the Moorish
government. He escaped with his life, but only after great risks, and he
was banished to a suburb of Cordova, in which only Jews were allowed to
live. By personal influence he succeeded in securing the pardon of
himself and friends, and then was summoned to the court of the son and
successor of El-Mansur in Morocco. He died, not long after, in 1198.

Altogether there are some thirty-three works of Averroes on philosophy
and science. Only three of these are concerned with medicine. One is the
"Colliget," so-called, containing seven books, on anatomy, physiology,
pathology, diagnostics, materia medica, hygiene, and therapy. Then there
is a commentary on the "Cantica of Avicenna," and a tractate on the
"Theriac." Averroes' idea in writing about medicine was to apply his
particular system of philosophy to medical science. His intimate
relations with other great physicians of the time, and in particular his
close friendship with Avenzoar, enabled him to get abundant medical
information in faultless order so far as knowledge then went, but his
theoretic speculations, instead of helping medicine, as he thought they
would, and as philosophers have always been inclined to think as regards
their theoretic contributions, were not only not of value, but to some
extent at least hindered human progress by diverting men from the field
of observation to that of speculation. It is interesting to realize that
Averroes did in his time what Descartes did many centuries later, and
many another brilliant thinker has done before and since.

ARABIAN INFLUENCE

The fame of these great thinkers and writers in philosophy and in
medicine came to be known not only through the distribution of their
books long after their death, but during their lifetime, and in
immediately subsequent generations, ardent seekers after knowledge, who
were themselves afterwards to become famous by their teaching and
writing, found their way into the Arabian dominions in order to take
advantage of the educational opportunities afforded. These were better
than they could secure at home in Christian countries, because the
process of bringing culture and devotion to literature and science into
the minds of the Northern nations, who had replaced the old Romans in
Europe, was not yet completed. Bagdad and Cordova were the two favorite
places of educational pilgrimage. The names that are most familiar among
the scholars in the Middle Ages in Europe are those