ed fractures; the touch of
the hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled poison;
friction with a dead man's tooth cured toothache."

In another and earlier portion of the same chapter, under the heading
"Theological Opposition to Anatomical Studies," he states the reasons
why this low state of surgical practice existed. Once more it is
declared to be {168} because of a prohibitory decree, or several of
them, directed against the practice of surgery by ecclesiastical
authorities. These decrees, we shall find, as was true of previous
supposed prohibitions, are entirely perverted from their real meaning
by President White, who has the happy faculty of lighting upon mares'
nests of Papal decrees and decrees of councils and neglecting to pay
any attention to the real history of the science of which he writes.
President White says:

"To those arguments against dissection was now added another one
which may well fill us with amazement. It is the remark of the
foremost of recent English philosophical historians, that of all
organizations in human history, the Church of Rome has caused the
greatest spilling of innocent blood. No one conversant with history,
even though he admit all possible extenuating circumstances and
honor the older Church for the great circumstances which can
undoubtedly be claimed for her, can deny this statement. Strange is
it, then, to note that one of the main objections developed in the
Middle Ages against anatomical studies was the maxim that 'The
Church abhors the shedding of blood.'"

"On this ground, in 1248, the Council of Le Mans forbade surgery to
monks. Many other councils did the same, and at the end of the
thirteenth century came the most serious blow of all: for it was
then that Pope Boniface VIII., without any of that foresight of
consequences which might well have been expected in an infallible
teacher, issued a decretal forbidding a practice which had come into
use during the Crusades, namely, the separation of the flesh from
the bones of the dead whose remains it was desired to carry back to
their own country." Note always the return to Pope Boniface's {169}
bull and always the perversion of the meaning of the word
infallibility.

I have already stated the real significance of Boniface's bull. It
neither forbade, nor did its interpretation in any way hamper, the
development of anatomy. Just exactly the same thing is true wi