was known in his time about the treatment of poisoning and that he had endeavored to present this to his reader in a concise and succinct form. The book consists of two divisions. The first is divided into four sections and deals with the treatment of the bites of animals. The second division, consisting of six chapters, treats of the manner of antidotal administration for internal poisons.

Some of his recommendations are the following: The wound induced by the bite of a poisonous animal should be sucked dry by the lips, should be kept open, and alcohol and oil should be applied. Emetics should be promptly administered. He suggested various applications to the wound, among which were common salt, onions, asa fœtida, etc. For internal poisoning he advised the use of mandrake, bezoar, precious stones, various aromatic principles, and especially theriaca, which in all times was believed to possess properties of combating the effects of the bites of venomous animals.

He wrote on hydrophobia, on sexual diseases, on hemorrhoids, on gout, on the causes of disease, etc. His fame was so great that foreign monarchs requested his advice and followed his prescriptions. It is said that Richard Cœur de Lion desired to take him to England as his Court Physician, but the Hebrew doctor declined this honor. The fame of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon was very great during his lifetime, and after death all nations united in lauding him. He has been called the “Eagle of Doctors," "Lumen Captivitatis," and Moses Egyptius." All his successors had naught but praise for him after his death. The Arabic poet and Cadi, Al Said ibn Surat al Mulk, sang his praise in ecstatic

verse:

"Galen's art heals only the body,

But Ibn Amram's the body and the soul.

With his wisdom he could heal the sickness of ignorance

If the moon would submit to his art,

He would deliver her of her spots at the time of full moon.
Cure her of her periodic defects,

And at the time of her conjunction save her from waning."

Maimonides died in the sixty-ninth year of his life (1204) in Fostat, where both Jews and Mohammedans observed public mourning for three days. His body was taken to Tiberias for internment and his tomb became a place for pilgrimage.

Abulkassim, Avenzoar and Averroes were also Cordovans. Abulkassim's writings give us an insight into the surgical technic of those days. Avenzoar was born toward the end of the eleventh century. He was a decided foe of quackery, and his advice to his scholars was that "experience is the best guide and test of practice; and that every physician conforming to this test would be acquitted both here and hereafter." He experimented on goats and other brutes. He stated that he had practiced bronchotomy on goats and that it was a feasible operation. For obstruction of the esophagus, he advised either the passage of a tin or silver tube through which the patient can be fed, or feeding the patient by means of inunction or bathing in milk or other nutrient

fluids, or by administering nutrient enemata. The last method he used in a pregnant woman for six weeks' time with complete success. Avenzoar died full of years in 1162.

Averroes (Ibn Roshd) was born in Cordova in 1126. He was the son of the High Priest and Chief Justice of Cordova, and was educated in the University of Morocco. His religious skepticism and his love for the pagan learning led to his persecution and exile. Even the Christians were against him in the succeeding centuries. He was spoken of as "the mad dog who barked against the Christ," and was called by Erasmus "impious and thrice accursed." He died in 1198 in Morocco. Mediæval writers have given him the title of "The Commentator," par excellence, for his writings aim to restore the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato.

These men broke somewhat the pall of theological darkness that covered Europe, and men were born in England and Italy, in Spain and in France who revived learning, and sought to study Nature by experimentation and investigation. This awakening marks the beginning of the modern period, when men followed the advice, "Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth will make ye free." With Roger Bacon, the Englishman, who was intellectually three centuries in advance of his time, we find the culmination in Europe of Arabian knowledge. He, however, was not a medical man, but the path that he had hewed during a life of persecution and suffering was much widened by the scholars that followed him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. BUCKLE, T. H. History of civilization in England, Vol. I, p. 9.

2. HAMILTON, WM.

p. 223.

History of medicine, surgery and anatomy, 1831, Vol. I,

3. KAHN, M. "Maimonides the physician." New York Med. Jour., 1913, xcviii.

CHAPTER III

HISTORY OF MEDICINE DURING THE SIXTEENTH AND

SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

BY MAX KAHN, M.A., PH.D., M.D.

The era that produced Columbus and Savonarola and Leonardo da Vinci is the most illustrious in Italian history. The reawakening of Europe from its lethargy of so very many centuries is especially evidenced in the strivings and teachings and writings of these men. Genoese navigator felt the spur of the times, irked at the circumscribed limitations of the physical world, and ventured forth on the great unknown Ocear to peer into the mystery of the Beyond, and to uncover the vast continents that had been hidden hitherto to civilization. The Florentine monk, the Hamlet of the Renaissance, thundered forth his scathing denunciations at the depraved clergy, and reanimated the feeble spark of spiritualism that the Catholic corruption could not entirely smother. The Church ordered him burnt at the stake, and he died a martyr's death. But the torch of progress which then began to flicker glowed all the more brilliantly, for, unwittingly, the Church had added fuel to the fire, and, in attempting to extinguish it by throwing in the body of Savonarola, they blew the flame to greater and more illuminating beights.

The Doctor Faustus of the fifteenth century is Leonardo. In the portrait that we have of him, we see a venerable man, with a long flowing beard, a high forehead, and a face full of wisdom and learning. It is the face of old Faustus, who having studied much and learned much, sees the narrow confines of his world, and seeks higher altitudes and wider horizons for his contemplation:

Pious, ascetic Girolamo Savonarola might, indeed, preach against the profligacy and immorality of the period in which he lived. With Hamlet, he might have exclaimed,

"O cursèd spite,

That ever I was born to set it right."

For the times were unsettled and ungodly, and the world was reeking with rottenness and corruption. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been called the Age of Despots in Italy. Tyrants, deriving their power either by heredity, or by pretended authority on the basis of imperial right in Lombardy, or through their power as chief of some military force, or through their kinship to the Pope (his "nephews" or illegitimate sons), or through their wealth, established dynasties in the various principalities and cities, oppressed the burghers with heavy taxes and cruel laws, until some more formidable tyrant of some neighboring town waged war against them, and substituted his despotic rule in their stead. In such times of strife and turmoil which were characteristic not only of Italy, but also of all Europe in that period, it is not customary for Arts and Science to flourish, and the reason for the literary and scientific prosperity in Italian cities is to be found in the personality of the very tyrants that caused all the misery of the masses.

In Italy, the personality of the individual-his mentality, his ruthlessness, his physical prowess, his command of men-was considered of more account than his family tree, or his legal privileges or his moral rights. Illegitimacy of birth was not deemed a blot on the escutcheon of a powerful leader. "The last La Scalas were bastards. The House of Aragon in Naples descended from a bastard. Gabriello Visconti shared with his half brothers the heritage of Gian Galeazzo. The line of the Medici was continued by princes of more than doubtful origin. Suspicion rested on the birth of Frederick of Urbino. The houses of Este and Malatesta honored their bastards in the same degree as their lawful progeny. The sons of Popes ranked with the proudest of aristocratic families."

The tyrants of Italy were usually able men, if they were quite frequently merciless and treacherous. They vied with one another in the brilliancy of their courts. To drive away the malign fears and evil fancies which frequently tortured their conscience, they surrounded themselves with men of letters, artists, musicians, astrologers, and buffoons. Certain of them-Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Can Grande della Scala, Francesca and Ludovico Sforza, and others-fostered the foundation of libraries, the building of palaces, the adornment of churches, and patronized all the sciences and arts. "The life of a despot was usually one of terror. He surrounded his person with foreign troops, protected his bedchamber with a picked guard, and watched his meat and drink lest they should be poisoned. He dared not hope for a quiet end. No one believed in the natural death of a prince: princes must be poisoned or poniarded." Since he had no friends, the tyrant invited entertainers