e were supposed to be
fruitful causes of disease). Certain minerals, among them very
probably antimony, were beginning to be used in medical practice, and
so mineralogy was a special subject of study. Of plants they were
expected to know in a general way much more than the modern {158}
medical student, to whom botany is not considered of much importance,
and of zoology they probably had at least as great practical
knowledge, since many of their dissections were made on animals, and
the differences in structure between them and man were pointed out
when the annual anatomies or human dissections at the universities
were made. Of pharmacology and the allied subject, chemistry, they had
to know all that would enable them to use properly the several hundred
vegetable remedies then used in medicine. This will give an idea,
then, what were in general the studies which Pope John was trying to
foster with so much care in the University of Perugia.

There is another phase of his regulations with regard to medical
schools which cannot but prove of the greatest interest to members of
our present-day medical faculties. It has been realized for some time,
that what is needed more than anything else to make good physicians
for the present generation is that medical students should have a
better preliminary education than has been the case in the past. In
order to secure this, various states have required evidence of a
certain number of years spent at high school or college before a
medical student's certificate allowing entrance into a medical school
will be granted. Some of the most prominent medical schools have gone
even farther than this, and have required that a degree in arts should
be obtained in the undergraduate department before medical studies may
be taken up. Something of this same kind was manifestly in Pope John's
mind when he required that seven years should have been spent at a
university, at least three years of which should have been entirely
devoted to medical studies, before the candidate might {159} be
allowed to go up for his examination for the doctor's degree.

As we begin the twentieth century, we note that the presidents of our
American universities are trying to secure just exactly the same
number of years of study for candidates for the degree of Doctor of
Medicine, as this medieval Pope insisted on as a prerequisite for the
same degree in a university founded in the Papal States at the
beginning of the f