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Chauliac did not think much of him, though his reason for his dislike of him will probably be somewhat startling to those who assume that the men of the Middle Ages always clung servilely to authority. Chauliac's objection to Gaddesden's book is that he merely repeats his masters and does not dare to think for himself.
He says that while much is claimed for these methods he has never seen them work in practice and he distrusts them entirely. The most interesting phase of what Guy de Chauliac has to say with regard to dentistry is of course to be found in his paragraphs on the artificial replacement of lost teeth and the subject of dental prosthesis generally.
Guy de Chauliac declared that in wounds of the intestines patients would die unless the intestinal lacerations were sewed up, and he described the method of suture and invented a needle holder. We have many wonderful instruments from these early days preserved in pictures at least, that show us how much modern advance is merely re-invention.
As we note in the chapter on "Great Surgeons of the Medieval Universities," Mondeville, according to Guy de Chauliac, had pictures of anatomical preparations which he used for teaching purposes.
The preceding century had seen the origin of the universities and the rise of such supremely great men as Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, and the other famous scholars of the early days of the mendicant orders, and had made the intellectual mould of university training in which men's minds for seven centuries were to be formed, so that Chauliac, instead of being an unusual phenomenon is only a fitting expression of the interest of this time in everything, including the physical sciences and, above all, medicine and surgery.
But these remedies promise much and accomplish but little mais ils donnent beaucoup de promesses, et peu, d'opérations." It is no wonder that Chauliac has been enthusiastically praised. Nicaise has devoutly gathered many of these praises into a sheaf of eulogies at the end of his biography of the great French surgeon. He tells us that Fallopius compared him to Hippocrates.
Chauliac not only used the trephine, but laid down very exact indications for its application. Expectant treatment was to be the rule in wounds of the head, yet when necessary, interference was counselled as of great value. His prognosis of brain injuries was much better than that of his predecessors.
It must not be thought, however, that it was only with the coarse applications of surgery that Chauliac concerned himself. He was very much interested in the surgical treatment of eye diseases and wrote a monograph on cataract, in which he gathers what was known before his time and discusses it in the light of his own experience.
"Guy de Chauliac speaks also of women who practised surgery. They formed the fifth and last class of operators in his time.
It is at least curious that the date of the earthquake coincides very closely with the date which has been given by Guido de Chauliac for the first appearance of the plague at Avignon. James's Day in 1347. It is asserted that it reached England at the beginning of August, is said to have lingered for some months in the west, and to have devastated Bristol with awful severity.
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