Science At The Medieval Universities
With the growth of interest in science and in nature study in our own
day, one of the expressions that is probably oftenest heard is surprise
that the men of preceding generations and especially university men did
not occupy themselves more with the world around them and with the
phenomena that are so tempting to curiosity. Science is usually supposed
to be comparatively new and nature study only a few generations old. Men
speculations and theories of many kinds, that they neglected the
realities of life around them while spinning fine webs of theory.
Previous generations, of course, have indulged in theory, but then our
own generation is not entirely free from that amusing occupation.
Nothing could well be less true, however, than that the men of preceding
generations were not interested in science even in the sense of physical
science, or that nature study is new, or that men were not curious and
did not try to find out all they could about the phenomena of the world
around them.
The medieval universities and the school-men who taught in them have
been particularly blamed for their failure to occupy themselves with
realities instead of with speculation. We are coming to recognize their
wonderful zeal for education, the large numbers of students they
attracted, the enthusiasm of their students, since they made so many
handwritten copies of the books of their masters, the devotion of the
teachers themselves, who wrote at much greater length than do our
professors even now and on the most abstruse subjects, so that it is all
the more surprising to think they should have neglected science. The
thought of our generation in the matter, however, is founded entirely on
an assumption. Those who know anything about the writers of the Middle
Ages at first hand are not likely to think of them as neglectful of
science even in our sense of the term. Those who know them at second
hand are, however, very sure in the matter.
The assumption is due to the neglect of history that came in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We have many other similar
assumptions because of the neglect of many phases of mental development
and applied science at this time. For instance, most of us are very
proud of our modern hospital development and think of this as a great
humanitarian evolution of applied medical science. We are very likely to
think that this is the first time in the world's history that the
building of hospitals has been brought to such a climax of development,
and that the houses for the ailing in the olden time were mere refuges,
prone to become death traps and at most makeshifts for the solution of
the problem of the care of the ailing poor. This is true for the
hospitals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it is not
true at all for the hospitals of the thirteenth and fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Miss Nutting and Miss Dock in their History of
Nursing[36] have called attention to the fact that the lowest period in
hospital development is during the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Hospitals were little better than prisons, they had narrow
windows, were ill provided with light and air and hygienic arrangements,
and in general were all that we should imagine old-time hospitals to be.
The hospitals of the earlier time, however, had fine high ceilings,
large windows, abundant light and air, excellent arrangements for the
privacy of patients, and in general were as worthy of the architects of
the earlier times as the municipal buildings, the cathedrals, the
castles, the university buildings, and every other form of construction
that the late medieval centuries devoted themselves to.
The trouble with those who assume that there was no study of science and
practically no attention to nature study in the Middle Ages is that they
know nothing at all at first hand about the works of the men who wrote
in the medieval period. They have accepted declarations with regard to
the absolute dependence of the scholastics on authority, their almost
divine worship of Aristotle, their utter readiness to accept
authoritative assertions provided they came with the stamp of a mighty
name, and then their complete lack of attention to observation and above
all to experiment. Nothing could well be more ridiculous than this
ignorant assumption of knowledge with regard to the great teachers at
the medieval universities. Just as soon as there is definite knowledge
of what these great teachers wrote and taught, not only does the
previous mood of blame for them for not paying much more attention to
science and nature at once disappear, but it gives place to the
heartiest admiration for the work of these great thinkers. It is easy to
appreciate, then, what Professor Saintsbury said in a recent volume on
the thirteenth century:
And there have even 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.
Three men were the great teachers in the medieval universities at their
prime. They have been read and studied with interest ever since. They
wrote huge tomes, but men have pored over them in every generation. They
were Albertus Magnus, the teacher of the other two, Thomas Aquinas and
Roger Bacon. All three of them were together at the University of Paris
shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century. Anyone who wants to
know anything about the attitude of mind of the medieval universities,
their professors and students, and of all the intellectual world of the
time towards science and observation and experiment, should read the
books of these men. Any other mode of getting at any knowledge of the
real significance of the science of this time is mere pretence. These
constitute the documents behind any scientific history of the
development of science at this time.
It is extremely interesting to see the attitude of these men with regard
to authority. In Albert's tenth book (of his Summa), in which 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 be of certainty. In his impressive Latin
phrase experimentum solum certificat in talibus. With regard to the
study of nature in general he was quite as emphatic. He was a theologian
as well as a scientist, yet in his treatise on The Heavens and the
Earth he declared that in studying nature we have not to inquire 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 inquire
what nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass.[37]
Just as striking quotations on this subject might be made from Roger
Bacon. Indeed, Bacon was quite impatient with the scholars around him
who talked over-much, did not observe enough, depended to excess on
authority, and in general did as mediocre scholars always do, made much
fuss on second-hand information--plus some filmy speculations of their
own. Friar Bacon, however, had one great pupil whose work he thoroughly
appreciated because it exhibited the opposite qualities. This was
Petrus--we have come to know him as Peregrinus--whose observations on
magnetism have excited so much attention in recent years with the
republications of his epistle on the subject. It is really a monograph
on magnetism written in the thirteenth century. Roger Bacon's opinion of
it and of its author furnishes us the best possible index of his
attitude of mind towards observation and experiment in science.
