l of Bologna continued to maintain as a centre of
medical teaching."

Of course, erudition had its revenge, and carried Taddeo too far. The
difficult thing in human nature is to stay in the mean and avoid
exaggeration. His methods of illustrating medical truths from many
literary and philosophical sources often caused the kernel of
observation to be hidden beneath a blanket of speculation or, at least,
to be concealed to a great extent. Even the Germans, who have insisted
most on this unfortunate tendency of Taddeo, have been compelled to
confess that there is much that is valuable in what he accomplished, and
that even his modes of expression were not without a certain vivacity
which attracted attention and doubtless added materially to his success
as a teacher. Pagel, in Puschmann's "Handbuch," says: "It cannot be
denied [this is just after he has quoted a passage of Taddeo with regard
to dreams] that Taddeo's expressions have a certain liveliness all their
own that gives us some idea why he was looked upon as so good a teacher,
a teacher who, as we know now, also gave instruction by the bedside of
patients." Pagel adds, "Taddeo's greatest merit and his highest
significance in medical education consist in the fact that a great many
(_zahlreiche_) physicians followed directly in his footsteps and were
counted as his pupils. They were all men, as we know them, who as
writers and practitioners of medicine succeeded in going far beyond the
level of mediocrity in what they accomplished."

This was the teacher who most influenced young Mondino when he came to
the University of Bologna, for it seems not unlikely that as a medical
student he was actually the pupil of Taddeo, then in a vigorous old age.
If not, he was at least brought under the direct influence of the
teaching tradition created during more than thirty years by that
wonderful old man. Knowing what we do of Taddeo it is not surprising
that his pupil should have accomplished work that was to influence
succeeding generations more than any other of that wonderful thirteenth
century. Dr. Pilcher in the article on "The Mondino Myth," so often
placed under contribution in this sketch, says that "It needs no great
stretch of the imagination to picture somewhat of the effect that
contact with such a man as Taddeo di Alderotto[15] might have, in
molding the character of his young neighbor and pupil, the chemist's
son, who a few years later, by his devotion to the study