The history of medicine has been sadly neglected in our medical schools. The valuable and fruitful lessons which it tells of what not to do have been completely disregarded, and in consequence the same gross errors have over and over been repeated. The following pages represent an effort to bring the most important facts and events comprised within such history into the compass of a medical curriculum, and, at the same time, to rehearse them in such manner that the book may be useful and acceptable to the interested layman.,—i.e., to popularize the subject. This effort first took form in a series of lectures given in the Medical Department of the University of Buffalo. The subject-matter of these lectures has been rearranged, enlarged, and edited, in order to make it more presentable for easy reading and reference. I have also tried, so far as I could in such brief space, to indicate the relationship which has ever existed between medicine, philosophy, natural science, theology, and even belles-lettres. Particularly is the history of medicine inseparable from a consideration of the various notions and beliefs that have at times shaken the very foundation of Christendom and the Church, and for reasons which appear throughout the book.

The history of medicine is really a history of human error and of human discovery. During the past two thousand years it is hard to say which has prevailed. Notwithstanding, had it not been for the latter the total of the former would have been vastly greater. A large part of my effort has been devoted to considering the causes which conspired to prevent the more rapid development of our art. If among these the frowning or forbidding attitude of the Church figures most prominently, it must not be regarded as any expression of a quarrel with the Church of to-day. But let any one interested read President White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, the best presentation of the subject, and he can take no issue with my statements.

Reverence for the true, the beautiful, and the good has characterized physicians in all times and climes. But little of the true, the beautiful, or the good crept into the transactions of the Church for many centuries, and we suffer, to-day, more from its interference in time past than from all other causes combined. The same may be said of theology, which is as separate from religion as darkness from light. Only when students of science emancipated themselves from the prejudices and superstitions of the theologians did medicine make more than barely perceptible progress.

In this connection I would like to quote a paragraph from an article by King, in the Nineteenth Century for 1893: "The difficulties under which medical science labored may be estimated from the fact that dissection was forbidden by the clergy of the Middle Ages on the ground that it was impious to mutilate a form made in the image of God. We do not find this pious objection interfering with such mutilation when effected by means of the rack and wheel and such other clerical, rather than medical, instruments."

Written history is, to a certain extent at least, plagiarism; and I make no apology for having borrowed my facts from whatever source could best furnish them, but wish cheerfully and publicly to acknowledge my indebtedness to the works mentioned below, those especially of Renouard, Baas, and Sprengel, and to various biographical dictionaries. I have not even scrupled to take bodily sentences or expressions from these authorities, but have tried to so indicate them when I could.

The writer takes pleasure in acknowledging here the obligations which both he and the publishers feel to Dr. Joseph H. Hunt, of Brooklyn, N. Y., from whose extensive and valuable collection have been furnished the originals for most of the portraits in the following pages, and to Dr. F. P. Henry, Honorary Librarian of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, through whose courtesy was obtained the privilege of reproducing the illustrations of instruments and operations from some of the rare old works in the college library. The kind co-operation of these gentlemen has given a distinct and added value to the contents of this little work.