FOURTH: THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD THE CHAPTER IV IMPOSTURE MEDICINE Part I.-The Dark Ages 'HERE is much discrepancy of opinion among historians as to the approximate period of the so-called Dark Ages, when they began and when they closed. Hallam rather arbitrarily fixes (and no historian has a better right) their beginning at Rome in the sixth century; but then there was a long period of after-glow, when the light of Greece went out in the West-a period of twilight of several centuries before absolute darkness finally set in,-and the capture of Alexandria by the Saracens, early in the seventh century (A. D. 638). Interest in learning and things of time and sense began to wane in Galen's day at Rome, in the second century. The climax of darkness was reached in Germany in the tenth century, and in France a little earlier. Hallam says that France and Germany began to improve, to awaken, at the advent of Charlemagne-the tenth century, but the improvement was slow. In England the darkest period did not reach its climax before the thirteenth, nor end until the invention of printing, about the middle of the fifteenth century, at which time the first book, the Bible, was printed in movable type by the inventors, Fust, Schaeffer, and Gutenberg. This is the date fixed by Hallam as the end of the Dark Ages in England,-about the year 1450 A. D. We know of no more authoritative writer on this subject than Henry Hallam, LL.D. He says: A rapid decline of learning began in the sixth century, of which Gregory of Tours is both a witness and an example. It is therefore properly one of the Dark Ages; more so, by much, than the eleventh, which concludes them, since very few were left in the church who possessed any acquaintance with classical authors, or who wrote with any command of the Latin language. Their studies when they studied at all were almost exclusively theological; and this must be understood as to the subsequent centuries. By theology is meant the Vulgate Scriptures and some of the Latin Fathers: not, however, by reasoning upon them, or doing much more than introducing them as authority in their own words. In the seventh century, and still more at the beginning of the eighth, very little even of this remained in France, where we find hardly a name deserving of remembrance, in a literary sense; but Isodore and our own Bede do honor to Spain and Britain.' The death of Galen occurred about A. D. 200, at the approximate age of seventy. The 1 History of the Middle Ages, iii., p. 474. shadow of the Dark Ages had already begun to spread its sinister aspect over Rome before the death of that sage. It must have been hastened by that event, for he was a genius of uncommon brilliancy and a man of simple life and pure morality. It was as if a luminous orb had been extinguished when death put an end to his illustrious career. Galen must have had contemporaries at Rome, the field of his greatest triumphs as a physician; but his character and genius were so far superior to theirs as to entirely overshadow them in the public mind. The historian of that period finds, therefore, few medical men whose names and achievements are worthy of mention. All, with one notable exception, were servile imitators of Galen's methods, and with his methods they combined the arts of priestcraft and sorcerer. The exception we have to note is Sextus Empiricus, who appears to have been a contemporary of Galen. He rose to distinction and was celebrated more as a skeptic than a medical philosopher. His writings on medicine and philosophy, chiefly of a controversial character, have come down to us. They show much learning and familiarity with the classic writers. We may justly characterize him the prince of the skeptics. He doubted everything in medicine, religion, and philosophy, and even in mathematics. His works contain all the arguments and maxims of the ancient skeptics, and tend to involve in doubt |