Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/469

Rh Just in the same way there were said to be decrees of the church councils forbidding the practise of surgery. President White says in his "Warfare of Religion with Theology in Christendom," that as a consequence of these surgery was in dishonor until the Emperor Winceslaus, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, ordered that it should be restored to estimation. As a matter of fact during the two centuries immediately preceding the first years of the fifteenth century, surgery developed very wonderfully and we have probably the most successful period in all the history of surgery except possibly our own. The decrees forbade monks to practise surgery because it led to certain abuses. Those who found these decrees and wanted to believe that they prevented all surgical development simply quoted them and assumed there was no surgery. The history of surgery at this time is one of the most wonderful chapters in human progress.

The more we know of the Middle Ages the more do we realize how much they accomplished in every department of intellectual effort. Their development of the arts and crafts has never been equalled in the modern time. They made very great literature, marvelous architecture, sculpture that rivals the Greeks, painting that is still the model for our artists, surpassing illuminations; everything that they touched became 80 beautiful as to be a model for all the after time. They accomplished as much in education as they did in all the other arts, their universities had more students than any that have existed down to our own time and they were enthusiastic students and their professors were ardent teachers, writers, observers, investigators. While we have been accustomed to think of them as neglecting science their minds were occupied entirely with science. They succeeded in anticipating much more of our modern thought and even scientific progress than we have had any idea until comparatively recent years. The work of the later middle ages in mathematics is particularly strong and was the incentive for many succeeding generations. Roger Bacon insisted that without mathematics there was no possibility of real advance in physical science. They had the right ideas in every way. While they were occupied more with the philosophical and ethical sciences than we are, these were never pursued to the neglect of the physical sciences in the strictest sense of that term.

Is it not time that we should drop the foolish notions that are very commonly held because we know nothing about the middle ages—and therefore the more easily assume great knowledge, and get back to appreciate the really marvellous details of educational and scientific development which are so interesting and of so much significance at this time?