een so clearly revealed to us by the investigation of original
documents in the last twenty-five years. This was, in fact, one of the
greatest periods in the history of surgery that the world has ever
known. Whatever of difficulty in development surgery encountered was
due not to any Church opposition, but to unfortunate conditions that
arose in the practice of medicine. Professional jealousy and
shortsightedness was the main element in it. Even this, however, did
not prevent the very wonderful development of surgery that came {198}
during the Middle Ages, and that made this department of human
knowledge quite as progressive and successful as any other, in that
marvelous period when the universities came into existence in the form
which they have maintained ever since.

{199}

PAPAL PHYSICIANS.

Most of what historical writers generally, who follow the old
traditions of the medieval eclipse of medicine, have to say with
regard to the supposed Papal opposition to the development of medical
science, is founded on the assumption that men who believed in
miracles and in the efficacy of prayer for the relief of disease could
not possibly be interested to any serious degree in scientific
medicine. As Dr. White says, "out of all these inquiries came
inevitably that question whose logical answer was especially injurious
to the development of medical science: why should men seek to build up
scientific medicine and surgery, when relics, pilgrimages, and sacred
observances, according to an overwhelming mass of concurrent
testimony, have cured and are curing hosts of sick folk in all parts
of Europe." He goes even farther than this, however, when he suggests
that "it would be expecting too much from human nature to imagine that
Pontiffs who derived large revenues from the sale of the Agnus Dei, or
priests who derived both wealth and honors from cures wrought at
shrines under their care, or lay dignitaries who had invested heavily
in relics, should favor the development of any science which
undermined their interests."

On the strength of assumptions such as these, that "medieval belief in
miracles of healing must have checked medical science," and that
therefore it did actually prevent the development of scientific
medicine, statements are made with regard to the history of {200}
medicine that are utterly at variance with the plain facts of history.
Once more, as in the case of the supposed failure of s