Many suggestions are made for the treatment of
trichiasis. That a man who was as distinguished in medicine as Peter
of Spain should have been elected Pope, is the best possible proof
that there was no opposition between science and religion during the
thirteenth century.

But to return to the Papal Physicians in our original meaning of the
term. Alderotti's successor as physician to the Papal Court was
scarcely, if any, less distinguished. This was Simon Januensis, the
medical attendant to Pope Nicholas IV., whose pontificate lasted from
1288-1292. Simon did much to make the use of opium more scientific
than it had been, and he established definite rules for its
administration. Before this the anodyne effects of the drug had been
well known, but the difficulty had been to regulate its dosage
properly and prevent the use of too large quantities, while at the
same time securing the administration of sufficient of the drug to
relieve pain. At the beginning there was much prejudice with regard to
opium. Indeed, as every physician knows, this prejudice has not
entirely died out even in our own day. How much of good, then, Simon
was able to accomplish because the prestige of his position as {209}
Papal Physician helped to break down this prejudice, and how much
human suffering he saved as a consequence, it is easy to understand.

Simon is best known in the history of medical science as the author of
what was probably the first important dictionary of medicine. This was
called the Synonyma Medicinae or Clavis Sanationis, the Key of Health.
Steinschneider has declared this book to be one of the most important
works in the field of Synonymies. Julius Pagel, in his chapter on
Therapeutics in the Middle Ages, in Puschmann's Handbook of the
History of Medicine, already quoted, says that this Papal Physician
succeeded in solving very happily the problem which he set himself, of
gathering together the information that had been collected during past
centuries with regard to medical words, and especially those relating
to the use of various remedial measures. The industry of the writer
may be very well appreciated from the fact that his glossary contains
some six thousand articles. Its place in the history of science, as
given by Meyer, the German historian of botany, is that for the
understanding of the older words in natural science, no better aid
than this can be found. He considers it the best work of its kind
until Caspar Bauhin