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THE TRAINING OF DOCTORS IN GENERAL. 237
THE TRAINING OF DOCTORS IN GENERAL.
THE universities of the middle ages were institutions of a
different kind to those of the present day. The conceptions
which are associated with things change with the
lapse of time just as the names do by which we designate
them. The academies of that period, moreover, differed
considerably among themselves according to the time and
place of their origin. Those of Salerno and Montpellier
appear to have been, as it were, technical schools of
medicine, to which the other faculties were somewhat
loosely linked. The academies at Bologna, Padua, and
other places in Italy resembled wandering colonies of professors
and students, who pitched upon a site wherever
the best prospect of freedom and the greatest advantages
were offered ; many associated themselves with one of the
numerous schools of law existing in several towns from a
remoter period. The university of Paris and the academies
of England and Germany, which were modelled on it, give
the impression of philosophical faculties which afforded
medicine a place, along with other sciences, within the
circle of the studies pursued within their walls ; at certain
of these universities, such as Paris, Vienna, Prague, Basel
and other places, medical teaching stood in close connection
with the corporation of doctors, as was also originally the
case in the oldest medical schools at Salerno and Montpellier.
Just as artisans and artists in their guilds, so also
the masters of medicine claimed the right of determining
in their general meetings in what manner their art should
be taught, and who possessed the requisite knowledge for
independently practising it. So, too, in the other
academies, the medical faculties had a somewhat different
signification to that possessed by them to-day, for at that
time they gave no complete technical education, but only
the theoretical basis for this which depends upon literature;