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 works of wisdom. Therefore what others
grope after blindly, as bats in the evening twilight, this man
contemplates in 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.
Similar expressions might readily be quoted from Thomas Aquinas, but his
works are so easy to secure and his whole attitude of mind so well
known, that it scarcely seems worth while taking space to do so. Aquinas
is still studied very faithfully in many universities, and within the
last few years one of his great text-books of philosophy has been
replaced in the curriculum of Oxford University, in which it occupied a
prominent position in the long ago, as a work that may be offered for
examination in the department of philosophy. It is with regard to him
particularly that there has been the greatest revulsion of feeling in
recent years and a recognition of the fact that here was a great thinker
familiar with all that was known in the physical sciences, and who had
this knowledge constantly in his mind when he drew his conclusions with
regard to philosophical and theological questions.
It used to be the fashion to make little of the medieval scholars for
the high estimation in which they held Aristotle. Occasionally even yet
one hears narrowly educated men, I am sorry to say much more frequently
scientific specialists than others, talk deprecatingly of this ardent
devotion to Aristotle. No one who knows anything about Aristotle ever
indulges in such an exhibition of ignorance of the realities of the
history of philosophy and science. To know Aristotle well is to think of
him as probably possessed of the greatest human mind that ever existed.
We do not need to go back to the Middle Ages to be confirmed in that
opinion. Modern scientists who know their science well, but who also
know Aristotle well, and who are ardent worshippers at his shrine, are
not hard to find. Romanes, the great English biologist of the end of the
nineteenth century, said: It appears to me that there can be no
question that Aristotle stands forth not only as the greatest figure in
antiquity but as the greatest intellect that has ever appeared upon this
earth.
Before Romanes, George H. Lewes, in his interesting monograph in the
history of thought, Aristotle, a Chapter in the History of Science, is
quite as complimentary to the great Greek thinker. We may say that Lewes
was by no means partial to Aristotle. Anything but inclined to accept
authority as of value in philosophy, he had been rendered impatient by
the fact that so much of the history of philosophy was dominated by
Aristotle, and it was only that the panegyric was forced from him by
careful study of all that the Stagirite wrote that he said: History
gazed on him with wonder. His intellect was piercing and comprehensive;
his attainments surpassed those of every philosopher; his influence has
been excelled only by the founders of religion ... his vast and active
intelligence for twenty centuries held the world in awe.
Professor Osborn, whose scholarly study of the theory of evolution down
the ages From the Greeks to Darwin rather startled the world of
science by showing not only how old was a theory of evolution, but how
frequently it had been stated and how many of them anticipated phases of
our own thought in the matter, pays a high compliment to the great Greek
scientist. He says: Aristotle clearly states and rejects a theory of
the origin of adaptive structures in animals altogether similar to that
of Darwin. He then quotes certain passages from Aristotle's Physics,
and says: These passages seem to contain absolute evidence that
Aristotle had substantially the modern conception of the evolution of
life, from a primordial, soft mass of living matter to the most perfect
forms, and that even in these he believed that evolution was incomplete
for they were progressing to higher forms.
Modern French scientists are particularly laudatory in their estimation
of Aristotle. The group of biologists, Buffon, Cuvier, St. Hilaire, and
others who called world attention to French science and its attainments
about a century ago, are all of them on record in highest praise of
Aristotle. Cuvier said: I cannot read his work without being ravished
with astonishment. It is impossible to conceive how a single man was
able to collect and compare the multitude of facts implied in the rules
and aphorisms contained in this book.
It is possible, however, to get opinions ardently laudatory of Aristotle
from the serious students of any nation, provided only they know their
Aristotle. Sir William Hamilton, the Scotch philosopher, said:
Aristotle's seal is upon all the sciences, his speculations have
determined those of all subsequent thinkers. Hegel, the German
philosophic writer, is not less outspoken in his praise: Aristotle
penetrated the whole universe of things and subjected them to
intelligence. Kant, who is often said to have influenced our modern
thinking more than any other in recent generations, has his compliment
for Aristotle. It relates particularly to that branch of philosophy with
which Kant had most occupied himself. The Koenigsberg philosopher said:
Logic since Aristotle, like Geometry since Euclid, is a finished
science.
I do not want to tire you or I could quote many other authorities who
proclaim Aristotle the genius of the race. They would include poets like
Dante and Goethe, scholars like Cicero and Anthon, literary men like
Lessing and Reich and many others. The scholars of the Middle Ages, far
from condemnation for their devotion to Aristotle, deserve the highest
praise for it. If they had done nothing else but appreciate Aristotle as
our greatest modern scholars have done, that of itself would proclaim
their profound scholarship.
