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MEDICAL PROFESSION AND LITERATURE. 279
A church must provide him with them. He is to physic
when necessary each and everyone gratis and he must
earn his pay by true and faithful service/'* Frankforton-the-Main
had in 1348 a town doctor who received
clothing and 30 curnocks of corn ;f there were afterwards
three, their pay ranging between 10 and 100
gulden. Doctors were also appointed for the troops, the
hospitals, the monasteries, and particular prisons, and
received regular pay.
Doctors, especially medical officers of towns, enjoyed in
many places freedom from taxation and other privileges.
Some received, free of charge, the freedom of the city they
had settled in. In social position they ranked with the
nobility. The members of the medical profession belonged
for the most part to the wealthy classes; among them we
find names representative of the most distinguished families
of Italy. On the other hand the surgeons, especially in
Germany, as a rule had a tendency to issue from the poorer
classes.
Among doctors the Jews were very numerously represented.
While, during the first centuries of the middle
ages medical study languished in the Christian States
of the West, it was the privilege of the Jews to derive
instruction from their contact with Arabian civilization
and from the investigation of learned Rabbis. It was
not therefore surprising if they excelled their Christian
colleagues in knowledge and skill. And thus it came
about that especially in countries in which, as in Germany,
medicine was very much neglected, the Jews were in
the greatest request as doctors. Not only princes and
ruling lords but even bishops and popes had Jewish physicians
in ordinary; at most monasteries Jews were appointed
as doctors, as ARNALDUS DE VlLLANOVA declares.^
* MOEHSEN : Geschichte der Wissenschaften in Brandenburg, Berlin 1783, S.
564.—P. FRANK : System der medicin. Polizei, Wien 1817, vi, 1, S. 174.
t KRIEGK op. tit. S. 8.
J.GUDEMANN : Geschichte des Enziehungswesens der Juden, Wien, i, S. 155.