so
faithful and loving a student of Dante that he would be expected not
to be {343} mistaken in such a matter, nor is he; but he has dwelt
overmuch on certain phases of Dante's lack of interest in nature,
until the great Florentine's devotion to creation as he saw it around
him is obscured. It is not difficult to show, from Dante's own
writings, how much he was interested in nearly every phase of nature
and natural phenomena. In the "Westminster Review" for July and
August, 1907, Mr. George Trobridge, in articles on Dante as a Nature
Poet, has furnished abundant evidence to prove his thesis, though he
too has felt the necessity for apologizing for even apparently
differing from so great a critic and such an enthusiastic Dante
student as Ruskin. Dante's works, however, themselves can be the only
appeal in this matter, and Mr. Trobridge has used them with good
effect and in such a way as to carry to anyone the conviction that
Dante was a profound student of nature in all her moods and tenses.
Mr. Trobridge says in the introduction:
"It will appear presumptuous in the present writer to differ from so
great a critic and such an enthusiastic student of Dante as Ruskin,
but it seems to him that the author of Modern Painters has done
scant justice to the intense insight of the poet into the beauties
of the world we live in and his wonderful power of expressing what
he saw. There are few even modern poets who have taken so wide a
view of the field of nature, and even Shakespeare himself scarcely
excells the great Florentine in felicity and concentration of
expression. The Divina Commedia is full of vivid pictures covering
the whole range of natural phenomena. As these pass before our eyes,
we can scarcely realize that the painter of them is not of our own
day, so thoroughly does he enter into the spirit of modern landscape
art. {344} Sometimes his pictures are momentary impressions--studies
of effects painted with a large brush; at others his touch is of a
Preraphaelitic nicety, and now and then he gives us a studied
composition full of doubtful detail like one of Turner's landscapes.
He was one with Wordsworth in his sincere delight in every form of
natural beauty. Like him, he lived beneath the habitual sway of
fountains, meadows, hills and groves; with him he saw the 'splendor
in the grass' and the 'glory in the flower.' He could 'feel the
gladness of the May' and rejoiced in 'the innocent brightness of a
new day.'"
In the matter of science as distinct from poetic interest in nature,
quite as much can be said for Dante. This greatest of Italian poets is
a fair example to take of the university man of the thirteenth century
in this respect. He was thirty-five before the first century of
university existence properly so-called closed. He may be considered a
typical product of university life. It is true he had had the almost
inestimable advantage of the schooling and culture of his native
Florence, where at the end of the thirteenth century there were more
children, it is said, in attendance at the schools to the number of
the population than there is at the present moment even in most of our
American cities. Brother Azarias in his Essays Educational, [Footnote
43] said:
[Footnote 43: Essays Educational, by Brother Azarias, with Preface by
His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons. Chicago, D. H. McBride & Co., 1906.]
"In the thirteenth century, out of a population of 90,000 in Florence,
we find 12,000 children attending the schools, a ratio of school
attendance as large as existed in New York City, in the year of Grace
1893." This ratio, it may be said, is as great as is ordinarily to be
found anywhere, and this fact alone may serve to show {345} how
earnest were these medieval burghers for the education of their
children. Dante had the advantage of this, and in addition, of the
training at two or three of the universities at least of Italy,
besides spending some time at Paris, and probably a visit at least to
Oxford.
Lest it should be thought that perhaps Brother Azarias gave too
favorable an estimate in his account of the schools in Florence,
though he quotes as his authority Villani, and other authorities are
readily available, it seems worth while to give a very interesting
reference to this subject of education in one of the notes in Prince
Kropotkin's chapter on Mutual Aid in the Medieval City, from his book
Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution, a work that we have placed under
contribution a number of times already in this attempt to picture
medieval conditions as they were in reality, and not in the foolish
imaginings of outworn traditions. Kropotkin's studies in what the free
cities accomplished by the union of the guilds for every fraternal
purpose, and the coordination of their citizens for every detail of
the commonweal, has made him realize that common or public school
education was an important feature of medieval free city life, and
strange as that fact may appear to many modern minds, that such public
school education occupied at least as prominent a position as it does
with us in our own time. In the quotation from him it will be seen
that he considers that Florence was not alone in this matter, and he
ventures to place Nüremberg on a level with her. Doubtless other
German cities, as certainly other Italian cities, provided similar
facilities for general education.
Kropotkin says: "In 1336 it (Florence) had 8,000 to 10,000 boys and
girls in its primary schools, 1,000 to {346} 1,200 boys in its seven
middle schools, and from 550 to 600 students in its four universities.
The thirty communal hospitals contained over 1,000 beds for a
population of 90,000 inhabitants. (Capponi, ii. 249 seq.) It has more
than once been suggested by authoritative writers, that education
stood, as a rule, at a much higher level than is generally supposed.
Certainly so in democratic Nüremberg."
The content of this educational system is our main subject of interest
at the present moment.
"Seven hundred young men received the higher education. (This in a
city of less than 100,000 inhabitants. How do our cities of 100,000
inhabitants compare with it?) The very spirit of the arts was
scholastic in Dante's day. You read the story in the oratory of
Orsanmichele, in which each art with its masterpiece receives a crown;
you read it in the chapters of Santa Maria Novella, in Gaddi's
painting of the Trivium and Quadrivium; you read it in Giotto's
sculpture of the same subject upon this marvelous campanile. Here was
the atmosphere in which Dante's boyhood and early manhood were
passed."
We shall not be surprised, then, to find in Dante, the typical product
of this form of education, an interest in every form of erudition and
in all details of information.
I have preferred to take the evidence for Dante's knowledge of science
from others, rather than attempt to supply it entirely by means of
quotations from his works. This latter would be the most scholarly
way, but Dante is not easy reading even in a good translation, and one
needs to be familiar with his modes of expression and to be accustomed
to the wonderful compression of his style to appreciate his full
significance. There is {347} no lack of good authorities, however, who
have made deep studies in Dante, to bring out for us the complete
import of all the references to the science of his time, which Dante
was tempted to make. We have perhaps been prone to think, in
English-speaking countries, that no poets have ever kept more
thoroughly in touch with the progress of science, or at least have
ever used references to scientific details with more accuracy, than
some of our own nineteenth century poets. A little study of the first
great poet of modern times, in whom Carlyle said "ten silent centuries
found a voice," though Dante by no means stands alone in the century,
but is the culmination of a series of great poets, will show that he
probably must be considered as taking the palm even from our most
modern of poets in this respect. If the expressions in text-books of
the history of education are to be accepted as evidence of the
thoughts of educators with regard to the details of education in
Dante's time, even a brief sketch of Dante's scientific knowledge will
be a supreme surprise to them.
As will be at once appreciated, Dante was not a specialist in science,
but used the knowledge of science current in his day in order to drive
home his thoughts by means of figures. It is surprising, however, what
a marvelous display of scientific knowledge, entirely without
pedantry, which anyone who knows his supreme compression of style will
realize to be the fault Dante is least liable to, was thus made by
this educated literary man of the thirteenth century. Dr. L. Oscar
Kuhns, Professor in Wesleyan University, has in his little book The
Treatment of Nature in Dante's Divina Commedia, suggested a comparison
between Dante and Goethe. [Footnote 44 ] {348} Everyone realizes at
once how profound a scientist was Goethe. Professor Kuhns' comparison,
then, will bring out the scientific qualities of this great medieval
poet, who is the representative scholar of the universities of his
time.
[Footnote 44: The Treatment of Nature in Dante's Divina Commedia, by
L. Oscar Kuhns, Professor in Wesleyan University, Middletown, U. S. A.
Edward Arnold, London and New York. 1897.]
"There is perhaps no innate contradiction between science and
poetry, but it is not often that they are found together in the same
man. Dante, like Goethe, half a millennium later, was not only drawn
by the beauty of nature, but he had likewise an unquenchable
intellectual curiosity, and sought diligently to understand the
meaning of the universe in which he lived.
"No other poet has ever combined the loftiest poetry with the
discussion of such complicated topics in all branches of learning.
In one place we find a long discussion of the origin and development
of life, which, naive and scholastic as it is, shows some lines of
resemblance to the modern doctrines in biology; in another place
there is a learned discussion between the poet and Beatrice
concerning the cause of the spots in the moon, in which an actual
experiment in optics is given."
The first passage to which Professor Kuhns refers, while containing
many speculative elements, is a discussion of certain important basic
problems in biology that have always appealed to thinking men at every
period of the history of science, and never more so than in our own
day. They must still be considered undecided, though many volumes have
been written on them in the last century. There are thoughts in
Dante's exposition of the subject that are startling enough to the
modern biologist, and that make it clear how much men's minds run
along the same grooves in facing questions that we are prone to think
have occurred to men only in the last {349} few generations. The other
quotation to which Professor Kuhns refers deserves to be quoted
entire. It is perhaps even more striking because of its actual
description of an experiment in optics, which shows how much this
great poetic intelligence of the medieval time, usually supposed to be
so abstracted and occupied with things other-worldly and supernal,
living his intellectual life quite beyond the domain of sense, still
remembered the teachings of his university days, and even recalled the
details of demonstrations that he had seen. The passage occurs in the
II. canto of the Paradiso, beginning with line 97:
"Take thou three mirrors, two of them remove
From thee an equal distance, and the last
Between the two, and further from thee move;
And turned towards them let a light be cast,
Behind thy back, upon those mirrors three,
So that from all reflected rays are passed.
Then, though the light which furthest stands from thee
May not with them in magnitude compete,
Yet will it shine in brightness equally."
It is easy to understand, then, that Professor Kuhns should have been
enthusiastic with regard to Dante's knowledge of science. He says:
"The whole structure of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise shows a
thorough knowledge of the Ptolemaic system; and we invariably find
astronomical facts, mingled with classical quotations, in the
description of stellar phenomena. But not only in specific passages
do we find evidence of Dante's love for science, but in brief
allusions to the various aspects of nature--metaphors, {350}
figures, descriptions--a word or two is added, giving the cause of
the phenomenon in question. Examples of this abound."
It is with regard to astronomy, of course, that Dante has given us the
most convincing evidence of his knowledge of science, his interest in
nature and natural phenomena, his questioning spirit in nature study,
and the wonderful anticipations of his generation with regard to
knowledge that has usually been supposed to have been hidden from
them. The stars appealed to his poetic spirit, and then besides, his
great poem occupied itself with all the visible universe, and
especially with the parts outside this world. Professor Kuhns has
said:
"One may confidently assert that no such perfect lines descriptive of
the stars have ever been written. Shakespeare and others can furnish
famous passages, but none, I think, equal to those of Dante. They have
all the quality of his art--truth, clearness, possessing the power of
touching deeply the imagination, yet terse and compact, containing not
a word too much. We see the stars at all hours of the night, in all
degrees of brilliancy, fading away at the approach of dawn, gradually
appearing as twilight comes on, shining with splendor on a moonless
night, keenly sparkling after the winds have cleared the atmosphere,
or eclipsed by the greater effulgence of the moon. The motion of the
constellations about the pole is referred to, those which are nearest
to it never setting beneath the horizon."
It is often thought that the proper idea of the explanation of the
Milky Way was quite modern. Dante, however, discusses in his Convito
the theories of it that had been suggested up to his time, and then
gives his own {351} views, which he confesses are founded on
Aristotle, but which are evidently the result also of his own
thinking. Pythagoras, he said, attributed it to the scorching heat of
the sun, as if somehow this left a trace of itself even after the sun
had sunk. Other Greek philosophers, as for example Anaxagoras and
Democritus, explained it as a reflection of the light of the sun which
still found its way even though that luminary had passed from sight.
Dante himself says that, following Aristotle, he cannot help but think
that the Milky Way is composed of a multitude of minute stars which
are gathered very closely together in this particular part of the
heavens, and which are so small that they cannot be distinguished from
one another, though their light causes that special white luminosity
which we call the Milky Way. This explanation is the true one, only
that the apparent smallness of the stars are due to their distance,
and not to their actual minuteness of size.
A brief list of the other astronomical phenomena mentioned by Dante
has been made by Professor Kuhns. This serves to show very clearly
that Dante's knowledge with regard to the heavens was quite as
extensive as that of the modern educated man, indeed, probably more
so, and that it was quite as exact. The little touch which shows that
he knew, for instance, that August is the month when shooting stars
are more frequent, is wonderfully illuminating. His powers of
observation are brought out by his having seen them during the day as
well as at night. In all this it must not be forgotten that Dante was
no mere pedant making a display of his knowledge; that he was not one
to parade his erudition for the sake of show; that indeed no one has
ever written so compressedly as he; that every word that he {352} used
counts in bringing out his meaning, and yet that we find all this
wealth of information with regard to astronomy in a book that was
meant to proclaim, and has, in the opinion of men for all time since,
expressed more sublimely the significance of man's relations to the
universe and his reflections on the infinite in lofty poetic thought,
than any other that was ever written. Professor Kuhns says:
"The other celestial phenomena mentioned by Dante may be dismissed
briefly. We have references to the eclipse and its cause, and the
Blessed in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars flame brightly, _a guisa di
comete_ (in the guise of a comet). Shooting-stars are referred to
several times, almost invariably as a conventional figure for
rapidity. August is the month when they are the most frequent, and
they are most seen to shoot with lightninglike swiftness across the
serene blue sky or pierce the clouds that gather around the setting
sun. One fine passage describes the spectator following them with
his eyes as they lose themselves in the distance."
It is no wonder, then, that Prof. Kuhns should be quite enthusiastic
with regard to Dante's use of astronomical knowledge. He insists,
however, that while it was his poetic soul and love for the stars that
tempted him to allow his thoughts to wander so frequently into the
realm of the celestial bodies, his interest was always profoundly
scientific. His passage to this effect is worth while quoting _in
extenso_, because it brings out this fact very clearly. As Prof.
Kuhns' only idea in this was to show how marvelously the
representative poet of the Middle Ages turned to nature in his poetry,
and there was no thought of controverting the foolish notions of those
who so lightly declare that the students of the {353} Middle Age
universities knew nothing of science, the paragraph is a bit of very
striking evidence in this matter.
"Dante's love for the stars was largely scientific; he knew
thoroughly the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, which forms the
framework of the whole structure of the Paradiso. We find constant
and accurate allusions to the constellations, their various shapes
and positions in the heavens; while the hour of the day and the
season of the year are often referred to in terms of astronomical
science, frequently interwoven with mythology. But besides this
scientific interest, he was deeply touched by the beauty, the
mystery and the tranquilizing power of the celestial orbs. There is
hardly a phase of them that he has not touched upon; many of his
descriptions and allusions have a truth and vividness unsurpassed
even in this present day of nature worship. Here, as elsewhere in
the Divina Commedia, science and learning and poetry go hand in
hand. We have no mere dry catalogue of facts, but the wonderful
mechanism of the starry heavens is brought before our eyes, rolling
its spheres in celestial harmony, radiant with light and splendour,
while the innumerable company of angels and the 'spirits of just men
made perfect' raise the chorus of praise to the Alto Fattore."
We cannot but add the reflection that, as our own poets of the
nineteenth century indulged themselves in figures drawn from science
not only because of their own interest in the subject, but because
they realized the interest of the men of their time in matters
scientific and appreciated that figures drawn from them would add to
the significance of their own thoughts, so Dante would not have used
figures drawn from science only {354} that, closely in touch as he was
with the educated men of his time in many cities and countries, he
felt that he would thus not only be adding to the interest of his
work, but would be making his own meaning clearer by a wealth of
allusion from things scientific. This is indeed the side of this study
of Dante that deserves the most thorough consideration by educators in
our time, if they would understand what the real spirit of the
teaching of science in the medieval universities was, and what the
attitude of educated people of the time toward nature study, which has
been so egregiously misrepresented by those who know nothing at all
about it, must be considered to have been. All this we must judge,
however, from contemporary sources, and not from subsequent
supercilious misrepresentations.
It must not be thought, however, that Dante's interest in science was
exhausted by his excursions into astronomy. This has already been more
than hinted at in some of the passages quoted, which show his interest
in other phases of science. In the modern time, however, it is almost
the rule, that if a scholar who is not a scientist, and especially if
he happens to be, as Dante was, a literary man, indulges in some
scientific pursuits, he has at most but an interest in one branch of
science. Quite as often as not he rather prides himself on knowing
nothing at all about this department of knowledge. Specialism has
invaded even scientific education, and a man specializes in some
favorite department of science for his avocation, and is apt to know
very little about other departments. Dante was not thus constituted,
however. It will be comparatively easy to show that every form of
scientific thought interested him, and that his love of nature led him
into nature study, in the {355} best sense of that very modern term,
and caused him to make observations for himself, or so retain the
observations of others that he had heard or read, that he was able to
use them very forcibly and appropriately in the figurative language of
his great poem.
Alexander von Humboldt, the distinguished German naturalist and leader
of scientific thought in the early nineteenth century, whose
compliment to Albertus Magnus, quoted in the chapter on Science at the
Medieval Universities, is probably a surprise to most people, but
serves to show how wide was the reading of this great scientist, was
also an attentive student of Dante, and has a passage with regard to
the Florentine poet's knowledge of science quite as striking as that
with regard to the great scholastic's excursions into the same field.
In his Cosmos he has the following tribute to Dante as a student of
nature and as a loving observer of natural phenomena:
"When the story of the Arabic, Greek or Roman dominion--or, I might
almost say, when the ancient world had passed away, we find in the
great and inspired founder of a new era, Dante Alighieri, occasional
manifestations of the deepest sensibility to the charms of the
terrestrial life of nature, whenever he abstracts himself from the
passionate and subjective control of that despondent mysticism which
constituted the general circle of his ideas."
With regard to the famous description of the river of light in the
thirtieth canto of the Paradiso, Humboldt declared that the picture
must have been suggested to Dante by the phosphorescence seen so
beautifully and so luxuriantly in the Adriatic Sea at times. The
passage itself is so beautiful and is so well worth the reading a
{356} second time, even for those who have read it before, that I give
it a place here, followed by Humboldt's comment.
I saw a glory like a stream flow by,
In brightness rushing, and on either shore
Were banks that with spring's wondrous hues might vie.
And from that river living sparks did soar,
And sank on all sides on the floweret's bloom.
Like precious rubies set in golden ore.
Then, as if drunk with all the rich perfume,
Back to the wondrous torrent did they roll,
And as one sank another filled its room.
Dean Plumptre says that Humboldt's suggestion with regard to this
description has not been found elsewhere, and as it adds to the
completeness of the idea conveyed by the figure, he gives it a place
in his studies and estimates of Dante. Humboldt said:
"It would almost seem as if this picture had its origin in the
poet's recollection of that peculiar and rare phosphorescent
condition of the ocean when luminous points appear to rise from the
breaking waves, and, spreading themselves over the surface of the
waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea of sparkling
stars."
It is with regard to the little things in life, particularly those
that are so small that one would be tempted to think at first blush
that Dante paid no attention to them at all, that his powers of
observation as a student of nature, and his all-pervading love for
every even smallest manifestation of her power, is especially made
manifest. With regard to this subject, Prof. Kuhns, to whom I have
already turned so often, has an illuminating {357} passage, which sums
up a large amount of reading of the poet. He says:
"The smallest members of the animal kingdom do not escape the
observing eye of the poet, and such unpoetical insects as the flea,
the gnat, and the fly are brought into use. By means of these latter
he has accurately given the time of day and season of the year in
one line, where, showing us the farmer lying on the hillside of a
summer evening, looking down upon the valley alight with fire-flies,
he says the time was that
'When the fly yields to the gnat.'
Those pests of dogs, the flea and hornet, are referred to in a
passage already given, where the dog is seen snapping and scratching
in agony. The butterfly was symbolical, during the Middle Ages, of
the death and resurrection of the body. The various phases of its
development are referred to by Dante; the caterpillar state, the
latter referring to the cocoon of the silk-worm, furnishing a figure
for the souls in Paradise, swathed in light; in one passage,
backsliding Christians are compared to insects in a state of
arrested development."
Dante's passage in the tenth canto of the Purgatorio, in which he
compares man to the butterfly, who in this life passes through the
caterpillar stage, passing in death, as it were, into the larval stage
when in his coffin he is motionless and apparently dead, as the insect
in its cocoon, yet finally reaching the glory of the resurrection in
the winged butterfly stage, shows how well these medieval observers of
nature had studied carefully aspects of nature which we are apt to
think were holden entirely from their eyes. The passage would remind
one of the story of the Jesuit, three centuries later, who, in {358}
the early days of missionary work in this country, wondered how he
would obtain a fitting word to express to the Indians the abstract
idea of the resurrection of the body. The good Father finally recalled
his Dante, and having found a caterpillar that had entered into the
larval stage after having spun its cocoon and wrapped itself round
with its shroud to lie down in what is a striking similitude of death,
presented it to the Indians, and then having waited until the
butterfly came out, asked them what they called this process, and
applied the word for it to the resurrection. Dante says:--
"Perceive ye not we are of a wormlike kind,
Born to bring forth the angel butterfly,
That soars to Judgment, and no screen doth find?
Why doth your soul lift up itself on high?
Ye are as insects yet but half complete,
As worms in whom their growth fails utterly."
It is with regard to bees and ants, however, that Dante's observant
love of nature and of natury study is especially to be admired. It is
true, as has been often pointed out, that the older poets, of whom
Dante was an assiduous and mindful reader, made use of figures with
regard to bees, and Virgil, with all of whose works Dante was so
intimately acquainted that nothing must have escaped him, devoted one
of the four books of his Georgics to what is practically a treatise on
Apiculture. In this most of the problems of bee raising are discussed.
Lucretius, Lucan, and Ovid, all made use of this interesting insect
for figures in their poetry. Dante might have obtained most of the
references to the bee, then, from his reading. Prof. Kuhns is of the
opinion, however, that some at {359} least of Dante's references to
them are due to his observations, quite apart from his literary
reminiscences with regard to their habits and instincts. He says:--
"There are certain touches in the Divina Commedia which seem to
prove that Dante's use of them was not entirely conventional. In the
wonderful passage where he stands contemplating
'La forma general di Paradiso,'
he saw the Blessed in the shape of a great white rose on the banks
of the river of light; and the white-robed angels, with wings of
gold and faces of flame, as they fly unceasingly back and forth from
the seats of the saints to the effulgent river, are compared to
bees, following their inborn instinct to make honey, flying from
flower to flower, burying themselves in the chalice, and then rising
heavily to carry their burden to their hives. In another passage
their buzzing noise is compared to the noise of a distant
waterfall;"--a touch of nature that could only have come from
familiarity with the insects.
In is with regard to ants even more than bees that Dante's
proclivities for nature study are most evident. When in the
Purgatorio, in the twenty-sixth canto, Dante would describe the
meeting of souls in Paradise who kiss each other as they speed on
their way, he compares them to the ants who as they meet one another
touch antennae, thus communicating various messages, and then go on
their way. The passage is very striking because, as Dean Plumptre
remarks, the picture drawn reminds one almost of Sir John Lubbock's
ant studies, or the remarkable descriptions of ant life in Bishop
Ken's Hymnotheo. Dante's lines are as follows:--
{360}
"So oft, within their dusk brown host proceed
This ant and that, till muzzle muzzle meet;
Spying their way, or how affairs succeed."
Thus did Dante know the whole round of science in his time better than
any modern university man. People who take exception to his knowledge
fail to realize its environment. They may smile a little scornfully
now at his complacent acceptance of the Ptolemaic system without a
question, but it must not be forgotten that for three centuries after
his time educated men still continued to accept it, and that even the
distinguished Jesuit astronomer, Clavius, to whom we owe the Gregorian
reformation of the calendar and the restoration of the year to its
proper place as regards the heavens, not only accepted it, but worked
out his calendar reform problems by means of it. Clavius's great
contemporary, Tycho-Brahe, the distinguished Danish astronomer, found
no reason to reject it. Even Lord Bacon, who with perverted historical
sense is still proclaimed the father of modern experimental science,
also accepted the Ptolemaic system, and found that it thoroughly
explained all the phenomena of the heavens, while he rejected the
Copernican system, then nearly a century before the world, because he
thought it did not. The surprise, however, is not in Dante's knowledge
of astronomy, but in his familiarity with details of biology that
enables him to reason, though in poetic language, with straightforward
and logical directness with regard to basic thought in this science
that is usually considered so thoroughly modern.
Another surprising feature is the knowledge of the habits of birds and
of insects. Our modern students of {361} nature are supposed to be the
first who went deeply enough into these subjects to make them material
for literature. Here, however, is Dante describing, in a few
picturesque words, characteristic peculiarities of birds and insects,
which our modern writers spend pages over, yet tell us scarcely more
about them. A little knowledge of Dante is evidently the best antidote
that our generation can have for that foolish persuasion that the
Middle Ages were ignorant of science and that the universities taught
nothing but nonsense about nature.
I am tempted to add just a few paragraphs with regard to another
aspect of Dante's scientific interests which assimilates him to the
modern educated man. Education itself would seem to be one of the
sciences the development of which was surely left to a late and more
conscious age. There are, however, as has been pointed out by Brother
Azarias, quite enough materials in Dante's works to show that a
serious student who was, however, only a literary man and not an
educator, had many thoughts with regard to the practical side of
education, and had come to many conclusions with regard to how it
should be carried on, that are anticipations of the most fruitful
thoughts of our modern educators and that have formed the subject of
many theses on education down to our own day. Education is, of course,
scarcely one of the physical sciences, yet since its subject-matter is
mainly the child and the developing human intellect, and in that sense
it is nature study in its highest form, this aspect of Dante's
thinking also deserves to be given due weight here. Brother Azarias
says:--
"It is the mission of the poet to reflect in his work the
predominant, all-pervading spirit and views of his age. Now, in his
day, the universities were the {362} controlling element in thought,
in art, in politics, moulding the thinkers and rulers of the age
both in church and state. But Dante was a life-long student. He
traveled from land to land and from school to school, and sat
impatiently, yet humbly, at the feet of masters, imbibing whatever
knowledge they could convey. He disputed in public. His bright eyes
and strong, sombre, reserved features attracted the attention of
fellow students as he wended his way, absorbed in his own thoughts,
through the rue de Fouarre and entered the hall in which Siger was
holding forth. Tradition has it that he was no less assiduous a
frequenter of School Street in Oxford. He has left us no distinct
treatise on education; but he who embodied all the science of his
day, who was supreme in teaching so many other lessons, could not be
silent in regard to pedagogy. From his writings a whole volume of
rules and principles bearing upon education might be gleaned. In 'Il
Convito' he expresses himself fully on the different ages of human
growth and development; speaks of obedience as an essential
requisite for the child; after his father he should obey his master
and his elders. He should also be gentle and modest, reverent and
eager to acquire knowledge; reserved, never forward; repentant of
his faults to the extent of overcoming them. As our soul in all its
operations makes use of a bodily organ, it behooves us to exercise
the body, that it grow in grace and aptness, and be well ordained
and disposed in order that the soul may control it to the best
advantage. Thus it is that a noble nature seeks to have a sound mind
in a sound body."
{363}
THE CHURCH AND THE MENTALLY AFFLICTED.
It is especially with regard to the attitude of the churchmen, the
people, and even the physicians of the Middle Ages toward insanity,
that most opprobrium has been heaped upon the Church and her teachings
in the so-called histories of the relations of science to theology or
faith. Much of what has been said that has been supposed to tell worst
against the Church, however, should not rest upon the shoulders of
ecclesiastics, and should not be set down to the evil effect of
theology. It is easy now to look back and blame men for the acceptance
of supernatural agencies as causes in nearly all cases of mental and
nervous diseases, but the reason for this is rather to be looked for
in the nature of man than in his belief in religion. Ethnology shows
us traces of it everywhere. Our American Indians, long before any
tincture of Christianity, and before any hint of theology of any kind
reached them, beyond that which develops spontaneously from the depths
of their natural faculties, believed in the effect of the evil spirits
in producing disease, and, of course, particularly the mental diseases
which made men do things so contrary to their own interests, and often
so harmful to the beings they loved best in the world.
In the Middle Ages they had not yet outgrown this primitive way of
looking at mental diseases. For that matter, we have not even as yet.
The intelligent classes in the community are, as a rule, convinced of
the physical basis of mental diseases, but there are a {364} great
many people who still are inclined to think that some of them, at
least, are manifestations of some punitive force outside of the
patients themselves, or even some manifestation of ill-understood
forces quite apart from matter. Not all the thinking people of the
Middle Ages accepted all the absurd notions sometimes rehearsed in
this matter, but as in our own time, foolish traditions and
superstitions dominated the unthinking classes, which form still,
unfortunately, the great mass of mankind. We have had just the
opposite delusions forced upon our attention in our own day. Large
numbers, supposedly of intelligent people, have pretended to believe
or have definitely accepted the teaching that disease is nothing. This
is quite as foolish as attributing to spiritual agencies what has come
to be recognized as due to physical factors. It is to be hoped that
our generation and its thinking shall not be judged by future
generations to have been utterly foolish, just because a few millions
of us accepted Eddyism,--and it must be remembered that these are not,
as a rule, the uneducated. Another side of this question is even more
interesting, or at least has become so during the last twenty years. A
generation ago it was the custom to scoff not a little scornfully in
scientific circles, at the idea of admitting even the possibility of
the interference of immaterial or spiritual agencies, or of any other
intelligences or wills at work in the ordinary affairs of this life,
than those of men. This scornful attitude still continues to be the
pose of many students and teachers of science. It is by no means so
universal as it was, however. Strikingly enough, the converts from
this attitude of mind have come, not from the lower ranks of teachers
of science, but from among the very leaders in original {365} research
and scientific investigation. We may still continue to laugh at and
ridicule the medieval people for their admission of the activity of
spirits in ordinary mundane affairs, but if we do so, we must also
laugh at and ridicule just as much, such prominent leaders of
scientific thought and progress as Sir William Crookes, Mr. Alfred
Russell Wallace, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Charles Richet, the
distinguished French physiologist, Flammarion the astronomer, and even
of late years Professor Lombroso, the well-known Italian
criminologist, whose special doctrines as to crime and criminals would
apparently insure him against such theories as those of the
spiritualists. All of these men have confessed their belief not only
in the possibility of spiritual interference in this world of ours,
but insist that they have seen such interference, and are absolutely
convinced of its frequent occurrence.
This is a decided reaction from previous states of the scientific mind
on this subject, and represents a retroversion to medieval modes of
thought that may be deprecated by scientific investigators of
materialistic tendencies, but that cannot be neglected, and must not
be despised. When the results of these recent investigations are taken
into account, the opprobrium which has been heaped upon medieval
scholars and churchmen for the facility with which they accepted the
doctrine of the interference of spirits in human life, must be
minimized to such a degree, or indeed eradicated so entirely, that a
saner view of the whole situation as regards the relationship of the
spiritual and material world seems likely to prevail. It is easy and
cheap to reject without more ado and without serious consideration,
such evidence of spiritual manifestations as has {366} convinced these
leaders of scientific thought. But this rejection is not scientific,
nor does it show an open mind. What is needed is a calm review of the
situation, in order to see just where truth lies. It is not at either
extreme. It is not in too great credulity with regard to spiritual
interference, but certainly not at the opposite pole of the negation
of all spiritual influence in human life, that genuine progress in
knowledge is to come. This premised, we may take up the consideration
of the actual accomplishment of the Middle Ages with regard to the
insane, better prepared to appreciate their point of view and to get
at the significance of their attitude toward the mentally diseased.
There are two phases of this question of the attitude of even
intelligent men of the Middle Ages toward nervous and mental diseases,
that deserve to be studied, not superficially, but in their actual
relationships to the men of that time, and to our opinions at the
present day. These are: first, the question of the treatment of the
mentally afflicted, and second, the mystery of demoniacal possession
and its related phenomenon--mediumship, as we call it.
Personally, I was very much surprised some years ago, while collecting
material for a paper to be read before the International Guild for the
Care of the Insane, to find how many things that are most modern in
our methods of treating the insane, and that are among the desiderata
which are universally conceded to be most necessary for the
improvement of present conditions in our management of mental
diseases, were anticipated by the generations of the thirteenth to the
fifteenth centuries. It is not hard, for instance, to show that such
eminently desirable conditions as the {367} open door for mild cases,
the combination of the ordinary hospital with a ward for psychic
cases, the colony system for the treatment of those of lower
mentality, were all in existence in the Middle Ages and did good work.
The colony system particularly, as it comes to us from the Middle
Ages, has recently been studied very carefully, and this has given us
many valuable hints as to the methods that will have to be adopted in
other countries in modern times.
The conditions which developed at Gheel in Belgium have deservedly
attracted much attention in recent times, and have been the subject of
articles in the medical journals of nearly every country in the world,
because of the poignant realization by our generation that large
institutions, meaning by this large single buildings or closely
associated groups of buildings, are very unfavorable for the care of
the insane. In America, one of these articles was published in the
Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, and a second, written by my
friend, Dr. Jelliffe, who is the Professor of Mental Diseases in
Fordham University School of Medicine, was written after a special
visit paid to Gheel by him, in order to investigate conditions there.
Though the situation at Gheel now is practically identical with that
which originated there at least five centuries ago, there are many who
consider that similar conditions would be ideal for the treatment of
certain classes of the insane even in our own day. It is this sort of
interpretation of the work of these old-time philanthropists and
physicians that we need, and not the cheap condemnation which makes it
necessary for us to begin all over again in each generation.
In the light of this unexpected revelation and the {368} consequent
revolution of thought it suggests, a short review of the treatment of
the insane will not be out of place. It is usual for our
self-complacent generation to consider that it was not until our own
time that rational measures for the care of the insane were taken.
Most of the text-books on mental diseases that touch at all on the
historical aspects of the treatment question, are apt to say that the
evolution of methods for the treatment and cure of the insane might be
divided into four historical periods: First, the era of exorcism, on
the theory that insane patients were possessed of devils. Second, the
chain and dungeon era, during which persons exhibiting signs of
insanity were imprisoned and shackled in such a manner as to prevent
the infliction of injury upon others. Third, the era of asylums.
Fourth, the present era of psychopathic wards in general hospitals for
the acutely insane in cities, and colonies for the chronic insane in
the country, which is only just beginning to develop.
From this classification, the ordinary reader would suppose that
nothing at all was done for the insane during the first two periods,
except exorcism in one and confinement in the other. As a matter of
fact, the number of the harmlessly insane has always been much larger
than the violent, and the latter, indeed, constitute only a very small
portion of the mentally ailing at any period. Exorcism, as a rule, was
applied only to the violent and to the hysterical. In the asylums at
all times there were a number of patients who were not chained or
confined to any great degree, and unless one had shown some special
violent manifestation, severe measures were not taken. It is the
treatment of the great mass of the insane rather than of the few {369}
exceptional cases, that must be considered as representing the
attitude of mind of the generations of the Middle Age toward the
mentally afflicted, and not what they found themselves compelled to do
because of their fear and dread of violence.
For those who were mentally afflicted in a mild degree, abundant
suitable provision was made by the generations of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. When historical writers suggest the contrary,
they are only making one of the usual assumptions from ignorance of
the details. Because in some cases insanity was supposed to be due to
possession by the devil, to say that, therefore, in all cases no
provision was made for the insane is nonsense. It is comparatively
easy to find, from records of the hospitals of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, that there were what we now call psychopathic
wards for the acutely insane in the cities, and some colonies for the
chronic insane in country places.
Knowing nothing of this, Prof. White, for instance, says: "The stream
of Christian endeavor, so far as the insane were concerned, was almost
entirely cut off. In all the beautiful provision during the Middle
Ages for the alleviation of human suffering, there was for the insane
almost no care. Some monasteries indeed gave them refuge. We hear of a
charitable work done for them at the London Bethlehem Hospital in the
thirteenth century, at Geneva in the fifteenth, at Marseilles in the
sixteenth, by the Black Penitents in the South of France, by certain
Franciscans in Northern France, by the Alexian Brothers on the Rhine,
and by various agencies in other parts of Europe; but, curiously
enough, the only really important effort in the Christian Church {370}
was stimulated by the Mohammedans." This last clause is a slur on
Christianity absolutely without justification. As is true for all
broad generalizations, to ignore thus the work of caring for the
insane and the methods employed in earlier times, amounts to
deplorable injustice to generations whose provision for the sick of
every class was not only much more abundant, but more rational and
complete, than it has been our custom to recognize and acknowledge.
The earliest city hospitals that we know of were due to the fatherly
care and providence of that great Pope, Innocent III., whose
pontificate (1198-1213) has been more misunderstood than perhaps any
corresponding period of time in history. It was Virchow, the great
German pathologist, whose sympathies with the Papacy were very slight,
and whose attitude in the Kulturkampf in Germany showed him to be a
strenuous opponent of the Papal policy, who paid the high tribute to
Pope Innocent III. which we quote in the chapter on the Foundation of
City Hospitals. It was in connection with these hospitals founded by
Pope Innocent III., or the result of the movement initiated by him,
that the insane were cared for at first. This may seem to have been an
undesirable method, but at the present time there is an almost
universal demand on the part of experts in mental diseases for wards
for the mentally diseased in connection with city hospitals, because
admission is thus facilitated, treatment is begun earlier, the patient
is not left in unsuitable conditions so long, friends are readier to
take measures to bring the patient under proper treatment and
surveillance, and, as a consequence, more of the acutely insane have
the course of their disease modified at once, and more cures take
place than would otherwise be possible. Of course, this was {371} not
the idea of the original founder of the medieval hospitals, or even
the conscious plan of those who were in charge. They had to take the
mentally infirm because there was nowhere else for them to go at that
time. As a matter of fact, however, their simple method of procedure
was better in the end for the patient than is our more complex method
of admission to insane asylums, with its disturbing necessity for
formal examination of the patient under circumstances that are likely
to increase any excitement that he may be laboring under. And the
transfer to an institution bearing the dreaded name of asylum, or even
sanitarium (for that term has taken quite as ominous a meaning in
recent years) is sure to aggravate the patient's irritated state, and
to exaggerate symptoms which might otherwise be relieved by prompt,
soothing care, and by the consciousness that his ailment is being
treated rather than that he himself is being placed in durance.
An examination of the methods for the care of the insane in the Middle
Ages brings out clearly the fact, that the modern generation may learn
from those old Catholic humanitarians, whose hearts and whose charity
served so well to make up for any deficiencies of intellect or of
science the moderns would presume them to have labored under. There
are said to be three great desiderata for the intelligent care for the
insane:
First: The open door system, permitting patients who are not violent,
and who can be trusted even though they have many queer notions, to
come and go at will.
Second: The after care treatment of those who have been insane, to the
end that they may not be compelled to go back to strenuous lives of
toil; and above all, that they {372} may not be forced into the too
harrassing conditions of which their mental breakdown originally was
born.
Third: A colony system by which patients of lowered intelligence may
be cared for in the country, far away from the stress of city life,
and where, without the cares of existence pressing upon them, they may
be surrounded by gentle, patient, kindly friends who will make every
allowance for their peculiarities and strive to help them in their
up-hill struggles.
These desiderata are so absolutely modern that they have only been
formulated definitely with the beginning of the twentieth century.
Notwithstanding this apparent newness, I think that it will not be
difficult to show that the old-time methods of caring for the insane
partook, to a greater degree than would be suspected at the present
time, of these desirable qualities that modern science has come to
recognize as so indispensable for the rational care of the mentally
unbalanced. In saying this I do not wish to claim for the Middle Ages
accomplishments beyond their deserts. My idea is rather to write an
interpretation; to make clear from what we know of the details of the
care of the insane in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that
unconsciously those generations, in their large-hearted charity,
anticipated what is best in our present system.
The first record in English medical literature of a home for the
insane is that of Bethlehem Royal Hospital, London, which has become
famous under the familiar shortened name of Bedlam, meaning a house or
place of confusion. Bethlehem was a general hospital into which during
the fourteenth century insane patients were admitted. There is a
historical record to the effect that at the beginning of the fifteenth
century a royal commission {373} investigated the methods of treating
the insane in vogue there, because there had been complaint of abuses
in the institution. Practically every century since there have been
written corresponding records of similar investigations. The trouble
seems always to have been that there were too few attendants properly
to take care of insane patients, and thus they had to be placed in
confinement in various ways, which inevitably led to abuses.
For a generation or longer after each exposure by a committee of
inspection, the evils of this system would be more or less tolerable;
then they would become unbearable once more and another investigation
would be demanded. I would like to feel that we have progressed in all
respects beyond these hit and miss methods, but any one familiar with
the present situation in the matter is quite well aware that there are
still many abuses that need correction, and inspection committees find
many suggestions to make and sometimes gross evils to stigmatize.
Bedlam seems, however, to have always been as well and as humanely
conducted as the spirit of the times demanded. It must not be
forgotten that according to well authenticated tradition, a very large
part of the hospital's income was obtained by the collection of fees
for the admittance of visitors who came to be amused by the vagaries
of the insane. The number visiting the asylum for this purpose must
have been enormous, for, though only a penny was charged for
admission, the resulting revenue is said to have amounted to four
hundred pounds sterling a year, showing that nearly one hundred
thousand persons had visited the institution.
From generations that were pleased to derive morbid amusement out of
the misfortunes of others, humanitarian {374} care of the insane could
not be reasonably expected; but in view of this custom it is difficult
to understand how there could have been at this period any great abuse
of patients, in the matter of severe punishments or inhuman restraint.
Some of the customs of the old-time hospitals were interesting. It was
believed that the one chance for an insane patient to recover lay in
trusting him somewhat, allowing him even to go unattended outside the
walls at times. Patients in Bedlam were permitted to go out alone
after they improved in health, and if they were poor they were allowed
to obtain their living by means of begging. In order that they might
more easily work upon public sympathy, they were permitted to wear tin
plates fastened to their arms. The wearers of these were called
"Bedlams," or "Bedlamites" or "Bedlam beggars," and tradition says
that they received much more consideration than ordinary beggars.
It may appear that this was dangerous liberty, but the ordinary person
is apt to consider as dangerous the open door treatment of the insane
which most alienists now hold to be the most commendable feature of
present day treatment. It seems reasonable that to permit patients to
go into the open air and sunshine was better than confining them in
the hospital, and doubtless the insignia which they wore especially
commended them to the care and alms and sympathy of the people.