The medieval writers are often said to have been uncritical in their
judgment, but in their lofty estimation of Aristotle they displayed the
finest possible critical judgment. On the contrary, the generations who
made much of the opportunity to minimize medieval scholarship because of
its worship at the shrine of Aristotle, must themselves fall under the
suspicion at least of either not knowing Aristotle or of not thinking
deeply about the subjects with regard to which he wrote. For in all the
world's history the rule has been that whenever men have thought deeply
about a subject and know what Aristotle has written with regard to that
subject, they have the liveliest admiration for the great Greek thinker.
This is true for philosophy, logic, metaphysics, politics, ethics,
dramatics, but it is also quite as true for physical science. He lacked
our knowledge, though not nearly to the degree that is usually thought,
and he had a marvellous accumulation of information, but he had a
breadth of view and a thoroughness of appreciation with a power of
penetration that make his opinions worth while knowing even on
scientific subjects in our enlightened age.
As for the supposed swearing by Aristotle, in the sense of literally
accepting his opinions without daring to examine them critically, which
is so constantly asserted to have been the habit of the medieval
scholars and teachers, it is extremely difficult in the light of the
expressions which we have from them, to understand how this false
impression arose. Aristotle they thoroughly respected. They constantly
referred to his works, but so has every thinking generation ever since.
Whenever he had made a declaration they would not accept the
contradiction of it without a good reason, but whenever they had good
reasons, Aristotle's opinion was at once rejected without compunction.
Albertus Magnus, for instance, said: Whoever believes that Aristotle
was a God must also believe that he never erred, but if we believe that
Aristotle was a man, then doubtless he was liable to err just as we
are. A number of direct contradictions of Aristotle we have from
Albert. A well-known one is that with regard to Aristotle's assertion
that lunar rainbows appeared only twice in fifty years. Albert declared
that he himself had seen two in a single year.
Indeed, it seems very clear that the whole trend of thought among the
great teachers of the time was away from the acceptance of scientific
conclusions on authority unless there was good evidence for them
available. They were quite as impatient as the scientists of our time
with the constant putting forward of Aristotle as if that settled a
scientific question. Roger Bacon wanted the Pope to forbid the study of
Aristotle because his works were leading men astray from the study of
science, his authority being looked upon as so great that men did not
think for themselves but accepted his assertions. Smaller men are always
prone to do this, and indeed it constitutes one of the difficulties in
the way of advance in scientific knowledge at all times, as Roger Bacon
himself pointed out.
These are the sort of expressions that are to be expected from Friar
Bacon from what we know of other parts of his work. His Opus Tertium
was written at the request of Pope Clement IV, because the Pope had
heard many interesting accounts of what 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. Bacon starts out
with the principle that there are four grounds of human ignorance. These
are, first, trust in inadequate authority; second, that force of custom
which leads men to accept without properly questioning what has been
accepted before their time; third, the placing of confidence in the
assertions of the inexperienced; and fourth, the hiding of one's own
ignorance behind the parade of superficial knowledge, so that we are
afraid to say I do not know. Professor Henry Morley, a careful student
of Bacon's writings, said with regard to these expressions of Bacon:
No part of that ground has yet been cut away from beneath the
feet of students, although six centuries have passed. 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.
In his Opus Majus Bacon had previously given abundant evidence of his
respect for the experimental method. There is a section of this work
which bears the title Scientia Experimentalis. In this Bacon affirms
that without experiment nothing can be adequately known. An argument
may prove the correctness of a theory, 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 its way by means of experiment. To this
he later added in his Opus Tertium: The strongest argument proves
nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience.
Experimental science is the queen of sciences, and the goal of all
speculation.
It is no wonder that Dr. Whewell, in his History of the Inductive
Sciences, should have been unstinted in his praise of Roger Bacon's
work and writings. In a well-known passage he says of the Opus Majus:
Roger Bacon's Opus Majus is the encyclopedia and Novum
Organon of the thirteenth century, a work equally wonderful
with regard to its wonderful scheme and to the special
treatises by 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 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 of a prospect
of the vast 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 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.
As a matter of fact the universities of the Middle Ages, far from
neglecting science, were really scientific universities. Because the
universities of the early nineteenth century occupied themselves almost
exclusively with languages and especially formed students' minds by
means of classical studies, men in our time seem to be prone to think
that such linguistic studies formed the main portion of the curriculum
of the universities in all the old times and particularly in the Middle
Ages. The study of the classic languages, however, came into university
life only after the Renaissance. Before that the undergraduates of the
universities had occupied themselves almost entirely with science. It
was quite as much trouble to introduce linguistic studies into the old
universities in the Renaissance time to replace science, as it was to
secure room for science by pushing out the classics in the modern time.
Indeed the two revolutions in education are strikingly similar when
studied in detail. Men who had been brought up on science before the
Renaissance were quite sure that that formed the best possible means of
developing the mind. In the early nineteenth century men who had been
formed on the classics were quite as sure that science could not replace
them with any success.
