Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/705

Rh Mondeville rose bravely above this principle, but yielded sometimes to its influence, and also called the Arabians to his aid.

On the subject of consultation at a distance, he observes that "people have often asked counsel of us surgeons on the treatment of diseases that we have not seen and can not see, because of the absence and distance of patients who can not be brought to us, while we can no more go to them. Under such conditions, it is neither safe nor conformable to the precepts of the art and of a good conscience to make out a prescription of curative treatment for diseases hard to cure, like cancers, fistulas, etc. It is, however, permissible, after having legitimately excused one's self, to prescribe a palliative treatment. In diseases easy to cure, in recent small wounds—for example, boils, tumors, slight contusions, etc.—we may give a curative prescription to absent persons. We should laugh indeed at surgeons," he adds, "if the patient had to appear personally before them for a light disease as well as for a serious one.

"Possibly the messengers from persons seriously ill will tell us that they know as well as the patient himself all the details of the disease; but this is not possible, for no one can extract facts as appropriate and useful in the particular case as the doctor. The patient would not pay due heed to the questions if they did not come from the doctor; and even if the messengers did exactly describe the condition of the patient as it was—and even this is not possible—they would be wholly, or to a large extent, ignorant of his present state, for it would have changed in the interim." In the proceedings just described things were done correctly, as in our own time, but it was not always so; and there are some statements in Mondeville that throw a curious light on the manners of the fourteenth century.

He represents many persons as choosing their doctor without troubling themselves to know whether he was well taught and experienced; others were not satisfied till they had as many doctors around them as possible. "There are frequently," he says, "Parisians who, when ill, call together a great many doctors of different sects, to consult with them. Some think that the more surgeons they have, the sooner their disease will be cured—the same, for example, as ten masons working together on a wall will accomplish as much in one day as one mason can in ten days. Patients who know how to distinguish among surgeons the one who has the best training and experience prefer to have only one"—and that is Mondeville's advice.

But if complications arise, as a fourth day of fever, it will be