quoted. The
contempt for surgery was due rather to the general lack of culture
before the foundation of the universities than to any ecclesiastical
repression. Just as soon as the great medical schools were opened--and
that at Salerno came into existence in the early part of the tenth
century if not earlier--surgery began to be in honor. Pagel himself
confesses this in the very next paragraph of this brief conspectus of
surgery, and shows how generally was the uplift of surgery made
possible by university education, though there still remained many
drawbacks to progress because of the jealousy of physicians.

"Gradually, however, a beneficial transformation of customs in this
matter began to be manifest. Physicians {192} who were
scientifically trained began to take up surgery with enthusiasm, and
from that time (end of twelfth century) dates the visible uplift of
this specialty. Eventually the most noteworthy literary events and
remains of the representatives of the great schools of the Middle
Ages--Salerno, Bologna, Paris and Montpelier--concern quite as much
the department of surgery as of practical medicine. These medieval
literary contributions constitute the principal steps in the
historical development of scientific surgery. The Crusades represent
an extremely important influence upon the perfecting of the surgery
of wounds. Italian surgeons in large numbers took prominent parts
therein. They took the abundant opportunities afforded them to
gather experience, which they used to great advantage in their
practice and in their teaching after their return home. From Roger,
the first and most important of the representatives of the
Salernitan school (whose life occupies the end of the twelfth and
the beginning of the thirteenth century), and down to Guy de
Chauliac (who died toward the end of the fourteenth century), in a
space therefore of not quite two hundred years, a complete breach
with the blood-fearing traditions of the Arabs was made. In no
European land does one fail to find evidence of intense as well as
successful scientific occupation with surgery."

As a reflection that throws a brilliant light on the true conditions
that brought about the diminished estimation in which surgery came to
be held, Guy de Chauliac has an interesting passage in which he
suggests an explanation for it, which is surely much nearer the truth
than any modern explanation is likely to