Much has been said with regard to the alleged neglect and abuse of the
insane during the period of exorcism, because of the misunderstanding
of the cause of the disease. There are persons who consider
neurasthenia and major-hysteria as more or less modern forms of
nervous diseases, but it is more than probable that they {375} existed
with considerable frequency in the olden time. Many of these cases
would be cured by strong suggestions, that is, by the treatment
usually given to supposed possessed persons, and as we know that the
best possible treatment for certain forms of major-hysteria is to
frighten the patient (the earthquake at San Francisco cured a dozen
persons who had not been regarded as able to walk, some of them for
years), it is probable that a goodly number of the patients of the
past were cured by the rather heroic measures sometimes devised. Sir
Thomas More mentions such cases, and though himself eminently humane,
commends this method of treatment "in which such patients were
severely scourged and thoroughly aroused from their willfulness."
When psychiatrists talk slightingly of the old-time methods of caring
for the insane, it is well to recall that, considering the conditions
and limitations of scientific knowledge, they seem to have done very
well in those times. It has been the custom of critics to hold up to
ridicule that insane patients were sometimes taken to special shrines
in order that their ills might be cured by the direct interposition of
Heaven; or that the devil supposed to possess them, might be driven
out. It must not be forgotten, however, that such procedures were of
supreme utility in mild cases viewed merely from the human standpoint,
and without any appeal to the supernatural. The journey to a favorite
shrine, undertaken under conditions that gave variety to life and new
interests, together with the hope aroused while there, were sufficient
to help the patient physically and, not infrequently, mentally.
Some of the most distinguished specialists in mental diseases in
Germany, France and England are on record {376} as believing that one
of the most helpful agencies in the relief of certain symptoms of
mental disturbance, and even the cure of milder forms of insanity, is
confidence in the Almighty as expressed by prayer. At a meeting of the
British Medical Association two years ago, this idea was expressed
very forcibly by a distinguished specialist, and was concurred in by a
number of those at the meeting of the Section on Mental Diseases. He
said:
"As an alienist and one whose life has been concerned with the
suffering of the mind, I would state that of all hygienic measures
to counteract disturbed sleep, depressed spirits and all of the
miserable sequels of a distressed mind, I would undoubtedly give the
first place to the simple habit of prayer. * * * Such a habit does
more to calm the spirit and strengthen the soul to overcome mere
incidental emotionalism than any other therapeutic agent known to
me."
The medieval peoples realized this, and finding it beneficial, used it
to decided advantage in a large number of cases.
Occasionally some very striking developments resulted from pilgrimages
made for the cure of the insane. A typical instance is to be found at
the shrine of St. Dympna in Belgium. Many persons in various stages
and differing forms of mental derangement were accustomed to go or be
taken to the shrine of this Irish girl missionary, whose martyrdom had
so elevated her in the estimation of the people of the neighborhood
that they thought her tomb worthy of special reverence. The sufferers
who journeyed thither frequently lingered for some time in order to
invoke the aid of the Saint, and, if possible, secure her intercession
for the relief of their {377} ailments. Many of them were found to get
along better in the quiet of the little village than they had done in
their homes, and as they were simply quartered among the people of the
village, their friends were able for a trifling pecuniary
consideration to secure their maintenance there for an indefinite
period, in the hope that what the Saint had not granted at the
beginning might be obtained by more assiduous devotion at her shrine.
At first the friends probably intended to come back and take the
patients away, but after a time, finding that they got along so well
near the shrine, they gradually learned to leave them there entirely.
Thus originated the famous insane colony at Gheel which has in recent
years been the subject of more attention on the part of alienists the
world over than almost any other therapeutic method of our time. This
medieval invention of caring for the non-violent insane, especially
those of low grades of intelligence, in the midst of small families,
where none of the cares of life burden them and where they have
occupation of mind and body and certain human interests, such as might
appeal to their weakened intelligence, is probably the ideal method of
caring for such patients. Certain it is that it is much better than
the large institutional system, the invention of succeeding centuries,
from which we are now trying to get away as fast and as far as
possible.
The Gheel mode of caring for the insane is really the colony system
that is now universally recognized as the most favorable mode of
treatment for these patients. It seems not unlikely that there was
much more of this practice during the Middle Ages in Europe than we
have any idea of.
With regard to the serious accusations so often made {378} against the
people of the Middle Ages for their cruelty to the insane, not much
apology will be needed by those who know anything about the treatment
of the insane, even in quite recent times. Measures of rigid restraint
were employed for dangerous cases. Patients who had shown
manifestations of violence were likely to be chained. Severe and
unusual punishments were sometimes inflicted. Of all this there is no
doubt. Abuses crept into institutions. The insane were sometimes
brutally treated or hideously neglected. These, however, are
objections that can be urged against our system of taking care of the
insane in many places even at the present day. In certain states, in
order to lessen the expense of caring for the insane, they are kept in
departments in the Poor Houses, and every now and then a legislative
committee of investigation tells the story of appalling evils that
have been discovered. It was not because they thought that possessed
people deserved punishment, nor because they hoped thus to get the
devils to go out of them, that the medieval generations allowed such
things in their asylums, but because human nature will neglect its
duties toward the ailing unless carefully superintended, and because
regular attendants become hardened in their feelings sooner or later,
when they serve only for pay, and the result always is the abuse of
patients.
In proportion to the number of patients cared for, there was much more
need for restraint in those old days than at present. As a rule,
during the Middle Ages prisons and asylums were few. Only the
violently insane, who already had actually committed some serious
crime or threatened to, were kept in the asylums. For these restraint
is needed even at the present {379} time. We have learned to apply
milder measures by employing many more attendants, but even that has
come only in the last generation or two. The milder cases of insanity
were not kept in asylums, but were allowed to wander about the
country, or were cared for in their families with a devotion of which
one finds no example at the present time; or if the insane person
belonged to a noble family, very often the patient was kept in the
house of a retainer and gently cared for. The fact that the milder
cases were allowed to wander about the country might seem to be
dangerous, but is not so serious as is ordinarily thought. Only a
limited number of insane patients are likely to be violent, and these,
as a rule, show manifestations of it early in the history of their
affection. It was the frequent meeting with these harmless insane, as
they were to be encountered in the many places through which he
wandered professionally in England, that enabled Shakespeare to make
his pictures of insane characters so true to life, that even at the
present day we are able to recognize from his marvelous description
exactly the form of insanity that was present.
In a word, these generations of the Middle Ages builded better than
they knew in this matter of the care of the mentally afflicted, as in
everything else which they took up for serious consideration. They did
only the most obvious things, and what they could not very well help,
under the circumstances, and yet very often the solutions of grave
problems which they hit upon so naturally, proved to be as efficient
as, indeed sometimes practically identical with, those we have reached
by much more elaborate methods. This story of the treatment of the
insane in the Middle Ages {380} deserves careful study. I have given
only a few suggestions for the interpretation of certain methods of
action on their part, apparently very different from our ideas, yet in
reality anticipating our most recent conclusions.
What many people have not been able to forgive the generations of the
Middle Ages, and especially the ecclesiastics of the centuries before
our own, is that as educated men and leaders of the people they should
have accepted the view that mental diseases may, in some of their
forms at least, be due to possession by the devil or some other
spiritual interference with the working of the human intellect. During
the latter half of the nineteenth century, it became the custom among
the educated to scoff at any possible manifestation of this kind. The
interference of the spiritual world with any of man's actions came to
be looked upon as absurd, except by those who still clung to old-time
beliefs and thought that new fashions in opinion might very well prove
almost as variable as do corresponding fads in the realm of dress or
of interests. The difficulty in the matter was that the generations of
the latter nineteenth century lost their faith, to a great extent, in
the existence of a spiritual world, and consequently it was easy to
laugh at those who had found the interference of such a world as not
only possible, but actual, in a great many affairs in human life. As a
matter of fact, when we realize how many utterly inexplicable
phenomena the earlier centuries tried to explain this way, it is not
surprising to find their explanation sometimes wrong.
It is very easy, to my mind, for men of our generation to be too hard
in their judgments of the men of {381} the Middle Ages with regard to
the curious phenomena, psychic, spiritistic and occult, which, with
all our advance in science, are still almost as obscure to the eye of
the intellect as they were seven centuries ago. The medieval
generations saw a great many things that they could not explain
happening round them, and attributed them to spiritual agencies. We
have learned since that many of these things are merely natural, and
must not be considered as due to anything else than the ordinary laws
of nature. We have not eliminated belief in the spiritual world,
however, and there is still a large proportion of mankind who think
that they see, even in the matter-of-fact world around them of the
present day, many signs of interference in human affairs by agencies
distinct from those of human beings and quite independent of matter.
It is easy to dismiss this side of the question with a shrug of the
shoulders and say that it need not be taken into account. A man who
does this easily succeeds in convincing himself that there are no
evidences for spiritual manifestations in our life, and that the
stories with regard to them are all nonsense.
It is curious, however, that anyone who investigates and does not
merely dismiss at once, is very prone to come to a contrary
conclusion, even though all his training and the traditions of his
education are opposed to such an admission. There are many prominent
scientists who have allowed themselves to be drawn into the
investigation of spiritualistic manifestations so-called. Very few of
them have come away from their investigations entirely convinced that
there was nothing in them. Frauds they have found; sleight-of-hand
impositions they have exposed; but apart from all these, there {382}
is a residue of phenomena which they cannot explain and which
convinces many of them of the existence and the mundane action of
forces independent of matter. The men who come to these conclusions
are not only the ignorant, nor the over-credulous, but frequently
representative leaders in scientific thought--men who are known to be
thoroughly capable of weighing evidence, prominent lawyers and judges,
above all, men who are accustomed to investigation as most painstaking
scientists and faithful students of nature.
A few examples will illustrate this. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, the
co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of natural selection, has a
name in the scientific world that places him among the leaders of
scientific thought. For many years he has been convinced that
spiritualism contains in itself truths that deserve careful
investigation, and he for one is persuaded that the neglect of
investigation of this subject, on the part of recent generations, is
one of the most serious mistakes, from a purely scientific standpoint,
that they have made. Sir William Crookes, whose brilliant theories
with regard to the fourth stage of matter, radiant matter, would seem
to have quite appropriately prepared him for the proper investigation
of existences even beyond the domain of the attenuated substances with
which he had been so much concerned, is another of the prominent
scientists of the day who confesses to a belief in the truth of
spiritualistic phenomena. He made his first publication on the subject
more than a quarter of a century ago. When a score of years after this
he was elected as the President of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, the most prominent scientific body in Great
Britain, and, it may be said, in the {383} English-speaking world, he
recurred in his Presidential address to the subject of spiritualism,
and said that in the meantime he not only had not changed his mind
with regard to the truth of certain spiritualistic phenomena, but had
even become more convinced than he was originally.
These are prominent English scientists, and Englishmen are supposed to
be more conservative, less likely to be influenced by personal
motives, and less prone to be led astray by imaginative influences,
than their colleagues on the Continent. Besides these two whom we have
mentioned, there is a third one, of quite as great prominence, Sir
Oliver Lodge, who is also a convert to belief in the reality of
certain spiritual manifestations, and other names might readily be
mentioned. Over in France, the most prominent of living physiologists,
Professor Charles Richet, who is well known for investigating work of
a high order and successful original research that has made his name
familiar throughout the medical world at least, is another modern
scientist who cannot but think that there is something in
spiritualistic manifestations. The latest convert to these notions is
an even more surprising addition to such a group of witnesses to the
possibility of the interference of spirits with human affairs. This is
no less a person than Lombroso, the well-known writer on criminology,
who has recently confessed that certain tests made by him showed
beyond all doubt that there were influences at work quite independent
of human powers, and showing the existence of a world apart from
matter. This immaterial world evidently interpenetrates, and may
interfere with things in the material world as we know it.
{384}
In a word, it may be said that if a man wants to keep the spiritual
side of things out of his purview of life, he may do so by refusing to
investigate any evidence that would demonstrate the existence of
spiritual forces in the world around him. The heavy price, however,
that he pays for absolute certainty and peace of mind in this
matter--is peremptory refusal to investigate. If he gives himself up
to investigations, he comes inevitably to the conclusion that there is
something in the belief in the existence of spirits all round us, and
of the possibility of their interference in the ordinary affairs of
life. It is true that after he has come to this conclusion he may not
be able to demonstrate it to others. His conviction of it, however,
will be none the less absolute because of this. His adhesion to the
new belief may seem to many people absurd. He will accept this view of
his state of mind quite calmly, and apparently enjoy the compensation
of finding the absurdity to be in the other point of view. It matters
not how distinguished a scientist he may be, he comes out of
investigation of spiritual phenomena persuaded of the existence of a
spiritual world.
This persuasion seems to come by some form of intuition not quite
dependent on the ordinary processes of intelligence. It is as if
spirit called to spirit across the abyss, from the immaterial to the
material, as if somehow we obtained a conviction of the existence of
spirits around us by the very sympathy of our natures and their
relationship to the immaterial world, rather than by the ordinary
avenues of intelligence. It is, in a word, a telepathy, the other
agent in which is not material, but quite independent of matter, yet
somehow is able to set up those vibrations in the ether which {385}
affect brain cells, and thus bring about communications, as Sir
William Crookes explains the curious phenomena in this line that occur
between human beings. Such an explanation may easily be dismissed as
highly imaginative and altogether theoretic. As a student of
psychology now for many years, it has appealed to me, however, as the
only possible hypothesis that gives any plausible explanation of the
curious conversions which so inevitably result from sympathetic
attempts at investigation of the possibility of spirit interference in
mundane affairs.
How far this persuasion of spiritual interference in ordinary human
affairs has gone, will not be realized except by those who are
familiar with some of the literature which has been made in the last
twenty years on the subject of psychical research. Not long since, a
distinguished European professor of physical science went so far as to
warn people of the dangers there might be in dismissing the opinion
that other intelligences than those of men could interfere for the
abrogation of certain natural laws. This may be scoffed at as the
height of credulity, and may be received in sceptical mood by those
who refuse to look into such matters, because they know _a priori_
that they _cannot be true!_ It is hard, however, to differentiate the
attitude of mind of such persons from that which Galileo deprecated so
much, in that letter of complaint to Kepler, in which he said so
bitterly that they refused to look through his telescope and
demolished, as they thought, his observations by logical conclusions
from what they knew already. It is to be remarked that it was not
ecclesiastics of whom he was talking at this time, but professors of
science at the University of {386} Pisa, who were quite as
unsympathetic towards certain of his astronomical discoveries as were
any of the ecclesiastics of his time.
Alfred Russell Wallace has summed up this matter in a well-known
chapter on psychic research, which he places among what he calls the
failures of A Wonderful Century--the nineteenth. While personally
viewing this matter from a very different standpoint to that from
which it is viewed by Mr. Wallace, I cannot help but think that the
position he occupies is much nearer the truth than the absolute
refusal to credit stories of supra-natural or ultra-natural, if not
supernatural interferences in human affairs. When Mr. Wallace has an
opinion he is likely to express it very forcibly, and he has done so
in this case. He does not hesitate to attribute a great many marvelous
happenings to practically the same forces as the medieval people
formulated for them, though they would disagree utterly in the
purposes attributed to these events. Mr. Wallace says:
"The still more extraordinary phenomena--veridical hallucinations,
warnings, detailed predictions of future events, phantoms, voices or
knockings, visible or audible to numerous individuals, bell-ringing,
the playing on musical instruments, stone-throwing and various
movements of solid bodies, all without human contact or any
discoverable physical cause, still occur among us as they have
occurred in all ages. These are now being investigated, and slowly
but surely are proved to be realities, although the majority of
scientific men and of writers for the press still ignore the
cumulative evidence and ridicule the inquirers. These phenomena
being comparatively rare, are as yet known to but a limited number
of persons; but the evidence for their reality is {387} also very
extensive, and it is absolutely certain that during the coming
century they too will be accepted as realities by all impartial
students and by the majority of educated men and women."
Mr. Wallace has insisted further on the utterly unscientific position
of many of those who refuse to look into the evidence for these
phenomena, so plainly beyond the power of the ordinary forces of
nature as we know them, or of the human intelligences in the body,
that are immediately around us. He deprecates, as does Galileo, the
method by which this subject has been kept from receiving its due meed
of attention. He points out that it is because of intellectual
intolerance that this subject has been relegated to the background of
scientific attention. He even contends that a great lesson is to be
learned from this neglect, and one which will help men to free
themselves from that burden of overconservatism which, much more than
religion or theology, has impeded the progress of knowledge and the
advance of science. He says:
"The great lesson to be learnt from our review of this subject is,
distrust of all _a priori_ judgments as to facts; for the whole
history of the progress of human knowledge, and especially of that
department of knowledge now known as psychical research, renders it
certain that whenever the scientific men or popular teachers of any
age have denied, on _a priori_ grounds of impossibility or opposition
to the 'laws of nature,' the facts observed and recorded by numerous
investigators of average honesty and intelligence, these deniers
have always been wrong."
"Future ages will, I believe, be astonished at the vast amount of
energy and ignorance displayed by so many {388} of the great men of
this century in opposing unpalatable truths, and in supposing that
_a priori_ arguments, accusations of imposture or insanity, or
personal abuse, were the proper means of determining matters of fact
and of observation in any department of human knowledge."
If these hard-headed scientists, whose training has been obtained in
what physical scientists themselves, at least, are fain to call the
rigid school of the logic of facts, and under the severe mental
discipline of the inductive method, accept on the evidence afforded
them, the manifestations of the spiritual world and its influences in
this as true, surely we will not condemn these men of the Middle Ages,
who approached the subject in such a different temper, if they came to
the same conclusion. We recognize that the modern scientist, with his
trained powers of observation and his elaborate facilities for
eliminating the adventitious in his experiments, is in a position to
judge impartially with regard to such subjects. More than this, his
life has usually been spent in making such syntheses of evidence for
and against the significance of facts, as should enable him to be a
proper judge. If, then, whenever he seriously devotes himself to such
an investigation, he comes almost inevitably to the conclusion that
spirits do intervene in our affairs, yet we refuse to believe with
him, it is hard to know on what principle we shall accept his
scientific conclusions. If we cannot bring ourselves to think his
conclusions are of equal value in both cases, we place ourselves in a
strange dilemma. The medieval scholars were prone, because of the
faith to which they had given their whole-hearted adhesion, to see
spiritual powers at work in many things. In this they were {389}
sometimes sadly mistaken, but not so much mistaken as certain
generations of the nineteenth century, who absolutely refused to
accept any possibility of spiritual interference in things mundane.
Both the extremes are mistakes. It is manifestly more of a mistake,
however, to deny spiritual influence entirely (I talk now from the
standpoint of the scientist and not the believer), than to accept so
much of spiritual interference as the medieval generations permitted
themselves to be convinced of.
This whole subject is one that cannot be dismissed as the conclusion
of a bit of vapid superficial argumentation. It is one of the great
mysteries of life and of the significance of man in the world. The
medieval peoples did much harm by accepting the position, that many
persons suffering from ordinary nervous and mental diseases as we now
know them were really possessed by the devil. The treatment accorded
these supposedly possessed (for the moment we lay aside the question
as to the possibility of the reality of diabolic possession) was not
any worse than has frequently been accorded to sufferers from mental
and nervous disease in presumably much more intelligent times, either
because of fear of them, or neglect on account of the absence of a
sufficient number of keepers, or because of curious theories of
medical science. Mankind, it is hoped, is progressing, but the amount
of progress from generation to generation is not enough, that any
succeeding age should criticise severely the well-intentioned though
mistaken efforts of their predecessors to meet, according to the best
of their ability, problems that are as deep as those involved in
nervous and mental diseases.
{390}
APPENDIX.
"The truth seeker has had to struggle for his physical life. Each
acquisition of truth has been resisted by the full force of the
inertia of satisfaction with preconceived ideas. Just as a new
thought comes to us with a shock which rouses the resistance of our
personal conservatism, so a new idea is met and repelled by the
conservatism of society." (_Jordan, The Struggle for Realities, in
Footsteps of Evolution._)
I.
OPPOSITION TO SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.
The main purpose of this book has not been accomplished unless it has
been shown that the Church, the Popes, and ecclesiastics generally
during the Middle Ages, and especially during the three centuries
before the reformation so-called, far from opposing scientific advance
or investigation, were constantly in the position of encouraging and
fostering science, even if the meaning of that term be limited, as it
has come to be in modern times, to the physical or natural sciences.
The Popes and the great ecclesiastics were patrons of learning of
every kind, and that they not only encouraged, but aided very
materially the institutions of learning in which the problems of
science with which we are now engaged, were discussed in very much the
same way as we discuss them at the present time, is evident from the
story of the foundation of the universities. It will be a source of
wonder to many people how, with all this as a matter of simple
educational history, the traditions with regard to the supposed
opposition of the Church and the Popes to science have grown up. This
is not so difficult to understand, however, as might be thought, {391}
and a few words of explanation will serve to show that there was
opposition to science, but that this was not due to religious
intolerance in any proper sense of the term.
Those who give the religious element a prominent place in this, forget
how much natural opposition to the introduction of new ideas there is
in men's minds, quite apart from their religious convictions. Nearly
two centuries ago Dean Swift said, in his own bitter frame of mind of
course, but still with an approach to truth that has made the
expression one of the oft-quoted passages from his works: "When a true
genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign--that all
the asses are in confederacy against him."
I suppose the Dean himself would have been the first to insist that
some of his colleagues in the ministry eminently deserved the
opprobrious substantive epithet he employed. It would be too much to
expect that there should not be as many foolish ones among the clergy
of the olden times as in any other of the professions. Occasionally
one of these foolish clergymen rose up in opposition to science.
Whenever he did, especially if he belonged to the class mentioned by
Dean Swift, then he surely made his religion the principal reason for
his opposition. That gave an added prestige in his mind and in the
minds of those who accepted his teachings, to whatever he had to say
on the subject. This no more involved the Church itself, nor
ecclesiastics generally, in the condemnation of the particular
scientific doctrine, than does the frequent opposition of peculiar
members of medical societies to real progress in medicine, involve the
organization to which they belong in the old-fogyism which would
prevent advance.
It must not be forgotten that small minds are always prone to find
very respectable reasons for their opposition to something that has
been hitherto unknown to them. While novelty is supposed to attract,
and does when it comes in a form not too unfamiliar, and when men are
not asked to give up old convictions for its sake, real newness always
evokes opposition. Washington Allston once said very well with regard
to this, that "An original mind is rarely understood until it has been
reflected from some half-dozen congenial with it, so {392} averse are
men to admitting the true in an unusual form; whilst any novelty,
however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed." This
principle will be of great service in making clear the real
significance of many incidents in the history of science, in which not
only intelligent men without special scientific training have been
found in opposition to real scientific progress, but in which men
having had the advantage of long experience in scientific
investigation, having themselves sometimes as younger men done
original work of value, have yet placed themselves squarely in
opposition to scientific advance that eventually proved of the highest
possible significance.
Scientific men have, as a rule, been quite ready at all times to argue
that an announced new discovery could not be true, that indeed it was
absurd to think of it. The word nonsense is perhaps oftener on
scientists' tongues than on any others'. It is not because he is
deliberately opposed to scientific progress that this is the case with
the scientist, but that he is so convinced of the ultimate
significance of many things that he knows already, that he cannot
readily bring himself to admit the idea of progress along lines with
which he is familiar. To do so, indeed, supposes that he himself has
been lacking in perspicacity and in powers of observation. The fact
that it is usually a young man who makes the new observation, not
infrequently a young man who does not know the great body of science
that the older acknowledged scientist does, only adds to the readiness
with which the senior is apt to consider the new proposition as
absurd. Ecclesiastics have done this same thing, but not nearly so
frequently as scientists. There was a time when the majority of
educated men belonged to the clerical order, and then it seemed as
though it must be religion that prompted some of the conservatism
which led them to oppose what proved eventually to be new truths. It
was not, however, but only human nature asserting itself in spite of
education.
Prof. David Starr Jordan in reviewing briefly the history of the
Struggle for Realities in one of the essays in his Foot-notes to
Evolution, [Footnote 45] has summed up the genuine {393} significance
of this supposed opposition of science and theology in some striking
paragraphs. To my mind, he places the whole subject on its proper
foundation, and properly disposes of the supposed conflict between
religion or theology and science. He says:--
[Footnote 45: N. Y., Appleton, 1902.]
"But as I have said before, the real essence of conservatism lies
not in theology. The whole conflict is a struggle in the mind of
man. It exists in human psychology before it is wrought out in human
history. It is the struggle of realities against tradition and
suggestion. The progress of civilization would still have been just
such a struggle had religion or theology or churches or worship
never existed. But such a conception is impossible, because the need
for all these is part of the actual development of man.
Intolerance and prejudice is, moreover, not confined to religious
organizations. The same spirit that burned Michael Servetus and
Giordano Bruno for the heresies of science, led the atheist
"liberal" mob of Paris to send to the scaffold the great chemist
Lavoisier, with the sneer that "the republic has no need of
savants." The same spirit that leads the orthodox Gladstone to
reject natural selection because it "relieves God of the labor of
creation," causes the heterodox Haecekel to condemn Weismann's
theories of heredity, not because they are at variance with facts,
but because such questions are settled once for all by the great
philosophic dictum (his own) "of monism."
This very natural ultra-conservative mood of scientists is well
illustrated by a passage from Galileo's life, in which he himself
describes in a letter to Kepler, the great mathematician and
astronomer of his time, the reception that his new invention, the
telescope, met with from distinguished men of science, their
colleagues of the moment. The Italian astronomer encountered the
well-known tendency of men to reason from what they already know, that
certain advances in knowledge are impossible or absurd. The favorite
expression is that the thoughts suggested by some new discovery are
illogical. Men have always reasoned thus, and apparently they always
will. Knowledge that they learn before they are forty constitutes,
consciously or unconsciously, for them the possible sum of human
knowledge, and {394} they can only think that apparent progress that
contradicts their previous convictions must be founded on false
premises or faulty observation. We cannot help sympathizing with
Galileo, though it must be a consolation for others who are struggling
to have ideas of theirs adopted, to read the words addressed to his
great contemporary and sympathetic fellow worker by the Italian
astronomer.
"What wilt thou say," he writes, "of the first teachers at the
University at Padua, who when I offered to them the opportunity,
would look neither at the planets nor the moon through the
telescope? This sort of men look on philosophy as a book like the
AEneid or Odyssey, and believe the truth is to be sought not in the
world of nature, but only in comparison of texts. How wouldst thou
have laughed, when at Pisa the leading Professor of the University
there endeavored, in the presence of the Grand Duke, to tear away
the new planets from Heaven with logical arguments, like magical
exorcisms!"
This gives the key to the real explanation of the Galileo incident
better than would a whole volume of explanation of it. It is now
realized that very few of those who have been most ready to quote the
example of Galileo's condemnation as an argument for Church
intolerance in the matter of science, know anything at all about the
details of his case. The bitter intolerance of many men of science of
his time, including even that supposed apostle of the experimental
method--Bacon--to the Copernican system, is an important but ignored
phase of the case of Galileo, as it came before the Roman inquisition.
The peculiar position occupied by Galileo caused Prof. Huxley, writing
to Prof. St. George Mivart, November 12th, 1885, to say that, after
looking into the case of Galileo when he was in Italy, he had arrived
at the conclusion "that the Pope and the College of Cardinals had
rather the best of it." In our own time, M. Bertrand, the Perpetual
Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, declared that "the great
lesson for those who would wish to oppose reason with violence was
clearly to be read in Galileo's story, and the scandal of his
condemnation was learned _without any profound sorrow to Galileo
himself; and his long life, considered as a whole, must be looked upon
as the most serene and enviable in the history of science."_
{395}
Certain historical incidents in which Church authorities and
ecclesiastics assumed an attitude distinctly opposed to true
scientific advance can be found. They are, however, ever so much rarer
than is thought. Let those who accept unquestioningly the supposed
opposition of Church to science, count over for themselves the
definite cases of this in history which they know for certain, and
they will be surprised, as a rule, on what slight grounds their
persuasion in this matter is founded. We have detailed the policy of
the Church with regard to education and science. Such incidents of
opposition as can be gathered were breaks away from that policy. They
were not due so much to faith or theology, though these were often
made excuses for them, as to the natural opposition to novelty, so
common in man.
With regard to this matter, as with regard to opposition in general to
science, President Jordan has once more set forth the realities of the
situation so as to make it clear that, even when it was the dogmatic
spirit that was behind the refusal to accept certain scientific
truths, not only was there the best of intentions in this in all
cases, but in nearly all, the results were such as to benefit mankind,
and even to help rather than hinder science. He says:
"The desire of dogmatism to control action is in its essence the
desire to save men from their own folly. The great historic churches
have existed 'for the benefit of the weak and the poor.' By their
observances they have stimulated the spirit of devotion. By their
commands they have protected men from unwise action. By their
condemnations they have saved men from the grasp of vice and crime."
The ultra-conservatism which is the real factor at fault in these
cases exists in all men beyond middle life. It is a wise provision of
nature very probably to prevent the young and headstrong from running
away with the race. We would be plunged into all sorts of curious
experimental conditions only for the fact that those beyond middle
life act as a brake on the initiative of their juniors. While it does
some harm, there is no doubt of its supremely beneficial effects in
the long run. {396} For one announced great discovery that proves its
actual right to the title, there are at least a hundred that are
proclaimed with loud blare of trumpet, yet prove nonentities. This
sometimes becomes a very troublesome brake on progress, however. Some
three hundred years ago, Harvey said with regard to his epoch-making
discovery of the circulation of the blood, that he did not expect any
of his contemporaries who was over forty years of age to accept it.
His premonition in this matter was fully confirmed by the event.
Darwin, I believe, once remarked that he did not think that men of his
own age in his own generation would accept his theory, and most of
them did not.
The opposition which, as a consequence of this natural conservatism,
is so constantly ready to manifest itself, is as human as the envy
which, much as we may bewail the fact, accompanies all individual
success. A history of this phase of scientific progress is of itself
very interesting and of great psychological importance. A short sketch
of it will serve the purpose of placing the opposition of churchmen to
science in the category where it belongs, and will make this subject
appear in its true light of a very natural and universal psychic
manifestation, not a religious or supposed theological phenomenon.
As a matter of fact, it is comparatively easy to show that there are
many more incidents of opposition to the progress of science on the
part of scientists because of their conservatism, than on the part of
ecclesiastics because of religion or theology. There has scarcely ever
been a really important advance made in science, a really new
discovery announced, which has not met with such bitter opposition on
the part of the men who were most prominent in the science concerned
at the time, as to make things very uncomfortable for the discoverer,
and on many occasions this opposition has taken on the character of
real persecution. It will be at once said that this is very different
from the formal condemnation by organized bodies of truths in science,
with all that this implies of ostracization and of discouragement on
the part of scientific workers. The history of science is full of
stories showing that formal scientific bodies refused to consider
seriously what were {397} really great discoveries, or that scientific
editors not only rejected papers representing valuable original
research, but even did not hesitate to discredit their authors in such
a way as to make it extremely difficult for them to pursue their
studies in science successfully, and still more to prevent them from
securing such positions as would enable them to carry on their
scientific investigations under favorable circumstances. In a word,
persecution was carried out just as far as possible, and the result
was quite as much discouragement as if the opposition were more
formal. It is not hard to show, on the other hand, that while formal
opposition by Church authorities was very rare, rejection by medical
and scientific societies and by the scientific authorities for the
moment of new discoveries was so common, as to be almost the rule in
the history of progress in science.
This is so different from what is ordinarily supposed to be the calm
course of scientific evolution, that it will need a series of
illustrative cases to support it. In recent years, however, the
cultivation of the history of science has been more ardent than in the
past, and the result has been that many more know of this curious
anomaly and paradox in scientific history than was the case a few
years ago, and it is comparatively easy to obtain the material to
demonstrate it. One of the most striking instances is that of Harvey.
Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, at a time and under
circumstances that would surely lead us to expect its immediate
acceptance and the hailing of him as a great original thinker in
science. He first expounded it to his class, very probably in 1616,
which will be remembered as the year of Shakespeare's death. The glory
of the great Elizabethan era in England was not yet passed. Men's
minds had been opened to great advances in every department of thought
during the preceding century, by the Renaissance movement and the New
Learning in England. Probably no greater group of original thinkers
has ever existed than were alive in England during the preceding
twenty-five years. Four years after Harvey had sufficiently elaborated
his ideas on the circulation to present them to his class, and the
very year after he wrote his treatise on the {398} subject, though he
dared not publish it as yet, Lord Bacon published his Novum Organum,
in which he advocated the use in science of the very principles of
induction on which Harvey's great discovery was founded.
What happened is interesting for our purpose. Harvey was so well
acquainted with the intolerant temper of men as regards new
discoveries, that he hesitated to publish his book on the subject
until men had been prepared for it, by his ideas gradually filtering
out among the medical profession through the members of his class. He
waited nearly fifteen years after his first formal lesson on the
subject, before he dared to commit it to print. Shakespeare had made
Brutus say to Portia:
"You are my true and honorable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart;"
but men were not yet ready to accept the great principle of the blood
movement. There seems to be good authority for saying that Harvey had
more than suspected his great truth for twenty-five years before he
dared print it. He realized that it would surely meet with opposition
and would make serious unpleasantness between him and his friends. He
was not deceived in anticipation. Many of his friends fell away from
him, and according to tradition, he lost more than half of his
consulting practice, because physicians could not and would not
believe that a man who evolved such a strange idea as the constant
movement of the blood all over the body, from heart to surface and
back, could possibly be in his right mind, and, above all, be a
suitable person to consult with in difficult cases.
Harvey's case is a lively picture of what happened to Vesalius the
century before in Italy, which we have already discussed at length in
the chapter on the Golden Age of Anatomy. President White insists that
this persecution was due to ecclesiastical opposition to dissection,
but of this there is not a trace to be found. Dissection was carried
on with perfect freedom at all of the Italian universities, though
they were all under ecclesiastical influence, and in none was there
more freedom than in the Papal University of Rome, at the {399} very
time when Vesalius was doing his work in Northern Italy. At this time,
too, Bologna was famous for its work in anatomy. Berengar of Carpi did
a very large number of dissections, though Bologna was at the moment a
Papal city and the University was directly under the Popes.
It is clear, then, that the opposition to Vesalius arose entirely from
the conservatism of fellow scientists in medicine, who thought that
what had been taught for many hundreds of years in the universities,
and had been accepted by men quite as good as Vesalius or any of their
generation for over a thousand years, must surely be nearer absolute
truth than what this young investigator wished them to accept. It is
scarcely to be wondered that they resented, as men always do, what
must have seemed the intrusive rashness of this young medical student,
who was not yet thirty when he began to claim the right to teach his
teachers, and who wanted to tell them that the medical world had all
been wrong not only for many years, but for many centuries, and that
he had been born to set them right. This is, after all, the attitude
of mind which naturally develops in these cases, and it is no wonder
that the old men use whatever means they have in their power to
prevent rash young men from leading, as they think, the world astray.
The cases of Harvey and Vesalius are by no means exceptional, nor was
the opposition limited to England and Italy, but examples of it may be
found in every country in Europe. Nor was it only with regard to
anatomy and anatomical discoveries and problems that such opposition
manifested itself. In this matter the story of Servetus is very
interesting. He made some new discoveries in anatomy, but these had
nothing to do with the bitter opposition which some of his ideas
encountered in Paris, quite apart from any question of theology or
religion. We do not know just when he discovered the circulation in
the lungs, which he described so clearly in the volume on the renewal
of Christianity, for which he was burned at Geneva by Calvin. While at
the University of Paris, he had been mainly occupied with the
department of therapeutics rather than of anatomy or physiology. He
had suggested especially certain changes in the mode of {400} giving
drugs. He had much to do with the general introduction of syrups to
replace more nauseating preparations of medicine. He was probably the
first one to realize that elegant prescribing, that is, the choice of
drugs and their combination in such a way as to make them less
unpleasant to the patient, was a consummation eminently to be desired
in medical practice. His ideas on this subject met, as novelties
always do, no matter how good in themselves, with the most rancorous
opposition. Factions were formed in the University. There were riots
in the streets. Students were wounded in the fights which took place.
Some even were killed apparently. All this over the question whether
medicine as given to patients should be pleasant or unpleasant.
As we have had examples from England, France and Italy, we may quote
one from the Netherlands. We do so only to emphasize the fact that
everywhere, no matter what the character of the people, nor the
religion which they happened to profess, their conservatism set them
in opposition at once to novelties in science. England was Protestant
in Harvey's time, and the Netherlands mainly so at the period of which
we are about to speak.
When Stensen, or as he is more familiarly known by his Latin name,
Steno, discovered and announced the fact that the heart is a muscle,
he was looked upon with very much the same suspicion as to his sanity
as Harvey, a half-century before, when the great English physiologist
proclaimed the circulation of the blood, and such suspicions were
rather openly expressed by those who were too conservative to accept
this new teaching. The heart had been considered, not figuratively as
we now speak, but seriously and very literally, as the seat of the
emotions. Over and over again, all men had had the experience that in
times of emotional stress the heart was disturbed. They could feel
their emotions welling up from their hearts, therefore there was no
doubt in their minds of the truth of the old teaching. Into the midst
of this perfectly harmonious concord of scientific opinion, without a
dissenting voice anywhere in the world, comes a young man not yet
twenty-five, who almost sacrilegiously declares that the heart is
merely a muscle and not a secreter of emotions. Fortunately for him,
he was of gentler disposition than most of the other {401} men who
have had the independence of mind to make discoveries, and so no very
bitter opposition was aroused against him. He was considered too
harmless to be taken very seriously, but at least when the
announcement first came, most of those who knew anything about
medicine, or thought they did, and this is much more serious in these
cases, recognized that young Stensen had somehow allowed himself to be
led astray into a very foolish notion, and one that could only emanate
from a mind not quite capable of realizing truth as it was; and they
did not hesitate to say so.
After this Stensen found the Netherlands quite an unsympathetic place
for his studies, and so moved down into Italy, where he could find
more freedom of thought for research and more appreciation, and
continue his original investigations with less scorn for his new
discoveries. Here he continued to hit upon original ideas that were
likely to make things quite uncomfortable for him, not because of
religious intolerance, but because of the more or less hide-bound
conservatism that always characterizes mediocre minds. Far from coming
into disrespect here, however, he acquired many and very close
friends. He laid the foundation of modern geology and wrote a little
book that is a very wonderful anticipation of supposedly nineteenth
century ideas in that science. He had come down into Italy a
Protestant, having been raised in that religion in his native Denmark.
He found so much of sympathy with every phase of intellectual activity
among the ecclesiastics in Italy, that he not only became a convert to
Catholicity, but after a time a Catholic priest. His reputation spread
to Rome, and the Pope not only sent for and received this innovator in
anatomy and the founder of geology very courteously, but treated him
with every mark of appreciation, and this within a half a century
after Galileo's condemnation. Stensen eventually went back to Northern
Europe as a bishop, in the hope of being able to convert to
Catholicity those among the Teutonic nations who had been led away
during the religious revolt.
It might be thought that such examples of persecution were of course
rather frequent in the distant centuries, and must not be taken too
seriously, since they come in times before men had learned to respect
one another's {402} opinions and to realize that the assertions of an
authority in science are only to be considered as worth the reasons he
advances for them. Most people will be quite ready to congratulate
themselves on the fact that our modern time has outlived this
unfortunate state of mind, which served to hamper scientific
investigation. They will probably even be quite self-complacent over
the supposed fact that, ever since the study of natural science was
taken up seriously at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of
the nineteenth century, this unfortunate temper has disappeared. Those
who think so, however, know nothing of the history of nineteenth
century science, and especially not of nineteenth century medicine.
Jenner's great discovery of the value of vaccination against small-pox
came just before the nineteenth century opened. It met with the
bitterest kind of opposition. This was especially the case in England.
There is a doubt whether Germany did not eventually do more to bring
about the recognition of the immense value of Jenner's discovery than
his native England. Anyone who has read Jenner's life knows how much
he was made to suffer from the bitterness of opponents' expressions
with regard to him. [Footnote 46] It is true that he was eventually
rewarded quite liberally, and that honors were showered upon him, but
only after a preliminary series of trials that must have made him
regret, if possible, that he had ever devoted himself to the
propaganda of a great truth. Nor did the dawn of the vaunted
nineteenth century bring in a better state of affairs in this regard.
[Footnote 46: See my sketch of his life in Makers of Modern Medicine.
Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1907.]
It might perhaps be thought that this almost constant tendency to
oppose new developments in science was not recognized for what it
really is, the ultra-conservatism of human nature as men grow older,
until comparatively modern times. Anyone who knows some of the
intimate details of the history of medicine is sure to be better
informed in this matter, and to be well aware that, like Harvey, most
discoverers in medicine anticipated this opposition. Usually they have
had no experience of it before, but they realize from the way men
{403} think around them, and very probably also from their own prompt
reaction of opposition to whatever is novel, that men are sure to be
ready to oppose the introduction of whatever is new. One of the
quietest, gentlest and most lovable characters among the geniuses in
medicine was Auenbrugger, who, in Vienna, about 150 years ago,
discovered the method of percussion of the chest, which is so helpful
in the diagnosis of chest diseases. He perfected his discovery when he
was a young man of about 25. He did not publish it until he was nearly
40 years of age. Like Harvey, he waited nearly a score of years before
giving it to the world. The reason for the delay is given in the
preface in the following words:
"I foresee very well that I shall encounter no little opposition to
my views, and I put my invention before the public with that
anticipation. _I realize, however, that envy and blame and even
hatred and calumny have never failed to come to men who have
illuminated art or science by their discoveries or have added to
their perfection. I expect to have to submit to this danger myself,_
but I think that no one will be able to call any of my observations
to account. I have written only what I have myself learned by
personal observation over and over again, and what my senses have
taught me during long hours of work and toil. I have never permitted
myself to add or subtract anything from my observations because of
the seductions of preconceived theory."
Nearly fifty years after the publication of Auenbrugger's book,
Laennec completed the development of the diagnostic methods necessary
for the differentiation of chest diseases by the discovery of
auscultation. His was the greatest work ever done in clinical
medicine. The solution of the meaning of the multitude of sounds that
can be heard in the human chest required a genius for observation, and
almost infinite patience. Laennec spent twelve years at the task, and
then published his books on the subject. Practically nothing of
importance has been added to his methods and results in the more than
three-quarters of a century of active attention that has been given to
medicine since that time. Laennec did not expect that his discovery
would be taken up by his contemporaries. He even refers to the cool
reception which had been given to {404} Auenbrugger's work, and
deprecates the fact that a man who had done so much for mankind should
have met with such neglect and lack of appreciation, and even the
contempt of his colleagues in medicine, who could not bring themselves
to think that his method of "drumming on the chest," as they called
it, could ever mean much for the recognition of disease. [Footnote 47]
[Footnote 47: Makers of Modern Medicine, by James J. Walsh, M.D.,
Ph.D., LL.D. Fordham University Press, New York, 1907.]
