Page:Science and medieval thought. The Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900 (IA sciencemedievalt00allbrich).pdf/76

70 cuts, published in 1491; they advanced to the Aphorisms, the Diet in Acute Diseases and the Prognostics of Hippocrates, overlaid with Syriac, Arabic and Spanish apparatus and glosses; to the Ars Parva of Calen; to the first and fifth Canons of Avicenna, with glosses; to the Ixth Book of Rhazes, Honcin, Aegidius Corboliensis, and perhaps some of the translations of Constantinus Africanus';-this was the lore that ruled the medical schools even to the birth of Harvey. Disputations among the stu- dents were incessant, both "inter se" and "sub cathe- drâ"; but it is doubtful whether these did more than sharpen their dialectical wits. Botany, regarded by the galenists as the secret of the divine dispen- sary, was always more forward; every medical. school had its physie garden, professors carried their students abroad to gather herbs, and Herbals, Dispensatoriums and Kräuterbücher were much in

I may venture to quote again the "locus classicus" :- "Wol knew he the olde Esculapius, And Deiscorides, and eek Rufus, Old Ypocras, Haly, and Galicu; Serapion, Razis, and Avicen; Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn; Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn." Chaucer, C. T. Prol. 429-434 (Skeat's Ed.).