There were no great creative scientists in the later Roman
empire of the East any more than in the corresponding empire of
the West. There was, however, one field in which the Byzantine made
respectable progress and regarding which their efforts require a few
words of special comment. This was the field of medicine.

The Byzantines of this time could boast of two great medical men, Aetius
of Amida (about 502-575 A.D.) and Paul of Aegina (about 620-690).
The works of Aetius were of value largely because they recorded the
teachings of many of his eminent predecessors, but he was not entirely
lacking in originality, and was perhaps the first physician to mention
diphtheria, with an allusion to some observations of the paralysis of
the palate which sometimes follows this disease.

Paul of Aegina, who came from the Alexandrian school about a century
later, was one of those remarkable men whose ideas are centuries ahead
of their time. This was particularly true of Paul in regard to surgery,
and his attitude towards the supernatural in the causation and treatment
of diseases. He was essentially a surgeon, being particularly familiar
with military surgery, and some of his descriptions of complicated
and difficult operations have been little improved upon even in modern
times. In his books he describes such operations as the removal of
foreign bodies from the nose, ear, and esophagus; and he recognizes
foreign growths such as polypi in the air-passages, and gives the
method of their removal. Such operations as tracheotomy, tonsillotomy,
bronchotomy, staphylotomy, etc., were performed by him, and he even
advocated and described puncture of the abdominal cavity, giving careful
directions as to the location in which such punctures should be made. He
advocated amputation of the breast for the cure of cancer, and described
extirpation of the uterus. Just how successful this last operation may
have been as performed by him does not appear; but he would hardly have
recommended it if it had not been sometimes, at least, successful.
That he mentions it at all, however, is significant, as this difficult
operation is considered one of the great triumphs of modern surgery.

But Paul of Aegina is a striking exception to the rule among Byzantine
surgeons, and as he was their greatest, so he was also their last
important surgeon. The energies of all Byzantium were so expended in
religious controversies that medicine, like the other sciences,