In the preface of his book Laennec, like Auenbrugger, prophesies that
his work will not receive the attention that it deserves, and attempts
to lessen the effect of the derision that will be meted out to it by
calmly stating his expectation of it. It is curious that both of these
men, one of them a German and the other a Frenchman, one of them a
rather stolid Styrian, the other of the lively Celtic nature of the
Bretons, should in turn have realized, at a distance of a thousand
miles and more than half a century from one another, just what the
attitude of the men of science was to be toward their discoveries,
even though those are of a kind that were eventually to be hailed as
among the most important steps in medical progress ever made. Certain
words of Laennec's preface are an echo of Auenbrugger's expressions.
He said:
"For our generation is not inquisitive as to what is being
accomplished by its sons. Claims of new discoveries made by
contemporaries are likely, for the most part, to be met by smiles
and mocking remarks. It is always easier to condemn than to test by
actual experience."
Many people are accustomed to think that, after the spirit that came
into the world with the French Revolution, men were less prone to
listen to authority or cling to old-fashioned notions, and that
liberalism of mind is to be found written large on many pages of
nineteenth century scientific history. One of the great scientists of
the first part of the last century was Dr. Thomas Young, to whom we
owe so much with regard to the theory of light waves and the existence
of the ether to carry them. Men absolutely refused to listen to this
idea at all at the beginning, though now it is the {405} groundwork of
most of our thinking and of nearly all of our mathematical
demonstrations with regard to the movement of light. They not only
refused, however, but they expressed their scorn of the man who
invented such a cumbrous theory. Dr. George M. Gould, in one of the
volumes of his Biographic Clinics, has told the story of Dr. Young's
career, and I prefer to present it in his words rather than my own.
"A practicing physician, Young, as early as 1801, hit upon the true
theory of the luminiferous ether, and of light and color, which
nearly a century before had been discovered by Robert Hooke. But his
scientific contemporaries would not see it, and to avoid persecution
and deprivation of practice, Dr. Young was compelled to publish his
grand discoveries and papers anonymously. Published finally by the
Royal Society (one can imagine the editor's smile of superior wisdom
over such trash), they were as utterly ignored as were those of
Mitchell, Thompson and Martin as to eyestrain, two or three
generations later. Arago finally championed Dr. Young's theory in
the French Academy, but the leaders, LaPlace, Poissin, Biot, etc.,
denounced and conquered, and not until 1823 would the Academy allow
the publication of Fresnel's papers on the subject; in about
twenty-five years the silencers were themselves silenced. But Young
had been silenced too; his disgust was so great that he resigned
from the Royal Society, and devoted himself to his poor medical
practice and to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics." (In which, by
the way, as might be expected I suppose, he made a distinguished
name for himself.)
Many another important medical discoverer in the nineteenth century
found the truth of Auenbrugger's and Laennec's expressions, and met
the fate of Jenner and Young. Next to vaccination for small-pox,
probably the most important advance in nineteenth century medicine was
the discovery of the cause of puerperal fever, and the consequent
diminution of the death-rate from that very fatal disease. At one time
in the nineteenth century, it was much more dangerous for a woman to
have a child in a lying-in hospital in Europe than to go through an
attack of typhoid fever. The death-rate was at least 10 per cent. When
it was {406} reduced to five per cent, the hospital authorities felt
quite self-complacent about it. Shortly after the beginning of the
second quarter of the nineteenth century, there began to come
glimmerings of the real cause of the affection. It was not due to
something from within the patient, but was caused by a _materies
morbi_ introduced from without. Usually the physician in attendance
was responsible for the introduction of it. He came to these patients
after contact with septic cases of various kinds improperly cleansed.
The consequence was that he infected them, and puerperal fever was
contracted.
It would seem as though the medical profession would be very ready and
willing to test any such simple explanation of the origin of a serious
disease, and if possible secure its diminution. On the contrary, the
old men proved to be so wedded to the notion that the physician could
not possibly be the cause of this serious condition, that they were
very bitter in their denunciation of those who tried to introduce the
new idea. One distinguished old professor of midwifery declared very
superciliously that, of course, it was a very charming thing for a
young poet to insist on the notion that these serious diseases were
not associated necessarily with the beautiful function of maternity
itself, but were extraneous factors quite apart from it; but there was
no doubt, he declared, that the affection came from within, all the
same, and that the youthful poet's idea was only a pleasant fiction.
The poet in the case was Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and, needless to
say now, though he was laboring under the heinous crime of being a
young man, and did indulge in occasional poetry, he was entirely in
the right, and the distinguished old professor entirely in the wrong.
No little denunciation was heaped upon the devoted head of Holmes,
however, for his strenuous humanitarian work with regard to this
subject. It cost Holmes some of his medical friends and not a little
practice for some time. Even in America, then the land of the free,
there was a strong conservatism that made the introduction of new
ideas a very difficult and almost a dangerous thing.
The man who worked out the same idea to a practical {407} effect in
Europe met with even more determined opposition than did our own Dr.
Holmes. I refer, of course, to Semmelweiss, who, while teaching
obstetrics in Vienna, realized that it was the students and doctors
engaged in pathological work at the same time that they were taking
out their courses in obstetrics, who caused the havoc among the
patients in his (obstetrical) department in the hospital. The
death-rate in the hands of these obstetrical attendants, who came
directly to the lying-in department from their work in pathology, was
sometimes as high as one in five. Semmelweiss insisted that this state
of affairs must cease, and that while the students were doing the
pathological work they must not be allowed to attend obstetrical
cases. This at once raised a storm of opposition in the university.
Poor Semmelweiss lost his position as a consequence of it. In the
midst of the rancorous discussion that followed, Semmelweiss lost his
reason also for a time, and had to be cared for in an insane asylum.
It is well recognized that his beneficent discovery was for him the
cause of many years of unhappiness.
Nor must it be thought that it is only with regard to medical
discoveries that such opposition--bitter, personal, rancorous and
persecutory--can be aroused. While it might be thought that the great
minds in the ordinary natural sciences would have no reason for the
personal element which more or less necessarily enters into medical
discussion because men had been applying for gain the notions that now
are proved to be incorrect, and their reputations have been made on
such applications, to think that all was placid and quiet in the
physical sciences would be a serious mistake. Long ago Virgil asked in
a famous line, "Is it possible that there can be such great wrath in
divine minds?"--"_tantaene animae celestibus irae_"--and we might be
tempted to ask, can there be such foolish intolerance on the part of
scientific teachers? but the answer would be the same in each case.
Virgil found that the gods were very human in this respect, and anyone
who knows the history of science knows the scientists are like the
pagan dieties, when their conservative spirit is aroused, and when
they are up in arms, as they fondly think, to protect their beloved
science from foolish innovators.
{408}
A typical example of the sort of opposition which a modern discoverer
in science meets with is to be found in the life of Ohm, after whom,
because of his discovery of the law of electrical resistance, the unit
of resistance is called. When he made his discovery Ohm was working in
the Gymnasium at Cologne. The leading physicists of the day could not
bring themselves to believe that this comparatively young man--he was
scarcely forty at the time--could have made a discovery that went far
beyond their knowledge. His paper on the subject was discussed rather
coldly and without any recognition of the far-reaching significance of
the work that he had accomplished. A distinguished representative of
the University of Berlin criticised it severely. As the law was
advanced on mathematical as well as experimental grounds, the opinion
of the university authorities at Berlin was looked upon as extremely
important, since at the time mathematics was the _forte_ there. The
minister of education took his cue from the authorities at Berlin. Ohm
and his friends urged his appointment to a university position. This
was not only refused, but was rejected in such terms that Ohm offered
his resignation as a teacher. His resignation was accepted with
regrets by the ministry, but with a distinct expression that Ohm must
not expect other than a gymnasium position. The consequence of this
misunderstanding was that other teaching institutions in Germany would
not give him a place on their staff, because of the danger of
misunderstanding with the ministry of education. Ohm had to accept a
private tutorship in mathematics in Berlin and a few hours of teaching
in a military school, for which he was paid three hundred thalers a
year. This would be something over $200 in our money, though money was
worth, in buying power, probably two or three times as much as it is
at the present time. Six precious years of Ohm's life, at the very
acme of his powers as an investigator, were thus spent away from the
larger educational institutions and their opportunities for research,
because men would not accept the great discovery that he had made, and
could not be brought to understand that a genius might come along to
revolutionize all their thinking, though he did his work from an
obscure position, and practically attracted no attention {409} before
he found this wonderful clue to the maze of electrical science, which
meant so much for the elucidation of difficulties hitherto insoluble.
Always men find some excuse other than their own unwillingness to
confess that they were wrong. It is to this that they object, and not
the acceptance of the new truth. In the course of writing the
biographies of the Makers of Modern Medicine, published last year, and
the Makers of Electricity, which is now preparing for the press, one
fact proved to be very striking. It is that discoverers of really
great truths are practically always what we would call young men, and
what older men are apt to think of as scarcely more than mere boys.
Such men as Morgagni, the Father of Pathology; Laennec, the Father of
Pulmonary Diagnosis; Stokes, who taught us so much about the lungs;
and Corrigan, who laid the foundation of exact knowledge in heart
diseases,--were under twenty-five when they made their primal
discovery, and some of them scarcely more than twenty. Vesalius
published his great work on anatomy when he was not yet thirty, and
Stensen did his best work under twenty-five. When such men attempt to
teach their elders, of course they are properly put in their places by
their elders, and this often includes a good deal of bitter satire and
discouragement. It is the eternal conflict between youth and age that
constitutes the main reason for opposition to progress in any form of
knowledge, for youth will be progressive and age will be conservative.
Unfortunately age often dissembles the reasons for its opposition even
to itself, and religion and common sense and supposedly established
principles of science are all appealed to as contradicted by the new
doctrine introduced by young men, the truth of which their elders
cannot see.
Nor must it be thought that the second half of the nineteenth century
was free from this tendency to persecute those who made advances in
medicine. There is probably no form of treatment which, in the minds
of those who know most about the disease, that has done more to save
awful suffering in mankind than the Pasteur treatment for rabies.
Anyone who knows anything about the history of the introduction of
that treatment will not be likely to forget how much of pain {410} and
suffering the discovery and introduction of it cost its author.
Nothing too bitter could be said by the medical profession of Germany
for many years after the treatment was first broached. One of the most
distinguished of German medical discoverers in the nineteenth century
said, in a very climax of satire, "that the distinguished Frenchman
deserved to be well known as one who treated diseases of which he knew
nothing by remedies of which he knew less." His good faith was
impugned, his statistics scorned, his results laughed at, even his
friends hesitated to say anything on the subject. Those who were close
to Pasteur know that he suffered, for his nature was of the most
sensitive, veritable torment because of this bitter opposition, which
at one time, because his French colleagues also were sceptical of his
treatment, threatened to impair the usefulness of our greatest
discoverer in nineteenth century medicine and leave him without that
support which would enable him to go on with his precious
investigation.
The more recent furore against antitoxin is still in many persons'
minds. Physicians who used it, and in whose cases serious results took
place, not the consequence of the antitoxin, but the consequence of
factors of the disease over which they had no control, sometimes
suffered seriously in their practice. All forms of opposition were
aroused against it. Even at the present time one still hears of the
crime, as some do not hesitate to call it, of injecting the serum of a
diseased animal into the veins of the human being, and above all a
little child. There are men (intelligent men!) who do not stop short
of tracing all sorts of disease incidents that happen after such an
injection, even many years later, to the evil effects of the horse
serum employed. Such people are exercising that superstitious fanatic
faculty which at all times has caused the obstinately conservative to
seek and find the most serious objections to any new doctrine,
careless of the consequences that they might bring on the discoverer
or the benefit they might prevent for the mass of humanity.
Originally vaccination was opposed by certain clergymen on the grounds
of theological objection to its use. At the present time most of such
objection has ceased, {411} It is still clergymen, however, who are
the most prominent among the anti-vaccinationists, though now they
usually find biological and pathological, instead of theological
reasons. They proclaim it a crime against nature, from the biological
standpoint, that the disease of an animal should be conveyed to man,
even for protective purposes. At the present time one can find just as
bitter objections to vaccination in anti-vaccination journals as when
the subject was first brought under discussion. Men must find some
reason for their opposition, and they take the weapon that is handiest
and that they are able to use with best effect. In an era when
theological ideas were dominant, theology was ready at hand for this
purpose, but any other ology will do just as well, and the history of
science, even in the present day, will show that always some ology,
regardless of human feelings, is used quite as ruthlessly and as
cruelly as in the olden days. There are tortures of spirit that are
worse than prison or even fire.
When we recall how few examples there are of opposition to science on
the part of ecclesiastics, and how most of these prove on careful
examination to be due to misunderstandings rather than to actual
desire to prevent the development of science, the stories of the way
in which discoveries in science were received in more modern times
become a striking lesson that makes us appreciate the broad-mindedness
and liberal policy of ecclesiastical educators in the olden time. They
were evidently much more ready to accept novel ideas, and much less
prone to set themselves up in opposition to them, than the educational
authorities of more modern times. This is the phase of the history of
education in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that
deserves the most careful study, and that should make modern educators
feel proud of their kinship with these old founders and patrons in
education, who at the same time furnish an example of liberality of
mind that it would be very beneficial to have in our modern supposedly
free universities.
For while we are prone to be proud of our academic freedom, we have
had more than one example in recent times of how dangerous it is for a
man, even though he may be recognized as an authority in his
department, {412} to treat certain economic questions from a
standpoint that is not favored by the rest of the faculty, or by the
Board of Governors, or, above all, by certain munificent patrons of
the particular educational institution. Much has been said about
religious educational institutions, about the middle of the nineteenth
century, so hampering the work of men in the physical sciences,
especially with regard to problems in geology and evolution, as to
nullify progress. Just this same thing, however, is true with regard
to many economic questions, because of the attitude of educational
interests with regard to free trade and protection, single tax, and
socialism and the like. No professor of science at a religious
institution ever felt himself more in the grip of old-fashioned
notions than do certain professors in departments of finance and
sociology with regard to problems that are now of the most profound
interest. Men have changed the reason for their conservatism, but the
conservatism itself remains, and apparently always will remain. This
is what must be realized when the stories of ecclesiastical opposition
to progress are told.
{413}
APPENDIX II.
Latin text of the Papal bulls and decrees which are given in English
in the body of this book. These documents are taken from Tomassetti's
Bullarium, except the decree of John XXII. with regard to alchemies,
which is taken from the Corpus Juris Canonici, Tome II., Lyons, 1779.
I.
Bull of Pope Boniface VIII. with regard to burials, which is supposed
to have been misconstrued into a prohibition of dissection.
De Sepulturis, Bonifacius VIII. Corpora defunctorum exenternantes,
et ea immaniter decoquentes, ut ossa a carnibus separata ferant
sepelienda in terram suam, ipso facto sunt excommunicati.
Cap. I. Detestandae feritatis abusum, quem ex quodam more (Alias,
_modo_) horribili nonnulli fideles improvide prosequuntur, nos piae
intentionis ducti proposito, ne abusus praedicti saevitia ulterius
corpora humana dilaceret, mentesque fidelium horrore commoveat, et
perturbet auditum, digue decrevimus abolendum. Praefati namque
fideles hujus suae improbandae utique consuetudinis vitio
intendentes, si quisquam ex eis genere nobilis, vel dignitatis
titulo insignitus, praesertim extra suarum partium limites debitum
naturae persolvat, in suis, vel alienis remotis partibus sepultura
electa; defuncti corpus ex quodam impiae pietatis affectu
truculenter exenterant, ae illud membratim, vel in frusta immaniter
concidentes, ea subsequenter aquis immersa exponunt ignibus
decoquenda. Et tandem (ab ossibus tegumento carnis excusso) eadem ad
partes praedictas mittunt, seu deferunt tumulanda. Quod non solum
Divinae majestatis conspectui abominabile plurimum redditur, sed
etiam humanae considerationis obtutibus occurrit vehementius
abhorrendum. Volentes igitur (prout officii nostri debitum exigit),
illud in hac parte remedium adhibere, per quod tantae abominationis,
tantaeque immanitatis, et impietatis abusus penitus deleatur, nec
extendatur ad alios; Apostolica auctoritate statuimus, et ordinamus,
ut cum quis cujuscumque status, aut generis, seu dignitatis
exstitent: in civitatibus, terris, seu locis, in quibus catholicae
fidei cultus viget, diem de caetero claudet extremum circa corpora
defunctorum hujusmodi abusus, vel similis nullatenus observetur, nec
fidelium manus tanta immanitate foedentur. Sed ut defunctorum
corpora sic impie, ac crudeliter non tractentur, et deferantur ad
loca in quibus viventes eligerint sepeliri, aut in civitate, castro,
vel loco ubi decesserint, vel loco vicino ecclesiasticae sepulturae
tradantur ad tempus, ita, quod demum incineratis corporibus, aut
alias ad loca ubi sepulturam eligerint, deportentur, et sepeliantur
in eis. Nos enim si praedicti defuncti executor, vel executores, aut
familiares ejus, seu quivis alii cujuscumque ordinis, conditionis,
status aut gradus fuerint etiam si pontificali dignitate
praefulgeant, aliquid contra hujusmodi nostri statuti, et
ordinationis tenorem praesumpserint attentare defunctorum corpora
sic inhumaniter et crudeliter pertractando, vel faciendo pertractari
{414} excommunicationis sententiam (quam exnunc in ipsos plurimos)
ipso facto se moverint incursuros, a qua non nisi per Apostolicam
sedem (praeterquam in mortis articulo) possint absolutionis
beneficium obtinere. Et nihilominus ille, cujus corpus sic inhumane
tractatum fuerit, ecclesiastica careat sepultura. Nulli ergo, etc.
Datum Latera. XII. Calen. Martii, Pontificatus nostri anno VI.
II.
Decree of Pope John XXII. forbidding alchemies, by which he prohibited
the pretended making of gold and silver, but is claimed to have
hampered the progress of chemistry.
De Crimine Falsi Titulus VI. I Joannis XXII. [circa annum 1317 Avenioni]
Alkimiae hic prohibentur, et puniuntur facientes et fieri
procurantes: quoniam tantum de vero auro et argento debent inferre
in publicum, ut pauperibus erogetur quantum de falso et adulterino
posuerunt. Et si eorum facultates non sufficiunt, poena per judicis
discretionem in aliam commutabitur, et infames fiunt. Et si sint
clerici beneficiis habitis privantur et ad habenda inhabiles
efficiuntur. (Vide Extravagantem ejusdem Joannis quae incipit
"Providens" et est sub eodem titulo collocata.)
Spondent quas non exhibent divitias, pauperes Alchimistae; pariter
qui se sapientes existimamt in foveam incidunt quam fecerunt. Nam
haud dubie hujus artis Alchimiae alterutrum se professores
ludificant; cum suae ignorantiae conscii, eos, qui supra ipsos
aliquid hujusmodi dixerint, admirentur: quibus cum veritas quaesita
non suppetat, diem cernunt, facultates exhauriunt; idemque verbis
dissimulant falsitatem, ut tandem quod non est in rerum natura, esse
verum aurum vel argentum sophistica transmutatione confingant; eoque
interdum eorum temeritas damnata et damnanda progreditur, ut fictis
metallis cudant publicae monetae characteres fidis oculis, et non
alias Alchimicum fornacis ignem vulgum ignorantem eludant. Haec
itaque perpetuis volentes exulare temporibus, hac edictali
constitutione sancimus, ut quicumque hujusmodi aurum vel argentum
fecerint, vel fieri secuto facto mandaverint, vel ad hoc scienter
(dum id fieret) facientibus ministraverint, aut scienter vel auro
vel argento usi fuerint vendendo vel dando in solutum: [illegible
letter or or mark] verum tanti ponderis aurum vel argentum poenae
nomine inferre cogantur in publicum pauperibus erogandum, quanti
Alchimicum existat; circa quod eos aliquo praedictorum modorum
legitime constiterit deliquisse: facientibus nihilominus aurum vel
argentum Alchimicum aut ipso, praemittitur, scienter utentibus
perpetuae, infamiae nota respersis. Quod si ad praefatam poenam
pecuniarum exsolvendam deliquentium ipsorum facultates non
sufficiant, poterit discreti moderatio judicis poenam hanc in aliam
(puta carceris, vel alteram juxta qualitatem negotii personarum
differentiam aliasque attendendo circumstantias) commutare. Illos
vero qui in tantae ignorantiam infelicitatis proruperint, ut nedum
nummos vedunt, sed naturalis juris praacepta contemnant, artis
excedant metas, legumque violant interdieta scienter videlicet
adulterinam ex auro et argento Alchimico cudendo seu fundendo, cudi
seu fundi faciendo monetam; hac animadversione percelli jubemus, ut
ipsorum bona deserantur carceri, ipsique perpetuo sint infames. Et
si clerici fuerint delinquentes, ipsi ultra praedictas poenas
priventur beneficiis habitis et prorsus reddantur inhabiles ad
habenda.
III.
Bull of Pope John XXII. forbidding certain magical practices, which,
like the prohibition of alchemies, protected his flock from {415}
sharpers of various kinds, sooth-sayers, pretended sorcerers,
magicians, _et id genus omne_. This is the bull which Pres. White
quotes under its Latin title, _Super illius specula_, as if he had it
under his eye at the moment of writing, and which he says "shows Pope
John himself, in spite of his infallibility, sunk in superstition the
most abject and debasing; for in this bull, supposed to be inspired
from wisdom from on high, Pope John complains that both he and his
flock are in danger of their lives by the arts of the sorcerers. He
(the Pope) declares that such sorcerers can shut up devils in mirrors
and finger-rings and phials and kill men and women by a magic word;
_that they had tried to kill him by piercing a waxen image of him with
needles in the name of the devil."_
Contra immolantes daemonibus, aut responsa et auxilia ab eis
postulantes; sive tenentes libros de eiusmodi erroribus tractantes.
Ioannes episcopus servus servorum Dei, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.
Super illius specula, quamvis immeriti, Eius favente clementia qui
primum hominem humani quidem generis protoplastum, terrenis
praclatum, divinis virtutibus adornatum, conformem et consimilem
imagini suea fecit, revocavit profugum, legem dando; ac demum
liberavit captivum, reinvenit perditum, et redemit venditum, merito
suae Passionis, ut contemplaremur ex illa super filios hominum, qui
christianae religionis culta Deum intelligunt et requirunt: dolenter
advertimus, quod etiam cum nostrorum turbatione viscerum cogitamus
quamplures esse solo nomine christianos, qui relicto primo veritatis
lumine, tanto erroris caligine obnubilantur, quod cum morte foedus
ineunt, et pactum faciunt cum inferno: daemonibus namque immolant,
hos adorant, fabricant ac fabricari procurant imagines, annulum vel
speculum, vel phialam, vel rem quamcumque aliam magice ad daemones
inibi alligandos, ab his petunt responsa, ab his recipiunt, et pro
implendis pravis suis desideriis auxilia postulant, pro re faet
idissima faetidam exhibent servitutem: Proh dolor! hujusmodi morbus
pestifer, nunc per mundum solito amplius convalescens, eccessive
gravius inficit Christi gregem.
1. Cum igitur, ex debito suscepti pastoralis officii, oves
aberrantes per devia teneamur ad caulas Christi reducere, et
excludere a grege dominico morbidas, ne alias corrumpant: hoc edicto
in perpetuum valituro, de consilio fratrum nostrorum, monemus omnes
et singulos renatos fonte baptismatis, in virtute sanctae
obedientiae, et sub interminatione anathematis, praecipientes
eisdem, quod nullus ipsorum aliquid de perversis dictis dogmatibus
docere ac addiscere audeat: vel, quod execrabilius est, quomodolibet
alio modo, in aliquo illis uti.
2. Et quia dignum est, quod hi, qui per sua opera perversa spernunt
Altissimum, poenis suis pro culpis debitis percellantur: nos in
omnes et singulos, qui contra nostra saluberrima monita et mandata
facere de praedictis quicquam praesumpserint, excommunicationis
sententiam promulgamus, quam ipsos incurrere volumus ipso facto.
Statuentes firmiter, quod praeter poenas praedictas, contra tales,
qui admoniti de praedictis seu praedictorum aliquo infra octo dies a
monitione computandos praefata, a praefatis non se correxerint, ad
infligendas poenas omnes et singulas, praeter bonorum [Transcriber:
might be "ponorum"] confiscationem dumtaxat, quas de iure merentur
haeretici, per suos competentes iudices procedetur.
3. Verum cum sit expediens, quod ad haec tam nefanda omnis via
omnisque occasio praecludatur, de dictorum nostrorum fratrum
consilio, universis praecipimus et mandamus, quod nullus eorum
libellos, scripturas quascumque ex praefatis damnatis errobus
quicquam continentes, habere aut tenere vel in ipsis studere
praesumat; quin {416} potius volumus, et in virtute sanctae
obedientiae cunctis praecipimus, quod quicumque de scripturis
praefatis vel libellis quicquam habuerint, infra octo dierum spatium
ab huiusmodi edicti nostri notitia computandum, totum et in toto et
in qualibet sui parte abolere et comburere teneantur: alioquin
volumus, quod incurrant sententiam excommunicationis ipso facto,
processuri contra contemptores huiusmodi (cum constiterit) ad poenas
alias graviores. Datum Avenione, etc.
IV.
Bull of Pope John XXII. authorizing the institution of chairs of
medicine and arts in the University of Perugia. The bull shows John's
care for the maintenance of standards in education, and is a
revelation by its anticipation of requirements for the Doctor's Degree
that we are only now coming to enforce once more.
Erectio cathedrarum medicinae et artium in Perusino Studio, data
insuper facultate episcopo licentiandi et laureandi in utraque
facultate idoneos, pro quorum examine nonullae sanciuntur leges.
Ioannes episcopus servus servorum Dei, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.
Dum solicitae considerationis indagine in mente revolvimus, quam sit
donum scientiae pretiosum, quamque illius desiderabilis et gloriosa
possessio, per quam profugandur ignorantiae tenebrae, et eliminata
funditus erroris caligine, studentium curiosa solertia cursus et
actus disponit et ordinat in lumine veritatis; magno nimirum
desidero ducimur, ut literarum studia, in quibus impretiabilis
margarita scientiae reperitur, laudanda ubilibet incrementa
suscipiant: sed in illis praesertim locis propensius vigeant, quae
ad multiplicanda doctrinae semina et germina salutari producenda
fore magis accommoda et idonea dignoscuntur.
1. Dudum siquidem felicis recordationis Clemens Papa praedecessor
noster, attendens fidei puritatem et devotionem eximiam, quam
civitas Perusina, terra peculiaris Romanae Ecclesiae, ad ipsam
Ecclesiam ab olim habuisse dignoscitur, et quod illas ad eam
successibus temporum de bono in melius augumentarat, dignum duxit et
aequitati consonum existimavit, ut civitatem eamdem, quam divina
gratia multarum praerogativa bonitatum gratiose dotaverat,
concessione generalis Studii insigniret: et ut auctore Deo ex
civitate ipsa producerentur viri scientia praepollentes auctoritate
apostolica statuit, ut in ea esset Studium generale, illudque
vigeret ibidem perpetuis futuris temporibus in qualibet facultate,
prout in literis praedecessoris eiusdem inde confectis plenius
dicitur contineri.
2. Ac subsequenter nos, licet immeriti, ad apicem Summi Apostolatus
assumpti, civitatem eamdem propter suae devotionis insignia quibus
se dignam Apostolicae Sedis gratia exhibebat, uberiore dono gratiae
prosequi cupientes, auctoritate apostolica de fratrum nostrorum
consilio, venerabili fratri nostro episcopo Perusino et
successoribus eius episcopus _Perusinis_, qui essent pro tempore,
impertiendi personis ad hoc idoneis docendi licentiam in iure
canonico et civili iuxta certum modum in literis nostris expressum,
liberam concessimus potestatem, prout in eisdem literis nostris
plenius et seriosius continetur.
3. Considerantes igitur, quod eadem civitas propter eius
commoditates et conditiones quamplurimas est non modicum apta
studentibus, ac propterea concessiones huiusmodi ob profectus
publicos, quos exinde provenire speramus, ampliare volentes,
apostolica auctoritate statuimus ut si qui processu temporis in
eodem Studio fuerint, qui etiam in medicinali scientia et
liberalibus artibus scientiae bravium assecuti, sibi docendi
licentiam, ut alios liberius erudire valeant, petierint in
perpetuum, in praedictis medicinali scientia et artibus examinari
possint ibidem et in eisdem facultatibus {417} titulo magisterii
decorari: statuentes, ut quotiens aliqui in praedictis medicina et
artibus fuerint doctorandi, praesententur episcopo Perusino, qui pro
tempore fuerit, vel ei, quern ad hoe praedictus episcopus duxerit
deputandum, qui magistris huiusmodi facultatis, in qua examinatio
fuerit facienda, in studio eodem praesentibus, qui ad minus quatuor
numero in examinatione huiusmodi esse debeant, convocatis eos
gratis, et difficultate quacumque sublata, de scientia, facundia,
modo legendi, et aliis, quae in promovendis ad doctoratus seu
magistratus officium requiruntur, examinari studeat diligenter; et
illos, quos idoneos repererit, petito secrete magistrorum eorumdem
consilio, quod utique consilium in ipsorum consulentium dispendium
vel iacturam revelare quomodolibet districtius prohibemus, approbet
et admittat, eisque petitam licentiam largiatur: alios minus idoneos
nullatenus admittendo, postpositis gratia, odio vel favore.
4. Ut autem in praedictis medicina et artibus praefatum Studium
tanto plenius coalescat, quanto peritiores doctores in huiusmodi
suis primitiis ibidem caeperint actu regere etdocere, statuimus,
quod usque ad triennium vel quatriennium aliqui doctores, duo ad
minus, qui in medicinali scientia in Parisien, vel Bononien, aut
aliis famosis generalibus Studiis honorem receperint doctoratus, ad
docendum et regendum in scientia medicinae et tres vel duo ad minus,
qui in artibus in Parisien. Studio apud maiorem Parisien. Ecclesiam
docendi licentiam fuerint assecuti, et saltem per annum rexerint,
sue docuerint in Parisien. Studio memorato, ad regendum et docendum
in dictis artibus in praefato Perusin. Studio assumantur, qui usque
ad quatriennium vel quinquennium, donec praefatum Studium in bonis
studentibus laudabiliter progressum acceperit, regant et doceant in
eodem.
5. Circa doctorandos vero in scientia medicinae hoc praecipue
observetur, ut huiusmodi decorandi audiverint omnes libros eiusdem
scientiae, qui in Bononien. vel Parisien. Studio a studentibus
promovendis consueverunt audiri, per septennium, vel qui in
logicalibus aut philosophia alias forent sufficienter instructi
saltem per quinquennium in scientia praedicta studerint, ita quod
saltem tribus annis eiusdem septennii vel quinquenni, ut
praedicitur, in medicinali scientia audierint in aliquo Studio
generali, et ut moris est, responderint sub doctoribus et
extraordinarie legerint libros legi extraordinarie consuetos,
servato circa examinationem ipsius in medicinae scientia promovendi
more laudabili, qui in talibus erga eos, qui promoventur in
Parisien. vel Bononien. Studio observatur.
6. Circa doctorandos vero in artibus liberalibus etiam observetur,
quod studuerint per quatuor vel quinque annos, de quibus saltem
duobus annis audierint in aliquo Studio generali: ita videlicet ut
in grammatica Priscianum maiorem et minorem, et in dialectica
Logicam novam et veterem Aristotelis, ac in philosophia librum de
anima, et saltem quatuor libros Ethicorum; et tarn in iis, quam in
caeteris aliis liberalibus artibus illos alios libros audierint, qui
in Parisien. Studio per promovendos in dicta facultate artium
consueverint audiri, servato circa examinationem tarn in communibus
quam in propriis ipsius artibus promovendi more laudabili, qui in
talibus erga eos, qui promoventur, apud praefatam maiorem Ecclesiam
Parisien. observatur.
7. Verum quia non passim reperiuntur in Studiis, qui omnes huiusmodi
libros audierint, praefato Perusin, episcopo suisque successoribus
Perusin episcopis, qui pro tempore fuerint, indulgemus, ut in
auditione aliorum praefatorum librorum de forma circa licentiandos
ipsos in artibus, prout sufficientia eorumdem licentiandorum
exegerit et sibi videbitur expedire, auctoritate nostra valeat
dispensare.
8. Illi autem, qui in dicta civitate Perusin, taliter examinati et
approbati fuerint, ac docendi licentiam obtinuerint, ut est dictum,
ex tunc, absque examinatione vel approbatione alia, regendi et
docendi ubique plenam et liberam habeant auctoritate praesentium
facultatem, nec a quoquam valeant prohiberi.
9. Sane ut rite in praefatis examinationibus procedatur,
praecipimus, ut tarn {418} episcopus Perusin., qui pro tempore
fuerit quam ille, cui praefatus episcopus ex causa rationabili
impeditus in hac parte commiserit vices suas, eidem episcopo,
propositis tamen, sed non tactis Evangeliis, ab aliis vero
corporaliter tactis iurent, quod in hac parte officium suum
fideliter exequentur. Volumus autem quod personis, quae per
examinationem huiusmodi repertae fuerint idoneae, huiusmodi licentia
debeatur impertiri, et quod idem episcopus personaliter, non per
vicarium vel substitutum examinationi huiusmodi interesse debeat:
nisi esset ex aliqua rationabili causa adeo impeditus quod suam non
posset examinationi praedictae personalem praesentiam exhibere: in
quo casu eidem episcopo interessendi examinationi huiusmodi per
vicarium, vel alium ad hoc idoneum substitutum, tenore praesentium
indulgemus: et quod nomini huiusmodi impartietur licentia, nisi, ei,
quern omnis vel maior pars doctorum, qui huiusmodi examinationi
intererint, approbabunt.
10. Magistri quoque, regere in eodem Studio cupientes, vel alias
inibi residentes, antequam incipiant, praestent in manibus dicti
episcopi iuramentum, quod ipsi vocatio ad examinationes easdem
venient, nisi fuerint legitime impediti, et gratis sine difficultate
dabunt examinatori fidele consilium, qui de examinatis ut digni
approbari debeant, aut indigni merito non admitti. Qui vero
iuramentum huiusmodi praestare noluerint, nec ad examinationes
eorumdem, nec etiam ad aliqua ipsius Studii commoda vel beneficia
ullatenus admittantur.
11. Nulli ergo omnino hominum liceat hanc paginam nostrarum
constitutionis, prohibitionis, concessionis, praecepti et voluntatis
infringere, etc.
Datum Avenioni, duodecimo kalendas martii, pontificatus nostri anno
v. Dat. die 18 februarii 1321, pontif. anno v.
V.
Bull of Pope John XXII. in which he authorizes the foundation of a
University in the City of Cahors, his birthplace, as a memorial of his
interest in the townspeople and a monument of his zeal for education.
Confirmatio erectionis Universitatis studiorum in civitate
Cadurcensi.
Ioannes episcopus servus servorum Dei, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.
Cum civitas Cadurcensis, quam excellentiae divinae bonitas
multiplicium gratiarum bonis et dotibus decoravit, propter ipsius
commoditates et conditiones quamplurimas apta non modicum generali
Studio censeatur, nos reipublicae multipliciter expedire credentes,
quod in civitate praefata fiat et emanet fons scientiarum irriguus,
de cuius plenitudine hauriant universi, litteralibus cupientes imbui
documentis, et etiam cultores sapientiae inserantur et provehantur
diversarum facultatum dogmatibus eruditi, facundi et undique
illustrati, fructum uberem, largiente Domino, suo tempore
producturi; attendentes quoque sincerae fidei puritatem, ac eximiae
devotionis affectum, quos dilecti filii consules et Universitas
eiusdem civitatis ad nos et Romanam Ecclesiam habere noscuntur: ex
praedictis causis, porrectis etiam nobis pro parte consulum et
Universitatis praedictae humilibus et devotis supplicationibus
inclinati, auctoritate apostolica statuimus et ordinamus, quod in
civitate praedicta perpetuis futuris temporibus generale. Studium
habeatur et vigeat in qualibet licita facultate, quodque praefatum
Studium, ac eius Universitas, ac doctores, magistri, licentiati,
baccalaurei et scholares pro tempore commorantes causa studiorum
ibidem, omnibus privilegiis, liberatibus et immunitatibus, concessis
Studio Tholosamensi ac Universitati eius, plene et libere gaudeant
et utantur.
Nulli ergo omnino hominum etc.
Datum Avenione vii idus iunii, pontificatus nostri anno xvi.
Dat. die 7 iunii 1332, pont. anno xvi.
{419}
APPENDIX III.
MEDIEVAL LAW FOR THE REGULATION OF THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE.
It is usually presumed that the practice of medicine was on a very low
plane during the Middle Ages, and that while only little was known
about medical science, the methods of practicing the medical art were
crude, as befitted an earlier time in evolution before modern advances
had come. Any such impression is founded entirely on ignorance of the
conditions which actually existed. In his studies in the history of
anatomy in the Middle Ages, Von Töply [Footnote 48] quotes the law for
the regulation of the practice of medicine issued by the Emperor
Frederick II. in 1240 or 1241. The Law was binding on the two
Sicilies, and shows exactly the state of medical practice in the
southern part of Italy at this time. Everything that we think we have
gained by magnificent advances in modern times is to be found in this
law. A physician must have a diploma from a university and a license
from the government; he must have studied three years before taking up
medicine--then three years in a medical school, and then must have
practiced with a physician for a year before he will be allowed to
take up the practice of medicine on his own account. If he is to take
up surgery, he must have made special studies in anatomy. The law is
especially interesting because of its regulation of the purity of
drugs, in which it anticipates by nearly seven centuries our Pure Drug
Law of last year. (This law was published in the form here given in
the "Journal of the American Medical Association," January, 1908.)
[Footnote 48: Studien zur Geschichte der Anatomie im Mittelalter von
Robert Ritter Von Töply. Leipzig, 1898.]
"While we are bent upon making regulations for the commonweal of our
loyal subjects, we keep ever under our observation the health of the
individual. In consideration of the serious damage and the
irreparable suffering which may occur as a consequence of the
inexperience of physicians, we decree that in future no one who
claims the title of physician shall exercise the art of healing or
dare {420} to treat the ailing, except such as have beforehand, in
our University of Salerno, passed a public examination under a
regular teacher of medicine, and been given a certificate not only
by the professor of medicine, but also by one of our civil
officials, which declares his trustworthiness and sufficient
knowledge. This document must be presented to us, or in our absence
from the kingdom to the person who remains behind in our stead, and
must be followed by the obtaining of a license to practice medicine
either from us or from our representative aforesaid. Violation of
this law is to be punished by confiscation of goods and a year in
prison for all those who in future dare to practice medicine without
such permission from our authority.
"Since students cannot be expected to learn medical science unless
they have previously been grounded in logic, we further decree that
no one be permitted to take up the study of medical science without
beforehand having devoted at least three full years to the study of
logic." (Under logic at this time was included the study of
practically all the subjects that are now taken up in the arts
department of our universities. Huxley, in his address before the
University of Aberdeen on the occasion of his inauguration as Rector
of that University, said that "the scholars [of the early days of
the universities] studied Grammar and Rhetoric; Arithmetic and
Geometry; Astronomy, Theology and Music." He added: "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 the old
Trivium and Quadrivium does." Huxley, Science and Education Essays,
page 197. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1896.--J. J. W.)
"After three years devoted to these studies, he (the student) may,
if he will, proceed to the study of medicine, provided always that
during the prescribed time he devotes himself also to surgery, which
is a part of medicine. After this, and not before, will he be given
the license to practice, provided he has passed an examination in
legal form as well as obtained a certificate from his teacher as to
his {421} studies in the preceding time. After having spent five
years in study, he shall not practice medicine until he has during a
full year devoted himself to medical practise with the advice and
under the direction of an experienced physician. In the medical
schools the professors shall during these five years devote
themselves to the recognized books, both those of Hippocrates as
well as those of Galen, and shall teach not only theoretic, but also
practical medicine.
"We also decree, as a measure intended for the furtherance of Public
Health, that no surgeon shall be allowed to practice, unless he has
a written certificate, which he must present to the professor in the
medical faculty, stating that he has spent at least a year at that
part of medicine which is necessary as a guide to the practice of
surgery, and that, above all, he has learned the anatomy of the
human body at the medical school, and is fully equipped in this
department of medicine, without which neither operations of any kind
can be undertaken with success nor fractures be properly treated.
"In every province of our Kingdom which is under our legal
authority, we decree that two prudent and trustworthy men, whose
names must be sent to our court, shall be appointed and bound by a
formal oath, under whose inspection electuaries and syrups and other
medicines be prepared according to law and only be sold after such
inspection. In Salerno in particular, we decree that this
inspectorship shall be limited to those who have taken their degrees
as Masters in Physic.
"We also decree by the present law, that no one in the Kingdom,
except in Salerno or in Naples (in which were the two universities
of the Kingdom), shall undertake to give lectures on medicine or
surgery, or presume to assume the name of teacher, unless he shall
have been very thoroughly examined in the presence of a Government
official and of a professor in the art of medicine.
"Every physician given a license to practice must take an oath that
he shall faithfully fulfil all the requirements of the law, and in
addition, whenever it comes to his knowledge that any apothecary has
for sale drugs that are of less than normal strength, he shall
report him to the court, and besides he shall give his advice to the
poor without asking for any compensation. A physician shall visit
his patient at least twice a day, and at the wish of his patient
once also at night, and shall charge him, in case the visit does not
{422} require him to go out of the village or beyond the walls of
the city, not more than one-half tarrene in gold for each day's
service." (A tarrene in gold was equal to about thirty cents of our
money. Money had at least twenty times the purchasing power at that
time that it has now. At the end of the thirteenth century,
according to an Act of the English Parliament, a workman received 4d
[eight cents] a day for his labor, and according to the same Act of
Parliament the following prices were charged for commodities: A pair
of shoes cost eight cents, that is, a day's wages. A fat goose cost
seven cents, less than a day's wages. A fat sheep unshorn cost
thirty-five cents; shorn, about twenty-five cents. For four days pay
a man could get enough meat for himself and family to live on for a
week, besides material out of which his wife could make excellent
garments for the family. A fat hog cost twice as much as a fat
sheep, and a bullock about six times as much.--J. J. W.) "From a
patient whom he visits outside of the village or the wall of the
town, the physician has a right to demand for a day's service not
more than three tarrenes, to which maybe added, however, his
expenses, provided that he does not demand more than four tarrenes
altogether.
