ryo in the
medicine of the olden time."--LITTRE: Introduction to the Works
of Hippocrates.

"How true it is that in reading this history one finds modern
discoveries that are anything but discoveries, unless one supposes that
they have been made twice."--DUJARDIN: _Histoire de la
Chirurgie_, Paris, 1774 (quoted by Gurlt on the post title-page of his
_Geschichte der Chirurgie_, Berlin, 1898).

PREFACE

The material for this book was gathered partly for lectures on the
history of medicine at Fordham University School of Medicine, and partly
for articles on a number of subjects in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Some
of it was developed for a series of addresses at commencements of
medical schools and before medical societies, on the general topic how
old the new is in surgery, medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy. The
information thus presented aroused so much interest, the accomplishments
of the physicians and surgeons of a period that is usually thought quite
sterile in medical science proved, indeed, so astonishing, that I was
tempted to connect the details for a volume in the Fordham University
Press series. There is no pretence to any original investigation in the
history of medicine, nor to any extended consultation of original
documents. I have had most of the great books that are mentioned in the
course of this volume in my hands, and have given as much time to the
study of them as could be afforded in the midst of a rather busy life,
but I owe my information mainly to the distinguished German and French
scholars who have in recent years made deep and serious studies of these
Old Makers of Medicine, and I have made my acknowledgments to them in
the text as opportunity presented itself.

There is just one feature of the book that may commend it to
present-day readers, and that is that our medieval medical colleagues,
when medicine embraced most of science, faced the problems of medicine
and surgery and the allied sciences that are now interesting us, in very
much the same temper of mind as we do, and very often anticipated our
solutions of them--much oftener, indeed, than most of us, unless we have
paid special attention to history, have any idea of. The volume does not
constitute, then, a contribution to that theme that has interested the
last few generations so much,--the supposed continuous progress of the
race and its marvellous advance,--but rather emphasizes that puzzling
question, how is it that men mak