the poor for
the privilege of practice accorded by the license, though the general
fees are of a thoroughly professional character and represent for each
visit of the physician about the amount of daily wage that the ordinary
laborer of that time earned. Curiously enough, this same ratio of
emolument has maintained itself. This law was also a pure drug law,
regulating the practice of pharmacy, and the price as well as the purity
of drugs, and the relations of physicians, druggists, and the royal drug
inspectors whose business it was to see that only proper drugs were
prepared and sold.

All this is so much more advanced than we could possibly have imagined,
only that the actual documents are in our possession, that most people
refuse to let themselves be persuaded in spite of the law that it could
have meant very much. Especially as regards medical education are they
dubious as to conditions at this time. To them it seems that it can make
very little difference how much time was required for medical study or
for studies preliminary to medicine, since there was so little to be
learned. The age was ignorant, men knew but little, and so very little
could be imparted no matter how much time was taken.

This is, I fear, a common impression, but an utterly false one. The
preliminary training that is the undergraduate work at the universities
consisted of the Seven Liberal Arts--the trivium and quadrivium, which
embraced logic, rhetoric, grammar, metaphysics, under which was included
not a little of physics, cosmology in which some biology was studied, as
well as psychology and mathematics, astronomy, and music. This was a
thoroughly rounded course in intellectual training. No wonder that
Professor Huxley said in his Inaugural Address as Rector of Aberdeen, "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." There is no doubt at all about the value of the
undergraduate training, nor of the scholarship of the men who were
turned out under the system, nor of their ability to concentrate their
minds on difficult subjects--a faculty that we strive to cultivate in
our time and do not always congratulate ourselves on securing to the
degree, at least, that we would like.

As to the medical teaching, AEgidius, often called Gilles of Corbeil, who
was a graduate of Salerno and afterward became the physician-in-ordinary
t