"He (the regularly licensed physician) must not enter into any
business relations with the apothecary, nor must he take any of them
under his protection nor incur any money obligations in their
regard." (Apparently many different ways of getting round this
regulation had already been invented, and the idea of these
expressions seemed to be to make it very clear in the law that any
such business relationship, no matter what the excuse or method of
it, is forbidden.--J. J. W.) "Nor must any licensed physician keep
an apothecary's shop himself. Apothecaries must conduct their
business with a certificate from a physician, according to the
regulations and upon their own credit and responsibility, and they
shall not be permitted to sell their products without having taken
an oath that all their drugs have been prepared in the prescribed
form, without any fraud. The apothecary may derive the following
profits from his sales: Such extracts and simples as he need not
keep in stock for more than a year before they may be employed may
be charged for at the rate of three tarrenes an ounce." (90 cents an
ounce seems very dear, but this is the maximum.) "Other medicines,
however, which in consequence of the special conditions required for
their preparation or for any other reason the apothecary has to have
in {423} stock for more than a year, he may charge for at the rate
of six tarrenes an ounce. Stations for the preparation of medicines
may not be located anywhere, but only in certain communities in the
Kingdom, as we prescribe below.
"We decree also that the growers of plants meant for medical purpose
shall be bound by a solemn oath that they shall prepare medicines
conscientiously, according to the rules of their art, and as far as
it is humanely possible that they shall prepare them in the presence
of the inspectors. Violations of this law shall be punished by the
confiscation of their movable goods. If the inspectors, however, to
whose fidelity to duty the keeping of these regulations is
committed, should allow any fraud in the matters that are entrusted
to them, they shall be condemned to punishment by death."
{424}
APPENDIX IV.
CHURCH DECREES RELATING TO MEDICINE.
Besides the Papal documents referred to in the body of this book and
quoted in the original in the Appendix to the first edition
immediately preceding this, there is a series of decrees of Councils
and Synods of the Church which are sometimes referred to as
representing a distinct policy of opposition on the part of the Church
to science and particularly medical and surgical practice, as if their
purpose had been to force people to have recourse to prayers and
relics and pilgrimages and masses rather than to take advantage of
medical knowledge and surgical experience for the relief of their
ills. The Papal documents quoted and discussed in the previous edition
of this book proved to have no such meaning as was attributed to them
and the history of the medical sciences as traced, shows that these
Church regulations were not misconstrued either in their own or
subsequent generations in such a way as to have the effect of
interfering with the development of medical science or medical
education as has been claimed. Their citation in support of the thesis
of Church opposition to science, theoretic or applied, is entirely
without justification.
Exactly this same thing is true with regard to the other documents
that are referred to as having a parallel and confirmatory
significance of Church opposition to medical science, or medical or
surgical practice, or medical teaching. It requires no lengthy
explanation to see that the decrees referred to are simply
ecclesiastical disciplinary regulations, aimed at putting an end to
certain abuses that had arisen in religious matters, and well
calculated to prevent their further occurrence. The Church authorities
recognized as will anyone who understands the circumstances that men
who had devoted their lives in religious orders exclusively to the
work of religion, should not be permitted to neglect their religious
vocations because of devotion to some secular profession. They were
forbidden to practice and to study medicine, but the practice of law
was forbidden to them quite as well and for the same reason. There was
no question of limiting the number of persons who might take up
medical study, but all those who had bound themselves for life to
religious duties must not withdraw from these to take up secular
occupations. The case against the Church as opposed to science, and
above all medicine and surgery, must indeed be weak {425} when it has
to be bolstered up by recondite references to documents such as these,
the purport of which is so clear and the good sense of which is as
evident now as it was when they were issued.
Everyone recognizes that absorbing professional occupations such as
the practice of medicine or of law keeps men from devoting themselves
to the intellectual or the spiritual life. The opposite is also felt
to be the case and there is still a profound distrust of the lawyer or
the physician who devotes himself to literature or to any intellectual
avocation, for the feeling is that he cannot be practically successful
at his profession. This feeling is often a mere prejudice and great
lawyers and great physicians have often been litterateurs of
distinction, but as a rule there is incompatibility between the two
modes of occupation. In the medieval period it was felt that there was
the same incompatibility between proper devotion to the spiritual life
and the professions, and as members of religious orders had given up
worldly affairs and interests in order to devote themselves to
other-worldliness and had taken vows of poverty, chastity and
obedience for that purpose, it was sincerely felt that they should not
engage in gainful occupations and professional work that distracted
them from the religious profession which they had taken up. Hence
these decrees.
The only way to make perfectly clear the meaning of these decrees in
their proper place in history both as regards education in general and
medical education, is to give the text of the documents in the
accompanying translation. I owe the text of them to Father Corbett of
the Seminary of St. Charles Borromeo at Overbrook, Pa., who supplied
me with the similar documents for the first edition of this work. The
translations are made from the recognized authoritative edition of the
decrees of the Church councils and synods issued at Paris in 1671, the
title page of which reads as follows: "Sacrosancta concilia ad regiam
editionem exacta quae nunc quarta parte prodit auctior studio Philip.
Labaei et Gab. Cossartii, Soc. Jesu Prebyterorum, Tomus Decimus,
1053--1197, Lutetiae Parisiorum 1671." [Footnote 49]
[Footnote 49: I feel that I should say that when there was question of
publishing these documents I consulted Dr. Garrison, the Assistant
Librarian of the Surgeon General's Library at Washington and the
author of the best history or medicine in English, as to the Church
decrees that ought to be published in their entirety in order to make
their meaning perfectly clear. I have followed the list suggested by
him.]
_The Council of Rheims held under Pope Innocent II, A.D. 1131,_ Canon
VI, forbidding monks or regular canons to study law or medicine for
the sake of gain.
{426}
"An evil custom as we consider it and detestable has grown up by
which monks and regular canons after having received the habit and
made their profession, spurning the rule of their blessed masters
Benedict and Augustine, learn secular law and medicine for the sake
of temporal gain. Inflamed by the fire of avarice they make
themselves the patrons of causes [that is the attorneys of legal
proceedings] and when they ought to be devoting themselves to
psalmody and hymns, confiding in the support of a fine voice and the
variety of their pleas, they confound justice and injustice, right
and wrong. Imperial constitutions attest that it is absurd, nay even
an opprobrium, for members of the clerical order to wish to be
skilled in forensic disputation. We decree that violators of the
religious life of this kind should fall under the severe judgment of
the apostolical authority, for as they have neglected the cure of
souls and in no way attend to the purpose of their order, promising
health for filthy lucre, they make themselves guardians of human
bodies. And since an impure eye is the index of an impure heart and
since religion ought not to deal with those things even to talk
about which brings the blush of shame to the cheek of honesty, in
order therefore that the monastic and canonical order should be
preserved inviolably pleasing to God in its holy purpose, we
interdict by the apostolical authority that any such proceeding
should be allowed hereafter. Bishops therefore and abbots and priors
who consent to such an enormity shall be deprived of their own
dignities."
_The Council of Tours held under Pope Alexander III, A.D. 1163,_ Canon
VIII. That religious should avoid secular studies.
"Not only does the envy of the old enemy of mankind bring him to
labor greatly to destroy the infirm members of the Church, but he
also puts his hand to securing the desirable members of the Church
and strives even to supplant the elect according to the saying of
the Scriptures 'for the elect are his food.' He plumes himself if he
can bring about the fall of many, but especially if he can bring
down some more distinguished member of the Church by making him
lukewarm. Hence it is that he knows how to transfigure himself after
his usual fashion into an angel of light, so that under the pretext
of caring for the health of ailing brethren and more faithfully
carrying out ecclesiastical business he leads members of the regular
religious orders to the study of law and of physical problems which
have to be given attention outside of the cloister. For this reason,
so that spiritual men under the pretext of science may not again
become involved in mundane affairs and themselves lose their
interior life while they are thinking to provide for others in the
exterior, we have decreed by the assent of the present council in
the endeavor to meet this evil, that no one at all after taking the
vows of religion or the making of religious profession should be
allowed to absent himself from the cloister for the study of
medicine and physic. If however he has already absented himself and
shall not have returned to his cloister within the space of two
months he is to be avoided by all as excommunicate, and if he should
presume to try the effect of patronage in no case should {427} he be
heard. On his return to the cloister he must always be the last of
the brothers in the choir and unless by the special indult or
permission of the Holy See must lose hope of all promotion."
_The Council of Paris, A.D. 1212,_ Second Part, Canon XX.
"Since certain of the members of the regular orders under the
pretense of caring for the bodies of ailing brother members and of
more faithfully managing ecclesiastical affairs, to use the words of
the Lateran Council, have not hesitated to go out of their cloisters
to learn mundane law and give themselves to the study of physical
problems in order to give their time to jurisprudence and medicine
and on account of that are lacking in the interior life because they
are devoting themselves to care for external things, we walking
closely in the footsteps of that council decree that unless within
the space of two months such students of law and medicine return to
their cloisters, in spite of the permission of their abbot, which he
is not empowered to give, they are to be excommunicated and avoided
by all; and in no case if they should endeavor to use patronage to
aid them are they to be admitted.
"We prohibit also anyone who enters the cloister for the sake of
religion to go out of it in order to go to school; whatever a student
may wish he should learn in the cloister. Those who are now in the
schools should within two months return to the cloister."
_Decree of the Council of Montpellier held under Pope Alexander
III, 1162._
Since the proceedings of this Council are not extant the records of it
are preserved in two monuments. One an Epistle of Pope Alexander to
the Bishop of Verona and the other the decrees of the Council of
Montpellier held in 1195 which enacted similar legislation.
Cap. 15. "The Council prohibited besides under the full severity of
ecclesiastical discipline any monk or canon regular or other member
of a religious order to take up the study of secular laws or
medicine. Anyone violating this statute must be canonically
published by the diocesan Bishops according to the decree
promulgated in this matter under Pope Alexander in the Council of
Montpellier."
It has been suggested that this exclusion of monks and religious from
the study of medicine by Church ordinance practically shut out all the
clerics, that is, all the educated men of the medieval period, from
the medical profession. Any such idea, however, could only have
occurred to one who does not realize that at any given time there are
only a comparatively few religious and a great many secular clergymen.
Practically all those who could read and write in the Middle Ages were
known as clerks, that is clerics, and were under the protection of the
Church, most of them indeed receiving minor orders, and if all the
clergy were to have been excluded {428} from the medical profession
this contention would be true. So far is it from the truth, however,
that a number of the great physicians and surgeons of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries belonged to the clerical orders, not a few of
them were priests and some of the greatest of them, like Theodoric,
were actually bishops. It was only the religious, that is the men who
had specially devoted their lives to monasticism, who were forbidden
to take up the study of medicine because it did not comport with their
monastic vocation.
A second series of ecclesiastical decrees that are often referred to
in the history of medicine are those which concern the relations of
the physician and his patient whenever there is danger of death. The
Church's duty was to secure the proper dispositions on the part of
those who were in danger of death. Physicians sometimes did not let
patients and their friends know how serious the illness was and as a
consequence patients died without the sacraments and rites of the
Church. In order to prevent this the Church regulation was promulgated
that a physician was bound to have a patient take care of his soul at
the same time that his body was being treated. Physicians of the
present day, even when they are not themselves Catholics, know how
much of good, even physical good, is done to patients almost without
exception by the consolations of religion. Instead of being perturbed
as is sometimes thought by those who have not had experience with the
custom, exactly the opposite effect is produced, and patients often
drop their anxieties and solicitudes and begin to improve immediately
after the reception of the sacraments. They usually submit themselves
to whatever Providence has in store for them, put off their worries,
and this factor of itself is eminently therapeutic.
Many a non-Catholic physician obeys these decrees of the Church with
regard to the summoning of a priest to an ailing Catholic patient
without knowing anything about them. He does it because of his
experience that his patients are benefited by the consolations of
religion. The wisdom of the Church in the decrees is seen very well by
the paragraph in which it is suggested that the reason for having the
physician always advise the calling in of a priest is that if this
advice is given only when there is serious danger of death many
patients knowing this will be thrown into a state of depression very
harmful to them when the suggestion is made.
How such decrees could be thought in any way to interfere with
medicine or its practice, or with the physician and his duties, or,
above all, represent any effort on the part of the Church to hamper
medical science or discourage patients from having physicians, I {429}
cannot for the life of me imagine. The idea sometimes suggested that
the real reason for this legislation was that the Church did not want
patients to die before priests were given an opportunity to secure
money for services in the administration of the last rites or for
masses for the recovery of the patient and the like, would only enter
into the mind of someone who not only did not understand the Church
and had no experience of Catholics and Catholic life, but who had no
proper recognition of the place of religion in life as a great source
of consolation and strength in the face of the mystery of death and
the hereafter.
Those who think religion a mere hypocrisy imposed on people by
designing clergy are so lacking in the knowledge that would enable
them to judge of the meaning of such decrees that their opinion is not
worth while considering. It must not be forgotten that these decrees
are still binding on a Catholic physician, and far from resenting them
we welcome them as helps in securing the aid of the consolations of
religion for our patients. Many a worried business man suffering from
some severe disease like pneumonia or typhoid fever, goes on to
develop a much more favorable mental attitude toward himself and his
affection after he has seen the priest. The last paragraph of the
first decree also emphasizes the wisdom of the Church and shows how
much of an aid her legislation was in the support of ethical
standards, for it forbids under the severest penalties that a
physician should ever advise a patient to anything contrary to his
conscience. This paragraph is also still binding on Catholic
physicians.
_The Fourth Lateran Council held under Pope Innocent III, A.D. 1215,_
Canon XII. That the sick should rather provide for the soul than the
body.
"Since bodily infirmity sometimes proceeds from sin, the Lord
himself saying to the ailing man whom he had cured 'Go now and sin
no more lest something worse should happen to you,' we declare by
the present decree and distinctly impose upon physicians of the body
that whenever it shall happen that they are called to ailing
persons, they must before all warn and persuade the ailing that they
should call in physicians of the soul so that after the spiritual
safety of the sick has been provided for he may proceed more
healthfully to the remedy of corporeal medicine, since the cause
ceasing the effect shall also cease.
"This among other things gave cause for this edict that certain
people lying on a bed of sickness when persuaded by physicians that
they should dispose things for the safety of their souls fall into a
condition of despair whence the more easily they incur the danger of
death.
{430}
"If any one of the physicians after this constitution of ours shall
have been published should transgress it he should be kept from
entrance to the Church until he shall have satisfied competently for
the transgression.
"Besides, since the soul is by far more precious than the body, we
prohibit under dire anathema that any physician should ever advise a
patient to do anything for his corporal welfare that would bring him
into danger of losing his soul."
_The Synodal Statutes of the Church of Mans (the chief town of
the Province of Main), A.D. 1247._
On Communion for the Sick.
"It was decreed in the general session and distinctly enjoined on
physicians of the body that when they happen to be called to the
ailing they must before everything else warn and persuade their
patients to call physicians of the soul, in order that after the
spiritual safety of the sick one may be provided for they may
proceed with more assurance to the remedy of corporal ills. If any
physician should transgress this constitution let him be kept from
entrance to the Church until he shall have made competent
satisfaction.
"Besides since the soul is much more important than the body it is
prohibited under anathema that any physician should advise a patient
anything for his bodily health which might bring his soul into
peril."
{431}
APPENDIX V.
PAPAL PHYSICIANS.
To make many sources of information with regard to this vexed question
of the relation of the Popes to Science more readily available, a
series of authoritative references to Papal Physicians so far as we
know them and their work during the past seven centuries has seemed to
me especially needed. Physicians at all times have been interested in
phases of science besides medicine and have not infrequently made
important discoveries in the non-medical sciences. Their constant
occupation with scientific subjects in their professional capacity has
always given them an open mind for scientific advances. As the Papal
Physicians were at all times men chosen because they had reached
distinction in medicine, they were usually scholars who thought for
themselves and were ready to recognize the new in science in any
department from which it might be presented. Many of the Papal
Physicians made important contributions to other sciences and not a
few of them laid important foundations, especially in the biological
sciences. The fact that the Popes constantly had near them, in the
confidential capacity so inevitable between a man and his physician,
scientists of prestige in their chosen profession, so often the
teachers of their generation in medicine and almost as a rule
interested in the sciences related to medicine and not infrequently in
physical science generally, is the best possible evidence not only
that there could not be opposition, but on the contrary that there
must have been, so far as human assumption may go, a constant
favorable attitude of mind of the Popes toward science.
In my chapter on Papal Physicians in the first edition of this volume
I gathered such references as would enable me to bring out the
valuable services of many of the medical attendants of the Popes to
medical and physical science. I was not aware then that a more or less
complete list of Papal Physicians for some five centuries at least had
been published, giving an excellent idea of what they had done and
written in scientific matters. There was no copy of the work in this
country so far as I could learn and it was only after considerable
difficulty that I was able to secure the volumes through the kind
offices of Rev. Father Hagan, S.J., who is the Papal Astronomer in
Rome at the present time. From that {432} work the History of the
Papal Physicians, originally written by Mandosio at the end of the
seventeenth century and extended and annotated by Marini at the end of
the eighteenth, [Footnote 50] it has seemed worth while to present
such abstracts as will supply ample material for the consultation of
those interested in Papal relations to science yet who have not the
longer work available for reference. This will show that many of the
Papal Physicians were, as I have said, leaders in the science of their
time, not only in medicine and also the biological sciences generally,
but in all departments of physical science.
[Footnote 50: _Degli Archiatri Pontifici_, Roma, Pagliarini, 1784.]
Nicholas I the Great (858-67).--Almost needless to say the available
list of the Papal Physicians does not go back much beyond the
thirteenth century, though we have the name of one Ursus who is
mentioned in a very old manuscript, No. 5696 (Fol. 184) of the Vatican
Library. The author of this manuscript work is Anastasius the Abbot
and he dedicates it to Ursus, Physician, Domestic Prelate of Pope
Nicholas I. Beyond a mention of Ursus by Fioravante Martinello in his
work, _Roma ex Ethnica Sacra_, (p. 414), nothing else is known of this
old-time physician. Even this mention, however, seems to make it clear
that there was a physician formally attached to the Papal See thus
early in the Middle Ages.
Sylvester II (999-1003), Victor III (1086-87).--In the tenth century
Gerbert, who became Pope under the name of Sylvester II, was famous
for his knowledge of medicine as well as other sciences and the close
personal friend of men who did much for medical education in France,
as we have noted in the body of the book. Before the end of the
eleventh century the Abbot Desiderius, as we have said, became Pope
after having been for years the intimate friend of Constantine
Africanus, to whom we owe the earliest serious development of the
medical school of Salerno and the first important medical writings in
modern Europe. We owe much of Constantine's writing to Desiderius'
inspiration.
Innocent III (1198-1216), Gregory IX (1227-41), Martin IV
(1281-85).--With the beginning of the thirteenth century the documents
for the history of culture in Europe are better preserved and the list
of Papal Physicians begins to be more complete. Guy of Montpellier was
summoned to Rome to establish the Hospital of Santo Spirito by
Innocent III just at the opening of the thirteenth century. Richard
the Englishman was the physician to the famous Pope Gregory IX, one of
Innocent's successors in the first half {433} of this century. Another
Englishman, Hugo Atratus or Atractus, said to have been from Evesham,
became the physician of Pope Martin II, 1281. Oldoino in his _Athenaeo
Romano_ mentions a series of books written by this Hugh of Evesham, as
he is called in English. They bear the titles _Medicinales Canones_,
Medical Canons, and _De Genealogiis Humanis_ and there is besides an
_opusculum_ by him on the work of Isaac the well-known Jewish
physician of the Middle Ages "On Fevers." The physicians of Pope
Honorius IV, Taddeo the Florentine, and of Nicholas IV, Simon a Corde,
or as he is better known, Simon Januensis, are mentioned in the body
of the book.
Boniface VIII (1294-1303), Benedict XI (1303-04), Clement V
(1305-14).--In the preface of his great text-book of surgery, written
in the first half of the fourteenth century, Henry of Mondeville,
whose work represents an important landmark in the history of surgery
that has been reissued in our own generation in at least two editions,
one in Germany, the other in France, declares that "I began to write
this work ... on the proposal and request of Master William of
Brescia, distinguished professor in the science of medicine and
formerly physician to Pope Boniface VIII, and Benedict XI, and Clement
V, the present Pope." This is almost all that we know of William, and
he is not mentioned in Mandosio's list of Papal Physicians nor in
Marini's additions to Mandosio. This is not so hard to understand
because no printed edition of Mondeville, who died untimely from
tuberculosis and whose work was left unfinished, was issued until our
time. If William had done nothing else, however, than stimulate his
younger colleague Mondeville to write his great book, which Pagel
thought it worth while to edit in our generation and to which Gurlt,
in his History of Surgery, devotes some forty pages, he would have a
right to a distinctive place in the history of surgery. As it is we
have Mondeville's praise of him and as the French professor of surgery
was himself one of the most scholarly men of that important period,
his opinion is of great value.
Another of the physicians of Pope Boniface VIII, Angelus Camerinensis,
is called by Oldoino "a most learned doctor of medicine (medicus
absolutissimus) who made a fortune out of his profession and for many
years not only pleased but benefited the students who crowded to hear
him." The two books from him that we know are on "The Regimen for
Preservation from the Pest" and on "Protection against Poisons."
One of the most distinguished of the Papal Physicians was Arnold {434}
of Villanova, who, after having been protected by Pope Benedict XI
from enemies who insisted that his scientific writings were heretical,
afterwards became the friend and physician of Pope Clement V at
Avignon. He is the author of a great many writings which have gone
through a number of editions. His works have proved a treasure house
of quotations from a number of his colleagues in medicine and surgery
who lived before his time, from whom nothing has been preserved except
these quotations in Villanova. The edition of his works published at
Lyons in 1504 contains some fifty-five different treatises.
One of the physicians of Pope Clement V, at least he seems to have
been summoned in consultation when the Pope was suffering from a
severe illness, the cure of which was attributed to him, was Petrus
Aichspadius. He appears to have been a very Admirable Crichton of
various learning, for Mandosius says of him that "he was distinguished
for his knowledge of the best literature, and as a theologian as well
as for his virtues, an excellent physician whose reputation had made
medicine respected in his time." With all this he was the Bishop of
Basel and after Pope Clement's recovery he was transferred to the See
of Moguntum by the Pope, who declared that as he was such a happy
curer of bodies it seemed only appropriate that he should be given a
larger cure of souls.
Pope John (XXI) XXII (1314-16).--Gentilis Gentilis, said to have been
the son of another Papal Physician of the name of Gentilis, was the
medical attendant of John (XXI) XXII. His death was due to his
faithful devotion to the citizens of Perugia during a time of
pestilence. He is the author of a volume of Commentaries on Avicenna,
of "The Best Councils for every Form of Disease of the Whole Body," of
a volume "On Fevers," of a treatise "On Leprosy," a monograph "On
Baths," and of a book that went through many editions after printing
was introduced on "The Proportions of Medicine and the Method of
Investigating their Composition and of Knowing the Appropriate Dose of
Each Medicine." This was printed at Padua more than a century after
his death and later at Lyons, and there seems to have been another
edition in the Low Countries. He wrote a series of smaller medical
treatises on "The Activity of Medicines," on "Phthisis" and on
"Medical Dosage." He also wrote "On the Pulse and on Urine" in a
volume of which editions were issued at Venice and at Lyons.
Another of the physicians of Pope John XXII was Dino del Garbo, a
Florentine, the son of Bruno del Garbo, a skilful surgeon and the
disciple of Taddeo of Florence. He is sometimes known as {435} Dino
the Expounder because of his successful devotion to the exposition of
Galen and Avicenna. Like many of the physicians of his time he had
degrees in both medicine and philosophy and was celebrated for his
scholarliness. According to Van der Linden, he wrote _De Caena et
Prandio Epistola_, which was published by Jerome of Cartularius in
1545; Commentaries on Hippocrates' Nature of the Foetus, Venice, 1502;
a treatise on surgery which was published at Ferrara in 1485 and a
subsequent edition at Venice in 1536. His Commentaries on Avicenna and
the General Practice of Medicine were published at Venice in 1495 and
his book on The Virtues of Simple Medicines, a commentary on the
Second Canon of Avicenna, was published at Venice the same year. Dino
is usually looked upon as one of the most distinguished contributors
to medicine in the fourteenth century. His son Thomas is said also to
have been in the service of the Popes and has written books on The
Reduction of Medicines, a Commentary on Avicenna and a commentary on
Galen's work "On Fevers."
John XXII (1316-34), Clement VI (1342-52), Innocent VI (1352-62), St.
Urban V (1362-70).--Of Guy de Chauliac, physician to the Popes at
Avignon, enough has been said in the text of this book to make clear
how important was his place in the surgery of his time and, indeed, of
all the modern time. I have written on him more at length in my Old
Time Makers of Medicine (Fordham University Press), and during the ten
years that have elapsed since the writing of the original edition of
this volume on The Popes and Science, Guy de Chauliac's fame and
merits have come to be recognized everywhere.
Gregory XI (1370-78).--One of the well-known physicians of the Popes
at Avignon was Jean de Tornemire, known by his Latin name of
Tornamira, the physician of Pope Gregory XI, who on the death of that
Pope went to Montpellier, where he became Dean and Chancellor of the
Medical Faculty. Gurlt, in his History of Surgery, says that he must
be "counted among the most learned and expert physicians of his time."
He wrote a commentary on Rhazes and some notes of his on stone in the
kidney and bladder show how careful an observer he was. His Rhazes was
published at Lyons, 1490. His collected works were published in many
editions in the sixteenth century.
Urban VI (1378-89), Innocent VII (1404-06), Martin V
(1417-31).--Francis Casinus, the son of a noble family of Siena, one
of the best-known of the physicians of North Italy in the fourteenth
century, was chosen physician to Urban VI in 1378. His son {436}
Francis was physician to Pope Martin V, 1417. A brother of Francis
Casinus, John by name, was Papal Physician to Pope Innocent VII.
Isadoras Ugurgerius in his work _"Le Pompe Sanesi"_ says, "The Casini
among the philosophers and physicians of their time held easily the
first place. John lectured on the theory of medicine at Siena about
the year 1370 and afterwards was summoned to Rome by Pope Innocent
VII, by whom he was admitted among his most intimate friends and
declared the guardian and conserver of his health." One of John
Casinus' sons became Cardinal Antonius Casinus, and another,
Bartholomeus, was the Abbot of Valombrosa, while the son of Francis
Casinus, his brother, became Bishop of Massa and is famous for a
collection of manuscripts made during the first half of the fifteenth
century.
Another of the physicians of Pope Martin V was Andrew Gamuccius, who
had also been physician to Pope John XXIII. He was a descendant of a
noble family of San Gemignano, well known for scholarship and for the
number of distinguished men who came from it.
Eugene IV (1431-47) chose as his physician John Baptist Verallus,
doctor of medicine and philosophy, to whom he gave besides the title
of archiater to the Pope that of chief physician of the city. Verallus
is famous for his work in improving the health of Rome itself and
represents one of the pioneers in public hygiene. At various times
most of our modern hygienic regulations were anticipated at Rome. The
ancient Romans had brought in water from a distance, because they had
experienced the seriousness of contamination and during the early
Renaissance the aqueducts which had fallen out of repair were
gradually restored. The contagiousness of tuberculosis began to be
suspected at this time and the idea of intimate contact with patients
suffering from disease as a definite cause took shape. In a chapter of
"The Century of Columbus," Catholic Summer School Press, N. Y., 1914,
I reviewed some of these anticipations in Italy of our modern hygiene
due to thinking physicians, of whom Verallus was one of the pioneers.
Another of the physicians of Pope Eugene IV was Ludovicus Scarampus.
His fame was for surgery rather than medicine, so that it is
interesting to learn in spite of the supposed ecclesiastical
opposition to surgery that Pope Eugene learned to think so much of him
that he made him a Bishop and then Archbishop of Florence, and
afterwards Patriarch of Aquilea with the rank of Cardinal. More than
one distinguished medieval surgeon in Italy had been a colleague in
the episcopal dignity. Practically all the historical {437} writers of
Scarampus' time give him a prominent place in their histories.
Nicholas V (1448-55).--One of the physicians of Pope Nicholas V, the
Renaissance patron of learning, was Bernard Garzonius, distinguished
for his knowledge of philosophy and medicine, who had been professor
in the medical school at Bologna before being summoned to Rome.
Alidosio in his volume _I Dottori Bolognesi di Teologia, Filosofia,
Medicina, ed Arti Liberali_ (page 29) gives an interesting account of
the hours and subjects of his teaching at Bologna. At nine in the
morning Garzonius lectured on the Theory of Medicine, and in the
afternoon on the Practice of Medicine. Besides there were special
lectures on Moral Philosophy probably setting forth the moral
principles of medical practice on the festival days. Garzonius died in
Rome of the pest in 1454, having devoted himself to the care of those
suffering from the disease, though the mortality was so high that most
of those who could, including even not a few of his colleagues in
medicine, had left the city.
Another of the physicians of Pope Nicholas V was Laurentius Roverella
of Ferrara, of whom his contemporaries speak in the highest praise for
his erudition, his ability to teach and the piety and charity of his
life. He was for a time professor at the University of Ferrara, but
afterwards was called to Padua, where his lectures attracted a great
deal of attention. He was recalled to Ferrara by the D'Estes in order
to secure his prestige for his native city and it was from here that
he was summoned to Rome to become the chamberlain and physician of
Pope Nicholas V. After the death of Nicholas V he went to Paris,
lectured there for a time and was crowned with the doctorate. After
this he returned to Ferrara and was frequently sent as ambassador to
diverse European princes by the Duke of Ferrara. He was also sent as
ambassador for the Popes into France and Hungary. He died at the
Monastery of Monte Oliveto in the arms of his brother, who was the
Prior of the monastery, but his body was brought for burial to the
Church of St. George in Ferrara. Roverella finds a significant place
in all the histories of the time.
Calixtus III (1455-58).--The physician of Pope Calixtus III and Pius
II was Joannes Serninus. He was a native of Siena, practised for a
time in his native city, was offered the position with a good salary
of public physician to Città di Castella, then went to Ancona in a
similar position with such success, according to tradition, that his
cures were considered almost miracles. From here he was summoned by
Pope Calixtus III, and after his death {438} was retained as his
physician by Pope Pius II, himself one of the Piccolomini family of
Siena. After his death his body was transferred to Siena because the
city considered that the remains of so great a son should rest in her
soil. It is significant that this physician of wide experience in
public health matters, whose successful career in helping various
Italian towns to make conditions more healthy for their citizens gave
him a wide reputation, should be the chosen physician of Pope Calixtus
III, to whom is attributed a famous Bull, that has never been found
however, against Halley's comet on its appearance in 1456. The
selection of such a man as Serninus as Papal Physician makes it
extremely improbable that the Pope should have issued any such
document as is attributed to him. Its issue has been accepted only
with the thought that in the middle of the fifteenth century the Pope
and his court were buried in ignorance of science and above all of
medicine and the cause of disease. [Footnote 51]
[Footnote 51: The whole subject of the supposed Papal Bull against the
comet is discussed in my sketch of Regiomontanus the father of modern
astronomy, as he is sometimes called, in "Catholic Churchmen in
Science," second series, Phila., Dolphin Press, 1909.]
Another of the physicians of Pope Nicholas V and Calixtus III was
Simon Tebaldi, who came of a distinguished family, one of whom was a
Cardinal. He is called by the historians of the time an illustrious
philosopher and physician of the period.
Paul II (1464-71).--Christopher of Verona is mentioned by Platina in
his life of Paul II as the physician of that Pope, but nothing more is
known of him. Jacobus Gottifredus, another of Paul's physicians, is
better known. He taught medicine for a time at Rome, which was his
native city, and devoted himself particularly to the practice of his
profession. According to tradition he became the most sought after
physician of the city and made a large fortune. He had many
archaeological interests, collected curiosities of all kinds and
generally used the fortune which he made in medicine for cultural
purposes.
Another of the physicians of Pope Paul II was Joannes Burgius, who was
also a bishop. He is highly praised by his contemporaries, and
Mandosius describes a huge manuscript volume by him preserved in one
of the libraries in Rome, bearing the title _Secreta Verissima ad
Varios Curandos Morbos_--The Truest Secrets for Curing Various
Diseases.
The fourth of the physicians of Paul II of whom there is record was
Sanctes Floccus, whose activities as writer and physician are summed
up in the inscription on his tombstone.
{439}
_"Flocca Domus, nomen mihi Sanctes, Patria Firmum,
Scriptor eram, et medicus Paule Secunde tuus."_
The fifth of the physicians of Paul II was Sebastianus Veteranus, who
was also the archiater or chief physician of the city of Rome
according to the list given in the appendix of the statutes of the
Roman College, called _Nomenclatura Medicorum._ He is mentioned by his
contemporaries as "well versed in the serious disciplines of
philosophy and medicine and as constantly a diligent, fruitful
cultivator of them, devoting his life to his studies."
Sixtus IV (1471-84).--One of the physicians of Pope Sixtus IV was
Onofrio de Onofriis. Oldoinus declares him "a celebrated physician
greatly esteemed for the success which he had in the treatment of
patients and the very large practice which he consequently enjoyed."
He had been a professor of philosophy and of medicine--the two nearly
always went together in these days, unfortunately they do not so often
any more--at the University of Perugia, where he achieved great
success. It was from here that he was summoned to be the physician of
Pope Sixtus. He wrote a series of books on medicine and some of his
lectures were published, though these are not now extant.
Another of the physicians of Pope Sixtus IV, to whom he dedicated his
important work on food, was John Philip de Lignamine, who had been
professor of medicine at Perugia, where his lectures attracted a large
following. His book, which appeared at Rome after his office of Papal
Physician secured him the leisure for its completion, is "On Every
Kind of Food and Drink Useful and Harmful For Man with a Consideration
of Their Prime Qualities" (_De Unoquoque Cibo, et Potu Utili Homini,
et Novivo, Eorumque Primis Qualitatibus_). [Footnote 52]
[Footnote 52: Lignamine interested himself in the new art of printing
and was the publisher of a well-known series of finely printed
_incunabula_.]
One of the important medical scientists of the end of the fifteenth
century was Benedict of Nursia, whose book _De Conservatione
Sanitatis_ is really an important contribution to medical botany. He
is placed in the list of Papal Physicians by Mandosius, whose
authority is usually unquestioned. Giacobilli is his authority. Marini
in his comments on Mandosius' work declares that Benedict was not a
Papal Physician but the ducal physician at Milan, and tells the story
of his exile from his native country Nursia. He was so distinguished
for his medical learning that he became almost at once one of the most
prominent of the physicians in Milan. There is no doubt, however, that
Benedict dedicated his book, {440} which is now looked upon as basic
in the history of medical botany, to Sixtus IV, and the suggestion
that he was a Papal Physician seems to have come from the fact that
though remaining in the service of the Duke of Milan he was summoned
in consultation to see this Pope during an illness.
Innocent VIII (1484-92).--Petrus Leonius, one of the physicians of
Innocent VIII, finds a place among Paul Jovius' "Eulogies of Learned
Men" and is the author of a commentary on medicine and mathematics and
a treatise, _De Urinis_. He had been a professor of medicine at
several of the important Italian universities and was very well known
throughout Italy. He was summoned to treat Lorenzo de Medici and the
early death of that illustrious Florentine gave occasion for a good
deal of opprobrium for his physician, though the most careful
investigation has shown that there was no reason for criticism of him.
The fact that Petrus Leonius had been called as the consultant in
Lorenzo's case shows how thoroughly he was appreciated. One of his
biographers suggests of him that he was "a learned rather than a lucky
physician." Physicians will probably appreciate that distinction,
better than others.
Alexander VI (1492-1503).--The first of the Papal Physicians of Pope
Alexander VI (Alexander de Espinosa) was like that Pontiff himself of
a family of Castilian origin though long enough in Italy to have
become thoroughly Italianized and even to have received the Roman
citizenship. He is mentioned in terms of praise by Baldus Baldi in his
work on "The Oriental Opobalsam." Mandosius speaks of him as "a man of
great erudition endowed with high intelligence and with a great zeal
for promoting the health of humanity."
Gaspar Torella, also a Spaniard, was another of the physicians of Pope
Alexander VI, and wrote a series of books on the venereal diseases
which attracted so much attention in Italy about this time, and which
are supposed to have been imported from America, though there is no
doubt now of their existence in Europe and in Asia long before. He
also wrote a book on "Portents, Prodigies and Prophecies" and another
"On Diet or the Preservation of Health" in the form of a dialogue on
eating and drinking which became rather popular. Torella was made a
bishop under Pope Julius II and his volume on diet is dedicated to
that Pope.
Another of the Papal Physicians of the end of the fifteenth century
was Petrus Pintor, a Spaniard from Valencia, who was "the beloved
friend and physician" of Pope Alexander VI. He wrote a {441}
"Compilation of the Opinions of All the Doctors on the Prevention and
Cure of the Pestilence" (under the word pestilence was included at
that time any form of epidemic) which was published at Rome in 1499
and was very well known by his contemporaries.
Julius II (1503-13).--One of the Papal Physicians of Pope Julius II
was Horatio Lancillotti, of whom it is declared that his whole delight
was in books. "Constantly he was occupied with the thought of helping
his patients and he practised medicine with liberality and good will,
kindly caring for the infirmities of the poor and of friends so that
he rendered himself worthy of every praise." He is spoken of as a man
of sublime intellect who gave himself to medicine with his whole
heart, but whose prudence, wisdom and conduct gave him a reputation
even beyond that which he enjoyed as a physician. His son was made a
Cardinal by Gregory XIII and other sons of his reached distinction.
Another of the physicians of Pope Julius II was Scipio Lancillotti,
the brother of Horatio just mentioned. It is related of him that once
when the Pope was severely ailing and on the fourth day of his illness
was overcome by so deep a coma that for some hours he was considered
dead, Scipio Lancillotti administered some medicine, and not only
brought the Pontiff back to consciousness, but freed him from danger
of death and restored him sufficiently to take up his work again.
Another of the physicians of Julius II was Joannes Bodier, whose tomb
in the Church of Saint Sebastian on the _Via Appia_ outside the Porta
Capena is well known. He was a scholarly ecclesiastic who because of
his intellectual and religious distinction was made the Abbot of the
Monastery of San Sebastiano by the Pope.
One hears much of Jewish physicians in attendance on the Popes, but
the records do not bear out the generally received opinion that there
were many of them. Occasionally there is mention of one and usually he
is some distinguished medical scientist well known in his time whose
services were asked also for the Pope. Evidently even the Christian
intolerance toward the Jews at this time was not sufficient to prevent
such relations on the part of the Popes. Indeed the tradition of the
frequency of Jewish physicians to Popes is probably due to the
reaction produced by the surprise of finding that there were any
Jewish physicians in attendance at the Papal Court. One of those who
attended Pope Julius II was Samuel Sarfadi or Sarfati, a Spanish Rabbi
who was looked upon as a leader of his people in Rome. It was he who
as their {442} representative greeted Pope Julius during the
procession when the Pontiff took possession of the city and in
accordance with the ancient usage presented him with a copy of the Old
Testament. Julius' reply was in the formula of the Roman Ordo
commending the Law but condemning the religious practice that did not
go beyond the Old Testament, which had reached completion in the New.
The Pope and the rabbi continued on terms of intimate friendship and
as Papal Physician he was able to protect his people and secure them
in the rights that were more freely granted them at Rome than
elsewhere in Europe.
Pius III.--One of the Papal Physicians of Pius III was Antonius
Petrutius, Doctor of Philosophy and of Medicine, of whom Mandosius in
his Lives of the Papal Physicians says that "he was the most excellent
physician of his time."
Leo X (1513-21).--One of the physicians of Pope Leo X who served also
in the conclave after his death was Dioscorides da Velletri, to whom
we owe a series of monographs on medicine that are of special
interest. He wrote on diet, _De Ordine Cibandi;_ on diagnosis, _De
Cognitione Naturae Aegritudinis_ (literally on the recognition of the
nature of disease), and on stone in the kidney, _De Lapide Renum._
Another of the physicians of Pope Leo X was Bartholomeo of Pisa. He is
mentioned by Carolus Cartharius in the _Athenaeo Romano_ as a
physician of great skill. He was professor in the Roman Archigymnasium
and is the author of an Epitome of the Theory and Practice of Medicine
issued at Florence early in the sixteenth century. This epitome is
said to have been of special service because it contained in brief a
great deal of information gathered from books and illustrated by
Bartholomeo's own experience.
Still another of the physicians of Pope Leo X was Bernardinus
Speronius, a Paduan by birth and a professor of high esteem in the
University of Padua. Angelus Portenarius in his work _Della Felicità
di Padova_ says of him that he was a physician of such great skill and
reputation that Pope Leo selected him for his physician while he was
lecturing at Padua, and Bernardinus felt himself highly honored by the
selection and accepted the post.
The fourth of the physicians of Pope Leo X was Jerome Sessa, Doctor of
Philosophy and Medicine, who was afterwards the particular friend and
physician of Pope Paul IV. He is the author of a treatise on medical
matters, _De Re Medica_, and was singularly respected for his kindness
to the poor, and for the {443} self-sacrifice with which he gave
himself to the more difficult duties of his profession.
The fifth physician of Pope Leo X was Clementius Clementinus, noted in
distinction from many of his colleagues as a Doctor of Arts and
Medicine instead of the usual combination with philosophy. Van der
Linden declares that "he was second to none in the opinion of Rome and
the whole of Italy in his knowledge of medicine though he was at the
same time a very celebrated astronomer." He had been professor of
philosophy and mathematics at Padua. He is the author of a work on The
Precepts of Medicine published by Jacob Mazzocchium at Rome, 1512. He
also wrote a work on astronomy, and a monograph on fevers.
Adrian VI (1522-23), the distinguished Belgian scholar elected to the
Papacy to succeed Leo X, had the honor of having dedicated to him a
monograph, _De Pestilentia_, written by the well-known Bartholomeo
Montagnana, who is one of the great Renaissance physicians of Italy.
