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SCIENCE 597
date illustrates a dissection, or post/mortem (PL 128 &); but
certainly the opportunities for dissection were necessarily
meagre and there is no evidence of research. The structure of
the body was seen through the eyes of Galen and Avicenna,
just as a modern medical student follows his textbook. But on
going into practice the surgeon had perforce to rely on his
own knowledge and skill, and the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries saw considerable improvements both in this art and
in medicine in general, in which Englishmen played their part.
In the mid^thirteenth century Gilbert the Englishman, who
became chancellor of Montpellier, wrote a comprehensive
work on medicine in which he described a number ofdiseases,
including the local anaesthesia ofthe skin as a diagnostic symp^
torn for leprosy, recognized for the first time that smallpox is
contagious, advised operating for cancer, and recommended
travellers to drink distilled water and sea^avellers to eat fruit.
Early in the fourteenth century John ofGaddesden, the Oxford
physician mentioned by Chaucer, gave, among much nonx
sense, good clinical descriptions ofcases ofascites with obstruct
tive jaundice, phthisis, leprosy, variola, small pox, and other
diseases; of operations for the stone and for hernia; of the re^
duction of dislocations; and described a new instrument for
extracting teeth. Later in the century John Arderne served as
army surgeon to two dukes of Lancaster, and saw the use of
gunpowder; afterwards he practised at Newark/upon/Trent
and London. He was a surgeon ofgenius, describing hisprac'
tice of cutting boldly, keeping the instruments clean, and using
light dressings. He made a special study of fistula, describing
and illustrating a new type of syringe and other instruments
used in treatment; and he gave a good account of the Black
Death in England. A medical encyclopaedia written at the end
of the fourteenth century by John Mirfeld, who seems to have
been connected with the priory and hospital of St. Bartholox
mew, gives a good picture ofmedical knowledge and practice
in London: at that time the number of hospitals, large and
small, in the city ran into hundreds.
Another science to which both men of learning and un/