There is no pretence that this view of the medieval universities is a
new idea in the history of education. Those who have known the old
universities at first hand by the study of the actual books of their
professors and by familiarity with their courses of study, have not been
inclined to make the mistake of thinking that the medieval university
neglected science. Professor Huxley in his Inaugural Address as Rector
of Aberdeen University some thirty years ago stated very definitely his
recognition of medieval devotion to science. His words are well worth
remembering by all those who are accustomed to think of our time as the
first in which the study of science was taken up seriously in our
universities. Professor Huxley said:
The scholars of the medieval universities seem to have studied
grammar, logic, and rhetoric; arithmetic and geometry;
astronomy, theology, and music. 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 this old Trivium
and Quadrivium does.
It would be entirely a mistake, however, to think that these great
writers and teachers who influenced the medieval universities so deeply
and whose works were the text-books of the universities for centuries
after, only had the principles of physical and experimental science and
did not practically apply them. As a matter of fact their works are full
of observation. Once more, the presumption that they wrote only nonsense
with regard to science comes from those who do not know their writings
at all, while great scientists who have taken the pains to study their
works are enthusiastic in praise. Humboldt, for instance, says of
Albertus Magnus, after reading some of his works with care:
Albertus Magnus is 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 the sun's rays in heating the ground which
have excited my surprise.
It is with regard to physical geography of course that Humboldt is
himself a distinguished authority.
Humboldt's expression that he found some exceedingly acute remarks on
the organic structure and physiology of plants in Albert the Great's
writings will prove a great surprise to many people. Meyer, the German
historian of botany, however, has re-echoed Humboldt's praise with
emphasis. The extraordinary erudition and originality of Albert's
treatise on plants drew from Meyer the comment:
No botanist who lived before Albert can be compared with 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 Gessner and
Caesalpino.
These men, it may be remarked, come three centuries after Albert's time.
A ready idea of Albert's contributions to physical science can be
obtained from his life by Sighart, which has been translated into
English by Dixon and was published in London in 1870. Pagel, in
Puschmann's History of Medicine, already referred to, gives a list of
the books written by Albert on scientific matters with some comments
which are eminently suggestive, and furnish solid basis for the remark
that I have made, that men's minds were occupied with nearly the same
problems in science in the thirteenth century as we are now, while the
conclusions they came to were not very different from ours, though
reached so long before us.
This catalogue of Albertus Magnus' works shows very well his own
interest and that of his generation in physical science of all kinds.
There were eight treatises on Aristotle's physics and on the underlying
principles of natural philosophy and of energy and of movement; four
treatises concerning the heavens and the earth, one on physical
geography which also contains, according to Pagel, numerous suggestions
on ethnography and physiology. There are two treatises on generation and
corruption, six books on meteors, five books on minerals, three books on
the soul, two books on the intellect, a treatise on nutritives, and then
a treatise on the senses and another on the memory and on the
imagination. All the phases of the biological sciences were especially
favorite subjects of his study. There is a treatise on the motion of
animals, a treatise in six books on vegetables and plants, a treatise on
breathing things, a treatise on sleep and waking, a treatise on youth
and old age, and a treatise on life and death. His treatise on minerals
contains, according to Pagel, a description of ninety-five different
kinds of precious stones. Albert's volumes on plants were reproduced
with Meyer, the German botanist, as editor (Berlin, 1867). All of
Albert's books are available in modern editions.
Pagel says of Albertus that
His profound scholarship, his boundless industry, the almost
incontrollable impulse of his mind after universality of
knowledge, the many-sidedness of his literary productivity,
and finally the almost 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.
In another passage Pagel has said:
While Albert was a Churchman and an 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 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.
Roger Bacon is, however, the one of these three great teachers who
shows us how thoroughly practical was the scientific knowledge of the
universities and how much it led to important useful discoveries in
applied science and to anticipations of what is most novel even in our
present-day sciences. Some of these indeed are so startling, that only
that we know them not by tradition but from his works, where they may be
readily found without any doubt of their authenticity, we should be sure
to think that they must be the result of later commentators' ideas.
Bacon was very much interested in astronomy, and not only suggested the
correction of the calendar, but also a method by which it could be kept
from wandering away from the actual date thereafter. He discovered many
of the properties of lenses and is said to have invented spectacles and
announced very emphatically that light did not travel instantaneously
but moved with a definite velocity. He is sometimes said to have
invented gunpowder, but of course he did not, though he studied this
substance in various forms very carefully and drew a number of
conclusions in his observations. He was sure that some time or other man
would learn to control the energies exhibited by explosives and that
then he would be able to accomplish many things that seemed quite
impossible under present conditions.
He said, for instance:
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.
In these days when the automobile is with us and when the principal
source of energy for motor purposes is derived from explosives of
various kinds, this expression of Roger Bacon represents a prophecy
marvellously surprising in its fulfilment. It is no wonder that the book
whence it comes bears the title De Secretis Artis et Naturae. Roger
Bacon even went to the extent, however, of declaring that man would some
time be able to fly. He was even sure that with sufficient pains he
could himself construct a flying machine. He did not expect to use
explosives for his motor power, however, but thought that a windlass
properly arranged, worked by hand, might enable a man to make sufficient
movement to carry himself aloft or at least to support himself in the
air, if there were enough surface to enable him to use his lifting power
to advantage. He was in intimate relations by letter with many other
distinguished inventors and investigators besides Peregrinus and was a
source of incentive and encouragement to them all.