The almost equally famous John Battista Elisio dedicated to him his
work _De Praesagiis Sapientum,_ On the Prognosis of the Wise. Some of
Adrian's physicians were among the most widely known members of the
medical profession at this time. To one of them, Giovanni Antracino,
John De Vigo dedicated his treatise _De Morbo Gallico_ in words of the
highest praise. Latin dedications lend themselves to flattery, but
with even all due discount for this, Vigo's expressions show how much
Antracino must have been appreciated at the time. He praises him for
"his singular wisdom, marvellous perspicacity, rightness of judgment
and serious purpose," and recalls that in many consultations where
they had been present together Antracino had excelled not only in
medical theory, but in medical practice.
Another of the physicians of Pope Adrian VI was Francesco Fusconi,
whose name is sometimes wrongly given as Frasconi. Amato Lusitano
calls him "a most famous physician," and Marsilio Cagnati in his work
_De Aeris Romani Salubritate_ notes that Francesco was the first to
recognize that starving a fever and especially the malarial fevers of
the neighborhood of Rome, though it had been the custom for a long
time for physicians to advise it, did much more harm than good. He
insisted that the ailing should be more richly nourished and that
above all they should be fed on chopped meats which would make it
easier for them to ingest such quantities as would be good for them.
Cagnati says that many Roman physicians followed this teaching and
saved much {444} suffering and many lives. Fusconi is the physician
whom Benvenuto Cellini praises for having saved his life. The famous
sculptor was taken with a very severe fever and the "first physicians"
of Rome were called to see him, among them Master Francesco (Fusconi)
Da Norcia, who was a very old man, but of great reputation. The fever
increased to such a degree that the professors held the disease for
desperate, but not Norcia. He took charge of the case and by the most
careful treatment succeeded in freeing Benvenuto from an illness which
did not seem as though it could possibly come to an end without fatal
issue.
Clement VII (1523-34), who was of the Medici family, had a number of
physicians and on one occasion when ill no less than eight were in
attendance on him. This gave occasion to the satiric poet Berni to
declare in verse that when the Pope after his recovery went to make
his thanksgiving to Our Lady he might indeed have felt that it was a
miraculous event to have been saved from the hands of eight physicians
all at once. At least three of these physicians of Pope Clement are
famous in the history of medicine; that is to say, they wrote books
frequently referred to by their medical colleagues. One of these,
Andrea Cibo, or Andreas Cibbo, was also physician to Pope Paul III and
will be mentioned under his name. Cibo had been a professor at the
University of Perugia before being made Papal Physician. One of his
contemporaries refers to him as "the secure health of the sick."
Another of Clement's physicians was Andrea Turini, who had been a
professor at Pisa. He seems afterwards to have been royal physician to
Louis XII, King of France. There are two books of his, _De Embrochia_
and _De Curatione Pleuritidis_ published at Lyons in 1537, in which
Andrea gives himself the titles of physician and counsellor of the
Pope and the King. Andrea was something of a wit and is quoted in the
_Facetiae_ of Domenichi. After a visit to Pisa he declared that "Pisa
was a maritime city without fish, having a handsome Cathedral without
a sacristy, a leaning tower which did not fall, a well without any
buckets, and a university without professors."
Ludovico Augeni, another of the physicians of Pope Clement VII, taught
for a while at Perugia and is said to have written a book on the use
of wines in health and disease, but he is famous principally as the
father of Orazio Augeni, professor at the Sapienza at Rome, who
dedicated to his father his commentary on the nine books of Rhazes. A
nephew of his, Sabastiano, issued a volume, _De Catarrho_, which he
dedicated to Paul IV.
{445}
One of the most famous of the Papal Physicians, though he is known
much more for his work in history and literature than in medicine, is
Paulus Jovius, another of the physicians to Clement VII. His
"Histories of Illustrious Men" and his "Eulogies of Men Distinguished
in Letters and in War," as well as his other writings, are well-known
sources of historical material. He is besides the author of a series
of volumes on natural history that are not so widely known, but
deserve a place in the history of science. They include a book on
Roman fishes and another on marine fishes and shellfish as well as
descriptions of Lake Como, of England, Scotland and Ireland and the
Orkney Islands that have a niche of their own in natural history. He
had been the intimate friend of Pope Leo X, Pope Adrian VI made him a
canon of the Cathedral of Como and he was one of the close associates
and a domestic prelate of Clement VII, who assigned him apartments in
the Vatican. Jovius made a magnificent collection of memorials of the
illustrious men whose lives he wrote, and we owe to him the
preservation of many historical materials that would otherwise almost
inevitably have been lost.
Still another of the physicians of Clement VII was Matteo Corti, of
whom Aller declares that "he was as great in speech as with the
scalpel, read the Greek authors and taught his colleagues to prefer
them to the Arabs and recalled Galen into the schools." He was
summoned from Venice to be physician to Pope Clement because of "the
great reputation for knowledge of disease and skill in the treatment
of patients that he had gained." He is noted for having modified the
habits of the Romans by advising them to take less food in the middle
of the day and to take a better meal at night. This putting back of
the principal meal gradually spread in the cities of the world until
the present custom of evening dinner became established. He wrote a
series of books, but his constant insistence was on the avoidance of
disease by careful attention to diet and mode of living rather than by
the cure of it. He made it his special boast that many of those who
followed his directions were either not ill for years or else were
afflicted with but minor ailments. After the death of Pope Clement he
was professor of medicine in Bologna and then the physician of Cosimo
de Medici in Florence and at the end of his life held a professor's
chair in medicine at Pisa. Ghilinus in his work The Theatre of
Literary Men (_Teatro d'Uomini Letterati_) talks of Matteo Corti (in
Latin, Matthaeus Curtius), as "a very celebrated doctor of medicine
who as a professor was the peer of all and the superior {446} of most
of his colleagues and who revived with benefit to his students and
their patients the true manner of treating illness according to
Hippocrates and Galen." He was looked upon as one of the distinguished
physicians of his time. He wrote concerning the manner of dining and
supping, (_De Prandio et Coena_), a commentary on Mondino's anatomy
and a book On Venesection and another On Dosage.
Paul III (1534-49).--One of the distinguished consultant physicians of
the mid-sixteenth century was Antonio Musa Brasavola (sometimes
written Brasovola), whose years run with the century. His studies were
made with the famous Leonicenus at Ferrara. He became the physician in
ordinary and personal friend of Hercules II, Duke of Este, and
accompanied him to France when the Duke espoused the daughter of Louis
XII. He was at various times the physician to four Popes and was
called in consultation to Henry VIII of England and Francis I of
France. He devoted himself particularly to medical botany and
pharmacology and was one of the first to hold a professorship in these
subjects. He was well known for his life-saving practice of
tracheotomy and he restored _paracentesis thoracis_ as a standard
remedy. He introduced the use of _radix chinae_, a kind of smilax
related to sarsaparilla, and put _lignum guiaci_ into the pharmacology
of the day. He wrote a series of monographs on botanical subjects
which have given him an enduring place in the history of that time. A
distinguished group of men were near the Popes in Rome at this time
with whom Brasavola was in close relations. They included Eustachius
the great anatomist, Columbus, discoverer of the circulation in the
lungs, Caesalpinus and Fallopius, who was a professor at the
University of Bologna, that city being at this time in the Papal
States.
One of the great Renaissance physicians and surgeons well known in our
histories of medicine for an important contribution to the treatment
of gunshot wounds, is Alfonso Ferri, a Neapolitan, who, after some
years of professorship in surgery in Naples, became the physician of
Pope Paul III. His book, which is founded on his "experience at home
and at war," went through a number of editions at Rome, at Antwerp and
Frankfurt and other places, and he was evidently widely read and
considered an important authority. He invented some instruments for
the removal of bullets and has many practical hints with regard to the
treatment of gunshot wounds. He was the professor of surgery at the
Sapienza, {447} Rome, and has written a volume on the carunculae, or
hard multiplex tumors, which arise at the vesical neck.
Silvius Zeffiri, another of the physicians of Pope Paul III, is the
author of a volume on "Putrefaction or The Best Method of Protracting
Life," which was published at Rome in 1536. Zeffiri seems to have
anticipated the modern popular notion of the putrefactive conditions
in the human system as one of the most important factors in shortening
life, and he discusses various means of preventing them.
[Illustration: Ferri's Instruments:--20 a, hollow probe or canula with
screw; b, canula with rounded end alone; c, screw; 21, 22, Alphonsinum
or grasping instrument for the removal of foreign bodies; 23, curved
needle.]
Another of the physicians of Pope Paul III was Andreas Cibbo, Doctor
of Arts and Medicine, of whom Caesar Crispoltus in his work on
distinguished Perugians called _Perugia Augusta_ (Book III, P. 335)
tells that having lectured for many years on medicine at the
University of Perugia and practised his profession with great
reputation, Andreas was called to Rome by Clement VII as Papal
Physician, and also occupied that post under Pope Paul III. He
accompanied Pope Paul on a journey to Nice on the occasion {448} when
the Emperor Charles V and King Francis I of France met, and he was
chosen by special honor to assist at the banquet given these
sovereigns.
[Illustration: Maggi's Bullet Extractors and Needles:--10, 11, 12,
shot borer (canula with screw); 11, screw alone; 12, canula alone; 13,
protective tube for the introduction of boring instrument; 14, 15,
lance needles; 16, 17, fistula scalpels.]
Another of the physicians of Pope Paul III was Jacobus Bonacossus, of
whom Mandosius says that "he was famous for his wide knowledge not
only in science, but on all culture subjects, as well as for his
magnanimity, his affability of manners and his careful attention in
his professional work to the poor as well as to the rich." He came of
a distinguished family of Ferrara and is given an important place in
the list of "Illustrious Men of the City of Ferrara" published by
Augustin Superbo.
Another of the physicians of Pope Paul III was Joannes {449}
Franciscus Emanuelis, also called Manovelli. He is mentioned in the
volume of Statutes of the College of Physicians of Florence and was
looked upon by his contemporaries, according to Baldo Baldi, as a very
learned man whose knowledge was only surpassed by his cultivation of
the social virtues. He was a professor at Florence when he was
summoned to Rome to become Papal Physician.
[Illustration: Maggi's Instruments for Gunshot Wounds:--6 a, b, c,
separable bullet forceps; 7, bullet spatula; 8, 9, anserine bullet
forceps, separable and with a screw-crushing arrangement.]
A very distinguished man who also occupied the post of physician to
Pope Paul III was Thomas Cadimustus, a Belgian, who, after securing
the doctorate in medicine and philosophy with distinction at Louvain,
came to Rome and soon secured a place among the {450} teachers there
and attained a reputation for great learning and successful care of
his patients. He became Secretary Apostolic as well as physician to
the Pope, and evidently enjoyed the close friendship of the Pontiff.
[Illustration: Some Instruments of Maggi:--1, surgical hook; 2, double
hook for the extraction of bullets; 3, concave toothed forceps; 4,
straight-toothed forceps; 5, crow-beak forceps.]
Another of the physicians of Pope Paul III was Tiberius Palella,
famous for his knowledge of medicine and with a special reputation for
information with regard to plants. He is known for his many
friendships with men of learning and left behind {451} him the
reputation, according to Mandosius, of being "a physician of the
highest integrity interested above all in the health of the poor as
well as the rich, without envy for others and a constant diligent
seeker of the right."
Another of the physicians of Pope Paul III who as the great friend of
the Jesuits might possibly be expected by those who misunderstand that
Order to be opposed to Science, but proves to have been a great patron
and friend of a whole series of the most prominent scientists of the
time, was Joannes Aquilinus, or John of Aquila, a noted Neapolitan
physician, who, after acquiring a great reputation in Naples, was
called to the Professorship of Medicine at Pisa when that University
was at the climax of its development. There he achieved so great a
reputation that his contemporaries referred to him as a "second
AEsculapius." Lacuna, who published a famous edition of Galen in 1548
which went through a series of editions, dedicated one portion of the
edition to Aquilinus out of deference to his "love for good
literature."
Another of the physicians to Pope Paul III was Franciscus Frigimelica,
who, after having acquired extraordinary fame as a teacher, having
been made professor at the University of Padua at the early age of
twenty-eight, received offers from many of the Italian princes to
become their physician. De Renzi in his _Storia della Medicina in
Italia_ says that he refused them all, but yielded to the solicitation
of Pope Paul III, and seems to have been tempted by the atmosphere of
intense medical science that had been created at Rome at this time.
Frigimelica is famous for his study of baths and his treatise on the
making of artificial baths with metallic salts. _De Balneis Metallicis
Artificio Parandis_ is an early classic in balneology. He also wrote a
volume "On Various Medical Questions," a _Pathologia Parva_, and a
number of his consultations were published.
Julius III (1550-55).--A very important Papal Physician is Maggi, who
had been the professor of anatomy and surgery at Bologna, the uncle
and teacher of the celebrated anatomist Aranzi. He became physician to
Pope Julius III about 1550. His book on gunshot wounds is dedicated to
Prince Giovanni Battista De Monte, nephew of Pope Julius and
General-in-Chief of the Papal Army. Gurlt, in his great History of
Surgery, declares that Maggi was the first who showed very clearly
that shot wounds neither caused burning nor poisoning. To demonstrate
this he made a series of carefully planned, most ingenious experiments
and {452} observations which were repeated hundreds of years
afterwards, but only to confirm his conclusions. His method of
handling gunshot wounds was very simple, and he laid the greatest
weight on treatment directed to permitting the free exit of pus. He
was the inventor of a series of instruments, the pictures of which we
have and some of which are here reproduced. They show his ingenuity
and anticipate a good many ideas that are supposed to be much more
modern than his time. Gurlt has devoted more than eight pages of
rather small type to a summarization of Maggi's work so that there is
no doubt about its great importance in the history of surgery.
Another of the physicians of Pope Julius III was Hippolytus Salvianus,
a doctor of medicine and of philosophy, of whom one of his
contemporaries said that it was doubtful in which of these sciences he
was the more learned and whether Hippolytus deserved more praise for
his science or his faith or his diligence in caring for the sick. He
wrote a volume in folio on fishes, illustrated by copper plate
engravings (Rome, 1555), a volume On Crises as a commentary on Galen
(Rome, 1558), and a book on aquatic animals (Venice, 1600). He has the
distinction also of having ventured successfully in literature and he
published poems and comedies which went through a number of editions.
One of his sons became a popular Roman physician, the other a poet.
One of the great Italian anatomists, a pioneer in the development of
the biological sciences, was John Baptist Cananus, who was one of the
medical attendants of Pope Julius III. His well-known work
"Illustrated Dissections of the Muscles of the Human Body,"
_Musculorum Humani Corporis, Picturata Dissectio_, Ferrara, 1572, in
quarto, is one of the precious bibliographic treasures in medicine. He
was the first to discover valves in veins, finding them in the azygos,
and he made a series of original observations on the sense organs
which gave a great stimulus to the development of the minute anatomy
of these structures at this time.
Another of the physicians of Pope Julius III was Augustin Ricchi, one
of the scholarly medical writers of the sixteenth century, whose
erudite translations enriched the medicine of that time and of
subsequent generations. Van der Linden notes that he translated a
number of the books of Galen, adding annotations. They were published
in Venice shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century. He had a
wide acquaintance and friendship with the most learned men of his
time.
{453}
Paul IV (1555-59).--One of the physicians to Pope Paul IV, of whom it
is noted that he was also an intimate friend whom the Pontiff loved
very dearly, was Jerome Cessa, doctor of medicine and philosophy, who
wrote a work on medicine and a treatise on religion, and who is said
to have refused the dignity of cardinal which was offered him because
he felt that others worthier might be chosen.
One of the distinguished physicians of this time was Professor
Altamare of Naples, of whom De Renzi in his _Storia della Medicina in
Italia_ tells that when he was compelled to fly from his native
country by political disturbance, he was given a refuge by Pope Paul
IV, under whose "wise and benevolent protection" he was able to
continue his medical work for a time and through whose patronage he
was restored to his professorship at Naples. As a mark of gratitude
Altamare dedicated to Pope Paul IV his book _De Medendis Humani
Corporis Malts, Ars Medica._
Pius IV (1559-65).--Alidosius, in his work on "The Foreign Doctors Who
Have Been Professors of Theology, Philosophy, Medicine and The Liberal
Arts in Bologna" (_Li Dottori Forestieri, che in Bologna hanno Letto
Teologia, Filosofia, Medicina ed Arti Liberali_), mentions John Andrew
Bianchi, a doctor of medicine and the liberal arts, famous for his
learning, who taught in the University of Bologna from 1525 to 1561
with great success and then was summoned to Rome to be the physician
to Pope Pius IV to the satisfaction of everyone, for it was felt that
he had achieved the highest place in his profession of medicine.
Simon Pasqua, a physician to Pope Pius IV, was the author of a book On
The Gout and of a description of his Embassy to Great Britain from
Genoa in the time of Queen Mary and Philip, but this, unfortunately,
was only in manuscript and seems to have been lost.
Pompeius Barba, or dalla Barba, was another of the physicians of Pope
Pius IV. He wrote a volume on "The Immortality of the Soul according
to the Peripatetic Philosophers" which was published at Florence in
1553. Two years later he wrote a commentary on some of the writings of
Pico della Mirandola and nearly twenty-five years later there appeared
at Venice a dialogue of his "On Arms and Letters." He left in
manuscript a book On Baths as well as some poems.
Still another of the physicians of Pope Pius IV was Franciscus
Gymnasius, described by a contemporary (Caesar Mezamici in his
_Notizie Istoriche_) as "so distinguished in the profession of {454}
medicine that while he was professor in Bologna many of the princes of
Italy called him in consultation when they were seriously ill and
constantly with a happy issue." Pius IV called him to Rome, honored
him with one of the principal chairs in the Papal University of the
Sapienza, providing a special stipend for him, and made him his
personal physician. Gymnasius added to his fame and obtained universal
esteem in the Curia. His tomb is in the Church of the Minerva at Rome.
A very interesting character at Rome during the later Renaissance was
Jerome Cardan, who though not a papal physician by formal appointment,
after wandering all over the world in various capacities, lived his
last years at Rome, enjoying a pension from the Pope. He is a type of
the many-sided, many-minded man of the Renaissance. In 1524 he
received his degree of doctor in medicine at Padua, practised for ten
years and then became professor of mathematics in Milan, and a few
years later taught medicine at Pavia, refused the corresponding
professorship at Copenhagen, spent nearly a year with Archbishop
Hamilton of St. Andrews, the primate of Scotland, returned to Italy to
practise once more, refusing many offers of professorships in foreign
universities, taught for some years at Pavia and then at Bologna and
spent the last five years of this varied, and at the end rather stormy
career, at Rome living on the Papal bounty. He is one of the great
geniuses of the time whose "vanity, boastfulness, childish credulity,
superstitiousness was bound up with a genius that opened up many new
paths in science" (Gurlt). His work meant more for philosophy and,
above all, for mathematics than for medicine, but he has an important
place in the history of science.
Another genius who spent some years in Rome about the same time, and
evidently found it eminently favorable for his work, was Jerome
Mercurialis, who was sent by his native city to Rome on a mission to
Pope Pius IV, when about 32, and secured opportunities for study in
Rome so much to his desires that he spent seven years in medical and
philological studies there. After this he was invited to be
Trincavella's successor at Padua and from here was summoned by the
Emperor Maximilian II on a consultation to Vienna and richly rewarded
for his services. After seven years of medical professorship at Padua
he was for some twelve years in a similar capacity at Bologna, which
was then a Papal University, and then accepted the call of the Grand
Duke Cosimo I to Pisa. The Medici were laboring at this time to make
Pisa an important rival in education of Padua and Bologna and {455}
were offering alluring salaries and special inducements to the most
distinguished teachers in every department. Mercurialis' books on skin
diseases, on women's diseases, on the diseases of children and on
gymnastics, went through many editions and now sell for good prices in
auction rooms, for he is considered one of the classics of medicine.
Pius V (1564-72).--One of the physicians and intimate friends of Pope
St. Pius V was Placidus Fuscus, who wrote a volume "On the Use and
Abuse of Astrology in Medicine." Fuscus, according to the inscription
on his tomb, was "distinguished for his social service, his work at
the hospital of the Santo Spirito and among the poor of Rome and
especially those in prison."
Gregory XIII (1572-85).--As might be expected, the physician of Pope
Gregory XIII, the Pope to whom we owe the correction of the calendar,
was a distinguished medical scientist who had been earlier an intimate
friend as well as physician to St. Ignatius Loyola the founder of the
Jesuits. His name was Alessandro Trajano Petronio of Castiglione, and
he is often mentioned in the medical literature of the time and wrote
a book, _De Victu Romanorum et de Sanitate Tuenda_, "On The Diet of
the Romans and the Preservation of Health," which he dedicated to Pope
Gregory XIII. He also wrote a work on "The Water of the Tiber" and a
series of dialogues on medicine as well as "Medical Aphorisms"
(Venice, 1535.)
Sixtus V (1585-90).--The principal physician of Pope Sixtus V was
Andreas Baccius, "who was famous not only as a physician but as a
philosopher and a man of erudite and polished intellect." Pope Sixtus
occupied himself with bringing fresh supplies of water into Rome and
we have a series of studies of these waters made by his physician. He
also wrote on baths and especially on those in the neighborhood of
Rome. There is also a book by him on "The Wines of Italy and The
Banquets of the Ancients." He was much more than an amateur as an
antiquary and wrote a book on "The Origin of the Old City of Cluana."
There is also a book of his on "Gems and Precious Stones," a volume on
"Poisons and their Antidotes," as well as a series of shorter
writings.
De Renzi in his _Storia della Medicina in Italia_ tells the story of
the earlier career of Baccio. As a younger man he became so deeply
interested in his scientific studies at Rome that he did not succeed
in practising medicine and was in danger even of starving because he
had not practical ways. He was rescued by Cardinal Ascanio Colonna,
who became his patron and provided him with the {456} opportunity to
devote himself to scientific studies without the necessity of thinking
about the obligation of gaining his daily bread. Baccio became
celebrated for his learning so that according to De Renzi his
"profound erudition passed into a proverb in his time." His great
opportunity came, adds De Renzi, when he was made Papal Physician to
Pope Sixtus V.
Castor Durantes, a skilled physician and poet, was another of the
medical attendants of Pope Sixtus V. In Giacobilli's catalogue the
following works are noted--"Treasure of Health," "On the Nature of
Food," which ran through many editions, the New Herbarium, and
_Theatrum Plantarum, Animalium, Piscium, et Petrarum_, Venetiis, 1636.
His Herbarium was done in verse and besides he wrote a series of poems
in Virgilian metre which attracted favorable attention from his
contemporaries.
Urban VII (1590-91).--The physician of Pope Urban VII was Demetrius
Canevarius, who was in his time, according to contemporary
authorities, the leading physician of Genoa when he was called to
Rome. He made a magnificent success at Rome, became very wealthy, but
was famous for his hospitality, his many friends and the magnificent
library which he collected, "filled with all the best books." We have
from him a book on "The Practice of Medicine," another on the
"Diagnosis, Prognosis and Cure of Fevers" and a third on "The
Procreation of Man." Like most of the physicians of his time he was a
philosopher as well as a medical scientist and so we have two
philosophic monographs from him, one on "The Origin and Destruction of
Natural Things," another on "First Principles."
Canevari, to use his more familiar Italian name, is famous as one of
the great bibliophiles of history. He had a series of the most
beautiful bindings made for his books and these have been the precious
treasures of collectors ever since. To own a Canevari binding is a
much-prized distinction in the world of rare books.
Innocent IX (1591).--Malpighi, one of the Papal Physicians of this
Pope, is one of the greatest of medical scientists. His career is
sketched earlier in this book. Another of his scarcely less
distinguished physicians was Lucas Tozzius, who succeeded Malpighi. It
would indeed have been difficult to have filled adequately the room of
so great a predecessor, but while Tozzi's powers of observation and
scientific genius were not so penetrating as those of Malpighi, his
books probably influenced his own generation of physicians almost more
than those of his great scientific predecessor. He wrote a volume on
the theory and another on the practice of {457} medicine, wrote
commentaries on the aphorisms of Hippocrates and on the medical art of
Galen, as well as some volumes on philosophy and even lighter
subjects. He was looked upon as one of the most talented men in Italy
of his time and his scholarly erudition made him the friend of learned
visitors to Italy from every country in Europe.
Clement VIII (1592).--Jerome Provenzalis, "a philosopher of
distinction, most expert physician, theologian of great name and yet a
practical genius of the highest ability who had scarcely his equal in
his generation in Italy" (Mandosius), was the medical attendant of
Pope Clement VIII. One of his books, a treatise on the senses (Rome,
1597), attracted wide attention in his time and still has a place in
the bibliography of the sensations.
Another of the physicians of Pope Clement VIII was Jerome Rubeus, who
wrote books on history as well as medicine. He is well known as the
author of a history of Ravenna and its neighborhood and people which
contains an account of the Goths, the Lombards and the Italians of the
earlier Middle Ages from the materials then at hand. He is best known
in medicine for his "Annotations on Cornelius Celsus' De Re Medica."
He wrote a treatise on Destination and a monograph on The Dietetic
Value of Melons. His book on Destination appeared in editions at
Venice, at Basel, at Ravenna and probably also at Rome. Rubeus has a
place in most of the histories written at this time.
Another of the physicians of Pope Clement VIII was Jerome Cordella.
While he is highly praised for his knowledge of philosophy and his
skill in medicine he is better known for his intimate friendship with
St. Philip Neri, of whom Cardinal Newman, in the nineteenth century,
was so proud to proclaim himself the spiritual son. Jerome was of
assistance to St. Philip particularly in the magnificent social work
which meant so much for the correction of social abuses at this time
and, above all, the occupation of youthful minds with higher thoughts.
Among Zecchius' books, who was another of the physicians to Pope
Clement VIII, is one on "The Means of Curing Especially Such Fevers as
Arise from Putrid Humors." Another is called "Medical Consultations or
The Whole Practice of Medicine Briefly Treated," a third is on "The
Use of Italian Waters," and then besides there are a series of shorter
papers on Hippocrates' Aphorisms, on Digestion, on Purgation, on The
Letting of Blood, on Critical Days and on the Morbus Gallicus.
Caesalpinus the Botanist.--Caesalpinus is mentioned in the {458} text
of the previous edition of this work as a professor at the Papal
Medical School, the Sapienza, and physician to Pope Clement VIII. In
the history of science, however, he should rather be counted among the
botanists than the physicians, though there is no doubt that he was
the first fully to describe the systemic circulation. Edward Lee
Greene, in his Landmarks of Botanical History, which is "A Study of
Certain Epochs in the Development of the Science of Botany" (part of
volume 54 of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Washington,
1909), mentions that "The Caesalpinus system of plant arrangement
seemed incomparably superior to every one that had preceded it."
Linnaeus in the warmth of zeal for the great Caesalpino had pronounced
him "first in the order of time among real systematists." Caesalpinus
is then one of the great founders of modern botany and his work _De
Plantis_ is a foundation stone of the science. Gurlt talks of him as
the greatest botanist of his century and his work as director of the
botanical garden of Pisa did much both for medicine and botany. A
little practical work of his was a Manual of the Practice of Medicine,
which attracted much attention and is in line with the efforts of
Papal Physicians as a rule to make knowledge available for the use of
physicians generally.
Still another of the physicians of Pope Clement VIII was Michael
Mercatus, an intimate personal friend of the well-known social
reformer St. Philip Neri, whose profound influence on the social life
of Rome is a matter of history and to whom such men as Newman and
Faber and the English Oratorians turned with the loving name of Father
in the nineteenth century. Mercatus wrote a series of instructions on
the Pest and his medical volume contains also articles on antidotes
against poisons, the gout and paralysis. Like many of the physicians
of his century he was interested in Oriental problems and wrote a
volume on the obelisks of Rome which was published in 1589 and
dedicated to Pope Sixtus V. This led to a controversy with Latino
Latini during which Mercatus published another volume on the obelisks.
Mercatus came of a well-known scholarly family, for his grandfather
had been a close friend of Marsilio Ficino and a member of the famous
Platonic Academy.
Another of the physicians of Pope Clement VIII, at least he received
the honor of the appointment as Papal Physician, though he could not
come to Rome to fulfil its duties because of the approach of age, was
Nicholas Masinus. He is well known for his work on "The Abuse of Cold
Drinks," which was published in {459} 1587. The custom of gathering
snow on the mountains and using it in their wine and other drinks
during the summer time, which had been practised by the ancient
Romans, was revived at the time of the Renaissance and Masinus was
sure that it was productive of harm to the digestive system.
Still another of the physicians of Pope Clement VIII who deserves
mention was Jacobus Bonaventura, to whom Athenius of Brussels
dedicated his edition of the "Medical Consultations of Jerome
Mercurialis," calling him "a very distinguished man." He was a
particular friend of Mercurialis, who expressed his opinion of him in
the highest terms. He made a great many friends among the nobility of
Italy and was very dear to the Sovereign Pontiff.
Still another of the physicians of Pope Clement VIII was Julius De
Angelis, who came of a well-known academic family with many members
distinguished in law and medicine. He was professor at Padua for years
and afterwards at the Sapienza in Rome and was chosen by the Pope to
give special lessons for the benefit of physicians and medical
attendants at the Santo Spirito Hospital in Saxia as it was called. He
is mentioned in a number of medical works of the time, and in the book
of the Statutes of the College of Physicians of the City of Rome.
Paul V (1605-21).--One of the physicians of Pope Paul V, though at
first he had refused the honor because it is said that as an
astrologer he had found the stars unfavorable to his acceptance of it,
was Pompeius Caimus, from whom we have a number of medical writings.
Van der Linden, in _De Scriptis Medicis_, and others furnish the list
of them. He wrote "On Congenital Heat," on "The Indications of Putrid
Fevers," on "The Recognition and Cure of Melancholia," on "The Nature
of Science and Its Acquisition," "On Grief," a "Treatise on Human
Longevity and the Climacteric Years," as well as "Dissertations on the
Aphorisms of Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna," which had been
delivered as lectures at Padua, on "The Nature and Differences of
Winds," and on "The Early Recognition and the Lengthening of Old Age,"
besides translating and annotating a number of the works of the old
Greek philosophers and physicians in Latin. It may seem strange that a
man of such wide erudition and scholarship should still cling to the
delusion of astrology, but about this same time Galileo and Kepler
were drawing up horoscopes, and in the middle of the eighteenth
century Mesmer's astrological essay was accepted for the degree of
Doctor of Medicine at the University of Vienna. Caimus, after refusing
the chair of {460} medicine at the University of Pisa, to which a
magnificent salary was attached, became the physician to Pope Gregory
XV.
Gregory XV (1621-23).--Vincentius Crucius was another of the
physicians of Pope Gregory XV. He had been a professor at Bologna and
we have from him his lectures at Bologna on "Epilepsy or The Comitial
Disease," published at Venice in 1603. Books of his "On Catarrh,"
published at Ravenna, on "The More Frequent Diseases of The Head;
Catarrh, Phrenitis, Lethargy and Epilepsy," published at Rome, 1617,
and "The More Frequent Diseases of the Chest; Phthisis, Haemoptysis,
Asthma, Peri-pneumonia, and Pluritis," issued also at Rome, a volume
on "The Diseases of The Stomach" and a series of volumes of
Consultations on Medicine, were well known to his contemporaries and
to succeeding generations. He wrote besides a commentary on Lucretius,
another on Hippocrates, a book on Prophylaxis, a volume on Vesuvius
and a popular work in Italian, all his other works having been in
Latin, meant to be of assistance to ordinary people in avoiding
disease and especially the infectious diseases.
Two of the Papal Physicians of Gregory XV are the brothers Giovanni
and Bernardino Castellani. John is the better known and was for years
the director of the Hospital of Santo Spirito and received the much
coveted title of Roman Citizen for his work for Roman citizens there.
He succeeded Elpidiano as lecturer on anatomy and surgery at the
University of the Sapienza and left a large anatomical work in
manuscript with many copper plate engravings, which were never
published. The book of his by which he is known is a volume of
directions for venesection from the standpoint of the anatomist. It
was the custom then for nearly everyone to have himself let blood
several times a year and especially in the spring, somewhat as in our
time many people take purgatives. The practices are about equally
foolish unless there is some special indication for them. In many
families the barber-surgeon was called in almost as regularly for this
and with quite as little anxiety about it as for the cutting of the
hair. Naturally there had been many mishaps in this practice because
the barbers were expert enough but ignorant, and venesection was done
from blood vessels all over the body because one patient thought his
head ought to be relieved, another his foot, another his chest, and
the like. Castellani's book then, called _Phylacterium_, which I
suppose might be translated The Protective, was meant to indicate the
anatomical landmarks that should guide the barber-surgeon so as to
avoid the danger points. Like so many other of the works of the {461}
Papal Physicians it was directed to the correction of popular
practices that were the source of injury and suffering to the people.
Castellani's book contained directions for the application of cups,
dry and wet, which was also a popular practice confided to the
barber-surgeons at this time, and like blood-letting had been subject
to many abuses.
Urban VIII (1623-44).--One of the scholarly Papal Physicians was
Julius Mancinus of Siena, who secured the much coveted position of
physician to the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome by competition. He
obtained a great reputation for his ability to make the prognosis of
disease and acquired an extensive practice as a consequence. He
accumulated a great fortune from his practice but lived very modestly
and used his income partly for the education of ambitious youths of
talent who were without the means of securing an education and partly
in the collection of works of art. He wrote a book on "The Pictures of
Rome." A number of books were dedicated to him, and Antonio Recchi in
his scientific work expresses his gratitude to him for the help
afforded in the collection of plants, animals, and minerals from
Mexico.
Two of the Papal Physicians of Pope Urban VIII were the uncle and
nephew Sylvester and Thaddeus Collicola. Sylvester taught medicine at
the Sapienza and was a very popular teacher mentioned in a number of
books of the time. Thaddeus had studied law before taking up medicine,
but devoted himself entirely to the second profession and Mandosius
speaks of him as "the greatest physician of his time, dear to all the
learned men who knew him and to all the good men who were brought in
contact with him." Thaddeus was evidently a friend of the literary men
of his time, for he is often mentioned by poets and writers. Several
books were dedicated to him by scientific and literary admirers.
Innocent X (1644-55).--One of the copious writers among the Papal
Physicians was Baldus Baldi, who was the medical attendant of Innocent
X. We have a series of books from him, one On Contagious Diseases, a
treatise on Hippocrates' Suggestions concerning Air, Water and
Habitation, a book On Pleurisy, a detailed account of the fatal
illness and the autopsy on the body of Cardinal Bevilacqua and
academic lectures on poisons as well as a book on the Opobalsamo
Orientate.
A distinguished Papal Physician under Pope Innocent X was Paul
Zacchias, "a most learned philosopher and physician who had a very
versatile genius and whose deep interest in every form of intellectual
work, not only such serious studies as philosophy, {462} medicine,
theology and jurisprudence, but also the lighter arts of poetry,
music, painting and so forth, made him distinguished among his
contemporaries." Zacchias is best known as the author of a book on
medico-legal questions which went through a series of editions, was
published originally at Rome and afterwards at Lyons in at least two
editions there. Zacchias wrote a volume on the keeping of Lent in
which he discussed various questions of the relationship of fasting
and health, which went through several editions and is often referred
to by the moralists. He also wrote a book on Hypochondriasis. Some of
his writings that were widely circulated in manuscript are On Sudden
and Unexpected Death, On Macules Contracted from the Foetus _in
Utero_, on Rest in the Cure of Disease, on Laughter and Grief, on a
Physical Consideration of The Miracles of Holy Scriptures, and other
subjects that might be expected to interest a medico-legal expert who
was occupied particularly with the psychology of many human problems.
The Papal Physicians were not all Italians, indeed Italian as a
national designation was almost unused, men were Neopolitans, Genoese,
Venetians, Paduans, Bolognese, Sicilians, Milanese quite as distinctly
as now they are French, English, Spanish or whatever else it may be.
The Popes usually chose physicians from their own cities but not to
the exclusion of others and not a few Papal Physicians were from
outside of Italy. Pope Innocent X chose Gabriel Fonseca, a Portuguese,
whose father had been a teacher of medicine at Pisa and at Padua, and
who himself held chairs in medicine at both of these universities
before he was invited to Rome to be a lecturer at the Sapienza and
Papal Physician. Van der Linden notes among his writings a work on
medical economy, _Medici Oeconomia_, and a series of lectures on
Contagious Fevers, as well as a book on Medical Banquets. Fonseca came
to be looked upon as one of the most distinguished teachers of
medicine in Italy in his time.
Alexander VII (1655-67).--One of the physicians of Pope Alexander VII
was Matthias Naldius, Doctor of Medicine and of Philosophy and a man
of great erudition, a scholar in Latin and in Greek, who knew Hebrew,
Chaldaic and Arabic. He was sent by the Duke of Etruria on a medical
mission of consultation to the Prince of Damascus, who was suffering
from what seemed to his attending physicians an incurable disease, and
Naldius was able to relieve him. The incident called attention to him
all over Italy and he was sent for in consultations to most of the
Italian cities. He taught at the medical school of Siena, his
birthplace, and wrote {463} a series of volumes on medical subjects.
One of these is the rather well-known "Pamphilia or Friendship of the
Whole World," the subtitle of which is "The Conciliation of the
Opinions of Disagreeing Philosophers." This was published at Siena in
1647 in quarto. He issued a small volume of "Rules for the Cure of
Contagious Diseases," Rome, 1656. His great work is the _Rei Medicae
Prodromi_, or introduction to medical science, which has for subtitle
"Treatise on the Principal Problems of Physiology."
A distinguished scientist of the seventeenth century who found Rome a
refuge and place of opportunity for his studies at this time when
beset with difficulties elsewhere, was Borelli, the first to apply
mechanical principles to the explanation of physiological problems in
his work _De Motu Animalium_. Borelli had been a professor of science
in Messina, visited Florence for a time in order to be with Galileo
shortly before the great astronomer's death, accepted the call of the
Duke of Tuscany to Pisa, where he had as colleagues Redi and Malpighi,
with whom he founded the Accademia del Cimento. He left Pisa, not long
after, to return to Messina, whence however he had to flee, having
fallen under the suspicion of taking part in a conspiracy against the
government, and now found a refuge in Rome. He was pensioned by Queen
Christina of Sweden, who was then living in the Papal Capital, but
after a time he retired to the monastery of San Pantaleone in Rome,
where two years later he died. Professor Foster, in his Lectures on
the History of Physiology, which were delivered at a number of
universities in this country and subsequently published in the
Cambridge Biological Series, devotes a whole lecture, some thirty
pages, to "Borelli and the Influence of the New Physics." He does not
hesitate to say at the conclusion of the lecture that "when we
consider the effect which a perusal of Borelli's book has upon the
reader now, we can easily understand how he was the founder of a great
school which flourished long after him. He was so successful in his
mechanical solutions of physiological problems that many coming after
him readily rushed to the conclusion that all such problems could be
solved by the same method. And as is often the case the less qualified
alike as regards mechanical as well as physiological knowledge and
insight to follow in Borelli's path were the men of succeeding times
the more loudly did they often proclaim the might of Borelli's
method." It has always been thus and doubtless always will be. The
smaller men who come after the great masters are quite sure that they
can go farther than the master himself and push his system, as did the
Darwinians in {464} our time, to silly exaggerations. When the
question of the attitude of the Popes to science is under
consideration, however, it is well to recall that Borelli's
revolutionary work was completed under the aegis of the Popes and a
religious order in Rome and the account of it was not actually
published in its completed form until after Borelli's death, and then
at the expense of ecclesiastics. It is the knowledge of details of
this kind that gives us a real insight into the significance of
ecclesiastical relations to science.
Innocent XI (1676-89).--The Papal Physician of this Pope was Floridus
Salvatorius, to whom the Provost, the Trustees and his Colleagues of
the College of Physicians of Rome dedicated, in an Introductory
Epistle, a volume of the Statutes of the College of Physicians of the
City, in which they praised him very highly. He seems to have been a
great favorite with the members of the medical profession in his time
at Rome, and other books on medicine were also dedicated to him.
Another of this Pope's physicians was Lancisi, one of the most
important in the list, whose place in the history of medicine is
pointed out in the body of this book.
Alexander VIII (1689-91).--The physician to this Pope was Romulus
Spezioli, doctor of philosophy and of medicine of the University of
Firmo, who acquired a great reputation at Rome as physician and
finally was selected as Papal Physician. He became professor at the
Sapienza, the Roman University, and was very popular as a teacher.
After the death of the Pope he gave up his profession of medicine and,
like Linacre a century before, became a priest, but his scientific
knowledge was taken advantage of to enable him to give lectures on
subjects in the borderland between religion and medicine, what has
come to be called in our time pastoral medicine, to the theological
students at the Roman University, and his medical experience was used
in the causes of canonization in order to pass on miracles.
Innocent XII (1691-1700).--Both of the physicians of Innocent XII,
Malpighi and Lucas Tozzi, are very well known. Malpighi deserves in
medical history a place beside Harvey as one of the greatest of the
contributors to the medical sciences and probably even a niche higher
than the Englishman because of the number of original observations
that he made. I dealt with him earlier in this volume. Lucas Tozzi is
the author of a series of books on The Theory and Practice of Medicine
that are classics. One of these was issued at Lyons in 1731, another
at Paris in 1737, and a commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates at
Naples, 1743. He {465} wrote also a commentary on the _Ars Medicinalis
Galeni_, besides smaller contributions to medical theory and practice.
One of his books, with the title _De Anima Mundi_, The Soul of the
World, in which he brings together a large number of the fallacies of
philosophic writers before his time regarding the universe and man and
their origin and destiny, was widely read. He suggests not only how
little there is that we know, but how much there is that we think we
know that is not so.
Pope Innocent XII died in 1700, and with the beginning of the
eighteenth century we feel that we are in our own times. Whatever of
direct opposition there has been supposed to be between the Popes and
science has always been traced to the older times. It was nearly
always shrouded in the mists of medieval history. It does not seem so
important then, to follow out the lives of the Papal Physicians in
detail in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For anyone who
wishes really to know, the information is readily available. There is
abundant evidence, moreover, of the favorable attitude of the Popes
towards the medical sciences and a number of distinguished men are
among their physicians. The great Morgagni, who in his time was
undoubtedly the greatest of living physicians, was the intimate friend
of a number of Popes and was frequently consulted on all scientific as
well as medical matters. Both Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) and his
successor Clement XIII (1758-69) insisted, as we have said in the body
of this volume, on having the great pathologist consider the Papal
Palace always open to him as a place of residence, whenever he visited
Rome. Almost needless to say this same favorable attitude has
continued during the nineteenth century.
