Petella, physician-in-chief of the Royal Italian Marine, in
Janus, the International Archives for the History of Medicine and for
Medical Geography in 1898. Petella does not {230} hesitate to proclaim
him one of the greatest men of his time. Daunou, one of the
continuators of the Benedictines' literary history of France,
[Footnote 28] says that this Peter of Spain was one of the most
notable persons in Europe in his generation.

[Footnote 28: Histoire Litteraire de la France, Vol. XVI. This is the
famous work begun by the Benedictines of St. Maur.]

Pope John XXI., before his accession to the Papacy, had certainly
accomplished remarkable work in medicine, and of a kind that makes his
writings of great interest even at the present day. There is scarcely
an important pathological condition of the eye which does not receive
some consideration in this little book, and it is a constant source of
surprise in reading it to find, with their limited knowledge and lack
of instruments, what good diagnosticians the ophthalmologists of the
thirteenth century were. Cataract is described, for instance, under
the name of "water that descends into the eye," and a distinction is
made between cataract from internal and external causes. Hardening of
the eye is mentioned and is declared to be very serious in its
effects. There seems no doubt that this was glaucoma. Conditions of
the lids, particularly, were differentiated and treated by rational
measures, some of them quite modern in substance. A curious
anticipation of modern therapeutics is the frequent recommendation of
extracts of the livers of various fishes for external and internal
use, that is a reminder of the present employment of cod-liver oil.
The book is acknowledged to be a classic in medicine. The fact that
its author should have become Pope later, is the best proof that
instead of opposition there was the greatest sympathy between medicine
and ecclesiasticism in his time.

{231}

With these thoroughly amicable relations between the Church and the
medical schools during the thirteenth and preceeding centuries, it
will not be so much of a surprise as it might otherwise be, to learn
of the foundation of the Medical School of Rome and of the
continuation of Papal patronage of it even while the Popes were absent
at Avignon. University records do not say much about it during the
next two centuries. With the coming of the Renaissance, however, and
the entrance of a new spirit