, the medical historian, who saw a copy of Ardern's
manuscript in St. John's College, Oxford, says that it contains
numerous illustrations of instruments and operations. His work seems
really to be a series of monographs or collection of special articles
on different subjects, which Ardern had made at various times, rather
than a connected work. Pagel bewails the fact {189} that a more
thorough consideration of Ardern's work is impossible, because the
greater part of what he wrote remains as yet unprinted.

In general, when we consider how difficult was the task of making
copies of works on surgery by hand, and especially such as contain
numerous illustrations, the wonder grows that we should have so much
about the surgery of these centuries rather than so little. Some of
these works have been preserved for us by the merest chance. There
have been many centuries since their time, when what these surgeons
wrote would have been thought of very little value because physicians
were not educated up to them. In spite of this liability to loss,
which must have caused the destruction of many valuable works, we
still have enough to show us what wonderful men were these surgeons of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, who anticipated our best
thinking of the modern times in many of the most difficult problems.
It is only during the last twenty-five years that anything like
justice has been done them. The only way to know what these men did
and taught is to read their own works, and these have been buried in
manuscript or hidden away in large folio volumes, printed very early
in the history of printing, and considered so valuable that
consultation of them was almost resented by librarians. Anyone who
talks about the lack of surgery in Europe during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries is supremely ignorant of the real course of
history at this time, and when in addition he attributes the failure
of surgery to develop to a trumped-up opposition of the Church or
ecclesiastics, he is simply making a ridiculous exhibition of
intolerance and of foolish readiness to accept anything, however
groundless, that may {190} enable him to make out a case against the
ecclesiastical authorities.

It is curious to reflect that in spite of all this wonderful progress
in surgery, somehow there has crept in the tradition which has been
very generally accepted by historians not acquainted with the details
of medical history, that surgery was