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 VII

FROM THE ARABS TO THE EUROPEANS

"Mediciners, like the medicines which they employ, are often useful, though the one were by birth and manners the vilest of humanity, as the others are in many cases extracted from the basest materials. Men may use the assistance of pagans and infidels in their need, and there is reason to think that one cause of their being permitted to remain on earth is that they might minister to the convenience of true Christians."—The Archbishop of Tyre in Sir Walter Scott's Talisman.

It would require a very long chapter and would be outside the scope of this work to attempt to trace in any detail the manner in which the ancient wisdom and science of the Greek and Latin authors, which was so marvellously preserved by the iconoclastic Arabs, was transferred, when their passion for study and research began to fail, to European nations. It has been alleged that the Crusades served to bring the attainments of the Eastern Saracens to the knowledge of the West through learning picked up by the physicians and others who accompanied the Christian armies against the Mohammedans.

But there is no evidence and not much probability that Europeans acquired any Eastern science of value through the Crusades. Indirectly medicine ultimately profited greatly by the commerce which these marvellous wars opened up between the East and the West,