enthusiastic accord of
authorities attesting that operations were done at this time with the
help of this inhalant without the infliction of pain. Chauliac says:

"Some prescribe medicaments which send the patient to sleep,
so that the incision may not be felt, such as opium, the juice
of the morel, hyoscyamus, mandrake, ivy, hemlock, lettuce. A
new sponge is soaked by them in these juices and left to dry
in the sun; and when they have need of it they put this sponge
into warm water and then hold it under the nostrils of the
patient until he goes to sleep. Then they perform the
operation."

Many people might be prone to think that the hospitals of Chauliac's
time would not be suitable for such surgical work as he describes. It
is, however, only another amusing assumption of this self-complacent age
of ours to think that we were the first who ever made hospitals worthy
of the name and of the great humanitarian purpose they subserve. As a
matter of fact, the old-time hospitals were even better than ours or, as
a rule, better than any we had until the present generation. In "The
Popes and Science," in the chapter on "The Foundation of City
Hospitals," I call attention to the fact that architects of the present
day go back to the hospitals of the Middle Ages in order to find the
models for hospitals for the modern times. Mr. Arthur Dillon, a
well-known New York architect, writing of a hospital built at Tonnerre
in France, toward the end of the thirteenth century (1292), says:

"It was an admirable hospital in every way, and it is doubtful
if we to-day surpass it. It was isolated; the ward was
separated from the other buildings; it had the advantage we so
often lose of being but one story high, and more space was
given to each patient than we can now afford.

"The ventilation by the great windows and ventilators in the
ceiling was excellent; it was cheerfully lighted; and the
arrangement of the gallery shielded the patients from dazzling
light and from draughts from the windows and afforded an easy
means of supervision, while the division by the roofless low
partitions isolated the sick and obviated the depression that
comes from sight of others in pain.

"It was, moreover, in great contrast to the cheerless white
wards of to-day. The vaulted ceiling was very beautiful; the
woodwork was richly carved, and