of the
centuries since.

The relation of the Popes to these advances in medicine may be best
appreciated from the interest which they took in the hospitals. It was
only in hospitals that cases could be properly studied, and the
medieval hospitals were conducted with very nearly the same relations
to the universities of that time as those that exist at the present
day. In the chapter on the Foundation of City Hospitals we show that
these institutions are all, as Virchow, who is surely an authority
above suspicion in any matter relating to the Popes has declared, due
to one great Pope. This is the best possible demonstration of supreme
humanitarian interest in human ills, and their treatment. Innocent
III., as we shall see, at the beginning of the thirteenth century
summoned Guy from Montpelier, where he had been trained in the care of
patients, and where the greatest medical school of the time existed,
to come to Rome and organize the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in the
Papal City, which was to be a model for hospitals of the same kind in
every diocese throughout the Christian world. Literally hundreds of
{11} these hospitals were founded during the thirteenth century as the
result of this initiative. Patients were not left to die, with only
the hope of prayers to relieve their sufferings, but they were cared
for as skilfully as the rising science of the time knew how and with
the tenderness that religious care has always been able to give. For
added consolation in the midst of their sufferings and as a fortifier
against the thought of death, they had religion and all its beautiful
influences, for which even Virchow, himself utterly unbelieving,
cannot suppress a tribute.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the University of the City
of Rome was founded by Pope Boniface VIII. Only a year or two later
the Popes removed their capital to Avignon. It has often been thought
that, because of this removal of the Papal capital, this University of
the City never came into existence; but we have definite records of
salaries paid out of the Papal revenues to professors of law and
medicine about the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century.

Down in the South of France, at Avignon itself, the Popes had for one
of their chamberlains the famous Guy de Chauliac, who is always spoken
of as the Father of Modern Surgery. One of the Popes of the Avignon
period founded the College of Twelve Physicians at Montpelier, the