y health which might bring his soul into
peril."

{431}

APPENDIX V.

PAPAL PHYSICIANS.

To make many sources of information with regard to this vexed question
of the relation of the Popes to Science more readily available, a
series of authoritative references to Papal Physicians so far as we
know them and their work during the past seven centuries has seemed to
me especially needed. Physicians at all times have been interested in
phases of science besides medicine and have not infrequently made
important discoveries in the non-medical sciences. Their constant
occupation with scientific subjects in their professional capacity has
always given them an open mind for scientific advances. As the Papal
Physicians were at all times men chosen because they had reached
distinction in medicine, they were usually scholars who thought for
themselves and were ready to recognize the new in science in any
department from which it might be presented. Many of the Papal
Physicians made important contributions to other sciences and not a
few of them laid important foundations, especially in the biological
sciences. The fact that the Popes constantly had near them, in the
confidential capacity so inevitable between a man and his physician,
scientists of prestige in their chosen profession, so often the
teachers of their generation in medicine and almost as a rule
interested in the sciences related to medicine and not infrequently in
physical science generally, is the best possible evidence not only
that there could not be opposition, but on the contrary that there
must have been, so far as human assumption may go, a constant
favorable attitude of mind of the Popes toward science.

In my chapter on Papal Physicians in the first edition of this volume
I gathered such references as would enable me to bring out the
valuable services of many of the medical attendants of the Popes to
medical and physical science. I was not aware then that a more or less
complete list of Papal Physicians for some five centuries at least had
been published, giving an excellent idea of what they had done and
written in scientific matters. There was no copy of the work in this
country so far as I could learn and it was only after considerable
difficulty that I was able to secure the volumes through the kind
offices of Rev. Father Hagan, S.J., who is the Papal Astronomer in
Rome at the present time. From that {432} work the History of the
Papal Physician