rinks for his patients
this medieval surgeon suggested that certain verses of the psalms
which were usually recited, according to the custom of the times,
whenever anything was administered to a patient, should be said. Pagel
considers it quite natural that as a believing physician he should
have realized how much his believing patients would be influenced for
the better by such a procedure. He did not place any supreme faith in
its efficacy, but {179} knew that it could do no harm, and had
probably seen, as has many a physician and surgeon of the modern time,
that such a practice does good, if not by the direct interference of
Providence, then at least by the calmness of mind which it
superinduces in the patient. In the same way Mondeville was not averse
to his patients going on pilgrimages. He did not expect that they
would all be cured miraculously, but according to Pagel, his
discussion of this subject is quite modern. Travel and change of scene
would do good anyhow in many cases, expectancy would help the
patient's condition, and the hope aroused was also good. The best
merit, however, of this French surgeon is undoubtedly the immense
influence which he exerted over his great successor, Guy de Chauliac.

We are really only beginning to accumulate knowledge with regard to
the surgery of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Pagel has
devoted three very full pages, in his compressed account of surgery,
to John Yperman, a surgeon of the early fourteenth century of whom
practically nothing was known until about twenty-five years ago, when
the Belgian historian Broeck brought to light his works and gathered
some details of his life. He was a pupil of Lanfranc's, and at the end
of the thirteenth century studied at Paris on a scholarship provided
by his native town of Ypres, which deliberately sent him in order that
he might become expert in surgery. This may seem a strange thing for a
medieval town to do, at least it may seem so to those who have been
accustomed to think little of the Middle Ages, but it will not to
anyone who knows anything about the wonderful civic spirit of the Free
Towns. In the chapter on Science at the Medieval Universities I have
quoted {180} from Prince Kropotkin's work on Mutual Aid in the
Medieval Towns, and further consultation of that as a ready reference,
would make all cause for ignorant surprise with regard to the culture
and the enterprise of medieval towns disappear. Ypres, while a to