Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/702

686  and observations till the spring of 1613, At that time he was master enough of the question of the sun's rotation to correct Scheiner's errors. (2) Jean Fabricius discovered the sun spots on March 9, 1611; he was acquainted with the sun's rotation, and was the first to publish a work on the subject. His discovery is quite independent of any previous suggestion. (3) Scheiner may also have observed the sun spots independently in March, 1611, but he attached no importance to them till October of the same year, after the publication of the Narration by Fabricius. His merit consists in his having continued the observations, and in having collected a large number of them, which were inserted in his Rosa Ursina.

The "long before" (longe ante) of Kepler is unexplained.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from Ciel et Terre.



AREMBERG says, in his Histoire des Sciences médicales, that the custom of consultations among doctors was extended in the thirteenth century; but it is probable that the usage existed in previous stages of civilization. There have always been grave maladies and hard diagnoses and cases involving considerable responsibilities, for which a meeting of doctors was desirable; and there have always been patients in considerable social station who liked to be taken care of by several doctors at once. Consultations, therefore, have not all the same origin or the same purpose, but the proceedings in them are always the same—examination for what is the matter with the patient, and discussion concerning it and concerning the treatment to be adopted.

On this subject, we have but few documents from antiquity and the middle ages, and of these the work of Mondeville gives the most information. His work relates to other subjects than surgery, and might, without straining words, be styled Memoirs. Under Philippe the Fair money was scarce, and the doctor and the surgeon were but poorly paid even by the king. "I have never," Mondeville says, "found a man rich enough or honest enough, of whatever condition, religious or other, willing to pay what he had promised without being pressed or forced to do it."