gns of the modification of his
predecessors' opinions by the results of his own experience. His method
of writing is, as Pagel declares, "always interesting, lively, and often
full of meat." He had a teacher's instinct, for in several of the
earlier manuscripts his special teaching is put in larger letters in
order to attract students' attention.... He seems to have introduced or
re-introduced into practice the idea of the use of a large magnet in
order to extract portions of iron from the tissues. He made several
modifications in needles and thread holders and invented a kind of
small derrick for the extraction of arrows with barbs. Besides, he
suggested the surrounding of the barbs of the arrows with tubes, to
facilitate extraction. In his treatment of wounds, Pagel considers that
as a writer and teacher he is far ahead of his predecessors and even of
those who came after him in immediately subsequent generations. One of
his great merits undoubtedly is that Guy de Chauliac, the father of
modern surgery, in his text-book turned to him with a confidence that
proclaims his admiration and how much he felt that he had gained from
him.

One of the most interesting features of Mondeville's work is his
insistence on the influence of the mind on the body and the importance
of using this influence to the best advantage. It is especially
important in Mondeville's opinion to keep a surgical patient from being
moody. "Let the surgeon," says he, "take care to regulate the whole
regimen of the patient's life for joy and happiness by promising that he
will soon be well, by allowing his relatives and special friends to
cheer him and by having someone to tell him jokes, and let him be
solaced also by music on the viol or psaltery. The surgeon must forbid
anger, hatred, and sadness in the patient, and remind him that the body
grows fat from joy and thin from sadness. He must insist on the patient
obeying him faithfully in all things." He repeats with approval the
expression of Avicenna that "often the confidence of the patient in his
physician does more for the cure of his disease than the physician with
all his remedies." Obstinate and conceited patients prone to object to
nearly everything that the surgeon wants to do, and who often seem to
think that they surpass Galen and Hippocrates in science and wisdom, are
likely to delay their cure very much, and they represent the cases with
which the surgeon has much difficulty.

Mondeville