the application of the (Gooch) splint, of instruments for trepanning (borers, elevators, rugines, etc.), for fistula operation, and for cauterization (olivary, dactillary, punctuale, etc.). In spite of the foundations laid in anatomy by Mondino and in surgery by Guy de Chauliac and by the other anatomists and surgeons trained at the French and Italian universities, the general European practitioner of the fourteenth century no doubt deserved the satire leveled at him by the English poet Chaucer a few years after the death of Guy de Chauliac. Lines 5-8 in the following quotation are rather obscure, but refer to the attempts of the medical astrologers to bring magic influence to bear by means of diagrams of constellations made at the proper astrological moment. Such diagrams or images were frequently engraved on gems and were supposed to accumulate influence. ་ With us ther was a Doctour of Phisyk, In al this world ne was ther noon him lyk He kepte his pacient a ful greet del He knew the cause of everich maladye, He was a verrey parfit practisour. The cause y-knowe, and of his harm the rote, To send him drogges and his letuaries, But of great norissing and digestible. Ther fore he lovede gold in special. In Germany the universities were particularly late in providing instruction in medicine, and the first celebrated German surgeons acquired their skill on the field of battle. Pfolspeundt, a Bavarian army surgeon of the fifteenth century, mentions incidentally the treatment of gunshot wounds (1460). Speaking of the more familiar arrow wounds, he says, in the spirit of Chaucer's Doctour, that recovery depends on the favorable conjunction of the planet that is in the ascendant. His knowledge of rhinoplasty and his use of a narcotic inhalation show that he was somewhat influenced by Italian surgeons. Hieronymus Brunschwig, an Alsatian army surgeon, born at Strassburg in the early part of the fifteenth century, wrote as an old man "Das Buch der Wund-Artzney" (1497). He held that gunshot wounds are poisoned and that suppuration should be induced as a means of purification. He was acquainted with the work of the leading French and Italian surgeons. Hans von Gersdorff, also a native of Strassburg, gained experience of military surgery in the campaigns of Charles the Bold and was present at the battles of Granson (1476) and Nancy (1477). He wrote a "Feldtbuch der Wundtartzney" (1517) illustrated, like Brunschwig's work, with excellent woodcuts. He performed about two hundred amputations, and developed a method of his own. He did not believe that gunshot wounds are necessarily poisoned, but in certain cases followed the practice of pouring hot oil into the wounds. Giovanni da Vigo, in the "Practica Copiosa" (1514), had taught, according to Paré, "that wounds made by firearms partake of venenosity, by reason of the powder; and for their cure he bids you cauterize them with oil of elder-flowers scalding hot, mixed with a little treacle." In the meantime anatomy had made a great advance in Italy under the influence of the Renaissance spirit. The practice of dissection, which had gained a definite place in medical education through the efforts of Mondino, was continued at Bologna, Padua, and other Italian universities by Zerbi, Achillini, and Marc Antonio della Torre in the brilliant period of scientific and artistic activity at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. The greatest contribution, however, to the advancement of the study of anatomy was made by the supreme genius of the time, Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519, who has been described as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, musician, poet, philosopher, chemist, botanist, and geologist, and, in addition was referred to by William Hunter as the very best anatomist and physiologist of his time. We learn from an Italian painter and writer of the sixteenth century (Vasari) that Leonardo "filled a book with drawings in red crayon outlined with a pen, all the copies made with the utmost care [from bodies] dissected by his own hand. In this book he set forth the entire structure, arrangement and disposition of the bones, to which he afterwards added all the ligaments, in their due order, and next supplied the muscles. Of each separate part he wrote an explanation in rude characters written backwards and with |