The more one knows of Aquinas the more surprise there is at his
anticipation of many modern scientific ideas. At the conclusion of a
course on cosmology delivered at the University of Paris he said that
nothing at all would ever be reduced to nothingness (nihil omnino in
nihilum redigetur). He was teaching the doctrine that man could not
destroy matter and God would not annihilate it. In other words, he was
teaching the indestructibility of matter even more emphatically than we
do. He saw the many changes that take place in material substances
around us, but he taught that these were only changes of form and not
substantial changes and that the same amount of matter always remained
in the world. At the same time he was teaching that the forms in matter
by which he meant the combinations of energies which distinguish the
various kinds of matter are not destroyed. In other words, he was
anticipating not vaguely, but very clearly and definitely, the
conservation of energy. His teaching with regard to the composition of
matter was very like that now held by physicists. He declared that
matter was composed of two principles, prime matter and form. By forma
he meant the dynamic element in matter, while by materia prima he
meant the underlying substratum of material, the same in every
substance, but differentiated by the dynamics of matter.
It used to be the custom to make fun of these medieval scientists for
believing in the transmutation of metals. It may be said that all three
of these greatest teachers did not hold the doctrine of the
transmutation of metals in the exaggerated way in which it appealed to
many of their contemporaries. The theory of matter and form, however,
gave a philosophical basis for the idea that one kind of matter might be
changed into another. We no longer think that notion absurd. Sir William
Ramsay has actually succeeded in changing one element into another and
radium and helium are seen changing into each other, until now we are
quite ready to think of transmutation placidly. The Philosopher's Stone
used to seem a great absurdity until our recent experience with radium,
which is to some extent at least the philosopher's stone, since it
brings about the change of certain supposed elements into others. A
distinguished American chemist said not long ago that he would like to
extract all the silver from a large body of lead ore in which it occurs
so commonly, and then come back after twenty years and look for further
traces of silver, for he felt sure that they would be found and that
lead ore is probably always producing silver in small quantities and
copper ore is producing gold.
Most people will be inclined to ask where the fruits of this
undergraduate teaching of science are to be found. They are inclined to
presume that science was a closed book to the men and women of that
time. It is not hard, however, to point the effect of the scientific
training in the writings of the times. Dante is a typical university man
of the period. He was at several Italian universities, was at Paris and
perhaps at Oxford. His writings are full of science. Professor Kuehns, of
Wesleyan, in his book The Treatment of Nature in Dante, has pointed
out how much Dante knows of science and of nature. Few of the poets not
only of his own but of any time have known more. There are only one or
two writers of poetry in our time who go with so much confidence to
nature and the scientific interpretation of her for figures for their
poetry. The astronomy, the botany, the zooelogy of Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas, Dante knew very well and used confidently for figurative
purposes. Anyone who is inclined to think nature study a new idea in the
world forgets, or has never known, his Dante. The birds and the bees,
the flowers, the leaves, the varied aspects of clouds and sea, the
phenomena of phosphorescence, the intimate habits of bird and beast and
the ways of the plants, as well as all the appearances of the heavens,
Dante knew very well and in a detail that is quite surprising when we
recall how little nature study is supposed to have attracted the men of
his time. Only that his readers appreciated it all, Dante would surely
not have used his scientific erudition so constantly.
So much for the undergraduate department of the universities of the
Middle Ages, and the view is absolutely fair, for these were the men to
whom the students flocked by thousands. They were teaching science, not
literature. They were discussing physics as well as metaphysics,
psychology in its phenomena as well as philosophy, observation and
experiment as well as logic, the ethical sciences, economics,
practically all the scientific ideas that were needed in their
generation--and that generation saw the rise of the universities, the
finishing of the cathedrals, the building of magnificent town halls and
castles and beautiful municipal buildings of many kinds, including
hospitals, the development of the Hansa League in commerce, and of
wonderful manufacturers of all the textiles, the arts and crafts, as
well as the most beautiful book-making and art and literature. We could
be quite sure that the men who solved all the other problems so well
could not have been absurd only in their treatment of science. Anyone
who reads their books will be quite sure of that.
While most people might be ready, then, to confess that possibly Huxley
was not mistaken with regard to the undergraduate department of the
universities, most of them would feel sure that at least the graduate
departments were sadly deficient in accomplishment. Once more this is
entirely an assumption. The facts are all against any such idea.
There were three graduate departments in most of the
universities--theology, law, and medicine. While physical scientists are
usually not cognizant of it apparently, theology is a science, a
department of knowledge developed scientifically, and most of these
medieval universities did more for its scientific development than the
schools of any other period. Quite as much may be said for philosophy,
for there are many who hesitate to attribute any scientific quality to
modern developments in the matter. As for law, this is the great period
of the foundation of scientific law development; the English common law
was formulated by Bracton, the deep foundations of basic French and
Spanish law were laid, and canon law acquired a definite scientific
character which it was always to retain. All this was accomplished
almost entirely by the professors in the law departments of the
universities.
