Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

32
FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.
blow of all ; for then it was that Pope Boniface VIII, without
any of that foresight of consequences which might well
have been expected in an infallible teacher, issued a decretal
forbidding a practice which had come into use during the
Crusades, namely, the separation of the flesh from the bone
of the dead whose remains it was desired to carry back t
their own country.
The idea lying at the bottom of this interdiction was i
all probability that which had inspired Tertullian to maki
his bitter utterance against Herophilus ; but, be that as ii
may, it soon came to be considered as extending to all di
section, and thereby surgery and medicine were crippled fo;
more than two centuries ; it was the worst blow they ever
received, for it impressed upon the mind of the Church the
belief that all dissection is sacrilege, and led to ecclesiastical
mandates withdrawing from the healing art the most
thoughtful and cultivated men of the Middle Ages and giving
up surgery to the lowest class of nomadic charlatans. -
So deeply was this idea rooted in the mind of the
univeii|
sal Church that for over a thousand years surgery was con-
sidered dishonourable : the greatest monarchs were often
unable to secure an ordinary surgical operation ; and it was
only in 1406 that a better beginning was made, when the Emperor
Wenzel of Germany ordered that dishonour should na
longer attach to the surgical profession.*
* As to religious scraples against dissection, and abhorrence of the Parascki
or embalmer, see Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of Civilization, p. 216. For di
nunciation of surgery by the Church authorities, see Sprengel, vol. ii, pp. 432-431
also Fort, pp. 452 et seq. ; and for the reasoning which led the Church to forbH
200. As tc
surgery to priests, see especially Fredault, Histoire de la Medicine, p.
the decretal of Boniface VIII, the usual statement is that he forbade all dissections
While it was undoubtedly construed universally to prohibit dissections for anatom
ical purposes, its declared intent was as stated in the text ; that it was constantl;
construed against anatomical investigations can not for a moment be denied. Thi
construction is taken for granted in the great Histoire Littdrairc de la Fratue, founde
by the Benedictines, certainly a very high authority as to the main current of opir
ion in the Church. For the decretal of Boniface VIII, see the Corpus Juris Cani
nici. I have used the edition of Paris, 1618, where it maybe found on pp. 866, 86
See also, in spite of the special pleading of Giraldi, the Benedictine Hist. Lit. <
ia France^ tome xvi, p. 98.