Pius VI (1775-99).--Among the physicians who treated Pius VI during
the severe physical trials of a stormy pontificate was Professor
Cotugno of Naples, to whom we owe a number of important discoveries in
medicine. He was the first to point out the presence of the
cerebro-spinal fluid and ably supplemented the investigations of
Valsalva on the ear which did so much to clear up many problems in
connection with that organ, most of whose anatomy we owe to Italians.
He made a careful study of sciatica, _De Ischiada Nervosa_, Vienna,
1770, which is the classic foundation of our modern knowledge of that
affection. He made a series of _post-mortem_ observations on typhoid
fever in which he demonstrated very clearly the intestinal lesions of
that affection and came very near solving the important problem of the
pathological basis of the disease. Like a number of others about the
middle of {466} the eighteenth century, in spite of acute observations
on intestinal lesions, he could not get away from the theory of fevers
being constitutional and so was unable to separate abdominal typhus
from dysentery on the one hand, nor true typhus on the other. The
constitutional nature of the disease we have come to recognize to some
extent again after the pendulum had swung very far in the direction of
the declaration of its local character.
Pius VII (1800-23).--One of the physicians of Pope Pius VII was
Professor Giambattista Bomba, who was professor of physiology at the
Sapienza or Roman University of that time. One of the surgeons in
attendance at the Papal Court was Antonio Baccelli, the father of
Professor Guido Baccelli, the distinguished Italian scientist and
statesman of the modern time.
Another of the physicians of Pius VII was Flajani, to whom we owe the
first description of the affection known as Graves' Disease in
English-speaking countries, and often as Basedow's Disease on the
Continent, though the English physician Parry anticipated both of
these in 1822. Graves' description did not come until 1835, Flajani's
had been published in 1802; Basedow did not write the more complete
description in which he called attention not only to the goitre and
the rapid heart action as his Irish and Italian predecessors had done,
but also to the exophthalmos, which is so common an accompaniment,
until 1850. Flajani was distinguished for his ability as a clinical
observer as his priority in this matter would well suggest.
Gregory XVI (1831-46).--The two of Gregory XVI's physicians who were
best known were Professor Paolo Baroni, the distinguished Professor of
Surgery, the University of Bologna, and Pier Luigi Valentini,
Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Roman
University. At the conclave which followed his death for the election
of his successor, Professor Giusseppe Constantini, the Professor of
the Institutes of Surgery at the Roman University, was in attendance.
[Footnote 53]
[Footnote 63: When the material of the famous Challenger expedition
was being assigned for investigation to those who were expected to use
it to the best advantage of science, the diatoms were handed over to
the study of Francesco Castracane degli Anteminelli. He discovered in
the material submitted to him three new genera of diatoms, 225 new
species and some thirty varieties. Altogether he had written some 112
papers on the biology of his favorite microscopic plants. Castracane
was a Catholic priest living at Rome in high favor with the
ecclesiastical authorities and directly encouraged by the Pope in his
work.]
Leo XIII (1878-1903) was so situated in his relations to the Italian
government that it would have been almost impossible for him to have
selected one of the distinguished professors at the {467} University
at Rome, which was, after all, a government institution. His physician
then was chosen from distant Ancona and proved to be a man of distinct
intellectual capacity, who impressed himself upon the science of Rome
in certain ways. This was Dr. Joseph Lapponi, whom those of us who had
the privilege of meeting remember with special pleasure. He was
professor of practical anthropology at the Academy of the
Historico-Juridical Conferences of Rome and the author of a book on
"Hypnotism and Spiritism; A Critical and Medical Study," which ran
through two or more editions in the original Italian and was
translated into several foreign languages. The English edition
published by Longmans is well known.
Pius X (1903-14).--Dr. Lapponi continued as the Papal Physician of Leo
XIII's successor until his death. Political conditions in Rome having
been modified somewhat Professor Marchiafava of the Roman University,
now in the hands of the Italian government, became the consultant
Papal Physician, the latest of a long line of distinguished men.
Marchiafava has done some excellent work with regard to malaria,
working out the life cycle of the malarial parasite and demonstrating
that the organisms of pernicious malaria and the tertian and quartan
malarial fevers are quite different. In recent years Marchiafava has
been particularly interested in the pathology of alcoholism, being a
prominent factor in that movement in Europe which during our time has
made it very clear that alcohol is never a stimulant but only a
narcotic and that in practically all cases where it is used regularly,
even though not consumed to excess, it produces definite pathological
changes in human tissues.
With this list before him, the reader will have all the material
necessary to understand the declaration that there is no series of men
whose names are connected together by any bond in the history of
medicine, even as members of the faculty of our oldest medical
schools, that represent so much achievement and original investigation
in medical matters as the Papal Physicians. With these men beside them
as advisers and very often as intimate friends, it would have been
quite impossible for the Popes to have been deliberate opponents of
scientific progress. We all know that by a curious irony of fate
physicians are sometimes found ranged against the line of advance in
medical science, but this is inevitable with human frailty and the
incidents of opposition have not done nearly so much harm as their
conservative refusal to listen to enthusiastic discoverers, whose
discovery was of no significance, has done of {468} good. No medical
society in the world has an unblemished record of constant readiness
to accept genuine new discoveries and all of them have sometime or
other been in opposition to what proved eventually to be significant
scientific progress. There are no striking incidents in the lives of
the Papal Physicians in this regard though their admiration for
Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen sometimes kept them over
conservative. As a rule, however, they were ready to welcome every new
step in medical advance that was made.
We all know how much a man's physician usually means in influencing
him with regard to the attitude that he shall assume towards
scientific advances generally and particularly announced progress in
the biological sciences. The Popes could scarcely have had better
advisers in this matter than the men who were actually chosen as Papal
Physicians. They came from every part of Italy and sometimes even from
other countries. A library consisting of their works alone would
contain an extremely valuable collection of books illustrating nearly
every phase of advance in medicine.
{469}
APPENDIX VI.
ASTRONOMY AND THE CHURCH.
_Some Roman Astronomers_.
A formal list of Papal Astronomers in any way comparable to that of
the Papal Physicians cannot be given. Astronomy is not so compelling
in its interests as medicine and while man's first serious scientific
interest is his body, and the first modern university, that of
Salerno, was founded around a medical school, the development of
astronomy as a science was practically delayed until the Renaissance.
Though a formal list of Papal Astronomers is not available, there is,
however, a long series of names of workers in astronomy at Rome, some
of whom occupied positions in the Papal capital actually called by
that name, with many others who merited it for the work they did with
Papal aid and encouragement. A large number of astronomical
investigators conducted their researches under the patronage of the
Popes, often dedicated their books, with permission, to them, were
frequently supported by Papal revenues and had their observatories
supplied by the Papal government, or else they were in intimate
relations with the Papacy and received every stimulus for their
researches.
For special purposes, as the correction of the calendar, distinguished
astronomers were summoned from long distances to Rome. At the Sapienza
Papal University and later at the Roman College directly under the
control of the Jesuits, but with the entire approval and constant
effective good-will of the Popes, men of great distinction in
astronomy and mathematics have frequently been professors. Some of the
very greatest contributions to the science of astronomy have been
issued not only with dedications to the Popes, as I have said, but not
infrequently have been printed at the expense of the Holy See.
In the chapter on Papal Physicians I have suggested that no list of
men connected by any bond in the history of medicine are so
distinguished as the roll of the Papal Physicians. The faculty of no
medical school, for instance, no matter how long it may be able to
trace its history, contains so many distinguished names. This same
thing might well be said of the list of men who have done
distinguished work in astronomy whose names are in some way {470}
connected with the Papacy and whose relations to the Popes make it
very clear that far from a determined course of opposition there was,
on the contrary, a definite policy of encouragement and patronage for
astronomical workers and that this greatly helped the diffusion of
valuable scientific information with regard to the heavens and made
the ecclesiastics of the world particularly interested in these
important advances in human knowledge. In this appendix, then, as a
complement to the appendix on the Papal Physicians, I have brought
together some of the names and the achievements of astronomers who
worked at Rome or were in some way connected with the Popes. I know
that it is incomplete, but even as it stands it is a strong
confirmation of that principle so surprising to many presumably
well-informed people that the Popes were, as far as conditions
permitted, always the patrons, not the persecutors, of scientists in
all departments of the purely physical as well as biological,
theoretic and applied sciences.
It is sometimes assumed in the modern time, and it used to be the
custom a generation ago for nearly everyone in English-speaking
countries to assume, that because we knew very little about science in
the medieval period it must be because there was very little to know.
We have learned the fallacy of that supposition to our cost, by the
republication of the great text-books of medicine and surgery of the
medieval period and by the deeper study of such great scholars as
Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas. Even the scanty
records that we have show us the Popes following the same sort of
policy with regard to education and science as at the present time.
Men who collected scientific information for academic or popular
diffusion, as Isidore of Seville, Albertus Magnus, Thomas of Aquin,
were not infrequently raised to ecclesiastical dignities during life
and placed among the saints after death. Occasionally a distinguished
scientist like Gerbert, who became Pope Sylvester II, or Petrus
Hispanus the well-known physician, who became Pope John XXI, were even
made Popes. It is easy to understand that their attitude as Supreme
Pontiffs towards science would be not only not one of opposition but
of sympathy and helpful patronage.
While as I have said astronomy as a formal science practically did not
develop until the Renaissance, there were a series of important
discussions of the relations of the earth to the other heavenly bodies
and of the size and shape of the earth itself among the professors of
the medieval universities, and the perfect freedom with which these
discussions were carried on shows how unshackled {471} was human
thought. Albertus Magnus discussed the antipodes, dismissed the notion
that if there were men on the other side of the earth they would
surely fall off by the thoroughly Socratic remark that we ourselves
were on the other side from them yet did not fall off, and understood
and taught very definitely the rotundity of the earth and other
doctrines that are usually supposed to be much more recent, and that
are often said to have brought their holders into ecclesiastical
odium. Far from this, Albert was always in high favor and was made a
bishop and canonized as a saint after his death.
Roger Bacon studied light, declared that it moved with a definite
velocity and gathered and made good use in his teaching of an immense
amount of information in the departments of knowledge that we now call
astronomy and geography. Humboldt declared that it was a passage from
Roger Bacon which more than anything else, even the Toscanelli
letters, roused Columbus to his life purpose of sailing westwards.
Roger Bacon's books, the one with the paragraph now famous because of
its connection with Columbus among the number, were issued at the
request of the Pope and it seems very probable that we would have had
no idea of his marvellous anticipation of many modern scientific
truths only for the definitely expressed wish of the Pope to know the
English Franciscan's thought. We have just celebrated the seventh
centenary of Roger Bacon's birth, and this has brought home to us how
much of a loss to the history of human culture would have been the
missing of Bacon's works. Bacon's difficulties in life were with his
Order and were personal matters not directly connected with his
science.
With the beginning of the Renaissance the stimulating effect of the
study of Greek science on the men of the fifteenth century was exerted
and one of those who was most deeply touched by the Greek spirit was
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, or Cusanus, as he is called from the Latin
name of his birthplace. He wrote a series of books touching many
matters in science and treating various phases of mathematics. He
dwelt particularly on certain problems relating to geography and
astronomy. I have summed up his scientific career in a chapter of "Old
Time Makers of Medicine" (N. Y., 1911). He taught the rotundity of the
earth and that the earth was the same sort of a body as the other
stars in the heavens, that it was not and could not be the centre of
the universe and that it had a movement of its own. Far from such
revolutionary teaching leading to his persecution or bringing him
under the suspicion {472} of the ecclesiastical authorities he was, on
the contrary, looked up to for his scholarship, received successive
ecclesiastical preferments, became Bishop of Brixen and then Papal
Legate to Germany for the reform of abuses, and finally a Cardinal. He
did much to encourage interest in mathematical, geographical and
astronomical science, provided opportunities for students, encouraged
Puerbach and Regiomontanus in their significant pioneer work in
mathematics and astronomy, and generally showed himself the
enlightened patron of every movement related to the physical sciences,
and all the workers with the experimental method.
The first epoch-making astronomer who was brought into intimate
relations with the Pope of whom we have definite knowledge was
Regiomontanus. He is deservedly known as the Father of Modern
Astronomy for his initiation of series of calculations and
publications with regard to the heavens and his establishment at
Nuremburg of a regular observatory. He was summoned to Rome to direct
the calculations for the correction of the calendar, but unfortunately
died there at the early age of forty. His invitation to Rome for this
purpose came within the same decade when, if we were to trust certain
modern historians of the relations of the Popes to science, Pope
Calixtus III issued his supposed bull against Halley's comet. The bull
has never been found. The attitude of the Popes towards science is
much better illustrated by the invitation to Regiomontanus and the
encouragement of astronomical research thus afforded than by the
fictitious bull against the comet. The supposed bull has, however,
played a large role in convincing a number of people of Church
opposition to science, some of them being professors of science who
knew nothing about the almost simultaneous appointment of
Regiomontanus as Papal Astronomer.
Toscanelli, over the question of whose influence on Columbus an as yet
unsettled controversy is waged, was a lifelong friend of Nicholas of
Cusa, they had been schoolmates at College and undoubtedly the great
cardinal doctor of laws or of decrees as they said at that time, owed
much of his progressive advanced views on scientific subjects to his
Florentine friend "the doctor of physic, Paul Toscanelli." Cusanus at
the height of his fame dedicated his book on Geometrical
Transformations "to Paul the Florentine physician." Regiomontanus, as
well as Cusa, often sought Toscanelli's opinion on abstruse questions
of mathematics and quoted him with confidence. The intimate relations
of Cusanus and Regiomontanus with the Popes of the middle of the
fifteenth century are very well known. Toscanelli's services to
astronomy are only {473} less famous than those to cosmography. A
series of his careful and painstaking observations and calculations of
the orbits of the comets of 1433, 1449-50, of Halley's comet of 1456
and of the comets of 1457 and 1472 are preserved in manuscript. They
demonstrate his profound and successful interest in astronomical
subject and it is easy to see that they must have cost him, as indeed
he tells in his letters, many a night's watching of the stars. The
relations between the ecclesiastical authorities and Toscanelli are
very well illustrated by that well-known monument to his astronomical
skill which still interests visitors so much in the Cathedral of Santa
Maria del Fiore at Florence. This is the gnomon arranged in the dome
of the Cathedral by the shadow of which it is said that he could
determine midday to within half a second. The use of the Cathedral for
this purpose is interesting testimony to the cordial relations of
science and religion at this time. It may be said in passing that
Toscanelli's gnomon was later improved by Cardinal Ximenes of Spain,
showing that these cordial ecclesiastical relations with science were
not confined to Italy.
While Toscanelli was making his observations Antoninus of Florence was
for some thirteen years the Archbishop of the city and was one of the
learned members of the Dominican Order at this time, who had made his
novitiate among the Dominicans with Fra Angelico and Fra Bartholomeo
the great Renaissance painters. Antoninus was greatly influenced
evidently by his associations with Toscanelli and formed one of a
group of men containing the Florentine physician astronomer, Cardinal
Cusanus and Regiomontanus, himself afterwards a bishop, who were on
terms of intimate relationship at least in scholarly matters at this
period. Archbishop Antoninus, who is the author of a _Summa Theologica
Moralis_ of which no less than fifteen editions were printed after his
death, wrote also a series of histories in which he shows this
influence by insisting that comets are celestial bodies like the
others in the heavens and had no effect on the physical or moral
conditions of the world and, quite contrary to popular beliefs, were
not responsible for war or pestilence nor prophetic of evil to
mankind. There had been a number of brilliant comets in the heavens
about this time and there was consequently a widespread interest in
them and much popular superstition with regard to them. Antoninus was
on terms of familiar intimacy with Pope Eugene IV, who insisted on his
becoming Archbishop of Florence, though Antoninus would have preferred
to have remained a simple Dominican and keep his leisure for his
scholarly work. When the Pope felt his end {474} approaching he called
Antoninus to Rome to administer the last rites of the Church to him
and be by his side during his last hours. Antoninus was frequently
consulted by Pope Eugene's successors, Nicholas V and Pius II, both of
whom were among the scholarly patrons of learning and art at this
time. Some fifty years after his death Antoninus was canonized by Pope
Hadrian VI, the scholarly Pope from Utrecht in Holland. His whole
career then shows clearly the relations of the ecclesiastics and
particularly the Popes of the time to science in a most favorable
light.
The relationship with the rising science of the Renaissance period
thus initiated was continued during the following century. At the end
of the fifteenth century Copernicus studied for ten years in Italy and
felt so thoroughly the interest of Italians in advances in science as
well as scholarship that when some years later he came to formulate
his great new hypothesis of the heavens, he sent an abstract of his
theory to some of the Roman teachers with whom he had become intimate
during his stay and it was taught publicly in the city to crowded
audiences. This may well seem surprising to many whose only knowledge
of the relations of the Popes to astronomy is the Galileo incident,
but it must not be forgotten that Copernicus' great work in which he
elaborated his theory, was dedicated, with permission, to the Pope,
and not only received no censure until Galileo's time, nearly a
century later, but was welcomed as a great contribution to science and
thought. It was looked upon as a theory, to be discussed as any other.
When Galileo, at the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, insisted on teaching it as absolute science, it must not be
forgotten that there were no astronomers in Europe who looked upon
Copernicanism as an accepted scientific doctrine. Even the reasons
advanced by Galileo for its acceptance have all since been rejected.
Owing to the discussions of it far and wide in the time of Galileo,
certain expressions in Copernicus' great work were required by the
Church authorities to be corrected so that his explanation of the
heavens should be presented as the theory that it was and not as an
absolute doctrine of science.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century the necessity for the
correction of the calendar became more urgently manifest and Pope
Gregory XIII invited Father Clavius, S.J., to take up the subject. At
this time also, as is described by Pope Leo XIII in his _Motu Proprio_
of 1891, "Gregory XIII [nearly half a century before the condemnation
of Galileo] ordered a tower to be erected in a convenient part of the
Vatican buildings and to be fitted out with {475} the greatest and
best instruments of the time. There he held the meetings of the
learned men to whom the reform of the calendar had been entrusted. The
tower stands to this day a witness to the munificence of its founder.
It contains a meridian line by Ignazio Danti of Perugia, with a round
marble plate in the centre, adorned with scientific designs. When
touched by the rays of the sun that are allowed to enter from above,
the designs demonstrate the error of the old reckoning and the
correctness of the reform." It was evidently the intention of the Pope
that there should be, as a permanent institution in Rome, an
astronomical observatory fully equipped and supported by the revenues
of the Holy See and with a prominent scientist at its head. This
purpose has been constantly kept in mind by the Popes ever since,
though not long after Gregory's time, but not at all because of any
opposition to science, the observatory founded by him came for more
than a century not to be used for the purpose intended because its
place was supplied by another Roman institution directly under the
patronage of the Popes.
This was the Roman College, the great central school of the Jesuits,
in the capital of Christendom. That Order was scarcely fifty years in
existence in Pope Gregory XIII's time, yet it was to a member of it
that the Pope turned for expert scientific direction in the correction
of the calendar. During the next three centuries science as patronized
by the Popes in Rome was mainly in the hands of the Jesuits. When it
is recalled that this Order is directly under the control of the Pope,
the professed members taking a special vow of obedience to him, it
will be understood that the Jesuit policy with regard to science must
be taken as representing the Papal position in its regard. If it is
further recalled that Poggendorff in his Biographical Lexicon of Men
Eminent in Science gives the names of some 500 Jesuits, though the
Order was not in a position to do any work in science until 1550, it
will be readily appreciated that the Popes acted wisely to encourage
an institute so prolific in _eminent_ scientists in its scientific
work at the Roman College, rather than maintain a separate scientific
department at the Vatican. The second institution would only have been
unnecessary duplication of staffs and the connection between teaching
and research at the Roman College was better for both functions.
Father Christopher Clavius, to whom more than to any other is due the
Gregorian reform of the calendar, a magnificent practical application
of astronomy and mathematics, is an excellent example {476} of the men
who were near the Popes as counsellors and scientific advisers just
before Galileo's time. Indeed Galileo and he were on the most friendly
terms until his death in 1612. The circle of his friends included such
men as Kepler, Tycho-Brahe and other great scientists of his time and
he was called "the Euclid of the sixteenth century." His works were
published at Mainz, in five huge folio volumes in a collective
edition. The third of these is a commentary upon the _Sphaera_ of John
Holywood (Joannes de Sacro Bosco, the great medieval mathematician)
and a dissertation upon the Astrolabe. The fourth volume contains a
very full discussion of Gnomonics, that is, the art of constructing
instruments of all kinds for determining the time by means of the sun.
The fifth volume contains his papers with regard to the reform of the
calendar. Most of these books were issued in many editions before and
after his death, and their publication over and over again shows very
clearly how much the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were interested in scientific subjects and how often and quite
properly they looked to great clerical teachers as their leaders in
science.
Just about the time that the Galileo matter was disturbing scientific
and ecclesiastical circles at Rome, Father Scheiner, the Jesuit
mathematician and astronomer became Professor of Mathematics in the
Roman College. He is the inventor of the pantograph or copying
instrument for drawings, and, being of an ingenious inventive
disposition, constructed a number of instruments for astronomical
investigation. He studied the sun carefully through colored glasses in
a helioscope and then conceived the idea of projecting the sun's image
on a screen in order to study its surface. Kepler used this same
method, but Scheiner is said to have the right of priority in it. In
March, 1611, he discovered by this method spots on the sun and while
the priority of discovery was disputed by Galileo, three men,
Fabricius, Galileo and Scheiner, seem all to have done their work
independently in this matter, Fabricius being probably the first in
time. For nearly a score of years Father Scheiner continued his
observations on the sun and published his great work, which in the
fashion of the day was called by the somewhat fantastic title, _Rosa
Ursina_. He had the true scientific spirit and devoted himself to
other subjects besides astronomy. He made important researches on the
eye, showing that the retina is the seat of vision, and devised the
optical experiment which bears his name.
One of Clavius' pupils was Father Matteo Ricci, S.J., founder of the
Catholic missions of China, who in the midst of his successful {477}
studies of mathematics and astronomy at the Roman College asked, at
the age of twenty-five, to be sent on the missions in farthest Asia
and was allowed to go the following year. He was selected to found
missions in China and succeeded in breaking through the Oriental
reserve and contempt for everything Occidental of the Chinese, and
thus gained a foothold for Christianity in the country. It was Father
Ricci's learning, particularly in cosmology, mathematics, astronomy
and geography, that attracted the attention of the Chinese. He
introduced astronomical studies at Pekin and brought over a series of
instruments for an observatory which were so well thought of that they
were preserved until our own time and some of them are said to have
been taken from the Chinese capital by the allied troops, after the
capture of the city following the Boxer Rebellion. He not only taught
the Chinese European science, but he sent back to Europe true accounts
of China and, above all, encouraged scientific studies among the
missionaries. The example he thus set has always been followed and
there has scarcely been a generation since when some Christian
missionary has not been making original observations in natural
history and collecting curious specimens to be sent home to scientists
in Europe, while at the same time faithfully pursuing his missionary
work.
Early in the seventeenth century, indeed just at the time when the
Galileo case was most prominent at Rome, Father Athanasius Kircher was
summoned to Rome and began his scientific work there, which included
contributions to every department of physical and even some of the
biological sciences. For some five years about the middle of the
seventeenth century Father Kircher devoted himself to astronomy and
the result was the publication, in 1656, of an astronomical treatise
called _Iter Celeste_. A second volume on astronomy appeared in 1660.
Anyone who is inclined to think that these contributions of the great
professor of science at the Roman College were only reviews of the
passing scientific opinions of the time, is not fully acquainted with
Father Kircher's work. He never failed to illuminate anything that he
set himself to study. His book on astronomy is of course a text-book,
but it is magnificently illustrated; it is a very large work which
shows the author's familiarity with the scientific literature of the
time, but at the same time reveals his own scientific genius. Father
Kircher was encouraged in every way by the Popes and high
ecclesiastics of Rome and by his own Order, and his great text-books
are among the bibliographic treasures of the history of science. Some
idea of {478} his industry may be gathered from the fact that he wrote
altogether some forty volumes folio on scientific subjects. He made
many original observations, invented a number of valuable scientific
instruments that are still in use, among others the vernier and magic
lantern, and was productively occupied with nearly every branch of
science in his time.
During the eighteenth century, before the suppression of the Jesuits,
another distinguished mathematician and astronomer, famous throughout
Europe, was working at the Roman College. This was Father Boscovitch,
to whom we owe the plans for the erection of an observatory above the
great pillars of the Church of the Gesu at Rome, which were not
destined to be executed until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Boscovitch is famous for a series of important works in mathematics
and astronomy. He wrote books on Sun Spots, the Transit of Mercury,
the Aurora Borealis, the Figure of the Earth, the Various Effects of
Gravity, the Aberration of the Fixed Stars, and other astronomical
problems. Pope Benedict XIV commissioned him and his brother Jesuit,
Father Le Maire, to carry out several precise meridian arc
measurements. He is the inventor of the rock crystal prismatic
micrometer, the ring micrometer. After the suppression of the Jesuits
Father Boscovitch was made Director of Optics for the Marine, a post
created for him in order to secure his services for France.
During the second period of the history of the Vatican Observatory at
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century,
the upper story of the Gregorian tower was fitted up with
meteorological and magnetic instruments with a seismograph, a Dolland
telescope, a small transit instrument and a pendulum clock and a
series of very careful observations on a number of subjects made. From
1800 to 1821 Gilii made an uninterrupted series of meteorological
observations, reading the instruments twice a day, at 6 a.m. and 2
p.m. The observations are published for seven years and the rest are
preserved as manuscripts in the Vatican Library. There are also
deposited astronomical observations of eclipses, comets, Jupiter's
satellites and of a transit of Mercury. Gilii laid down the meridian
line in front of St. Peter's with the obelisk as a gnomon and the
readings of the seasons by the length of the shadow. To him are due
also the bronze marks on the floor of St. Peters, giving the
comparative lengths of the greatest churches of the world. It was he
who placed the first lightning rod on the cupola of St. Peter's. The
{479} heavens, the weather, the lightning are supposed often to be set
by religiously inclined persons particularly under the care of
Providence, to be influenced by prayer, yet these are exactly the
three departments of science that were faithfully followed in their
detailed scientific aspects during all the centuries by the Papal
Astronomers under the patronage and with the approval of the Popes,
with the avowed purpose of discovering the natural laws under which
they occur.
Two of the distinguished teachers of mathematics and astronomy of the
end of the eighteenth century at Rome were Father Thomas Leseur,
professor at the Sapienza, and Professor Franz Jacquier, professor at
the Roman College, who wrote a commentary on Isaac Newton's
_Principia_ which did much to popularize Newton's work.
When, because political influence was brought to bear very strongly on
the Pope, the Jesuits were suppressed in 1773, the Roman College
passed from their hands and the real reason for allowing the Vatican
Observatory on the Papal grounds to fall into disuse was manifest, for
the Popes at once took up the question of re-establishing their own
observatory. Not long after the suppression we find Monsignor Filippo
Luigi Gilii placed in charge of the reorganized Roman Observatory by
Cardinal Zelada, who had been appointed Vatican Librarian in 1780, and
who found the old Gregorian tower available as a centre of
astronomical observation and investigation of which Rome had been
deprived since the suppression of the Roman College. After the
restoration of the Jesuits early in the nineteenth century, the Roman
College was opened once more and distinguished Jesuits, some of them
with world-wide reputations, did their work there. With the occupation
of Rome by the Italian government in 1870 the Jesuits were banished,
the Roman College with its observatory was once more deprived of the
learned expert direction of the Fathers of the Order, and once more
efforts were made for the re-establishment of a Vatican observatory
which is now in existence and under the direction of a Jesuit.
Another of the distinguished scientists of the eighteenth century who
taught for a time at Rome was Father Beccaria, whose name is well
known in the history of electricity. When not yet forty years of age
he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, always a much
envied distinction, and as a consequence of his election some of his
important papers relating to electricity and various astronomical
subjects were sent to the Royal Society {480} and published by them.
While no great discovery in physical science is attached to his name,
few men did as much as he to awaken enthusiasm and experimental
investigation into science in his time. He was one of the pioneers of
the great scientific movement of the nineteenth century. Priestley
called him one of the most eminent of all the workers in electricity
on the Continent, and Professor Chrystal, in his article on
electricity, in the Encyclopedia Britannica (ninth edition), gives him
an important place. He had been trained to be a professor of
experimental physics for his Order, and at this time every one of the
teaching orders with colleges at Rome had distinguished men among
their faculties.
The well-known astronomer, Father Piazzi, whose discovery of Ceres,
the first of the planetoids found in the space between Mars and
Jupiter, caused great excitement among astronomers, and whose
subsequent work in astronomy brought him membership in many of the
scientific academies of Europe, had been for some time a student and a
teacher in Rome. While there he was a colleague of Professor
Chiaramonti, who later became Pope Pius VII. During all his subsequent
brilliant scientific career his special friendship with the Pope
continued, and with all his many memberships in scientific bodies he
remained a member also of the Theatine religious order which he had
entered at a very early age.
After the restoration of the Jesuits the work in the sciences reverted
once more to the Jesuits at the Roman College and the Vatican
Observatory was discontinued. The interest of the Popes in science,
however, was very well illustrated by the apostolic letter of Leo XII,
_Quod divina sapientia_, which gave instructions to all Catholic
educational institutions, as to observatories, publications and
intercourse with foreign scientists.
The Jesuits at the Roman College reached noteworthy distinction for
their astronomical work during the nineteenth century. Father Secchi
came to be looked upon as probably one of the most distinguished
astronomers in Europe. He received many prizes for his observations,
for his invention of instruments and for important discoveries. His
work on the sun, published in his book, _Le Soleil_, represents some
of the most important contributions ever made to this department. It
was translated into most modern languages. His observations on the
corona of the sun during eclipses and especially photographs of the
corona, place him among the great original contributors to modern
astronomical knowledge. He made a critical examination and
classification of the spectra of four thousand stars entailing an
enormous amount of {481} work. He believed firmly that it was no use
making observations unless they were thoroughly recorded and made
available for others. His literary work in astronomy is almost
incredible. He sent nearly 700 communications to 42 scientific
journals, over 300 of which appeared in the _Comptes Rendues_ and in
the _Astronomische Nachrichten_, the French and German journals of
astronomy that are the authoritative records of contemporary
scientific work. In this country Newcomb and Langley quote from Secchi
frequently and use his illustrations. He was the founder of a new
branch of astronomy, Stellar Spectroscopy, and Secchi's types of solar
spectra will probably ever remain an essential illustration in
astronomical text-books.
Another of the astronomers who did excellent work among the Jesuits at
the Roman College during the nineteenth century was Father De Vico,
whose determination of the rotation period of Venus and the
inclination of its axis was considered so exhaustive that it was not
questioned for half a century. He also measured the eccentric position
of Saturn in his rings and observed the motions of the two inner moons
of this planet which had not been seen before this time except by
Herschel. Father De Vico also discovered eight comets, one of them
being the well-known comet with a period of rotation of five and a
half years which bears his name. Father De Vico and Father Secchi were
driven from Rome by the Revolution of 1848, but were brought back to
continue their work just as soon as it was possible. In the meantime
they continued to be personal friends of successive Popes, encouraged
in every way, aided in their work and looked upon as ornaments of the
Church. They were thoroughly respected by their Order and there was
never the slightest question of any possibility of all their studies
in science and all their profound investigation of the deepest
scientific subjects disturbing their faith in any way.
One of the well-known contributors to astronomy during the nineteenth
century was Father Benedict Sestini, who for his mathematical ability
was appointed assistant to Father De Vico of the Roman Observatory. He
was banished from Rome with his brother Jesuits by the Revolution of
1848, and taught at Georgetown College, Washington, D. C, for many
years. His principal work is his catalogue of star colors, published
in the Memoirs of the Roman College, 1845-47. He had very keen vision
and fine skill with the brush, so that his catalogue, which embodies
the entire B.A.C. Star Catalogue, from the North Pole to thirty
degrees south of the equator, will be invaluable for deciding the
question {482} whether there are stars variable in color. He made a
series of sunspot drawings which were engraved and published as
appendix A of the United States Naval Observatory volume for 1847,
printed in 1853. He was the teacher of mathematics and astronomy to
the American Jesuit students and wrote a series of text-books for that
purpose.
As we have said, the Italian government suppressed the Roman College,
declaring it State property and this prevented further work in the
observatory there, which had been for nearly half a century under
Father Secchi and Father De Vico, one of the most important centres in
the world of astronomical advance. Beggared by the Roman confiscations
which compelled the Popes to cut off all their support of scientific
and educational work except what related closely to clerical
education, it was not until 1888 that Pope Leo XIII found himself in a
position to re-establish a Roman observatory in connection with the
Vatican. In 1888 the Italian clergy, for the celebration of the Golden
Jubilee of Pope Leo XIII, presented to him, knowing from his interest
in science how agreeable such a gift would be to him, a collection of
astronomical instruments and the Gregorian tower was selected once
more for its former purposes and the Barnabite, Father Denza, the
well-known founder of the Italian Meteorological Society, became the
official head. Pope Leo XIII ceded to the Vatican Observatory a second
tower more than 400 metres distant from the Gregorian. As this was of
immense strength, the lower walls being some five yards in thickness,
it seemed strong and firm enough to support the thirteen-inch
photographic refractor which was ordered from Gauthier. Seven volumes
of observations were published during the next fifteen years, four
under Father Denza, a fifth under Father Lais and the last two under
Father Rodriguez, an Augustinian, who was a specialist in meteorology.
The last Pope, Pius X, encouraged the Vatican Observatory in every
way. The Gregorian tower being near the Vatican Library and too
distant from the observatory was restored to its original library
purpose and given over to the housing of the collection of Historical
Archives. The second round tower of the old Leonine Fortress, together
with the adjoining summer residence of Leo XIII, was devoted to
astronomical work. Father Hagan, S.J., who had been distinguished for
mathematical studies in connection with astronomy here in America, was
chosen as the director, and there has been a magnificent development
of the astronomical work. There is a new sixteen-inch visual telescope
in the second tower, {483} called the _Torre Pio X_. There are four
rotary domes covering the astrographic refractor in the Leonine Tower,
and some excellent work is being accomplished. Every encouragement is
given to it as far as the limited means of the Pope will permit, and a
fine library is being collected for future workers.
{484}
APPENDIX VII.
THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE.
There is a very general impression in many minds in our time that from
the very beginning of Christianity the interest of Church men in the
other world was so great that human attention was diverted just as far
as possible from concerns of all kinds with the stage of existence
through which man is passing here and now. As a consequence, there has
been the feeling that from the earliest time the Church was opposed to
science and scientific education, partly because this represented a
rather compelling diversion from other-worldly interests, but mainly
because it gave men control over natural forces which made life more
comfortable, raised men up in their own estimation and was opposed to
the spirit of humble faith best suited to the adherents of
Christianity. Hence it is concluded that there was always a Church
policy of deliberate opposition to science and indeed to all
intellectual development. This attitude is often declared to be best
represented by the expression attributed to one of the Fathers of the
Church, "Heaven lies open to the simple of mind, the little ones of
the earth, and the ignorant bear it away better than those who are
proud of intellect."
Any such impression with regard to the Fathers of the Church as to the
establishment of a policy of opposition to science and education is
quite erroneous and entirely contrary to the general trend of their
writings, even though it may be apparently substantiated by
expressions taken at random from the writings of the Fathers at
moments when they were emphasizing the truth that has always been so
manifest, that from the knowing ones of earth,--and our use of the
word knowing in the phrase is not complimentary,--especially from
those who are conceited in their knowingness, many things are
concealed that are revealed to those who are simple of heart and mind.
It has seemed worth while, however, to devote an appendix to this
subject of the real attitude of the Fathers to science. As Father
Leahy, in his "Astronomical Essays," Boston (Washington Press, 1910),
has answered Professor White's assumptions on this subject with a
knowledge of the Fathers I could not hope to emulate, I have preferred
to avail myself of his permission to quote him at length.
{485}
"By the Fathers we understand in general the Christian writers in
the Church's early history. In the West the period may be held to
have terminated with Isidore of Seville of the seventh century, and
in the East with John of Damascus of the eighth. The important
writers of this epoch number between fifty and a hundred, and their
works constitute, as may be imagined, a body of literature of vast
extent.
Our only present concern is to learn, if possible, what was the
general attitude of this army of ecclesiastical writers towards the
physical sciences, especially the science of astronomy. Explicit
treatises on astronomy we shall not, indeed, expect them to supply.
For their works when massed are seen to constitute a library of
theology, and in such a collection we should no more look for
scientific treatises than in a modern library for law. But inasmuch
as the Fathers of the Church have been accused, by Andrew D. White
and others, of having stayed and even thwarted the advance of
science, it becomes the interest and the duty of the apologist to
hunt up their scientific allusions that we may learn to what extent
the charges made are true.
_The Standstill of Science_.--It has often been alleged as
derogatory to the accomplishments of the Fathers, that they
contributed nothing to the progress of scientific knowledge. From
our modern standpoint we may be tempted to esteem this failure of
theirs as a cardinal sin. But it would be wrong in this instance, as
in every other, to render a verdict of guilt too hastily. We of the
twentieth century are prone to forget that there are other fields of
profitable intellectual exploration besides the physical, and that
there may be objects of research and thought worthier of study than
the material world.
The Fathers of the Church were philosophers and theologians occupied
with the problems of the world's origin and destiny, higher themes,
surely, than any with which physical science is concerned. It is the
fashion of the day to praise the ancient Greeks at the expense of
the patristic and medieval theologians. But the distinction is to a
large extent inconsistent, since both bodies of writers were at work
upon the selfsame themes. Philosophers like the Greeks, the Fathers
were like them moralists as well, engaged in the elaboration of
right rules of conduct. Finally, unlike the Greeks, the Fathers were
Scriptural scholars, many of them of extensive erudition, in homily
and commentary expounding with wonderful assiduity the Sacred Books
in which they believed that God had given His revelation to man.
_Analogous Examples_.--Should we be surprised, then, if men so
occupied failed to add much to the world's store of scientific
knowledge? Though it were admitted, as it cannot be in its entirety,
that they left physical science just where they found it, could not
an explanation be discovered that would exonerate them from all
blame? To justify such an apology, we do not even need to transport
ourselves in spirit back to their time, a process which, however,
strict fairness would demand. But in our own era we can think easily
of dozens and hundreds of men of highest respectability and most
beneficent accomplishment, men of books and men of affairs, jurists,
statesmen, historians and others, who have {486} themselves done
little or nothing for the onward march of Science. That the careers
of these men are profitless, who shall allege?
Again, the present writer has often thought of the almost parallel
example of the ancient Romans. It makes their history but little
less illustrious to learn that this conquering people did nothing
for Science's advance. Till Pliny of the first century after Christ,
what Roman was a scientist? They were a nation of soldiers,
statesmen, orators and jurists, and for seven hundred years they
pursued through such avenues their triumphant course. Yet what
writer of to-day rises to charge them with a cardinal sin, because
Science remained at a standstill among them for seven full
centuries? With these seven centuries can we not properly compare
the later seven in which the Christian Fathers were the teachers of
the civilized world?
_Heritage from the Greeks_.--Objection will be made, no doubt, that
the Fathers began their career with fairer start than the Romans,
forasmuch as they were the direct heirs of the astronomy and physics
of ancient Hellas. And they will be incriminated with having abused
their precious heritage, by not merely letting it lie fallow but by
raising every possible obstruction to its further cultivation. Such
is the tenor of Andrew D. White's accusations against them.
This well-known writer smiles at the puerilities of patristic
science. He cites from among them Cosmas of Egypt as having
propounded a perfectly childish theory of the structure of the earth
and grafted it on the science of theology. The ready answer to this
particular charge is that Cosmas' conception of the universe
belonged to cosmogony and not theology, and further that it had no
influence on subsequent thought. Returning to the general
arraignment, White rebukes the Fathers for having clung so
tenaciously to false opinions regarding the shape of the earth, the
motion of the heavens, and the nature of the firmament. And, most
seriously of all, he charges the Fathers with indifference and even
hostility to the study of science itself.
In a few short paragraphs it is impossible to give an adequate
rejoinder to these damaging complaints. But they demand some sort of
reply, however inadequate it be, as emanating from an American
scholar and statesman of high rank, and embodied in a work that has
free and wide circulation among our college students.
_Defence of Their Doctrine_.--The first palliation for the reputed
offence of the Fathers is that whatever false science they retail,
was practically all of it derived from the very sources which it is
the fashion of the day to laud in the highest degree. As far as was
consistent with their faith, the Christian Fathers were the pupils
of the Greeks. It was the latter and not the patristic writers who
invented the false theories of a solid firmament and a motionless
earth. If Europe and Arabia down to the Renaissance believed in the
Geocentric system, it was because they trusted Ptolemy the Greek,
till then admittedly the greatest of astronomers. And a similar
ancestry could be traced, we venture to say, for all or the major
part of their scientific errors as far as these may have extended.
_Restrictions Made by the Fathers_.--But if the Fathers were in
{487} general the heirs of the Greeks, they were not guilty of the
mistake of accepting the inheritance in its entirety. To a large
extent they could discern the chaff from the wheat, and were
actually at pains to make the separation. It ought to be known that
the scientific literature of the Grecians is teeming with the
wildest and vainest of speculations regarding all matters within the
scope of astronomical science. Here as elsewhere, the Greeks
speculated endlessly, contradictorily, emptily, and almost
aimlessly. In unfounded speculation they discoursed on all manner of
astronomical subjects, the shape and size and distance of the sun,
its nature and that of the moon and stars, and so on almost
indefinitely, with scarcely any agreement or concomitance of
opinion. There were almost as many diverse opinions as there were
men.
To this motley assemblage of groundless and conflicting theories the
Fathers had full access through the medium of Plutarch, the Greek
compiler. Eusebius, for example, the Father of Church History,
quotes Plutarch on just these topics for over thirty pages. If
Eusebius and the other Fathers grew impatient with all this
ill-assorted mass of _soi-disant_ science, shall we charge them as
Dr. White does with having been false to the interest of science?
Should we not rather maintain that they helped save science from its
enemies?
