ans. There were no hotels at
that time, and no hospitals, except in the large cities. There were
always guest houses in connection with monasteries and convents, in
which travellers were permitted to pass the night, and given what they
needed to eat. There are many people who have had experiences of
monastic hospitality even in our own time. Sometimes travellers fell
ill. Not infrequently the reason for travelling was to find health in
some distant and fabulously health-giving resort, or at the hands of
some wonder-working physician. Such high hopes are nearly always set at
a distance. This of itself must have given not a little additional need
for knowledge of medicine to the infirmarians of convents and
monasteries. There were around many of the monasteries, moreover, large
estates; often they had been cleared and made valuable by the work of
preceding generations of monks, and on these estates peasants came to
live. Workingmen and workingwomen from neighboring districts came to
help at harvest time, and, after a chance meeting, were married and
settled down on a little plot of ground provided for them near the
monastery. As these communities grew up, they looked to the monasteries
and convents for aid of all kinds, and turned to them particularly in
times of illness. The need for definite instruction in medicine on the
part of a great many of the monks and nuns can be readily understood,
and it was this need that Hildegarde tried to meet in her books. The
first of her books that we have mentioned, the "Liber Simplicis
Medicinae," attracted attention rather early in the Renaissance, and was
deemed worthy of print. It was edited at the beginning of the sixteenth
century by Dr. Schott at Strasburg, under the title, "Physica S.
Hildegardis." Another manuscript of this part was found in the library
of Wolfenbuttel, in 1858, by Dr. Jessen. This gave him an interest in
Hildegarde's contributions to medicine, and, in 1859, he noted in the
library at Copenhagen a manuscript with the title "Hildegardi Curae et
Causae." On examination, he was sure that it was the "Liber Compositae
Medicinae" of the saint. The first work consists of nine books, treating
of plants, elements, trees, stones, fishes, birds, quadrupeds, reptiles,
and metals, and is printed in Migne's "Patrologia," under the title
"Subtilitatum Diversarum Naturarum Libri Novem." The second, in five
books, treats of the general diseases of created things, of the human
b