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l of Bologna continued to maintain as a centre of medical teaching." Of course, erudition had its revenge, and carried Taddeo too far. The difficult thing in human nature is to stay in the mean and avoid exaggeration. His methods of illustrating medical truths from many literary and philosophical sources often caused the kernel of observation to be hidden beneath a blanket of speculation or, at least, to be concealed to a great extent. Even the Germans, who have insisted most on this unfortunate tendency of Taddeo, have been compelled to confess that there is much that is valuable in what he accomplished, and that even his modes of expression were not without a certain vivacity which attracted attention and doubtless added materially to his success as a teacher. Pagel, in Puschmann's "Handbuch," says: "It cannot be denied [this is just after he has quoted a passage of Taddeo with regard to dreams] that Taddeo's expressions have a certain liveliness all their own that gives us some idea why he was looked upon as so good a teacher, a teacher who, as we know now, also gave instruction by the bedside of patients." Pagel adds, "Taddeo's greatest merit and his highest significance in medical education consist in the fact that a great many (_zahlreiche_) physicians followed directly in his footsteps and were counted as his pupils. They were all men, as we know them, who as writers and practitioners of medicine succeeded in going far beyond the level of mediocrity in what they accomplished." This was the teacher who most influenced young Mondino when he came to the University of Bologna, for it seems not unlikely that as a medical student he was actually the pupil of Taddeo, then in a vigorous old age. If not, he was at least brought under the direct influence of the teaching tradition created during more than thirty years by that wonderful old man. Knowing what we do of Taddeo it is not surprising that his pupil should have accomplished work that was to influence succeeding generations more than any other of that wonderful thirteenth century. Dr. Pilcher in the article on "The Mondino Myth," so often placed under contribution in this sketch, says that "It needs no great stretch of the imagination to picture somewhat of the effect that contact with such a man as Taddeo di Alderotto[15] might have, in molding the character of his young neighbor and pupil, the chemist's son, who a few years later, by his devotion to the study
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