is really due to that very human
overconservatism, which so constantly places men in the position of
opponents to novelties of any kind, no matter how much of value they
may eventually prove to have. There has always existed a certain
prejudice against surgery on the part of physicians--meaning by that
term, for the moment, those who devote themselves to internal
medicine. This feeling has never quite died out. There were times in
the Middle Ages when it was very marked. Not a little of the feeling
is due to professional jealousy, and that, it is to be feared, like
the poor, we shall have always with us.

Professor Allbutt has in the address at St. Louis, already quoted
from, a very interesting passage with regard to the College of St.
Come at Paris, in which this jealousy between physicians and surgeons
is very well brought out. I quote it here in order to illustrate once
more that opposition of scientists to scientific advance, for personal
reasons, which has always existed, is still one of the features of the
history of science, and will probably always continue to be a
noteworthy phase of scientific progress. It will serve at the same
time to furnish to those who cannot think that these stories with
regard to the hampering of surgical development are {195} entirely
without foundation, some basis for them that will account for their
universality, but will only render clearer the intolerance of those
who have constantly perverted the meaning of this opposition to
persecution on the part of Church authorities. Ecclesiastics not only
had nothing to do with this, but more often than not were the active
factors in such amelioration of the conditions it brought about as
very much to lessen its effects.

Allbutt's story of the College of Surgeons of St. Come at Paris is,
as we have said, interesting from this standpoint. "Some of my
readers may wonder how it is that in discoursing of medieval surgery
I have not dwelt upon the Surgical College of St. Come of Paris.
Well, St. Come did no great things for surgery. The truth is that,
infected with the exclusiveness and dialectical conceits of all the
schools of Paris, St. Come was almost ready to sacrifice surgery
itself if thereby it might choke off its parasites, the barbers.
Lest they should be suspected of mixing their philosophy with facts,
its members went about with their hands ostentatiously tied behind
them. If perhaps Malgaigne speaks too cont