It was in medicine, however, where most people would be quite sure
without any more ado that nothing worth while talking about was being
done, that the great triumphs of graduate teaching at the medieval
universities were secured. Here more than anywhere else is there room
for supreme surprise at the quite unheard-of anticipations of our modern
medicine and, stranger still, as it may seem, of our modern surgery.
The law regulating the practice of medicine in the Two Sicilies about
the middle of the thirteenth century shows us the high standard of
medical education. Students were required to have three years of
preliminary study at the university, four years in the medical
department, and then practise for a year with a physician before they
were allowed to practise for themselves. If they wanted to practise
surgery, an extra year in the study of anatomy was required. I published
the text of this law, which was issued by the Emperor Frederick II about
1241, in the Journal of the American Medical Association three years
ago. It also regulated the practice of pharmacy. Drugs were manufactured
under the inspection of the government and there was a heavy penalty for
substitution, or for the sale of old inert drugs, or improperly prepared
pharmaceutical materials. If the government inspector violated his
obligations as to the oversight of drug preparations the penalty was
death. Nor was this law of the Emperor Frederick an exception. We have
the charters of a number of medical schools issued by the Popes during
the next century, all of which require seven years or more of university
study, four of them in the medical department, before the doctor's
degree could be obtained. When new medical schools were founded they had
to have professors from certain well-recognized schools on their staff
at the beginning in order to assure proper standards of teaching, and
all examinations were conducted under oath-bound secrecy and with the
heaviest obligations on professors to be assured of the knowledge of
students before allowing them to pass.
It might be easy to think, and many people are prone to do so, that in
spite of the long years of study required there was really very little
to study in medicine at that time. Those who think so should read
Professor Clifford Allbutt's address on the Historical Relations of
Medicine and Surgery delivered at the World's Fair at St. Louis in
1904. He has dwelt more on surgery than on medicine, but he makes it
very clear that he considers that the thinking professors of medicine of
the later Middle Ages were doing quite as serious work in their way as
any that has been done since. They were carefully studying cases and
writing case histories, they were teaching at the bedside, they were
making valuable observations, and they were using the means at their
command to the best advantage. Of course there are many absurdities in
their therapeutics, but then we must not forget there have always been
many absurdities in therapeutics and that we are not free from them in
our day. Professor Richet, at the University of Paris, said not long
ago: The therapeutics of any generation is quite absurd to the second
succeeding generation. We shall not blame the medieval generations for
having accepted remedies that afterwards proved inert, for every
generation has done that, even our own.
Their study of medicine was not without lasting accomplishment, however.
They laid down the indications and the dosage for opium. They used iron
with success, they tried out many of the bitter tonics among the herbal
medicines, and they used laxatives and purgatives to good advantage.
Down at Montpellier, Gilbert, the Englishman, suggested red light for
smallpox because it shortened the fever, lessened the lesions, and made
the disfigurement much less. Finsen was given the Nobel prize partly for
re-discovery of this. They segregated erysipelas and so prevented its
spread. They recognized the contagiousness of leprosy, and though it was
probably as widespread as tuberculosis is at the present time, they
succeeded not only in controlling but in eventually obliterating it
throughout Europe.
It was in surgery, however, that the greatest triumphs of teaching of
the medieval universities were secured. Most people are inclined to
think that surgery developed only in our day. The great surgeons of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, anticipated most of our
teaching. They investigated the causes of the failure of healing by
first intention, recognized the danger of wounds of the neck,
differentiated the venereal diseases, described rabies, and knew much of
blood poisoning, and operated very skilfully. We have their text-books
of surgery and they are a never-ending source of surprise. They operated
on the brain, on the thorax, on the abdominal cavity, and did not
hesitate to do most of the operations that modern surgeons do. They
operated for hernia by the radical cure, though Mondeville suggested
that more people were operated on for hernia for the benefit of the
doctor's pocket than for the benefit of the patient. Guy de Chauliac
declared that in wounds of the intestines patients would die unless the
intestinal lacerations were sewed up, and he described the method of
suture and invented a needle holder. We have many wonderful instruments
from these early days preserved in pictures at least, that show us how
much modern advance is merely re-invention.
They understood the principles of aseptic surgery very well. They
declared that it was not necessary that pus should be generated in
wounds. Professor Clifford Allbutt says:
They washed the wound with wine, scrupulously removing every
foreign particle; then they brought the edges together, not
allowing wine or anything else to remain within--dry adhesive
surfaces were their desire. Nature, they said, produces the
means of union in a viscous exudation, or natural balm, as it
was afterwards called by Paracelsus, Pare, and Wurtz. In older
wounds they did their best to obtain union by cleansing,
desiccation, and refreshing of the edges. Upon the outer
surface they laid only lint steeped in wine. Powders they
regarded as too desiccating, for powder shuts in decomposing
matters; wine after washing, purifying, and drying the raw
surfaces evaporates.
