Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

NEW BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
VI. NEW BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
In spite of all these opposing forces, the evolution of medical
science continued, though but slowly. In the second
century of the Christian era Galen had made himself a great
authority at Rome, and from Rome had swayed the medical
science of the world : his genius triumphed over the defects
of his method ; but, though he gave a powerful impulse to
medicine, his dogmatism stood in its way long afterward.
The places where medicine, such as it thus became, could
be applied, were at first mainly the infirmaries of various
monasteries, especially the larger ones of the Benedictine
order : these were frequently developed into hospitals.
,Many monks devoted themselves to such medical studies as
iwere permitted, and sundry churchmen and laymen did
much to secure and preserve copies of ancient medical treatises.
So, too, in the cathedral schools established by Charilemagne
and others, provision was generally made for med-
; had
ical teaching ; but all this instruction, whether in convents
or schools, was wretchedly poor.
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It consisted not in devel-
joping by individual thought and experiment the gifts of Hippocrates,
Aristotle, and Galen, but almost entirely in the
parrot-like repetition of their writings.
But, while the inherited ideas of Church leaders were
thus unfavourable to any proper development of medical sci-
ence, there were two bodies of men outside the Church who,
though largely fettered by superstition, were far less so than
the monks and students of ecclesiastical schools : these were
the Jews and Mohammedans. The first of these especially
lad inherited many useful sanitary and hygienic ideas, which
probably been first evolved by the Egyptians, and from
*:hem transmitted to the modern world mainly through the
5acred books attributed to Moses.
The Jewish scholars became especially devoted to med-
cal science. To them is largely due the building up of the '
School of Salerno, which we find flourishing in the tenth ,
:entury. Judged by our present standards its work was
Door indeed, but compared with other medical instruction
)f the time it was vastly superior: it developed hygienic
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