_Opposition to Science_.--It is only in the light of these
indisputable facts that we can understand the sayings of the Fathers
in which, as quoted by White, they upbraid science for its
inutility. Be it noted in passing that White is wont to quote them
not literally but freely, and apart from their context. Lactantius,
Eusebius, Augustine, and Basil, these are the four whom he selects
as representative. They are truly representative, and indeed any one
of them might stand for all.
Let Eusebius be our particular choice, for he discusses astronomy
more completely than the others. White alleges (_Warfare_, Vol. I,
p. 91) that Eusebius endeavored to bring scientific studies into
contempt, and quotes him as saying, "It is not through ignorance of
the things admired by them [scientific investigators], but through
contempt of their useless labor, that we think little of these
matters, turning our souls to better things."
Who would guess from this brief epitome of Eusebius' views that the
latter had devoted to the subject more than thirty pages? Who could
possibly surmise that he had taken pains to write out, under the
guidance of Plutarch, all the known opinions of the Greeks on some
thirty-nine problems, all but two or three of them astronomical? Let
the curious read Eusebius for themselves in the fifteenth book of
his _Praelectio Evangelica_. They will there discover what White
might have well acknowledged, that on not one of the problems are
the Greek philosophers in agreement. On the nature of the sun there
are nine opinions, on its size four, on its shape an equal number,
on the moon's nature seven. And this discrepancy of judgment
continues to the end. Moreover a large proportion of the theories
are of the most fantastic sort.
In the face of this chaotic wilderness of diverse, fluctuating and
contradictory teachings, what could Eusebius do but turn away in
impatience, and take up in their stead the only truth of which he
{488} felt certain, the truth of the Gospel? Such was his actual
procedure. "Does it not seem to you that we have rightly and
deservedly departed from the curiosity of all these men, so idle and
so full of error?" He confesses frankly that he can see no fruit or
utility for man in the teachings he has quoted. And he appeals for
his complete justification to Socrates, the wisest of the Greeks,
who in his day had adopted precisely the same stand. This and no
other is the argument and spirit of Eusebius.
_No Opposition to True Science_.--This was the temper, also, that
actuated the other Fathers named, Lactantius, Basil, and Augustine.
No doubt these men valued spiritual knowledge above material. But it
by no means follows from this that they undervalued Science. They
were scholars of extensive culture, Basil a graduate of Athens,
Augustine of Carthage, and Lactantius styled because of his
proficiency the Christian Cicero. They were well acquainted with the
learning of the Greeks. That they rebelled against the scientific
fantasies of the latter, is not a proof that they were hostile to
the advance of Science itself.
In the Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis expresses a sentiment
quite similar to theirs. "Surely a humble husbandman that serveth
God, is better than a proud philosopher who, neglecting himself, is
occupied in studying the course of the heavens." Like the Fathers, à
Kempis had reason to be disgusted with the astronomy of his time,
for it was beginning to be impregnated again with the virus of
Astrology. By refusing to follow such pseudo-scientific teachings,
both à Kempis and the Fathers did a real if seemingly negative
service to the science of astronomy.
"He was born under a lucky star." Language of this sort, used now
only in pleasantry, recalls a form of superstition which was once
accepted seriously by all men throughout the civilized world. In
many a period, mankind has believed literally that the stars and
planets exercised a real influence in shaping human lives. And there
have been many epochs, ancient, medieval, and even modern, when
astrology, the telling of fortunes by the stars, was given a rank
among the learned professions.
Even now there occur occasional sporadic outbreaks of the same
superstition. Along with other quacks and necromancers, astrologers
are still occasionally in evidence, advertising their trade through
the columns of the press. Indeed it is affirmed by the Catholic
Encyclopedia that the growth of occultistic ideas is reintroducing
astrology into society.
_Errors of Astrology_.--Whatever the popularity of this practice in
the past, and whatever its prospective vogue in the near future, it
is to be set down without qualification or hesitation as a delusion
and a snare. To suppose that the heavenly bodies have an influence
on human conduct is in its origin a pagan error, closely allied with
the pagan myth that the sun, moon and stars are presided over by as
many separate deities. Only thus could have originated the delusion
that Jupiter and Venus would procure a blessed destiny, and Mars and
Saturn a troubled one, for the children born at the time of their
rising.
Nor can the cult be justified by an array of the names of those who
have been its votaries. It is true that many astronomers in the
{489} past, including the great Kepler himself, have practised the
astrological art, casting horoscopes for their clients. But in most
cases it would be found, at least in the modern period, that these
scientists merely yielded through tolerance to the weakness of their
age. In true astronomy there is no place whatever for astrology.
Besides being groundless the practice is to be condemned for its
perilous moral tendencies. Distracting the soul from the worship of
the spiritual God, who alone governs the universe, it substitutes
for His action that of mere material objects, stars and planets,
which it thus elevates to the rank of lesser gods or demons.
Pretending to forecast from birth what each man's course in life
shall be, it robs the will of its proper share in moulding human
conduct.
_The Christian Fathers_.--An interesting testimony to the former
prevalence of this erroneous belief is found in one of Sir Walter
Scott's novels, "Guy Mannering," whose whole plot turns upon the
fulfilment of an astrological prediction. Reading the history at
hand the novelist had learned what complete sway the cult had
formerly exercised, almost down to the time of his writing. It would
have interested the celebrated author to know that there was,
however, one long period in which astrology was absolutely and
effectually excluded from Christian Europe. For over a thousand
years Christendom remained free from this blight, thanks to the
teachings of the Fathers of the Church.
In discussing the relations of the Fathers towards the astral
science, we have already shown how they purged it of some of its
grossest errors. But their principal service to the science remains
now to be told. For amongst all the vagaries of the science of the
heavens, astrology is both in theory and in practice the most
deplorable. That the Fathers placed the weight of their great
authority in the scale against this superstition, is one of the most
praiseworthy of their achievements.
_First Efforts at Reform_.--At the time that the Fathers began to
write, in the century just following the labors of the Apostles,
astrology formed everywhere an integral part of the science of
astronomy. It was taught in all the schools, Chaldean, Jewish,
Grecian and Roman. Almost from the beginning the defenders of the
Christian faith proceeded to attack this pernicious error, realizing
how inimical it was to the spread of truth which Christ had come to
impart. Already in his address to the Greeks, Tatian was heard
denouncing the absurdities of Grecian astronomy and astrology. This
was in the middle of the second century, just at the close of what
is called the Apostolic Period.
A little later, Tertullian, the famed apologist of the then
flourishing African Church, placed himself on record as the
uncompromising enemy of astrology. With his usual vehemence of
language he declared that "of astrologers there should be no
speaking even" among Christians; and went to the length of saying
that "he cannot hope for heaven whose finger or wand abuses the
heavens." These and many similar utterances may be found in his
Treatise on Idolatry.
_Respect for True Astrology_.--With this denunciation of magic and
idolatry there went hand in hand, however, a genuine respect {490}
for the proper science of the heavens. Contemporary with Tertullian,
and like him one of the great Christian masters of the period, was
Clement Alexandria. To the Catholic astronomer of to-day it is
gratifying to find this Father of the Egyptian Church giving
generous testimony to the worth of astronomical science. With just
discrimination he praises astronomy as "leading the soul nearer to
the creative power, as helpful to navigation and husbandry, and as
making the soul in the highest degree observant, capable of
perceiving the true and detecting the false."
Another contemporary, Hippolytus, was indeed unsparing in his
denunciation of astrology. In a treatise of eleven quarto pages,
contained in his "Refutation of All Heresies," he riddled with
merciless logic the vain pretensions of the Greek astrologers. But
he showed that he had no quarrel with a well ordered study of the
heavens, by giving liberal praise to Ptolemy, the ablest of the
astronomers.
_A Universal Teaching_.--In far distant Syria, then a choice realm
in the Church's patrimony, there was at the beginning of the third
century another school of Christian philosophers who joined with
their brethren in West and East in waging war on the same dread
enemy. A Syrian work, called the Book of the Astrologers, has two
quarto pages of excellent quality recounting and scoring the
absurdities of current astrological practices. It is so like
Hippolytus' work that one seems an echo of the other.
Perhaps the most interesting of all these concordant denunciations
is that found in the "Recognitions of Clement," a patristic writing
probably of the third century. Here the treatises on astrology run
to full ten chapters, a sign that the author had abundant knowledge
of the subject. In this work astrology is refuted particularly from
the moral point of view. It is convicted of the double charge of
being fatalistic in its tendency and subversive of all morality.
"Men's conduct," says the author's thesis, "is due to their own free
will and not to the configuration of the planets."
_Golden Age of Patristic Literature_.--So ran on in perfect unity
and harmony the steady flow of patristic teaching. It reached its
climax, as we should expect to find, in the heroic writers of the
fourth century, the golden era of patrology. Lactantius, the
Christian Cicero, re-echoed the voices of the past in pronouncing
astrology the work of demons. An Augustine, the greatest of the
Fathers, confirmed the decision of his predecessors by protesting
against the amalgamation of astrology with the true science of
nature.
So effectual indeed was the opposition to astrology of the earlier
Christian writers, confirmed by the masters of the post-Nicene
period, that the practice came to be regarded by all the faithful as
a superstition and a danger, and continued to be so esteemed down to
the time of the Crusades. For a full millennium, Christian Europe
midst all its vicissitudes was spared the absurdities of
astrological belief and practice, thanks to the patristic school of
writers.
_A Surprising Omission_.--We have thought it well to bring to light
these none too well-known facts regarding one important part of the
astronomical teachings of the Fathers. How they could have {491}
escaped the attention of Andrew D. White, or how he could have
failed to find place for them in his voluminous work, it is
difficult to understand.
His book bristles with accounts of superstitions, always telling
against the theologians, and in favor of the scientists. But
astrology is absent even from the index of his work. Had he allotted
it a chapter, his numerous readers would have learned that one great
school of theological writers, enduring for a thousand years, did
wage war on a certain sort of science, to wit, the pseudo-science of
astrology.
{492}
APPENDIX VIII.
SCIENCE IN AMERICA.
For Americans it is very probable that the chapter in the history of
science which will demonstrate most clearly that there was not only no
opposition on the part of the Popes or the Church authorities to the
teachings of science or its development, but on the contrary
encouragement and patronage, in spite of our English traditions to the
contrary, is that which gives even very briefly the story of the
evolution of science and its teaching on the American continent.
Notwithstanding the very prevalent impression, indeed we might say the
practically universal persuasion, that there was nothing worth while
talking about in any department of education in America before the
nineteenth century, except what little there was in the English
colonies, and while it is confidently assumed that above all science
received no attention from our Southern neighbors, Spanish America not
only surpassed English America in education, but far outdistanced
English America in what was accomplished for scientific research and
the evolution of the knowledge of a large number of scientific
subjects in a great many ways.
Even those among us who thought themselves well read in American
history have, as a rule, known almost nothing of this until
comparatively recent years. Professor Bourne of Yale, whose untimely
death deprived the United States of a distinguished historical
scholar, was the first to point out emphatically how far ahead of the
English were the Spanish colonies in every mode of education, but
particularly in the cultivation of science. In many places Prescott
had more than hinted at this, but the materials for the whole story
were not available until our time.
Some of Bourne's paragraphs represent a severe arraignment of the
ignorance that has characterized so much of our supposed knowledge of
the Spanish Americans and their culture in the past. After reading
them it is easy to realize the truth of the expression that another
distinguished university man from the United States made use of not
long ago, after having visited the South American countries. He
declared that it was time for North Americans to wake up and
_discover_ South America. Literally we have known almost nothing about
it, indeed in a certain sense we have known much less than nothing,
since we were quite sure that we knew {493} practically all there was
to know while failing to know much that as Americans we ought to have
known.
Two Spanish-American universities were founded under Papal charters
almost a full century before Harvard as our first small college in
English America began its career. Harvard was not to be a university
in any proper sense of the term for a full century and a half after
its foundation, while the universities of Mexico and Peru, largely
under the influence of the ecclesiastical authorities and owing nearly
everything to Church patronage under the Spanish Crown, had all the
essential university faculties before the close of the sixteenth
century. In spite of the predominant Church influence, which, if we
were to credit former English traditions, must have been fatal to the
evolution of science, Professor Bourne's researches show that in _the
sixteenth century_ the Spanish-American universities were already
doing such scientific work as the students in English America became
interested in only during the _nineteenth century_. Obviously I prefer
to quote Professor Bourne's own words for such startling assertions.
He said in his chapter on "The Transmission of Culture" in his volume
in The American Nation Series, "Spain in America":
"Not all the institutions of learning founded in Mexico in the
_sixteenth century_ can be enumerated here, but it is not too much
to say that in number, range of studies and standard of attainments
by the officers _they surpassed anything existing in English America
until the nineteenth century_. Mexican scholars made distinguished
achievements in some branches of science, particularly medicine and
surgery, but pre-eminently linguistics, history and anthropology.
Dictionaries and grammars of the native languages and histories of
the Mexican institutions are an imposing proof of their scholarly
devotion and intellectual activity. Conspicuous are Toribio de
Motolinia's '_Historia de las Indias de Nueva España,_' Duran's
'_Historia de las Indias de Nueva España_' but most important of all
Sahagun's great work on Mexican life and religion."
Indeed, it is with regard to science in various forms that one finds
the most surprising contributions from these old-time scholars. While
the English in America were paying practically no attention to
science, the Spaniards were deeply interested in it. Dr. Chanca, a
physician who had been for several years physician-in-ordinary to the
King and Queen (Ferdinand and Isabella) and was looked upon as one of
the leaders of his profession in Spain, was appointed by the Crown to
accompany Columbus on his second expedition, partly for the sake of
the health of those who went, but also in order to make scientific
notes on American subjects. The report {494} of this scientific
excursion is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the state of
science of the time and furnishes precious information with regard to
Indian medicine, Indian customs, Spanish knowledge of and interest in
botany and metallurgy, as well as certain phases of zoology and other
scientific departments, which serves to show how wide was the training
in science of this Spanish physician of over four hundred years ago.
Dr. Chanca's epistle was republished as one of the Miscellaneous
Publications of the Smithsonian Institution and a series of articles
with regard to him from the pen of Dr. Fernandez de Ybarra has
appeared in medical and other journals of the United States. Chanca is
the author of a medical work on the Treatment of Pleurisy, published
after his return in 1506, and a commentary on Arnold of Villanova's
_De conservanda juventute et retardanda senectute_, "The Conservation
of Youth and the Retardation of Old Age." Such a work is all the more
interesting at this time because we know of De Soto's search for a
"Fountain of Youth" in Florida and the popular belief in the
existence of some such fabled miracle-worker for the old. Indeed most
people seem inclined to think that such an idea represented very
characteristically the naive medical science of the time. The Fountain
of Youth was only like the many wonderful remedies--nearly always they
are announced to have come from long distances--that are supposed to
renew youthful vigor and which are sold so plentifully in our time. To
take such popular notions as an index of the medical science of either
that time or our own is quite absurd. The genuine medical science of
this period is, as I have shown in my volume "The Century of
Columbus," a never-ending source of surprise by its anticipation of
many ideas that are usually supposed to be much later in origin and
not a few of which are fondly supposed to be original discoveries of
our time.
Evidently Spanish interest in science was broad and deep and this is
confirmed by the story of the medical schools in connection with these
Spanish-American universities which is of special significance. My own
medical _alma mater_, the University of Pennsylvania, whose medical
school was the first in the United States, erected a tablet some years
ago in which it was at least hinted that this was the oldest medical
school in America. A few years later, on the erection of a second
tablet to the earliest medical faculty, additional knowledge having
come in the meantime, the inscription on this was worded so as to
refer to the first school of medicine in North America.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL, MEXICO (ANOTHER VIEW) This hospital, as was
noted in the caption to the other view of it (opp. page 272), is the
oldest foundation of this kind in America (1524) and is still in
existence supported by the original endowment. The second oldest
hospital in America was that of Santa Fé (in Mexico) founded in 1531
by a remarkable man who became Bishop of Michoacan, and who supported
it at his own expense, besides forming at Santa Fe a community of
thirty thousand Indians who lived like monks, practising hospitality
and all the works of charity (_A History of Nursing, Nutting and
Dock, New York_).]
{495}
The medical school of the University of Lima, founded before the end
of the sixteenth century, had meanwhile been discovered. Subsequently
the medical school of the University of Mexico came to be known and
the next tablet will have to be worded with due reference to that. The
first chair in medicine was founded at the University of Mexico about
1580, almost two centuries before our first formal academic medical
teaching in the United States was organized about 1770. During the
course of a generation altogether seven chairs in medicine were
founded in Mexico, including a chair of anatomy and surgery, a special
chair of dissection, a chair of therapeutics and one of prognostics.
The medical school of the University of Lima was organized about the
same time.
With our rather complacent modern method of belittling the past and
our disinclination to admit that the Spaniards were doing anything in
science that the English Americans were not to think of for nearly two
centuries, it would be easy to conclude that the teaching at these
medical schools must have been altogether trivial and of no
significance. When it is learned that most of the teaching was founded
on Hippocrates and Galen some of our generation might think it
hopelessly backward, but it would be well for those who think so, to
be reminded that during the century following the sixteenth, Sydenham
in England, and Boerhaave in Holland, the most distinguished medical
men of their time who are deservedly looked up to with great reverence
by most of the distinguished teachers of ours, were both of them
pleading for a return to the broad, sane views and insistence on
clinical observation of Hippocrates and Galen. As a matter of fact the
medical schools of both the University of Mexico and of Lima were
furnishing quite as good a medical training as the average medical
school of Europe at that time. They were modelled closely after the
Spanish universities and were in intimate relations with them, even
exchanging professors and students, and at the middle of the
seventeenth century at least maintaining excellent standards.
From the very beginning, then, the Spanish Americans made a definite
attempt to develop scientific knowledge in America. In medicine, in
botany, in pharmacology, as well as in geography, philology,
ethnology, and anthropology, there are magnificent contributions made
by Spanish scholars. Many a Spanish university student and teacher
spent time in this country investigating the properties of plants,
especially their relations to medicine, and laying precious
foundations in botany. Besides there were university scholars at home
in Spain taking advantage of these field investigations to {496}
compile works of serious character which are well known by those who
are familiar with the history of botany and pharmacology. What the
Spaniards were doing in America the Portuguese were doing in India and
South Africa, and a very serious attempt was made during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries to bring to Europe every possible material,
plant or mineral, that might be of value for human health and at the
same time to increase the bounds of human knowledge by careful
investigation.
Nor was this thoroughly scientific and practical education confined
only to the upper classes nor exclusively to those of Spanish birth
and blood. Even "the wild Indians," as Bourne tells us, "were
successfully gathered together in a village called a Mission where,
under the increasing supervision of the friars, they were taught the
elements of letters and trained to peaceful, industrious and religious
lives. In fact every mission was an industrial school, where the
simple arts were taught by the friars, themselves in origin plain
Spanish peasants." He continues, "Spanish America, from California and
Texas, to Paraguay and Chili, was fringed with such establishments,
the outposts of civilization, where many thousands of Indians went
through a schooling which ended only with their lives." Bourne goes so
far as to say "every town, Indian as well, as Spanish, was by law
required to have its church, hospital, and school for teaching Indian
children Spanish and the elements of religion." The Spaniards were
actually anticipating for the young Indians some of the modes of
vocational education, interest in which is only just being aroused
among us at the present time.
No wonder that the work of conversion in Mexico followed hard upon the
heels of conquest, and to quote Bourne's words farther, "The Aztec
priesthood relaxed its bonds and the masses were relieved from the
earlier burdens of the faith. In the old world the progress from
actual to vicarious sacrifice for sin had been slow and painful
through the ages; in the new it was accomplished in but a single
generation. The old religion had inculcated a relatively high
morality, but its dreadful rites overhung the present life like a
black cloud and for the future it offered little consolation." ..."The
work of the Church was rapidly adapted to the new field of labor." The
triumph of the Church's influence was the preservation of the natives
and their gradual uplift. This was a slow process and required almost
divine patience, but it was infinitely better than the method by which
the English-speaking colonies, in a chapter of history that is almost
untellable in its {497} completeness, brought the natives of the
country that they had invaded to ruin and practically obliteration.
This experiment in applied sociology so successfully accomplished must
be placed to the credit of the Spaniards also, and it stands out with
all the more interest by contrast with English neglect of duty.
While seeing so clearly all that was accomplished in Mexico under the
influence of the Church for education and social progress and
scientific teaching and training in the arts and crafts and trades,
Professor Bourne cannot quite bring himself to condemn entirely the
almost complete failure that characterized all the relations of the
English-speaking peoples to the natives here in America and he even
seems to find some justification for their harsh treatment of the
Indians. I think that our point of view generally has changed a great
deal in this matter even in the last ten or fifteen years since we
have come to recognize our social obligations more clearly and, above
all, have come to appreciate better what is meant by "the white man's
burden" in his relations to the dark-skinned peoples who are lower in
the scale of civilization than we are. The Civil War did much to
correct American notions on this point, but our attention to problems
in the Philippines has done even more. I shall leave Professor
Bourne's paragraph to speak for itself and each reader to say for
himself whether the English method of dealing with the Indian is
justified by comparison with the ruthless processes of nature as
Professor Bourne would hint.
"Far different was the advancing frontier in English America with
its clean sweep, its clash of elemental human forces. Our own method
prepared a home for a more advanced civilization and a less variously
mixed population and its present fruits seem to justify it as the
ruthless processes of nature are justified; but a comparison of the
two systems does not warrant self-righteousness on the part of the
English in America."
Indeed we might well say far from it, for the almost literal
obliteration of the Indian in North America as of the natives in
Australia and New Zealand, only so much more complete there,
represents ever to be regretted blots on the history of civilization
for which there can be no possible justification.
Professor Bourne does not hesitate to continue the comparison of
Spanish and English America down even to our own time and in doing so
points out that our advances which have for the time being put us so
far ahead of the Spanish Americans are mostly the gains of the age of
steam and are due to the fact that it was hard for their mixed
population with so many barbarous elements {498} in them to keep up
with our comparatively homogeneous population, homogeneous at least in
the sense of coming from the same strata and civilization in Europe.
While our Indians have been almost entirely obliterated there are more
Indians alive in Mexico and in South America to-day than there were
when Columbus landed. With this fact in mind Professor Bourne's
comparison and contrast takes on renewed interest and his apology for
the Spanish Americans is all the more telling.
"If we compare Spanish America with the United States a hundred
years ago we must recognize that while in the North there was a
sounder body politic, a purer social life and a more general
dissemination of elementary education, yet in Spanish America there
were both vastly greater wealth and greater poverty, _more imposing
monuments of civilization, such as public buildings, institutions of
learning and hospitals, more populous and richer cities, a higher
attainment in certain branches of science_. No one can read
Humboldt's account of the City of Mexico and its establishments for
the promotion of science and the fine arts without realizing that
whatever may be the superiorities of the United States over Mexico
in these respects, they have been mostly the gains of the age of
steam."
If one reads Champlain's account of the City of Mexico as he saw it at
the very beginning of the seventeenth century, as I have quoted it in
the chapter "America in Columbus' Century," in "The Century of
Columbus" (_Catholic Summer School Press. New York, 1914_), it will be
quite clear that Humboldt was only seeing the natural development of
culture and artistic progress that was already in evidence in the
early sixteenth century.
"During the first half-century," Bourne continues, "after the
application of steam to transportation Mexico weltered in domestic
turmoils arising out of the crash of the old regime. If the rule of
Spain could have lasted half a century longer, being progressively
as it was during the reign of Charles III; if a succession of such
viceroys as Revilla Gigedo, in Mexico, and De Croix and De Taboaday
Lemos, in Peru, could have borne sway in America until railroads
could have been built, intercolonial intercourse ramified, a
distinctly Spanish-American federal State might possibly have been
created, capable of self-defence against Europe, and inviting
cooperation rather than aggression from the neighbor in the North."
If the effort to understand Spanish America now so manifest will only
go to the extent of having our people realize the full truth that
until the nineteenth century English America was far behind Spanish
America in facilities for higher education, in culture and literature,
in the application of the arts to municipal life and, above {499} all,
in interest in science, then the prevalent impression that the Popes
and the Catholic Church are opposed to genuine progress and true
science will disappear. Catholic America was far ahead of Protestant
America in scientific education and research until the untimely break
from Spain left the Spanish-American countries the prey of political
disturbances.
{500}
APPENDIX IX.
THE DANGER OF A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE.
_Professor Draper's "The History of the Conflict between Religion
and Science."_
What I have tried to emphasize in this volume is that the arguments
advanced to show the opposition of the Catholic Church to science are
founded on actual ignorance of the history of science or
misunderstandings of particular incidents of that history. Not only
was there no policy of opposition to science, but on the contrary
encouragement of interest in scientific subjects, patronage of
scientific workers and even definite endowment of scientific research
by the ecclesiastical authorities. The tradition of Church opposition
to science is founded especially on lack of knowledge of what was done
for science in the medieval period and a misunderstanding of the
medieval universities. This tradition owed its origin partly to the
Renaissance, which, having rediscovered Greek, despised whatever
Western Europe had accomplished during the preceding centuries and
spoke of all that was done as Gothic, as if only worthy of barbarous
Gothic ancestors.
Another large factor, however, in the creation of this tradition and
one which meant more for us here in America than the Renaissance, was
the religious revolt of the sixteenth century in Germany which has
been called the Reformation. The reformers made it a point to
minimize, if not actually to misrepresent, what had been accomplished
under the old Church regime, and this Protestant tradition lived on
here in America with much more vitality even than in Europe.
The consequence was the bringing up of a series of generations, who,
if not actually believing as so many absurdly did, that the Pope of
Rome was the Scarlet Woman and the Church the Babylon of the
Apocalypse, were quite sure at least that no good could possibly have
come out of the Nazareth of pre-Reformation times. It is only in
recent years that we have come to recognize that all the talk about
the Dark Ages is, as John Fiske said, simply due to ignorance of the
time and its accomplishment. The later medieval period might well be
called the "Bright Ages" for its art and architecture, its magnificent
literature, its interest in education and {501} in scholarship, its
development of democracy and its formulation of the great laws and
constitutions by which the rights of men were guaranteed in
practically every country in Europe. Just as soon as this true state
of affairs with regard to the medieval period is recognized, then all
question of any policy of Church opposition to education and science
disappears.
I have illustrated the lack of knowledge of the true history of
science as the basis of the arguments for the thesis of Church
opposition to science in the present volume by impugning what
President White advances as facts. It can be illustrated still better,
however, from another book written twenty years before President
White's, even a little consideration of which shows how the whole
status of the arguments with regard to the relations of Church and
science has changed during a single generation. Our growing knowledge
of history has literally taken away all the ground on which the older
controversialists used to stand. This is the "History of the Conflict
Between Religion and Science" by Professor John W. Draper, which was
issued in 1874, just forty years ago, and already in 1875 had entered
its third edition, so that the book sold almost as a popular novel at
that time and evidently attracted wide attention. The volume was
accorded the privilege of publication in the International Scientific
Series, and as this set is among the recognized serious books of the
time, some of them classics in science and most of them representing
important contributions to knowledge, no wonder most readers never
thought of doubting its authority or above all questioning its
"facts."
Some of Dr. Draper's work made him deservedly one of the best-known
biological scientists of the United States in his time. He had had a
very striking career. As a medical student at the University of
Pennsylvania he reported in his thesis for the doctorate in medicine,
which had become at this time usually such a commonplace statement of
conventional science that it was shortly after given up as a
requirement, a series of observations on absorption through membranes,
using bubbles for his experimental work, that attracted the special
commendation of the faculty and the attention of the scientific world.
He was not yet thirty years of age when he made the first photograph
of a human being--that of his sister--ever made and in 1840
successfully secured the first photographs of the moon. During the
next ten years he made a series of observations on the spectrum which
attracted deserved attention and anticipated not a little of
Kirchoff's work. Melloni, himself a distinguished Italian physicist,
reported these observations {502} to the academy of Naples. Draper's
text-book of physiology was without doubt the best medical text-book
issued in America up to that time and deservedly held its place for
many years in our medical schools.
It was no wonder then that Draper received many distinctions in the
shape of membership in foreign scientific societies, honorable
mentions, and prizes. His works were translated into many of the
European languages. Late in life he gave up his experimental and
scientific work to devote himself to the writing of history. His
history of the Civil War was widely read both in Europe and America.
His "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," which only a
little reading now in the light of recent knowledge of the Middle Ages
shows us to be a caricature of the philosophy of history, was
translated into several foreign languages and was probably more widely
read than any serious work by an American author up to that time. What
was very rare for an American book at that period it was read by a
great many European teachers and students. All this gave added
distinction to his writing on the subject of the relations of science
and religion, and so it is easy to understand that he was considered
by many to have made an almost final summary of this important
controversy.
Professor Draper's book then became a sort of bible, that is a book of
books, for a great many American teachers of science and, above all,
for the younger generation of university lecturers who were to have
the shaping of opinions among the students of scientific departments
of our colleges and universities during the last quarter of the
nineteenth century. It does not seem too much to assume that most of
the maturer scientists who are now teaching in the university
scientific departments of this country, read Professor Draper's book
and were led by it to an almost unshakeable conviction that religion
and, above all, the Catholic Church, fearful lest science should take
men away from her influence, had been constantly opposed to all true
scientific progress, and what was more unpardonable, that religion as
represented by the Church had been for the same reason a bitter enemy
of any and every social progress that might lead to the real
development of mankind. For them under Draper's inspiration it seemed
that the deliberate Church policy was that if men were not happy here
they would look with all the more eagerness to happiness hereafter and
take all the means offered by the Church to secure it. That such a
conclusion impugned the motives of millions of men whom their own
generation had thoroughly respected and yielded to the most {503}
dangerous of human ideas, suspicion, made no difference. No good could
come out of the Nazareth of the Catholic Church.
It is quite certain that a great many of the younger teachers of
science of that time who are still alive, even when not entirely
conscious of the source of their opinions as to the relations of
science and religion and the Church and education, have at the back of
their minds certain prejudices, founded on the influence produced on
them during their plastic, formative state of mind by the reading of
Professor Draper's book. Indeed, so firm is the feeling in many of
these men, that this whole subject is settled for them beyond the
possibility of any modification, that they have insulated their minds
from any further currents of information.
Controversy is distasteful at best; to find out that one has been
cherishing a mistaken notion for years, is always disturbing as one
grows older, and so it is not surprising that many of these men
frequently use expressions with regard to the supposed relations of
Church and science that are quite incompatible with what is now very
generally known of the history of science. Their minds are made up,
and they simply refuse to bring for a second time any of these
subjects before the bar of judgment. Besides, though they would resent
any such imputation as to their own state of mind, they have the
feeling that people with religious convictions are prone to see only
one side, and, therefore, anything that may be said on the other side
is only a bit of special pleading for a conviction that no reasoning
and no argument would change. They argue, as a consequence, that it
would be quite useless for them to read the other side with any
reasonable hope of getting at the real facts. This attitude of
scientists is very different from the open-mindedness that is supposed
to be characteristic of the devotees of science; but it is very human.
Now the interesting fact with regard to Professor Draper's books is
that Professor Draper, a scientist, did not know the history of
science at all. He was entirely ignorant of the great advances that
were even then being made, with regard to our knowledge of the growth
of science during the medieval period. He thought that there was very
little, indeed practically no science, during that period. Looking
about for a reason, he made the Church a scapegoat. The publication
during the past generation of many German volumes on the history of
the different sciences--and these German students went straight to the
original documents--has shown us that there were magnificent
developments of science during the medieval and early Renaissance
periods, when the Church was in control of the educational
institutions and of every phase of {504} academic work. The story of
the opposition between religion and science falls to the ground at
once when these facts are known. Some of them were already in process
of publication even in Draper's time, but he knew nothing of them. He
was so sure that there was nothing to know in this matter, that he
probably did not bother his head very much about trying to get the
latest results of scholarship in the matter.
Professor Draper's summary of the relations of the Church to science
or learning, and his declaration of her absolute refusal to recognize
anything as scholarship, except what was deduced from the Scriptures,
shows how far a man can go in his assumption of knowledge when he
knows literally nothing about a subject. For him the Dark Ages knew
nothing because he knows nothing about them. If they knew anything, he
would know it, but he does not. Of one or two men he knows something,
but they are exceptions to the general rule of absolute negation of
intellectual interests and developments. Draper said: [Footnote 64]
[Footnote 64: Page 250.]
"In the annals of Christianity, the most ill-omened day is that in
which she separated herself from science. She compelled Origen, at
that time (A.D. 231) its chief representative and supporter in the
Church, to abandon his charge in Alexandria, and retire to Caesarea.
In vain through many subsequent centuries did her leading men spend
themselves in--as the phrase then went--drawing forth the internal
juice and marrow of the Scriptures for the explaining of things.
Universal history from the third to the sixteenth century shows with
what result. The Dark Ages owe their darkness to this fatal policy.
Here and there, it is true, there were great men, such as Frederick
II and Alphonso X, who, standing at a very elevated and general
point of view, had detected the value of learning to civilization,
and, in the midst of the dreary prospect that ecclesiasticism had
created around them, had recognized that science alone can improve
the social condition of man."
Of course the man who wrote that either knew nothing at all about a
whole series of triumphs of human intelligence, or else he
deliberately put them out of his mind. One wonders if he had ever even
heard of Dante, of whom more has been written than of any man who ever
lived. Those triumphs of art, architecture, the arts and crafts,
engineering, construction work of the highest genius, the Gothic
cathedrals and the great public buildings, town halls, hospitals,
university buildings, would surely have appeared to him as
representing magnificent intellectual--and social--accomplishments,
had he appreciated anything of their real significance or allowed
himself for a moment to get out of the narrow circle of {505}
interests in which he was unfortunately placed. Our architecture in
his time was cheap; our art absent; our crafts lacked development; our
civic and university architecture of the quarter century before he
wrote was literally a disgrace, and of course Professor Draper could
not be expected to appreciate the achievements of the Middle Ages in
those departments in which his own generation lacked so much.
It is especially striking to take a paragraph of Professor Draper's,
in which he sums up a whole movement, and place beside it a paragraph
of a serious and informed student of the same subject. Professor
Draper inherited the old traditions of lazy monks, living in idleness,
a drain on the country, of absolutely no benefit to themselves or to
others. Professor Draper wrote: [Footnote 65]
[Footnote 65: Page 267.]
"While thus the higher clergy secured every political appointment
worth having, and abbots vied with counts, in the herds of slaves
they possessed--some, it is said, owned not fewer than twenty
thousand--begging friars pervaded society in all directions, picking
up a share of what still remained to the poor. There was a vast body
of non-producers, living in idleness and owning a foreign
allegiance, who were subsisting on the fruits of the toil of the
laborers. It could not be otherwise than that small farms should be
unceasingly merged into the larger estates; that the poor should
steadily become poorer; that society far from improving, should
exhibit a continually increasing demoralization."
As a commentary on this, read the following paragraph from Mr. Ralph
Adams Cram's book on "The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain," in which he
describes what the monasteries actually did for the people. Mr. Cram
has made a special study of the subject in connection with the
magnificent architecture which these medieval monks developed, and
which he would like to have our people appreciate and emulate.
Professor Draper is much more positive, but Mr. Cram is much more
convincing. [Footnote 66]
[Footnote 66: _The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain_. New York: The
Churchman Co., 1905, p. 458.]
"At the height of monastic glory the religious houses were actually
the chief centres of industry and civilization, and around them grew
up the eager villages, many of which now exist, even though their
impulse and original inspiration have long since departed. Of
course, the possessions of the abbey reached far away from the walls
in every direction, including many farms even at a great distance,
for the abbeys were then the great landowners, and beneficent
landlords they were as well; even in their last days, for we have
many records of the cruelty and hardships that came to {506} the
tenants the moment the stolen lands came into the hands of laymen."
Or, almost better still, read the following paragraph from an address
at the summer meeting of the State Board of Agriculture of
Massachusetts, delivered by Dr. Henry Goodell, the President of the
Massachusetts Agricultural College, on the general subject of the
influence of the monks in agriculture:
"Agriculture was sunk to a low ebb at the decadence of the Roman
Empire. Marshes covered once fertile fields, and the men who should
have tilled the land spurned the plow as degrading. The monks left
their cells and their prayers to dig ditches and plow fields. The
effort was magical. Men once more turned back to a noble but
despised industry, and peace and plenty supplanted war and poverty.
So well recognized were the blessings they brought, that an old
German proverb among the peasants runs, 'It is good to live under
the crozier.' They ennobled manual labor, which, in a degenerate
Roman world, had been performed exclusively by slaves, and among the
barbarians by women. For the monks it is no exaggeration to say that
the cultivation of the soil was like an immense alms spread over a
whole country. The abbots and superiors set the example, and
stripping off their sacerdotal robes, toiled as common laborers.
Like the good parson whom Chaucer portrays in the prologue to the
"Canterbury Tales":
"'This noble ensample unto his scheep he gaf
That first he wroughte and after that he taughte.'
"When a Papal messenger came in haste to consult the Abbot Equutius
on important matters of the Church, he was not to be found anywhere,
but was finally discovered in the valley cutting hay. Under such
guidance and such example the monks upheld and taught everywhere the
dignity of labor, first, by consecrating to agriculture the energy
and intelligent activity of freemen often of high birth, and clothed
with the double authority of the priesthood and of hereditary
nobility, and, second, by associating under the Benedictine habit
sons of kings, princes, and nobles with the rudest labors of
peasants and serfs."
President Goodell has told the story of how the monks cleared
and reclaimed the land, transformed fens into forests, marshes
into gardens, and swamps into beautiful domains. As he says:
"A swamp was of no value. It was a source of pestilence. But it was
just the place for a monastery because it made life especially hard,
and so the monks carried in earth and stone and made a foundation,
and built their convent, and then set to work to dyke and drain and
fill up the swamp, till they had turned it into fertile plow land
and the pestilence had ceased."
{507}
President Goodell did not hesitate to proclaim that the monasteries
were the early representatives of our agricultural colleges. They
taught the peasantry of the surrounding country how best to grow their
crops and what to grow. Because of their wide affiliations they were
enabled to secure seeds of various kinds, and stock for breeding
purposes, and so were able to teach the people what was best for
particular neighborhoods, and not only show them how to raise it, but
actually supply them with the necessary initial materials. It became a
proverb that the monks and their people were the best farmers. When we
ourselves were ignorant of scientific farming, we did not appreciate
what the monks had done for agriculture. Now that our soil is becoming
exhausted by unscientific and wasteful farming, the foundation of
agricultural colleges leads the men who have studied the subject to
appreciate what the monks really accomplished. Professor Draper not
only cannot find anything good to say of the monks, but he can
scarcely find anything bitter enough to say of them. On the other hand
President Goodell, who has studied the situation from his point of
view very carefully, can scarcely find words strong enough to praise
them. He concluded his address as follows:
"My friends, I have outlined to you in briefest manner to-day the
work of these grand old monks during the period of 1500 years. They
saved agriculture when no one else would save it, they practised it
under a new life and new conditions when no one else dared undertake
it. They advanced it along every line of theory and practice, and
when they perished they left a void which generations have not
filled."
In the light of these few quotations even it is easy to see that
Professor Draper's book is really quite an amazing work to have come
from the hand of a man widely read, acknowledged as an authority in
certain subjects by his contemporaries and, above all, because the
author seems to have thought that he had quite exhausted his subject.
Here, for instance, is a portion of the paragraph in which he
summarizes the beginnings of science in modern Europe (page 298).
"The science of the Arabians followed the invading track of their
literature, which had come into Christendom by two routes--the south
of France and Sicily. Favored by the exile of the Popes to Avignon,
and by the Great Schism, it made good its foothold in upper Italy.
The Aristotelian or Inductive philosophy, clad in the Saracenic
costume that Averroes had given it, made many secret and not a few
open friends. It found many minds eager to receive {508} and able to
appreciate it. Among these were Leonardo da Vinci, who proclaimed
the fundamental principle that experiment and observation are the
only reliable foundations of reasoning in science, that experiment
is the only trustworthy interpreter of Nature, and is essential to
the ascertainment of laws. He showed that the action of two
perpendicular forces upon a point is the same as that denoted by the
diagonal of a rectangle, of which they represent the sides, etc."
We must suppose that the scientific readers of this book, for they
were mainly scientists, and it had a place in the International
Scientific Series, agreed with this marvellous exhibition of
ignorance. Here is a man summarizing modern European science and
leaving out all mention of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, the great
medical school of Salerno in the twelfth century, and the great
medical schools of Italy farther north during the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. This lack of knowledge of the
history of medicine deserves, above all, to be emphasized because
Draper as a professor in a medical school would naturally be supposed
to know something about his own branch of science.
He attributes all the initiative of modern science to the impulse
derived from the Arabs. This used to be a favorite way of looking at
the history of culture for those who wanted to minimize just as far as
possible all Christian influence. The facts of history are in constant
contradiction with this. Modern European science began at the
University of Salerno. It has often been stated that Arabian influence
must have largely impelled Salerno's work, situated as it was in the
southern part of Italy, but the use of any such expression means that
the writer must forget that this southern part of Italy had been a
Greek colony, was indeed called Magna Graecia and that Greek influence
persisted there, and when the revival came after the Barbarians who
had invaded Italy had gradually been brought by religious influence
into a state where culture and science and civilization were to mean
something for them, the influence of the old Greek authors was first
felt here. Gurlt, in his History of Surgery, emphasizes the fact, for
instance, that the first important modern (or medieval) writers on
surgery, the Four Masters of Salerno, were not influenced by the
Arabs. Their books contain no Arabisms but many Graecisms. They
obtained their inspiration from the old Greeks and carried on the
torch of learning in their own department magnificently as recent
studies of the School of Salerno have shown. They corrected the
polypharmacy of the Arabs and restored natural modes of cure to their
proper place.
{509}
For Professor Draper, until after the Reformation there was
practically no development of medicine. "It had always been the policy
of the Church to discourage the physician and his arts; he interfered
too much with the gifts and profits of the shrines." Professor Draper
either knew nothing of the great series of Papal physicians and
surgeons or else he ignored what they had done deliberately. It seems
reasonably certain that he knew nothing about them, for if he had done
so he would surely have mentioned them in order to minimize the
significance of their work--for that is his way. He is emphatic in his
declaration of the medieval neglect of sanitation and care for the
ailing, and sets it down to the deliberate purpose to secure more
money for prayers. "From cities wreaking with putrefying filth it was
thought that the plague might be staid by the prayers of the priests."
