Page:The Hunterian oration, for the year 1819.djvu/18

14 minished, and were assailed on various parts of their frontier. The empire, however, was still superior to these attacks, and according to the simile of a late elegant writer, it seemed like the trunk of an old tree, which still remained vigorous and unshaken by the winds which assaulted it, and had stripped it of its branches. In the territory protected by the last exertion of the Roman power, science and art still survived, though in a state of rapid decline. Here the works of the Grecian and Roman writers on medicine, were chiefly preserved, and their languages were spoken. Here too, when the people in general had become illiterate, ecclesiastical scholars, who had read these authors, took upon themselves to give medical advice, but refused to shed blood, or dress wounds or sores, which task devolved on their servants. It was here, therefore, that surgery first made its public appearance, clothed in the garb of a menial. Anatomy was wholly neglected by the Arabians, nor was it till the beginning of the fourteenth century, that Mondini made public dissections in Italy, and by