Almost needless to say these are exactly the principles of aseptic
surgery. The wine was the best antiseptic that they could use and we
still use alcohol in certain cases. It would seem to many quite
impossible that such operations as are described could have been done
without anaesthetics, but they were not done without anaesthetics. There
were two or three different forms of anaesthesia used during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. One method employed by Ugo da Lucca
consisted of the use of an inhalant. We do not know what the material
employed was. There are definite records, however, of its rather
frequent employment.
What a different picture of science at the medieval universities all
this makes from what we have been accustomed to hear and read with
regard to them. It is difficult to understand where the old false
impressions came from. The picture of university work that recent
historical research has given us shows us professors and students busy
with science in every department, making magnificent advances, many of
which were afterwards forgotten, or at least allowed to lapse into
desuetude.
The positive assertions with regard to old-time ignorance were all made
in the course of religious controversy. In English-speaking countries
particularly it became a definite purpose to represent the old Church as
very much opposed to education of all kinds and above all to scientific
education. There is not a trace of that to be found anywhere, but there
were many documents that were appealed to to confirm the protestant
view. There was a Papal bull, for instance, said to forbid dissection.
When read it proves to forbid the cutting up of bodies to carry them to
a distance for burial, an abuse which caused the spread of disease, and
was properly prohibited. The Church prohibition was international and
therefore effective. At the time the bull was issued there were twenty
medical schools doing dissection in Italy and they continued to practise
it quite undisturbed during succeeding centuries. The Papal physicians
were among the greatest dissectors. Dissections were done at Rome and
the cardinals attended them. Bologna at the height of its fame was in
the Papal States. All this has been ignored and the supposed bull
against anatomy emphasized as representing the keynote of medical and
surgical history. Then there was a Papal decree forbidding the making of
gold and silver. This was said to forbid chemistry or alchemy and so
prevent scientific progress. The history of the medical schools of the
time shows that it did no such thing. The great alchemists of the time
doing really scientific work were all clergymen, many of them very
prominent ecclesiastics.
Just in the same way there were said to be decrees of the Church
councils forbidding the practice of surgery. President White says in his
Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, that, as a
consequence of these, surgery was in dishonor until the Emperor
Wenceslaus, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, ordered that it
should be restored to estimation. As a matter of fact, during the two
centuries immediately preceding the first years of the fifteenth
century, surgery developed very wonderfully, and we have probably the
most successful period in all the history of surgery except possibly our
own. The decrees forbade monks to practise surgery because it led to
certain abuses. Those who found these decrees and wanted to believe
that they prevented all surgical development simply quoted them and
assumed there was no surgery. The history of surgery at this time is one
of the most wonderful chapters in human progress.
The more we know of the Middle Ages the more do we realize how much they
accomplished in every department of intellectual effort. Their
development of the arts and crafts has never been equalled in the modern
time. They made very great literature, marvellous architecture,
sculpture that rivals the Greeks', painting that is still the model for
our artists, surpassing illuminations; everything that they touched
became so beautiful as to be a model for all the after time. They
accomplished as much in education as they did in all the other arts,
their universities had more students than any that have existed down to
our own time, and they were enthusiastic students and their professors
were ardent teachers, writers, observers, investigators. While we have
been accustomed to think of them as neglecting science, their minds were
occupied entirely with science. They succeeded in anticipating much more
of our modern thought, and even scientific progress, than we have had
any idea until comparatively recent years. The work of the later Middle
Ages in mathematics is particularly strong, and was the incentive for
many succeeding generations. Roger Bacon insisted that, without
mathematics, there was no possibility of real advance in physical
science. They had the right ideas in every way. While they were occupied
more with the philosophical and ethical sciences than we are, these were
never pursued to the neglect of the physical sciences in the strictest
sense of that term.
Is it not time that we should drop the foolish notions that are very
commonly held because we know nothing about the Middle Ages--and,
therefore, the more easily assume great knowledge--and get back to
appreciate the really marvellous details of educational and scientific
development which are so interesting and of so much significance at this
time?
