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Updated: June 18, 2025
Hernia was Chauliac's specialty, and in it his surgical judgment is admirable. Mondeville before his time did not hesitate to say that many operations for hernia were done not for the benefit of the patient, but for the benefit of the surgeon, a very striking anticipation of remarks that one sometimes hears even at the present time. Chauliac discussed operations for hernia very conservatively.
It is often said that at this time surgery was mainly in the hands of barbers and the ignorant. Henri de Mondeville, however, is a striking example in contradiction of this. He must have had a fine preliminary education and his book shows very wide reading. There is almost no one of any importance who seriously touched upon medicine or surgery before his time whom Mondeville does not quote.
He begins with Galen, and as Galen divides the famous physicians of the world into three sects, the Methodists, the Empirics, and the Rationalists, so Mondeville divides modern surgery into three sects: first, that of the Salernitans, with Roger, Roland, and the Four Masters; second, that of William of Salicet and Lanfranc; and third, that of Hugo de Lucca and his brother Theodoric and their modern disciples.
It is therefore from the standpoint of a man who views married life from without that Mondeville makes his remarks as to the difficulty often encountered when wives nurse their husbands. He says that the surgeon has difficulty oftener when husbands or wives care for their spouses than at other times. This is much more likely to take place when the wives are caring for the husbands.
What surprises Mondeville however, as it has always surprised every physician who knows the situation, is that so many educated, or at least supposedly well-informed people of the better classes, indeed even of the so-called best classes, allow themselves to be influenced by these quacks.
The teaching so well begun by Lanfranc was magnificently continued by Mondeville and Arnold of Villanova and their disciples. Chauliac was fortunate enough to come under the influence of Petrus de Argentaria, who was worthily maintaining the tradition of practical teaching in anatomy and surgery so well founded by his great predecessors of the thirteenth century.
For these figures and for points relating to the old school at Bologna see F. G. Cavezza: Le Scuole dell' antico Studio Bolognese, Milano, 1896. The other early mediaeval university of special interest in medicine is that of Montpellier. With it are connected three teachers who have left great names in our story Arnold of Villanova, Henri de Mondeville and Guy de Chauliac.
One of the fellow students of Mondino at the University of Bologna had been Mondeville. Not long after Mondino's death, Guy de Chauliac came from France to reap similar opportunities to these, which had proved so fruitful for Mondeville.
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.
Unfortunately, in addition to other obstacles, Mondeville showed probably before he was forty the first symptoms of a serious pulmonary disease, presumably tuberculosis. He bravely fought it and went on with his work.
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