ody and its ailments, of the causes, symptoms, and treatment of
diseases.

It would be very easy to think that these are small volumes and that
they contain very little. We are so apt to think of old-fashioned
so-called books as scarcely more than chapters, that it may be
interesting to give some idea of the contents and extent of the first of
these works. The first book on Plants has 230 chapters, the second on
the Elements has 13 chapters, the third on Trees has 36 chapters, the
fourth on various kinds of Minerals, including precious stones, has 226
chapters, the fifth on Fishes has 36 chapters, the sixth on Birds has 68
chapters, the seventh on Quadrupeds has 43 chapters, the eighth on
Reptiles has 18 chapters, the ninth on Metals has 8 chapters. Each
chapter begins with a description of the species in question, and then
defines its value for man and its therapeutic significance. Modern
scientists have not hesitated to declare that the descriptions abound in
observations worthy of a scientific inquiring spirit. We are, of course,
not absolutely sure that all the contents of the books come from
Hildegarde. Subsequent students often made notes in these manuscript
books, and then other copyists copied these into the texts.
Unfortunately we have not a number of codices to collate and correct
such errors. Most of what Hildegarde wrote comes to us in a single copy,
of none are there more than four copies, showing how near we came to
missing all knowledge of her entirely.

Dr. Melanie Lipinska, in her "Histoire des Femmes Medecins," a thesis
presented for the doctorate in medicine at the University of Paris in
1900, subsequently awarded a special prize by the French Academy,
reviews Hildegarde's work critically from the medical standpoint. She
says that the saint distinguishes a double mode of action of different
substances, one chemical, the other physical, or what we would very
probably call magnetic. She discusses all the ailments of the various
organs, the brain, the eyes, the teeth, the heart, the spleen, the
stomach, the liver. She has special chapters on redness and paleness of
the face, on asthma, on cough, on fetid breath, on bilious indigestion,
on gout. Besides, she has other chapters on nervous affections, on
icterus, on fevers, on intestinal worms, on infections due to swamp
exhalations, on dysentery, and a number of forms of pulmonary diseases.
Nearly all of our methods of diagnosis are to be found, hinted at