s" that were so widely read and
accepted because we in America knew no better for the moment.

{v}
PREFACE

For years, as a student and physician, I listened to remarks from
teachers and professional friends as to the opposition of the Popes to
science, until finally, much against my will, I came to believe that
there had been many Papal documents issued, which intentionally or
otherwise hampered the progress of science. Interest in the history of
medicine led me to investigate the subject for myself. To my surprise,
I found that the supposed Papal opposition to science was practically
all founded on an exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo
incident. As a matter of history, the Popes were as liberal patrons of
science as of art. In the Renaissance period, when their patronage of
Raphael and Michel Angelo and other great artists did so much for art,
similar relations to Columbus, Eustachius, and Caesalpinus, and later
to Steno and Malpighi, our greatest medical discoverers, had like
results for science. The Papal Medical School was for centuries the
greatest medical school in Europe, and its professors were the most
distinguished medical scientists of the time. This is a perfectly
simple bit of history that anyone may find for himself in any reliable
history of medicine. The medical schools were the scientific
departments of the universities practically down to the nineteenth
century. In them were studied botany, zoology and the biological
sciences generally, chemistry, physics, mineralogy and even astronomy,
because of the belief that the stars influenced human constitutions.
The Popes in fostering medical schools (there were four of them in the
Papal dominions, and two of them, Bologna and Rome, were the greatest
medical schools for several centuries) were acting as wise and
beneficent patrons of science. Many of the greatest scientists of the
Middle Ages were clergymen. Some of the greatest of them were
canonized as saints. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas are typical
examples. At least one Pope had been a distinguished scientist before
being elected to the Papacy. For seven centuries the Popes selected as
their physicians the greatest medical scientists of the {vi} time, and
the list of Papal physicians is the worthiest series of names
connected by any bond in the history of medicine, far surpassing in
scientific import even the roll of the faculty of any medical school.

In