iven to medicine. Women
studied medicine and were professors in the medical department of
Salerno. Other Italian universities followed the example thus set, and
so there is abundant material for the chapter on "Medieval Women
Physicians."

The next phase of medical history in the medieval period brings us to
the Arabs. Utterly uninterested in culture, education, or science before
the time of Mohammed, with the growth of their political power and the
foundation of their capitals, the Arab Caliphs took up the patronage of
education. They were the rulers of the cities of Asia Minor in which
Greek culture had taken so firm a hold, and captive Greece has always
led its captors captive. With the leisure that came for study, Arabians
took up the cultivation of the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle,
and soon turned their attention also to the Greek physicians Hippocrates
and Galen. For some four hundred years then they were in the best
position to carry on medical traditions. Their teachers were the
Christian and Jewish physicians of the cities of Asia Minor, but soon
they themselves became distinguished for their attainments, and for
their medical writings. Interestingly enough, more of their
distinguished men flourished in Spain than in Asia Minor. We have
suggested an explanation for this in the fact that Spain had been one of
the most cultured provinces of the Roman Empire, providing practically
all the writers of the Silver Age of Latin literature, and evidently
possessing a widely cultured people. It was into this province, not yet
utterly decadent from the presence of the northern Goths, that the Moors
came and readily built up a magnificent structure of culture and
education on what had been the highest development of Roman
civilization.

The influence of the Arabs on Western civilization, and especially on
the development of science in Europe, has been much exaggerated by
certain writers. Closely in touch with Greek thought and Greek
literature during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, it is easy to
understand that the Arabian writers were far ahead of the Christian
scholars of Europe of the same period, who were struggling up out of the
practical chaos that had been created by the coming of the barbarians,
and who, besides, had the chance for whatever Greek learning came to
them only through the secondary channels of the Latin writers. Rome had
been too occupied with politics and aggrandizement ever to b