He knows nothing apparently of the well-directed attempts to organize
sanitary control, of the appointment of archiaters or medical
directors in Italian cities, of the recognition of the contagiousness
of tuberculosis, and the effort to control it, and seems even to have
missed the significance of the successful obliteration of leprosy by
segregation methods, for that was one of the greatest triumphs of
preventive medicine ever attained. Leprosy was probably as common in
the thirteenth century in Europe as consumption is now with us or very
nearly so, and yet in two centuries it had been practically
eradicated. Well for us if we shall accomplish as much for our folk
scourge of disease--the White Plague.
Above all, Professor Draper seems to know nothing of the magnificent
hospitals of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries,
beautiful architecturally, well planned for ventilation and the
disposal of waste material, with abundant water supply, with large
open wards, windows high in the wall, tiled floors that could be
thoroughly cleansed and which, alas! were to be replaced hundreds of
years later by the awful hospitals of the first half of the nineteenth
century, which with their small windows, narrow corridors, cell-like
apartments and little doors, were to be more like jails than refuges.
Some of the worst hospitals ever built in modern history had been
erected in Professor Draper's own lifetime. Some of the most beautiful
hospitals in the world had been erected in Italy and other countries
during the later medieval and Renaissance period, before the
Reformation, under religious influence,--but Professor Draper knows
nothing of them. The history of hospitals here in America is as
largely religious as it was in other countries and times.
{510}
Professor Draper seems to have known nothing of the fine hospitals and
foundling institutions and the great surgery of the later Middle Ages,
but he thinks he knows enough to be quite sure that any such
developments were impossible. Certain incidents that he accepts as
historical showed him what fools the Popes and all near them were in
matters of science, and, therefore, it would be quite impossible that
they could have any sympathy for scientific progress and quite easy to
understand their opposition. It is from conclusions and assumptions in
history that we need to be saved. A hundred years ago it used to be
said with pride that if you gave a zoologist a single bone he could
reconstruct the entire animal for you. We know that such
reconstruction worked much harm to science. Many of the animals
possess structures that even important portions of their anatomy in
other parts of the body would give no hint of. History that is built
up from single incidents is likely to be even more false because human
conduct is much more complex than any animal body. What could be
expected of the zoologist's reconstruction, however, if the original
bone handed to him was factitious, what a curious result might be
expected from his deduced skeleton.
This is what happened with Professor Draper's reconstruction of
history from certain incidents that he accepted. The story of the
Papal Bull against Halley's comet seemed enough to him to make it
quite clear that for centuries the Popes must have been buried in the
profoundest ignorance of science,--but then the story of the Papal
Bull against Halley's comet is all a modern invention. Draper said:
"But when Halley's comet came in 1456 so tremendous was its apparition
that it was necessary for the Pope himself to interfere. He exorcised
and expelled it from the skies. It slunk away into the abysses of
space terror-stricken by the maledictions of Calixtus III, and did not
venture back again for seventy-five years!" Of course this bit of
supposed information is all nonsense; Calixtus did no such thing, and
just at that time the Popes were encouraging Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa
in his great mathematical work and astronomical speculations, were
inviting Regiomontanus, "the Father of modern astronomy," down to Rome
to do his work there and help in the correction of the calendar, while
Cardinal Bessarion, one of the most intimate friends of the Pope at
this time, was encouraging Purbach at Vienna and Regiomontanus to
translate Ptolemy and providing them with manuscripts and putting them
in touch with Greek science in every way.
{511}
Halley's comet is a favorite reference with Professor Draper. How well
his readers must have remembered all about it! He says, for instance,
on page 320:
"The step that European intellect had made between 1456 and 1759 was
illustrated by Halley's comet. When it appeared in the former year,
it was considered as the harbinger of the vengeance of God, the
dispenser of the most dreadful of his retributions, war, pestilence,
famine. By order of the Pope, all the church-bells in Europe were
rung to scare it away, the faithful were commanded to add each day
another prayer; and, as their prayers had often in so marked a
manner been answered in eclipses and droughts and rains, so on this
occasion it was declared that a victory over the comet had been
vouchsafed to the Pope. But, in the meantime, Halley, guided by
revelations of Kepler and Newton, had discovered that its motions,
so far from being controlled by the supplications of Christendom,
were guided in an elliptic orbit by destiny. Knowing that Nature had
denied to him an opportunity of witnessing the fulfilment of his
daring prophecy, he besought the astronomers of the succeeding
generation to watch for its return in 1759, and in that year it
came."
All this is of course mere persiflage once it is known that the story
of the Papal Bull against the comet has no foundation in history. It
is the sort of nonsense that a great many serious men permit
themselves to indulge in when they think they are convicting some past
century of sublime foolishness. Not infrequently they make themselves
out just as absurd as they would like to present the men of former
generations, because they show how credulous a modern scholar can be
when his prejudices influence him. Unfortunately such passages have a
particularly lamentable effect upon young minds. For them ridicule
means much more than argument. For a young man to be ridiculous seems
the worst thing that can possibly happen and when anything is made
ridiculous for him he loses his respect for it. Ridicule is, as is
well known, an extremely dangerous argument, however. Professor Draper
and, indeed, many another teacher of history and, above all, lecturer
and writer on the history of science, have made themselves supremely
ridiculous by their ready acceptance of a legend for which there is
not the slightest authority. It was made up to serve the purpose of
exhibiting Papal ignorance and superstition, but it so happens that in
serious history the Popes of the time when this is supposed to have
occurred are among the most intelligent and scholarly men of history.
It seems worth while to go over the list of Popes who came during the
twenty years just before and after the date given for the issuance of
this supposed bull. Eugene IV, elected Pope in 1431, {512} whatever
may have been his faults of lack of tact, was scholarly and unselfish.
At an early age he distributed what was really an immense fortune in
his time to the poor, and entered the monastery. When political
troubles drove him from Rome he resided at Florence and the presence
of the Papal Court there did much to foster the humanistic movement
which was just then beginning. It was he who consecrated the beautiful
church just finished by Brunelleschi. His successor in 1447 was Pope
Nicholas V, a man of wide education and deep interest in the revival
of classical literature and Christian antiquities. He was the founder
of the Vatican Library and brought Fra Angelico to Rome for the great
decorative work at the Vatican. Pope Calixtus III, who succeeded
Nicholas in 1455, was a man of cultivated mind, scholarly tastes and
shared with his predecessor the honor of having founded the Vatican
Library. He encouraged the Greek scholars in Italy and added greatly
to the collections of precious manuscripts. His desire to prevent the
further destruction of Greek culture by the Turks who had just
captured Constantinople, led him to devote himself mainly to the
fulfilment of a vow that he had made to wrest Constantinople from the
Moslem. To his influence is largely due the victory gained by the
Christians at Belgrade at this time which prevented the further spread
of Mohammedan power. Pope Calixtus had the Angelus Bell rung every day
at noon to implore the aid of the heavenly powers against the Turks.
There is absolutely no question of any reference in this matter to the
comet, but here is where the story comes in.
Pope Calixtus' successor was the famous Renaissance scholar AEneas
Sylvius Piccolomini. He was just beginning some of the reforms, the
need of which had been pointed out by his friend, the scholarly
Nicholas of Cusa, when his death occurred as a consequence of his
fatigue in journeys undertaken to rouse the Christians of the West
against the Turks so as to preserve Christian civilization. His
successor was Pope Paul II. He found it necessary to suppress some of
the academies of Rome whose privileges were being abused by fostering
a pagan attitude toward philosophy and religion, and in revenge
Platina wrote a bitter biography of him, but no one has ever doubted
of his scholarliness. He built the Palace of St. Marco in Rome, now
known as the Venezia, and organized relief work among the poor while
encouraging printing, protecting universities, and showing himself a
judicious collector of works of ancient art.
Professor Draper's summaries of periods of history are amusing {513}
caricatures of the reality. I know no easier way to make a comic
history of progress in Europe, so-called, than to take a series of
excerpts from Draper's book and string them together. He ignores
completely the wonderful work done for scholarship, he knows nothing
apparently of the great series of books printed for us during the
Renaissance, usually in magnificent editions, which preserve scholarly
works of the Middle Ages, he utterly neglects the painting, the
architecture, the sculpture, even the great engineering feats in the
making of bridges and constructive work of all kinds, and then in
order to explain why there was nothing done by mankind puts all the
blame on the Church. As I have said before, in a period in which even
well-read men knew nothing about the Middle Ages, self-complacency
tempted them to conclude that such a gap in their knowledge could only
be because there was nothing to know about them. They looked for some
reason for the absence of accomplishment that made this blank in human
history. With their feelings, the Church was just the one that must be
responsible. Progress would surely have been made only that some
factor was keeping it back.
Professor Draper makes an especially strong appeal to American readers
by contrasting all the accomplishments of our material civilization
here in the United States, with the results in Mexico and in South
America. Our progress has been all beneficent, while the influence of
the Spaniard was everywhere absolutely maleficent. He seems to forget
all about our treatment of the Indian, with its awful injustice. He
proclaims our increase in wealth as the surest sign of our
intellectual superiority. He says: [Footnote 67]
[Footnote 67: Page 289.]
"Let us contrast with this the results of the invasion of Mexico and
Peru by the Spaniards, who in those countries overthrew a wonderful
civilization, in many respects superior to their own, a civilization
that had been accomplished without iron and gunpowder--a
civilization resting on an agriculture that had neither horse, nor
ox, nor plow. The Spaniards had a clear base to start from, and no
obstruction whatever in their advance. They ruined all that the
aboriginal children of America had accomplished. Millions of those
unfortunates were destroyed by their cruelty. Nations that for many
centuries had been living in contentment and prosperity, under
institutions shown by their history to be suitable to them, were
plunged into anarchy; the people fell into a baneful superstition,
and a greater part of their land and other property found its way
into the possession of the Roman Church."
Place beside that a paragraph from the late lamented Professor Bourne
of Yale, who having made special studies in {514} Spanish-American
culture and education, as well as in its intellectual life, contrasts
it quite unfavorably with what was accomplished in the English
colonies. Professor Bourne was, like Draper, a professor at an
American university, but he had made special studies in the subject,
and knew something about it. Professor Draper talked out of the depths
of his assumption of knowledge; Professor Bourne out of an intimate
acquaintance that had been obtained by years of serious research work.
Professor Bourne said:
"Both the Crown and the Church were solicitous for education in the
Spanish colonies, and provisions were made for its promotion on a
far greater scale than was possible or even attempted in the English
colonies. The early Franciscan missionaries built a school beside
each church, and in their teaching abundant use was made of signs,
drawings, and paintings. The native languages were reduced to
writing, and in a few years Indians were learning to read and write.
Pedro de Gante, a Flemish lay brother, and a relative of Charles V,
founded and conducted in the Indian quarter in Mexico a great
school, attended by over a thousand Indian boys, which combined
instruction in elementary and higher branches, the mechanical and
fine arts. In its workshops the boys were taught to be tailors,
carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, and painters."
Sir Sidney Lee, the editor of the "National Dictionary of Biography of
England," and the author of a series of works on Shakespeare, which
has gained for him recognition as probably the best living authority
on the history of the Elizabethan times, without deliberate intent,
answered Draper almost directly, in the following paragraphs from his
work, "The Call of The West," which appeared originally in _Scribner's
Magazine_, but has since been published in book form. Since Mr. Lee
cannot be suspected of national or creed affinities with the
Spaniards, and his knowledge of the subject is unquestionable, his
direct contradictions of Draper are all the more weighty:
"Especially has theological bias justified neglect or facilitated
misconception of Spain's role in the sixteenth century drama of
American history. Spain's initial adventures in the New World are
often consciously or unconsciously overlooked or underrated, in
order that she may figure on the stage of history as the benighted
champion of a false and obsolete faith, which was vanquished under a
divine protecting Providence by English defenders of the true
religion. Many are the hostile critics who have painted sixteenth
century Spain as the avaricious accumulator of American gold and
silver, to which she had no right, as the monopolist of American
trade, of which she robbed others, and as the oppressor and
exterminator of the weak and innocent aborigines of the new
continent, who deplored her presence among {515} them. Cruelty in
all its hideous forms is, indeed, commonly set forth as Spain's only
instrument of rule in her sixteenth century empire. On the other
hand, the English adventurer has been credited by the same pens with
a touching humanity, with the purest religious aspirations, with a
romantic courage which was always at the disposal of the oppressed
native.
"No such picture is recognized when we apply the touchstone of the
oral traditions, printed books, maps, and manuscripts concerning
America which circulated in Shakespeare's England. There a
predilection for romantic adventure is found to sway the Spaniards
in even greater degree than it swayed the Elizabethan Englishman.
Religious zeal is seen to inspirit the Spaniards more constantly and
conspicuously than it stimulated his English contemporary. The
motives of each nation are barely distinguishable one from another.
Neither deserves to be credited with any monopoly of virtue or vice.
Above all, the study of contemporary authorities brings into a
dazzling light, which illumes every corner of the picture, the
commanding facts of the Spaniard's priority as explorer, as
scientific navigator, as conqueror, as settler."
When an Englishman will admit this much in a comparison of his own
countrymen with the Spaniards, it is easy to understand how great must
be the actual historical contrast between the settlers of Spanish and
English America.
Professor Draper's philosophy of history is, indeed, something to make
one pause. He says on page 291, "The result of the Crusades had shaken
the faith of all Christendom." As a matter of easily ascertainable
history, the faith of Christendom was never so strong as during the
century immediately following the Crusades. This was the thirteenth
century, with the glorious Gothic cathedrals; the great Latin hymns;
the magnificent musical development; the wondrous tribute of painting
to religion, from Cimabue and Duccio to Giotto and Orcagna, and of
sculpture from the Pisani to the great designers of some of the doors
of the baptistry of Florence, of the finest arts and crafts in gold
and silver, in woodwork, in needle-work, in illuminated books--all
precious tributes to religious belief. In the hundred years after the
Crusades, the Popes secured a position of influence in Europe greater
than they had ever had before or have ever enjoyed since, which they
used to secure the foundation of hospitals everywhere throughout
Europe, the establishment of universities, the organization of
religious orders for teaching and nursing purposes, and the finest
development of social life and social happiness that the world had
ever known.
According to Professor Draper, the removal of the Papal Court to
Avignon in France gave opportunity for "the memorable intellectual
movement that soon manifested itself in the great commercial {516}
cities of Upper Italy." For him the earlier Renaissance begins with
the fourteenth century, the thirteenth is entirely neglected, and a
period that is really one of decadence is proclaimed a triumphant era
of progress, because forsooth the removal from Rome of the Papacy and
the abandonment by some of Christianity itself, gives him an
opportunity to explain, thus from his prejudiced point of view, how
the first stirrings of the Renaissance began. Verily indeed Professor
Draper has written a joke book of history. Everything is along the
same line. It is very rare, indeed, that by some chance he states a
genuine historical truth, and when he does he usually disfigures it in
some way or other. For him the Moors are the source of chivalry, of
respect for women(!), and of the noble sentiment of personal honor.
Everything else that is of any value in Christendom, must be referred
to some source not Christian, lest by any chance religion should seem
to have done any good in the world. _And let us not forget that this
book was taken seriously, and not by the ignorant, but by university
men, college graduates, professors, and teachers in many parts of the
country._
Above all Professor Draper can scarcely be too bitter in his
denunciation of the way that the poor were imposed upon, their
ignorance encouraged, their rights refused, and all opportunities
denied them. All this was due, according to Professor Draper, to the
tyranny of the Church. President Woodrow Wilson, after making a
special study of that subject, suggested in a passage in his book,
which may be found in "The New Freedom," exactly the opposite of this.
He knew something of the subject. Professor Draper was quite sure that
he knew all about it, and that no good could have possibly come out of
the Church. President Wilson's expressions are interesting to those
who do not know them:
"The only reason why government did not suffer dry rot in the Middle
Ages under the aristocratic systems which then prevailed, was that
the men who were efficient instruments of government were drawn from
the Church--from that great Church, that body we now distinguish
from other Church bodies as the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman
Catholic Church then, as now, was a great democracy. There was no
peasant so humble that he might not become a priest, and no priest
so obscure that he might not become a Pope of Christendom, and every
chancellory in Europe was ruled by those learned, trained and
accomplished men--the priesthood of that great and then dominant
Church; and so, what kept government alive in the Middle Ages was
this constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from the rank and
file of the great body of the people through the open channels of
the Roman Catholic priesthood."
{517}
The greatest surprise is to be found in Professor Draper's ignorance
of the history of his own profession. He says, "It had always been the
policy of the Church to discourage the physician and his art; he
interfered too much with the gifts and profits of the shrines."
Professor Draper apparently knew nothing of the magnificent medical
schools attached to the universities in the medieval period, whose
professors wrote great medical and surgical text-books, which have
come down to us, and whose faculties required a far higher standard of
medical education than was demanded in America in Professor Draper's
own day. For about 1871 anyone who wished might enter an American
medical school practically anywhere in the country, without any
preliminary education, and having taken two terms of ungraded
lectures, that is, having listened to the same set of lectures two
years in succession, might receive his degree of doctor of medicine.
In the Middle Ages he could enter the medical school only after having
completed three years of preliminary work in the undergraduate
department, and then he was required to give four years to the study
of medicine, and spend a year as assistant with another physician
before he was allowed to practise for himself. This is the standard to
which our university medical schools gradually climbed back at the
beginning of the twentieth century--a full generation after Draper's
time.
We know now that in those earlier centuries they had thorough clinical
teaching in the hospitals, that is, physicians learned to practise
medicine at the bedside of the patient, and not merely out of books
and by theoretic lectures. Clinical teaching had not developed in
Professor Draper's day to any extent. The medieval hospitals had
trained nurses and magnificent quarters, while the trained nurse was
only introduced into America in 1871, and our hospitals at that time
were almost without exception a disgrace to civilization, according to
our present standards of hospital construction. Our surgery was most
discouraging, because there were so many deaths in the unclean
hospital conditions. The medieval hospital surgeons operating under
anesthesia, boasted of getting union by first intention, and were in
many ways doing better work than their colleagues of 1870, Professor
Draper's own time, before Lister's great discovery. Of all this
Professor Draper had no inkling.
Draper's position is very like that of the specialist at all times.
Dean West of Princeton once said, I believe, that a specialist is a
man who knows so much more about one thing than he knows about
anything else that he is inclined to think that he knows more about
that than anyone else does. To which I once ventured {518} to add that
the specialist is also a man who thinks because of his recognized
attainments in one line, that if, for any reason, he should pay any
serious attention to any other subject he would know more about that
than anyone else does. Draper's views on universal history correspond
exactly to such a definition. He jumped to conclusions in a way that
he would surely have resented most bitterly and quite properly in
anyone who attempted after slight acquaintance with his own department
of science to express ultimate conclusions with regard to it, but he
himself with the most scanty information gleaned only for the purpose
of confirming some preconceived ideas, gathered entirely from
secondary authorities without even an attempt to confirm his views by
consultation of original documents, proceeded to tell the world just
what it ought to think about questions of all kinds that have
sometimes occupied historians for centuries and are by no means clear
even yet.
Above all, he failed to realize the relations of whatever knowledge he
had to the other facts of history. Deeply interested in science
himself to the exclusion of nearly everything else, he could not
understand how any generation and scarcely how any individual could
live a deeply intellectual life without an absorbing interest in
physical science. He seems to have had no conception of the fact that
physical science is only a passing phase of man's interest, and that
interests in philosophy, in art, in poetry, in literature are not only
quite equal to science as a mental discipline, but must probably be
considered to surpass it. Nothing can be so narrow as physical science
pursued alone,--as Draper himself furnishes the best possible proof,
but of this he seems to have had no hint. Fortunately humanity has
drawn away from that exaggerated idea of the value of physical science
as ultimate truth and we are able to judge a little more
dispassionately.
Professor Draper's prestige, and the fact that his book was published
in the International Scientific Series, led a great many people to
read it, and it found its way into many of the public libraries of the
country, on whose shelves it may still be found. Many of its readers
thought it could never be effectively answered. Scientists were
affected by it, or at least those interested in science, and it
represented one phase of that pronounced opposition to religion which
characterized what has been so well called the "silly seventies."
And if the seriously educated were willing to accept the ignorant and
prejudiced views of Professor Draper, what was to be expected of the
general reader? What has helped the position of the Church {519} in
this country during the past generations is knowledge, and ever more
knowledge. When those who are not of the fold know even a little of
the history of the Church, know a reasonable amount of the other side
of controversial problems, and, above all, when they have been brought
into personal touch with the Church itself, her pastors and the
hierarchy and religious men and women, prejudice disappears and
understanding grows. We still have the monks and nuns of the olden
time with us, but no one who knows them personally ever thinks for a
moment of lazy monks and idle nuns. After a man has met scholarly
Catholic clergymen, he has quite a different view of the relations of
the Church to education. That is all that the Church has ever
needed--to be known in order to be appreciated. Nothing emphasizes
this so much as the change that has come over the opinions of those
outside the Church as a result of growth in knowledge of the Church
and her institutions during the generation that separates us from the
writing of Professor Draper's book.
{520}
{521}
INDEX
A
A.A.A.S. 311
_Abditis de causis morborum_ 84
Accident of fevers 213
Achievement, human 306
Achillini 76, 86, 92, 105, 244
Achillinus (see above)
Addison 85
After-care of insane 371
Agenius, Otto 47
Agnostic 262
Agnus Dei 199
Albert (see Albertus)
Albertus Magnus 102, 134, 287, 295, 305, 324;
botany 318;
physical geography 318;
science 299;
scientific treatises 319;
scientific works 319
Albigenses 257
Albucasis 99
Alchemy 134, 135
Alderotti, Thaddeus 206
Alexander VI. 215, 231
Allbutt 83, 173, 185, 194, 196, 214, 506
Allston, Washington 391
Alma Mater Studiorum 94
Alphanus 228
America, discovery of 316
Amerigo Vespucci 283
Amalgam 135
Ampère 281
Anatomical preparations 46;
work at Rome 117
Anatomy,
history of 114, 62;
Father of 111;
Golden Age 30;
myths 61;
Renaissance of 112;
supposed prohibition 28
Anaxagoras 351
Aneurysms 243
Angelico 92
Angelo 90, 112
Angel butterfly 358
Angleworms dried 184
Annals of Anatomy and Surgery 116, 233
Annihilation 313
Anomalies 185
Antimony, Triumphal Chariot of 136
Antipodes 316
Ants 358
Applied science 329
Aquinas 135, 305, 323, 325
Arabisms 170
Arabs, surgical knowledge of 170, 192
Aranzi 245
Archives, Hospitaliêres 253
Ardern, John 188
Argelata 76
Aristotle 218, 292;
a man 298;
errors of 298
Arnold of Villanova 135, 186, 210
Arts and architecture 329;
seven devilish 145
Arts and Sciences, Congress of 173
Astrology 158, 212
Astronomy 140
Auenbrugger 243, 403
Augsburg 251
Augustine, St. 112, 296, 327
Authors, second-rate 315
Autopsy
on a living person 117;
on Cardinals 58
Autopsy, legal 72
Avicenna 99, 183
Avignon 79, 164, 182, 211;
development of 139
Azarias, Brother 344
B
B. A. A. S. 311
Bacon, Francis 283, 332, 360
Bacon, Roger 134, 305, 321, 323, 327, 332
Baillie 85
Balliol College 95
Bartholomaeus Anglicus 338
Bartholomew the Englishman 336
Bartolo 270
Basel 105
Basil, Valentine 136
Bauhin 209
Baunette 308
Baverius de Baveriis 213
Bede 315
Bedlam 255, 372;
visitors' fees 373
Bedlamites 374
Bedlams 374
Bees 358
Belgium, Catholic 102
Bellinis 90
Benedict XIV. 218, 223
Benedictines and medicine 224;
of St. Maur 53, 54
Benivieni 83, 85, 99, 105
Berengar of Carpi 82, 86, 105, 115, 245, 399
Berengarius 77
Bertapaglia 77
Berthelot 132
Bertrand, M. 394
Bertrucci 92, 186
Besancon 254
Bethlehem Hospital 369, 372
Black Death 272
Blepharitis 208
Blood, shedding of 168, 191
{522}
Bodleian 95
Body-snatching 37, 75
Boerhaave 244
Bologna 19, 119, 152, 158, 174, 192, 222;
a Papal City 82
Bolognese Medical School 244
Boniface VIII. 56, 112
Boniface's, Pope,
Bull 29;
Bull, meaning of 59;
misinterpretation 35;
reason for 32;
text 31;
where found 31
Books, medical, dedicated to Popes 235
Borelli 217
Botany 140, 158;
medieval 318
Brethren of the Common Life 97
Bridewell 255
Bright 85
Broeck 178
Brother Potamian 288
Brothers 254
Butterfly 358
C
Caesalpino 319
Caesalpinus 18, 113, 119, 217, 236
Cahors 156, 162, appendix
Caius,
John 94;
College 94
Calendar, correction of 323
Cambridge Modern History 24
Cantharides 181
Carlyle 347
Cassiodorus 225
Catalepsy 214
Cataract 208, 230
Catarrh 180
Catherei 185
Catherine of Siena 272
Cecco di Ascolo 211
Charles V. 108, 116, 217
Chartres 228
Chauliac 45, 74, 176, 180, 181, 210;
self-made man 210
Chauvinism 237
Chemicum Theatrum 135
Chemistry, story of 134
Children attending schools 344
Chirurgia Magna 175, 187
Chirurgia Parva 187
Chlorosis, iron for 214
Christ's Hospital 255
Church and
art 21;
education 21;
letters 22;
science 22
Church, pressure of 190
Circulation of the blood 238
City Hospitals 248, 370
Classic histories misleading 25
Claude Bernard 233
Clavis Sanationis 209
Clavius, S. J., Father 217, 360
Cleanliness, surgical 279
Clement
V. 135, 150, 210;
VIII. 237;
XI. 242;
XIII. 219
Climate at Rome 243
Climatology 140
Cod liver oil 230
Cologne 251, 318, 325
Colony system 367, 372
Columbus 86, 90, 113, 216, 232
St. Côme College 195
Committee
of inspection 373;
of investigation 378
Concordance 134
Conflict, supposed, between religion and science 393
Congregation of St. Maur 54
Conspiracy against the Truth 24
Constantine Africanus 170
Conservation of energy 312
Consultation, Vesalius's 107
Constanz 251
Contact, without human 386
Content of medieval teaching 314
Copenhagen, University of 97
Copper and gold 309
Coquelines 146
Coro Anatomico 246
Corpus Juris Canonici 124
Corradi 74
Coryza 180
Cosmos 355
Coulomb 282
Cruikshank 121
Crusades of surgery 192
Cycles of interest 131
D
Dante 341;
as a nature student 343;
architect 342;
like Goethe 348;
on education 361;
treatment of nature 347
Daremberg 188
Darwin 396
Daunou 54, 230;
Protestant tract 55
Decretals, sixth book of 56
Deduction 169, 200
Deductions in history 26
_De Magnete_ 285
DeMaistre 24, 165, 284
Democritus 351
Demonical possession 366
_De Motu Cordis_ 242
_De Natura rerum_ 338
Denifle 305
_De Re Anatomica_ 235
Desiderata for insane 371
Desiderius 227
Development of anatomy 63
Diabetes 180
Dillon, Arthur 266
Dino de Garbo 212
Director, surgical 183
Disease,
eradication 275;
What, Where 85
nothing 364
Disinterested scholars 302
Dissection
at Rome 59;
at Venice 38;
first 1302 37;
numerous 77;
hero of 111;
in public 58;
permissions 51;
practice of 63;
Rashdall on 37;
supposed prohibition 29;
systematic 76;
was it hampered? 36;
wounds 47
Documentary evidence 25
Doctorates 154
Dogmatism 395
Donatello 112
Donatus 305
Donkey, breath of 167, 183
Draper, Dr. 284
Dropsy, cause 174
Ducks, queerest 203
_Durities renum_ 174
{523}
Dungeon era 368
Dympna, St. 376
Dysuria 180
E
Earth, shape-size 315
Ecclesiastical institutions 339
Economics 412
Eddyism 364
Education
and Popes 19;
medical 65;
preliminary 141, 158;
Pope John XXII. and 141
Edward VI. 256
_Elementis, De Quatuor_ 208
Elizabeth, Queen 94, 285
Empyema 185
Encyclopedia,
first 334;
Britannica 133
Energy, conservation 314
Engineering, mechanical 330
Epilepsy 214
Epochs, four marvelous 161
Era of asylums 368
Erhardt 137
Erysipelas 276
Essays, educational 344
Etruscans 151
Eugenie, Empress 289
Eustachius 18, 86, 114, 119, 216
Evolution,
footsteps of 390;
in human affairs 332;
of science 93
Exaggeration, pious 203
Experimentalism 297
Experiment in optics 348
Exorcism 368, 374
Extravagantes 31, 124
Eye diseases 229
F
Fabrica, corporis humani 108
Fallopius 187
Falsification, crime of 125
Faraday 285
Father of electricity 265
Ferrara 243
Fevers 213
Finance 412
Firearms, wounds made by 215
Fisher, Dr. 233
Flies carry the plague 239
Florence 83
Fordham University Medical School 28, 267
Form 311
Fortune-teller 129
Foster, Sir Michael 107;
Prof. Med. 237
Fouarre, rue de 362
Foundation for modern thought 305
Foundling House 258
Fracassate 245
France 174
Franciscans 132, 287, 288, 290, 292, 327, 328, 369, 471, 514
Francis of Siena 213
Francis, Saint 328
Francis Speretis 381
Frankfort 251
Frederick II., body 34, 63
Free cities 333
Freind 187
Fulbert of Chartres 227
G
Gairdner 256
Galen 183, 194
Galileo 16, 19, 239, 306, 332, 385
Galvani 282
Gardner 270
Generation, spontaneous 92
Gentilis 77
Geography 140
Geology, foundation 401
Gerbert 227
Gesner 319
Gheel 367
Ghent 273
Gilbert 305;
of Colchester 285
Giordano Bruno 393
Giliani, Alessandra 46
Giotto 92
Gladstone 393
Glaucoma 230
God's hostelry 260
Goisbert 227
Gold, bricks 15;
from sea water 127
Gonorrhoea 180
Gordon 185
Gould, Dr. Geo. M. 405
Government interfered 279
Grandfather of Vesalius 110
Graves rifled 75
Grecisms 170
Gregory
VII. 227;
IX. 205;
XI. 212
Guido, or Guy of Montpelier 250
Guinicelli 308
Guyot de Provins 308
Günther of Andernach 103
H
Habits,
religious 278;
of prayer 376
Haeckel 393
Haeser 182
Haly 183
Hangman, touch of 183
Harvey 96, 119, 234, 306, 396, 397
Health, Key of 209
Heart as a muscle 400
Hildebrand 227
Hildier 227
Hirsch's Biographical Lexicon 242
Histoire Litteraire de la France 31, 53, 54
History lies 120, 122, 286
History
of Science 16;
of the Court of Rome 55
Hoefer 132
Holmes, Oliver Wendell 277, 405
Holy Ghost, sin against 35
Honorius
III. 273;
IV. 274
Hooke, Robert 405
Hospital
organization 248;
of Holy Spirit 250;
nursing 262;
community 273;
Siena 269;
for erysipelas 277
Hounds, bites of mad 181
House of God 266
House signs 253
Hugo De Senis 77
Humanitarian institutions 264
Humboldt 316;
on medical science 20, 355
Huxley on Galileo 17;
Prof. 394
Hydrophobia 181
Hypodermics 197
Hysteria 214
{524}
I
Icterus 180
Ignatius Loyola 201
Ignorance,
sublime 26;
four grounds of 290
Il Convito 362
Image, waxen 145, 169
Indestructibility of matter 312
Induction 169
Infallibility 35, 143, 169
Ionization 311
Innocent
III. 249, 273, 276, 370;
XI. 240;
XII. 242
Inquisition 112, 118
Insane
colony 377;
non-violent 377;
brutally treated 378;
in the poor houses 378;
harmless 379
Insanity in Middle Ages 363
_Inter ceteras curas_ 160
Interference, spiritual 380, 385
Intestines 185
Institutions, large 367
Institutional system 377
Instruments, illustrations of 181, 185
Intuition 384
Inunctions, mercurial 215
Investigations by experiment 296
Italy, post-graduate work in 96
J
Jackson, Dr. Geo. 116
Jacques de Vitry 265
Janus 207, 228
Jelliffe 367
Jenner 402
Jesuitism 50
Jesuits 232
Joannes de Tornamira 212
John XXII. 121;
and education 143, 207, 223
John of Chartres 227
John of Vigo 214
Jordan, David Starr 390
Jordan, Pres. 395
Joubert 197
Julius II. 214
K
Kelly, Dr. Howard 239
Ken, Bishop 359
Kepler 385
Kircher 18, 238
Knights Hospitalers 261
Knowledge, advance 306
Kopp 131
Kropotkin 180, 332
Kuhns, Prof. L. Oscar 347
L
Lachrimal fistula 208
Laennec 403
Lancisi 241
Lane lectures 237
Lanfranc 68, 79, 173, 175
La Place 405
Lapponi, Dr. 214
Latin Empire 258
Lavoisier 393
Lead into silver 309
Leo
XIII. 138, 327;
X. 215
Leproseries 274
Le Sexte 56
Leyden 241
Liber Cosmographicus 317
Library of Canon and Civil Law 162
Linacre 93
Lionardo da Vinci 90
Lithium into copper 310
Livers, extracts 230
Lodge, Sir Oliver 383
Logic, groundwork of 64
Lombroso 383
Lords the Poor 260
Louis IX. 334;
body 34
Louvain 100;
University of 102
Lubbock, Sir John 359
Lucan 358
Lucretius 358
Lully, Raymond 308
Lunar rainbows 318
Lung Abscess 180
Lutheranism 102
Lyons Council 326
M
Macaulay 284
Magnet in surgery 178
Mail and Express 266
Maison Dieu 260
Malgaigne 182, 194
Malingerers 273
Malpighi 18, 85, 96, 119, 217, 240
Manipulations, surgical 185
Mantegna 112
Marguerite of Burgogne 266
Marie of Burgundy 109
Mary, Queen 94
Massa 86
Massari 246
Maximilian I. 109
Medical Library and Hist. Journal 40, 121
Medical Schools of Rome 222
Medieval scientific books 23
Mental and nervous diseases 363
Method,
deductive 281;
inductive 283
Meyer, Ernest von 132
Meyer 209
Michel Angelo 90
Milan's magnificent hospital 269
Mineralogy 140, 157
Minerals 135
Miracles
to medicine 167;
belief in 199
Mitchell 405
Mivart, St. George 394
Mondino 37
Montagnano 78
Monte Cassino 205, 225
Montpelier, University of 79, 177, 182, 192
Morgagni 99, 219;
forerunner of 83;
eighth daughter of 222;
son a Jesuit 221
Morgan, Augustus de, on Galileo 16
Morley, Henry 291
München 251
{525}
N
Naples 325
Natural
phenomena 340;
science 340
Nature,
interest in 335;
laws of 387
Naudé 205
Neckam, Abbot 308
Necropsies 85
Newark 188
Newman, Cardinal, on Galileo 16
Newton 306
Nicaise 182
Nicholas,
Pope 137;
IV. 208;
V. 213
Nothingness 313
Novelty 392
Novum Organum 284, 293
Nüremberg 332
O
Observation, powers of 300
Ohm 282, 408
Open door 367, 371, 374
Opposition,
ecclesiastical 62;
popular 62
Opposition to the progress of science 396
Opus Tertium 134, 288;
Majus 292
Ordures 183
Ovid 358
Oxford 324
P
Padua 77, 83, 106;
University at 394
Palmist 129
Pagel 171, 177, 190, 319
Papal Medical School 26, 66, 89, 119, 222
Papal
bulls 26;
Curia 113;
Physicians 118, 202
Paracelsus 118, 137
Paré 174
Paris 152, 158, 192, 317, 325
Pasteur 289, 409
Pathology, father of 84
Patients scourged 375
Patron of students 331
Paul
III. 113, 232;
IV. 113, 114
Peregrinus 307
Permissions to dissect 51
Perugia University 149, 156, 161
Perugino 162, 243
Petella 207, 229
Peter of Chartres 227
Peter of Spain 207, 208
Pharmacology 158
Phenomena,
psychic 381;
occult 381
Philip Le Bel 177
Philip II. 217
Philosopher's stone 135, 308
Philosophy encouraged 22
Phosphorescence 355
Phreas, John 95
Phthisis 180
Physicians, Royal College of 93
Physicians,
thinking 201;
of educated people 203
Physical geography 317
Physics, treatise on 298
Piccolomini 216, 235
Pilcher, Prof., on Mondino 89, 45, 48, 64, 66
Pilgrimage for insane 375, 376
Pious Schools, Society of 218
Pius IV. 235
Poggendorf 286
Poissin 405
Polypus 85
Pope Clement 327
Popes encouraged anatomy and medical sciences 113
(For separate Popes see names)
Pope John and education 141
Popularizers in science 283
Possessed 368
Possession 380
Potamian, Brother 307
Practice of medicine 65
Prayer for mental diseases 376
Prerequisite for degree 159
President, our 143
Priestley 286
Prime matter 311
Prince Kropotkin 330, 345
Prospectus of Medical School 157
Protestant tradition 24
Psalms 178
Psychopathic wards 368
Ptolemaic 353
Public buildings 269
Puccinotti 69, 75
Puschmann 41, 58, 75, 171, 298, 819
Pythagoras 351
Q
Questions, medical 237
R
Rabies, treatment for 409
Ramsay, Sir Wm. 310
Raphael 90, 162
Rashdall 73;
History of Universities 37
Ratisbon, Bishop of 324
Reason for false tradition 24
Reed, Major Walter 239
Reformation, so-called 166, 190
Reform of philosophizing 293
Regius professors 193
Regulation of medical practice 65
Religious care for the sick 263
Renaissance 80
Renaissance of science 91
Resurrection of 91
Ricardus Anglicus 205
Ricardus Paresiensis 205
Richard the Englishman 205
Richet 383
Roger 170, 192
Rome 325;
Roman University 164
Rosarium 132
Rostock, University of 155
Roth 70, 76
Rovere, Cardinal Della 14
Ruskin 342
S
Saintsbury 303
Saladin 261
Salerno 65;
history of 130
{526}
Salicet 173, 221
Sanitarium 371
Sapienza 215
Sarti 67
Schacht 137
Scheit 137
Scholasticism 302, 303
Scholarship, profound 299
School street in Oxford 362
Science, Medieval 301, 335
Science
in modern universities 304;
chemical 120
Scientia Experimentalis 292
Scientists believers 282
Scirrhus 85
Scotus, Michael 102
Segregation, leprosy 275
Semmelweiss 407
Servetus 393, 399, 400
Shrines 375
Sicilies, dissection in 63
Siena, story of 270
Sighart 317
Simon Januensis 203
Sir Wm. Crookes 382
Sister of Holy Ghost 254
Skeleton of felon 104
Skeletons 105
Snake, bite of 181
Social ostracism 127
Sociology 412
South Pole 315
Speakman, Eliz. 259
Speculum Naturale 334
Sphericity of the earth 316
Spirit interference 385
Spiritist 129
Spiritual manifestations 381
Spiritual interference 366
Spiritual interference in human life 366
Spiritual world 380
Spondent pariter 122
St. Anthony's fire 272
St. Bartholomew's 255
St. Catherine of Siena 272
St. Charles Seminary 146
St. Côme 194
St. Dympna 376
St. Francis 162, 328
St. Francis's fire 276
St. Gallen 251
St. Thomas's Hospital 256
St. Victor 205
Stagirite 292
Stars,
shooting 351;
fixed 352
Steinschneider 209
Steno 96, 400
Stensen 96
Stenosis 85
Stone, philosopher's 125
Strangury 180
Strasburg 72
Structural work 330
Students
clerics 339;
of medicine 157
Sturdy vagrants 274
Sudden Death 242
Suggestions, strong 375
Summa Theologiae 298
Super Illius specula 128
Superficiality of our education 21
Superstition 184
Surgeons
ecclesiastics 169;
dishonorable 171
Surgeons, Middle Ages 172
Surgery,
history of 68;
prohibition of 169
Surgery,
father of 193;
prejudice against 194
Swift, Dean 391
Sylvester II. 227
Syncope 214
Synonyma Medicinae 209
Synonymies 209
T
Taxes 185
Telepathy 384
Temporal power 55
Tents 183
Tertullian 112
Thaddeus 206
Theobald V., King 335
Theodoric 183
Theological discouragement 167
Theological opposition 167
Theophastus 319
Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries 322
Thomas of Cantimprato 336
Thomson 132, 135, 405
Thrombosis of the mesenteric vein 85
Thule 315
Tolerance for scientific investigation 116
Thomassetti 146
Tooth, dead man's 167, 183
Töply 58, 67;
von 41
Tozzi 218, 240
Traditions, blood-fearing 192
Tramp 274
Transmutation of metals 309
Trent, Council of 204
Trephining 185
Trithemius 137
Trowbridge 343
Tuberculosis, crusade against 276
Turner 86, 115, 245, 304
Twelve, College of, Physicians 211
Tycho-Brahe 360
Tyndall 238
U
Ulcers, carcinomatous 183
Umbrian School 162
University curriculus, medieval 301, 303
University
books 304;
teaching 329
University, Papal 15
University of the City of Rome 223
Urban VI. 211
V
Valentine 136
Valsalva 99, 194
Van Swieten 241
Varolius 217
Vatican 88
Vecchetta 271
Venice 72, 88, 106
Verocchio 112
Verona 174
{527}
Vesalius 35, 51, 100;
great-grandfather 109;
inquisitive 101;
ancestry 109;
father 110;
as consultant 112;
life of 116, 216
Vibrations in the ether 384
Vienna Medical School 241
Villani 345
Villanova, Arnold of 210
Vincent of Beauvais 334
Virchow 251, 256
Virgil 407
Visitor's fees, Bedlam 373
Vitry 308
W
Wallace, Alfred Russell 386
Walsh 144
Wards, cheerless, white 268
Ward for psychic cases 367
Warfare, Theology, Science 29
Weismann 393
Wenzel, Emperor 169
Whewell 293
White, Andrew D. 29;
on dissection 49;
universal prohibition 20, 112, 122, 128, 130, 171, 199, 369
William of Salicet 68, 79
Workmen of Lyons 326
World, immaterial 383
Wurz 174
Y
Young, Dr. Thomas 404
Yperman 178
Ypres 178
Z
Zerbi 105
Zoology 158
Zurich 251
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