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There are many things in the preface that show us the reason for Mondeville's popularity, for they exhibit him as very sympathetically human in his interests.
Galen's description of the travelling charlatan who settled down in his front yard, not knowing that it belonged to a physician, shows this very well. There were evidently as many of them and as many different kinds in Mondeville's time as in our own.
Another phase of Mondeville's work that is sympathetic to the moderns is his discussion of the irregular practice of medicine and surgery as it existed in his time. Most of our modern medicine and surgery was anticipated in the olden time; but it may be said that all of the modes of the quack are as old as humanity.
The surgeon therefore must be careful in the selection of his nurses, for some of them obey very well while he is present, but do as they like and often just exactly the opposite of what he has directed when he is away." We do not know enough of the details of Mondeville's life to be sure whether he was married or not.
It may seem surprising that Mondeville's work should have been left thus long without publication, but unfortunately he did not live long enough to finish it. He was one of the victims that tuberculosis claimed among physicians in the midst of their work.
They were strong men with practical minds and good hands, whose experience taught them wisdom. In both there was the blunt honesty that so often characterizes a good surgeon, and I commend to modern surgeons de Mondeville's saying: "If you have operated conscientiously on the rich for a proper fee, and on the poor for charity, you need not play the monk, nor make pilgrimages for your soul."
Hyrtl, however, suggests that this invention of Mondeville's was probably very helpful, and was brought about by the impossibility of preserving bodies for long periods as well as the difficulty of obtaining them. One of the maxims of the old Greek philosophers was that good is diffusive of itself. As the scholastics put it, bonum est diffusivum sui.
One of the most interesting features of Mondeville's work is his insistence on the influence of the mind on the body and the importance of using this influence to the best advantage. It is especially important in Mondeville's opinion to keep a surgical patient from being moody.
It is probable that he was not, for all of these surgeons of the thirteenth century before Mondeville's time, Theodoric, William of Salicet, Lanfranc, and Guy de Chauliac, after him belonged to the clerical order; Theodoric was a bishop; the others, however, seem only to have been in minor orders.
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