of
preliminary study at the university, four years in the medical
department, and then practise for a year with a physician before they
were allowed to practise for themselves. If they wanted to practise
surgery, an extra year in the study of anatomy was required. I published
the text of this law, which was issued by the Emperor Frederick II about
1241, in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_ three years
ago. It also regulated the practice of pharmacy. Drugs were manufactured
under the inspection of the government and there was a heavy penalty for
substitution, or for the sale of old inert drugs, or improperly prepared
pharmaceutical materials. If the government inspector violated his
obligations as to the oversight of drug preparations the penalty was
death. Nor was this law of the Emperor Frederick an exception. We have
the charters of a number of medical schools issued by the Popes during
the next century, all of which require seven years or more of university
study, four of them in the medical department, before the doctor's
degree could be obtained. When new medical schools were founded they had
to have professors from certain well-recognized schools on their staff
at the beginning in order to assure proper standards of teaching, and
all examinations were conducted under oath-bound secrecy and with the
heaviest obligations on professors to be assured of the knowledge of
students before allowing them to pass.

It might be easy to think, and many people are prone to do so, that in
spite of the long years of study required there was really very little
to study in medicine at that time. Those who think so should read
Professor Clifford Allbutt's address on the "Historical Relations of
Medicine and Surgery" delivered at the World's Fair at St. Louis in
1904. He has dwelt more on surgery than on medicine, but he makes it
very clear that he considers that the thinking professors of medicine of
the later Middle Ages were doing quite as serious work in their way as
any that has been done since. They were carefully studying cases and
writing case histories, they were teaching at the bedside, they were
making valuable observations, and they were using the means at their
command to the best advantage. Of course there are many absurdities in
their therapeutics, but then we must not forget there have always been
many absurdities in therapeutics and that we are not free from them in
our day. Professor Richet, at the