ause so many of his brother physicians
were absent. He denounces their conduct as shameful, yet does not boast
of his own courage, but on the contrary says that he was in constant
fear of the disease. Toward the end of the epidemic he was attacked by
the plague and for a time his life was despaired of. Fortunately he
recovered, to become the most influential among his colleagues, the most
highly admired of the physicians of his generation, and the close
personal friend of all the high ecclesiastics, who had witnessed his
magnificent display of courage and of helpfulness for the
plague-stricken during the epidemic. He wrote a very clear account of
the epidemic, which leaves no doubt that it was true bubonic plague.

After this fine example, Chauliac's advice to brother physicians in the
specialty of surgery carried added weight. In the Introductory chapter
of his "Chirurgia Magna" he said:

"The surgeon should be learned, skilled, ingenious, and of
good morals. Be bold in things that are sure, cautious in
dangers; avoid evil cures and practices; be gracious to the
sick, obliging to his colleagues, wise in his predictions. Be
chaste, sober, pitiful, and merciful; not covetous nor
extortionate of money; but let the recompense be moderate,
according to the work, the means of the sick, the character of
the issue or event, and its dignity."

No wonder that Malgaigne says of him, "Never since Hippocrates has
medicine heard such language filled with so much nobility and so full of
matter in so few words."

Chauliac was in every way worthy of his great contemporaries and the
period in which his lot was cast. Ordinarily we are not apt to think of
the early fourteenth century as an especially productive period in human
history, but such it is. Dante's Divine Comedy was entirely written
during Chauliac's life. Petrarch was born within a few years of Chauliac
himself; Boccaccio in Italy, and Chaucer in England, wrote while
Chauliac was still alive. Giotto did his great painting, and his pupils
were laying the deep, firm foundations of modern art. Many of the great
cathedrals were being finished. Most of the universities were in the
first flush of their success as moulders of the human mind. There are
few centuries in history that can show the existence of so many men
whose work was to have an enduring influence for all the after time as
this upon which Chauliac's career shed so bright a li