More
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Avicenna
Undoubtedly the most important of Abulcasis' contemporaries is the famous physician whose Arabic name, Ibn Sina, was transformed into Avicenna. He was born toward the end of the tenth century in the Persian province of Chorasan, at the height of Ara... Bruno Da Longoburgo
The first of this important group of north Italian surgeons who taught at these universities was Bruno of Longoburgo. While he was born in Calabria, and probably studied in Salerno, his work was done at Vicenza, Padua, and Verona. His text-book, the... Constantine Africanus
Probably the most important representative of the medical school at Salerno, certainly the most significant member of its faculty, if we consider the wide influence for centuries after his time that his writings had, was Constantine Africanus. He ... Cusanus And The First Suggestion Of Laboratory Methods In Medicine
As illustrating how, as we know more about the details of medical history, the beginnings of medical science and medical practice are pushed back farther and farther, a discussion in the Berliner klinische Wochenschrift a dozen years ago is of inter... Early Greek Medicine
Apollo--AEsculapius--Temples--Serpents--Gods of Health--Melampus--Homer--Machaon--Podalarius--Temples of AEsculapius--Methods of Treatment--Gymnasia--Classification of Renouard--Pythagoras--Democedes--Greek Philosophers. The... Early Roman Medicine
Origin of Healing--Temples--Lectisternium--Temple of AEsculapius--Archagathus--Domestic Medicine--Greek Doctors--Cloaca Maxima--Aqueducts--State of the early Empire. The origin of the healing art in Ancient Rome is shrouded in un... Fees In Ancient Times
The professional incomes of doctors in ancient Greece and Rome varied greatly as at the present day. A few were paid very large fees, but the rank and file did not make more money than was equal to keeping them in decency. Seleucus paid Erasist... Further Christian Physicians
Another distinguished Christian medical scientist was Theophilus Protosbatharius, who belonged to the court of the Greek Emperor Heraclius, in the seventh century. He seems to have had a life very full of interest and surprisingly varied duties. He ... Galen
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In order to understand the place of the Arabs in medicine and in science, a few words as to the rise of this people to political power, and then to the cultivation of literature and of science, are necessary. We hear of the Arabs as hireling soldi... Great Jewish Physicians
Any account of Old-Time Makers of Medicine without a chapter on the Jewish Physicians would indeed be incomplete. They are among the most important factors in medieval medicine, representing one of the most significant elements of medical progress... Great Physicians In Early Christian Times
What we know of the life of the Founder of Christianity and how much He did for the ailing poor would make us expect that the religion that He established would foster the care and the cure of suffering humanity. As we have outlined in the Introdu... Great Surgeons Of The Medieval Universities
Strange as it may appear to those who have not watched the development of our knowledge of the Middle Ages in recent years the most interesting feature in the medical departments and, indeed, of the post-graduate work generally of the medieval unive... Guy De Chauliac
One of the most interesting characters in the history of medieval medicine, and undoubtedly the most important and significant of these Old-Time Makers of Medicine, is Guy de Chauliac. Most of the false notions so commonly accepted with regard to th... Gymnasia And Baths
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Bruno brought up with him the methods and principles of surgery from the south of Italy, but there seems to have been already in the north at least one distinguished surgeon who had made his mark. This was Ugo da Lucca or Ugo Luccanus, sometimes kno... In The Reign Of The Caesars To The Death Of Nero
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In English-speaking countries of course we are interested in what was done by Englishmen at this time. Fortunately we have the record of one great English surgeon of the period worthy to be placed beside even the writers already mentioned. This is J... Lanfranc
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The life of one of the great Jewish physicians, who has come to be known in history as Maimonides, is of such significance in medical biography that he deserves to have a separate sketch. Born in Spain, his life was lived in the East, where his co... Medieval Dentistry - Giovanni Of Arcoli
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The idea of collecting general information from many sources, of bringing it together into an easily available form, so as to save others labor, of writing it out in compendious fashion, so that it could readily pass from hand to hand, is likely t... Medieval Surgery
Even this brief account of the surgeons who taught and studied at the medieval universities demonstrates what fine work they did. It is surely not too much to say that the chapter on university education mainly concerned with them is one of the most... Medieval Women Physicians
Very probably the most interesting chapter for us of the modern time in the history of the medical school at Salerno is to be found in the opportunities provided for the medical education of women and the surrender to them of a whole department in... Mondeville
The next of the important surgeons who were to bring such distinction to French surgery for five centuries was Henri de Mondeville. Writers usually quote him as Henricus. His latter name is only the place of his birth, which was probably not far fro... Mondino And The Medical School Of Bologna
The most important contributions to medical science made by the Medical School of Salerno at the height of its development were in surgery. The text-books written by men trained in her halls or inspired by her teachers were to influence many succe... Moorish Physicians
After Rhazes, the most important contributors to medical literature from among the Arabs, with the single exception of Avicenna, were born in Spain. They are Albucasis or Abulcasis, the surgeon; Avenzoar, the physician, and Averroes, the philosophic... Paul Of Aegina
Another extremely important writer in these early medieval times, whose opportunities for study in medicine and for the practice of it, were afforded him by Christian schools and Christian hospitals, was Paul of AEgina. He was born on the island of ... Physicians From The Time Of Augustus To The Death Of Nero
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The most distinguished of the Arabian physicians was the man whose rather lengthy Arabian name, beginning with Abu Bekr Mohammed, finished with el-Razi, and who has hence been usually referred to in the history of medicine as Rhazes. He was born abo... Roger Roland And The Four Masters
Ruggero, or Rogero, who is also known as Rogerio and Rogerus with the adjective Parmensis, or Salernitanus, of Parma or of Salerno, and often in German and English history simply as Roger, lived at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thir... Roman Medicine At The End Of The Republic And The Beginning Of The
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After Roger and Rolando and the Four Masters, who owe the inspiration for their work to Salerno and the south of Italy, comes a group of north Italian surgeons: Bruno da Longoburgo, usually called simply Bruno; Theodoric and his father, Hugo of Lucc... Theodoric
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One of the maxims of the old Greek philosophers was that good is diffusive of itself. As the scholastics put it, bonum est diffusivum sui. This proved to be eminently true of the old universities also, and especially of their training in medicine an...