of such
a combination of powerful poisons does not appear, but the percentage
of deaths must have been very high, as the practice was generally
condemned. Insensibility could have been produced only by swallowing
large quantities of the liquid, which dripped into the nose and mouth
when the sponge was applied, and a lethal quantity might thus be
swallowed. The method was revived, with various modifications, from time
to time, but as often fell into disuse. As late as 1782 it was sometimes
attempted, and in that year the King of Poland is said to have been
completely anaesthetized and to have recovered, after a painless
amputation had been performed by the surgeons.

Peter of Abano was one of the first great men produced by the University
of Padua. His fate would have been even more tragic than that of the
shipwrecked Arnald had he not cheated the purifying fagots of the church
by dying opportunely on the eve of his execution for heresy. But if his
spirit had cheated the fanatics, his body could not, and his bones were
burned for his heresy. He had dared to deny the existence of a devil,
and had suggested that the case of a patient who lay in a trance for
three days might help to explain some miracles, like the raising of
Lazarus.

His great work was Conciliator Differentiarum, an attempt to reconcile
physicians and philosophers. But his researches were not confined to
medicine, for he seems to have had an inkling of the hitherto unknown
fact that air possesses weight, and his calculation of the length of the
year at three hundred and sixty-five days, six hours, and four minutes,
is exceptionally accurate for the age in which he lived. He was probably
the first of the Western writers to teach that the brain is the source
of the nerves, and the heart the source of the vessels. From this it
is seen that he was groping in the direction of an explanation of the
circulation of the blood, as demonstrated by Harvey three centuries
later.

The work of Arnald and Peter of Abano in "reviving" medicine was
continued actively by Mondino (1276-1326) of Bologna, the "restorer of
anatomy," and by Guy of Chauliac: (born about 1300), the "restorer of
surgery." All through the early Middle Ages dissections of human bodies
had been forbidden, and even dissection of the lower animals gradually
fell into disrepute because physicians detected in such practices
were sometimes accused of sorcery. Before the close of the thirteenth
century,