The principles of surgery / by James Miller.

  • James Miller
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of surgery / by James Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    Such were the Arabians. Of these, Albucasis was the most famous in surgery ; as Oelsus had been among the Romans, and Paulus iEgineta among the Greeks. But even he could not escape the unfortunate failing of the Saracenic school; endless invention of manifold and complicated instru- ments ; attaching far too much importance to the mechanical part of their profession ; and mistaking the inspiration of terror, and infliction of cruelty, for energetic and judicious surgery. In order, for example, to arrest hemor- rhage from a wounded surface, if time pressed and assistants were scarce, it was not uncommon to dip the part into boiling pitch ; a liquid which was then dignified with the appellation of a styptic. They, however, systemati- cally divided physic, surgery, and pharmacy, into three distinct professions ; and so, by commencing the division of labour, may be considered as having done something, not unimportant, towards the ultimate advancement of medical knowledge. The last traces of their intellectual illumination appeared among the Spanish Moors in the thirteenth century, when the Christian arms having become more and more powerful, they were compelled to substitute the field for the study—the sword for the pen—and, before an overwhelming opposition, were at length driven from a region whose fields they had tilled, and whose olives they had gathered, for a thousand years. With the decline of the Saracenic school, the daylight of science went down over the nations ; and an intellectual darkness, which endured for three hundred years, enveloped the general face of society. All the fountains of science were dried up, and the world seemed retrograding into the unillumined chaos of ignorance.* A knowledge of the Greek and Arabian systems of medicine was intro- duced into Italy, at Salerno, in the beginning of the eleventh century ; and this school soon rose to celebrity as a seat of medical learning. In the time of the Crusades, Salerno was a place of great resort for warriors of all nations passing between Europe and Palestine ; and by these wanderers, on their return, the light of medical science was thence slowly conveyed over Europe. It obtained the privileges of a university ; but the medical school of Salerno did not long retain its high reputation. In modern times, it is chiefly remembered on account of the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum ; a singular production, of which more than one hundred and sixty editions are known to have been published. Though written in the name of the Sckola Saler- nitana, it has generally been ascribed to Joannes de Milano. The English king to whom it is addressed is supposed to have been Robert of Normandy, whose claims to the English crown were recognised by some of his contem- poraries. The poem opens with these lines :— Anglorum Regi scripsit Schola tota Salerni. Si vis incolumen, si vis te reddere sanum, Curas tolle graves, irasci crede profanura, Parce mero, coenato paruni, non sit tibi vanum Surgere post epulas, somnuni fuge meridianum, Non mictiim retine, nec comprime fortitur anum.f In the twelfth century, the Jews practised medicine, not only among • Moir's Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine. Edinb. 1831, 16mo. Of this excellent work we have not scrupled to make free use in the course of the preceding observations. f Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum : a Poem on the Preservation of Health, in rhyming Latin verse, addressed by the School of Sulerno to Robert of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, with an ancient translation ; and an introduction and notes by Sir Alex- ander Croke, D.CL. and F.A.S. Oxford. 18.30, 12mo.
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