understand the course of medical
traditions through the Middle Ages, and especially in the earlier
period, with regard to which our documents are comparatively scanty,
and during which the disturbed conditions made medical developments
impossible, and anything more than the preservation of the old authors
out of the question. The torch of medical illumination lighted at the
great Greek fires passes from people to people, never quenched, though
often burning low because of unfavorable conditions, but sometimes with
new fuel added to its flame by the contributions of genius. The early
Christians took it up and kept it lighted, and, with the Jewish
physicians, carried it through the troublous times of the end of the old
order, and then passed it on for a while to the Arabs. Then, when
favorable conditions had developed again, Christian schools and scholars
gave it the opportunity to burn brightly for several centuries at the
end of the Middle Ages. This medieval age is probably the most difficult
period of medical history to understand properly, but it is worth while
taking the trouble to follow out the thread of medical tradition from
the Greeks to the Renaissance medical writers, who practically begin
modern medicine for us.

It is easy to understand that Christianity's influence on medicine,
instead of hampering, was most favorable. The Founder of Christianity
Himself had gone about healing the sick, and care for the ailing became
a prominent feature of Christian work. One of the Evangelists, St. Luke,
was a physician. It was the custom a generation ago, and even later,
when the Higher Criticism became popular, to impugn the tradition as to
St. Luke having been a physician, but this has all been undone, and
Harnack's recent book, "Luke the Physician," makes it very clear that
not only the Third Gospel, but also the Acts, could only have been
written by a man thoroughly familiar with the Greek medical terms of his
time, and who had surely had the advantage of a training in the medical
sciences at Alexandria. This makes such an important link in medical
traditions that a special chapter has been devoted to it in the
Appendix.

Very early in Christianity care for the ailing poor was taken up, and
hospitals in our modern sense of the term became common in Christian
communities. There had been military hospitals before this, and places
where those who could afford to pay for service were kept during
illness. Our modern ci