United States or Belize ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Gurlt declares that this chapter alone provides striking evidence for Alexander's practical experience and power of observation, as well as for his knowledge of the literature of medicine. He considers that only a short abstract is needed to show that. For water that has found its way into the external ear, Alexander suggests a mode of treatment that is still popularly used.
The most important portion of Paul's work for the modern time is contained in his sixth book on surgery. In this his personal observations are especially accumulated. Gurlt has reviewed it at considerable length, devoting altogether nearly thirty pages to it, and it well deserves this lengthy abstract.
Gurlt, in his "History of Surgery," has given over forty pages, much of it small type, with regard to Mondeville, because of the special interest there is in his writing. His life is of particular interest for other reasons besides his subsequent success as a surgeon. He was another of the university men of this time who wandered far for opportunities in education.
The work, however, is not made up entirely of quotations, but contains many observations made by the author himself. Gurlt says that the foundation of the theoretic medicine of Rhazes is the system of Galen, while in practice he seems to cling more to the aphorisms of Hippocrates. He has many practical points which show that he thought for himself.
He returned to Bologna in 1221 and was given the post of legal physician to the city. The civic statutes of Bologna are, according to Gurlt, the oldest monument of legal medicine in the Middle Ages. Ugo died not long after the middle of the century, and is said to have been nearly one hundred years old. Of his five sons, three became physicians.
I have quoted Gurlt in the chapter on "Great Surgeons of the Medieval Universities," insisting that the Salernitan school owed nothing at all to Arabian surgery. Salernitan medicine was, during the twelfth century, just as free from Arabian influence. It led especially to an oversophistication of medicine from the standpoint of drug therapeutics. The Arabian physicians trusted nature very little.
It is rather easy to illustrate from the quotations given in Gurlt or from the accounts of their teaching in Daremberg or De Renzi some features of this experience that can scarcely fail to be surprising to modern surgeons. For instance, what is to be found in this old text-book of surgery with regard to fractures of the skull is likely to be very interesting to surgeons at all times.
This much will give a good idea of Bruno's thoroughness. Altogether, Gurlt, in his "History of Surgery," gives about fifteen large octavo pages of rather small type to a brief compendium of Bruno's teachings. One or two other remarks of Bruno are rather interesting in the light of modern developments in medicine.
Gurlt, in his "History of Surgery," calls attention to the fact that two of our modern methods of treating varicose veins are thus discussed in Aëtius, that by ligation and that by the cautery. The cautery was applied over a space the breadth of a finger at several points along the dilated veins.
He has a number of interesting details in the first thirty-six chapters with regard to conception, pregnancy, labor, and lactation, which show how practical were the views of the physicians of the time. Gurlt has given us some details of his chapters on diseases of the breast. Aëtius differentiates phagedenic and rodent ulcers and cancer.
Word Of The Day