appropriate to the vehicle that goes by that name, than to any recent system of medicine. If we adhere to orthodoxy, we must accept Galen and his temperaments, Dioscorides and his Theriacs; these are irreconcilable with modern ideas if, on the other hand, we accept progress, then we must say farewell to Orthodoxy. : Ægineta says, that "when swallowed, it brings on the same symptoms as litharge, and the same remedies are to be used in this case."1 Avicenna says, that "Mercury which has been killed (that is, oxidated) or sublimated, (that is to say, attenuated,) produces grave symptoms, such as pain of the bowels, bloody flux, and so forth."2 We may sum up the history of this period in a few words: it took its Psychology, Physiology, and Anatomy, from Aristotle as represented by Galen and Avicenna, its theories of the practice of physic from Galen, and its Materia Medica from Dioscorides. Let us remember that this is orthodox medicine. This is the only system which can put forward a claim to be tried by the great rule of Catholic faith, "Quod semper, quod ubique, et quod ab omnibus traditum est." It was semper, that is, it endured for fifteen hundred years; it was ubique, it extended from the wall of China to the western shores of Spain; it was ab omnibus traditum, in so far, that where the greatest of Galen's successors ventures in the mildest way to differ on the most insignificant point from the sovereigns of medicine, this difference is picked out by modern historians as a feat of heroic independence ; was, besides, the system of legal authority in the Roman provinces, any controversion of it entailing most serious penalties. The systems which have sprung up since are of mushroom growth. Not one of them has had the slightest pretension to any one of the three requisites of Catholic orthodoxy. So far from having been always believed in, a new one has displaced its predecessor before the latter had obtained the prescriptive right of a generation of believers, and this new one has had to give way to its successor, after even a shorter reign. As for the ubique, that generally meant one school, or at the most, one country,-never the whole civilized world; and the term omnibus is more 1 Paulus Ægineta, Vol. II., p. 238. 2 Ibid., Lib. IV., p. 112. appropriate to the vehicle that goes by that name, than to any recent system of medicine. If we adhere to orthodoxy, we must accept Galen and his temperaments, Dioscorides and his Theriacs; these are irreconcilable with modern ideas if, on the other hand, we accept progress, then we must say farewell to Orthodoxy. : Roger Bacon-His Nationality-The Philosopher's Stone-His relation to the Church-English Sweating Sickness-Jerome Cardan-Philosopher and Quack -His Algebra and Astrology-Visits Scotland and England- Rise of a Middle Class in Italy-Milan-Salerno-General Turbulence-Robber-knights-The Christian Lady-The Chase-The King-His Sacred Majesty-Touching for the King's Evil. IT was in the year of Our Lord, 1162, at a council held at Montpellier, as has been already mentioned, that a decree was passed forbidding the practice of medicine to the monks. This may be looked upon as the first step in the process of the divorce of medicine and the church; which it took many years to consummate; for, till the middle of the fourteenth century, all physicians were ecclesiastics-in so far, at least, that both had the same education, habits of thought, and social position. Indeed, the former had no title to the appellation of physicians or investigators of nature; |
