most of them were,
many of them rose above their environment in such a way as to make
their work landmarks in the history of progress for all time.

Because their discoveries are buried in the old Latin folios that are
contained only in the best libraries, not often consulted by the
modern scientist, it is usually thought that the scientific
investigators of these centuries before the Reformation did no work
that would be worth while considering in our present day. It is only
some {51} one who goes into this matter as a labor of love who will
consider it worth his while to take the trouble seriously to consult
these musty old tomes. Many a scholar, however, has found his labor
well rewarded by the discovery of many an anticipation of modern
science in these volumes so much neglected and where such
treasure-trove is least expected. Professor Clifford Allbutt, the
Regius Professor of physics at the University of Cambridge, in his
address on "The Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery Down to
the End of the Sixteenth Century," which was delivered at the St.
Louis Congress of Arts and Sciences during the Exposition in 1904, has
shown how much that is supposed to be distinctly modern in medicine,
and above all in surgery, was the subject of discussion at the French
and Italian universities of the thirteenth century. William Salicet,
for instance, who taught at the University of Bologna, published a
large series of case histories, substituted the knife for the Arabic
use of the cautery, described the danger of wounds of the neck,
investigated the causes of the failure of healing by first intention,
and sutured divided nerves. His pupil, Lanfranc, who taught later at
the University of Paris, went farther than his master by
distinguishing between venous and arterial hemorrhage, requiring
digital compression for an hour to stop hemorrhage from the _venae
pulsatiles_--the pulsating veins, as they were called--and if this
failed because of the size of the vessel, {52} suggesting the
application of a ligature. Lanfranc's chapter on injuries to the head
still remains a noteworthy book in surgery that establishes beyond a
doubt how thoughtfully practical were these teachers in the medieval
universities. It must be remembered that at this time all the teachers
in universities, even those in the medical schools as well as those
occupied with surgery, were clerics. Professor Allbutt calls attention
over and over again to this fa