Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/237

 injuries commonly encountered in that part of the world and with the methods of treatment which, as long experience had shown, offered the best chances of affording relief or effecting a cure. It was a clinical school of a most practical type, and at the head of it was George Bakhtichou, who had been recommended to Almansur as the physician best fitted to take responsible charge of the new work which was then about to begin. George Bakhtichou was not the organizer of the school at Djondisabour, but simply its head at the time of which I am now speaking. Medicine had been taught there, it appears, since the early part of the seventh century A. D. The languages commonly spoken in that town were the Syrian, the Arabian and the Persian, and probably only a few persons understood Greek. The Caliph believed that, as the first and most important step in the new work, medical text books, translations of the works of the best Greek physicians, should be provided with as little loss of time as possible, and George Bakhtichou agreed with this opinion entirely. The latter, therefore, upon the urgent invitation of the Caliph, left the hospital at Djondisabour in the charge of his son, Bakhtichou ben Djordis, and went to Bagdad in company with two of his pupils, Ibrahim and Issa ben Chalata. He was well received at Court, partly because he displayed a readiness to further the Caliph's educational plans, and partly also because he was promptly successful in relieving him of a distressing dyspepsia. Not long after he had arrived in Bagdad, however, he was himself taken ill and was obliged to return to Djondisabour. Before his departure the Caliph presented him with a gift of 10,000 pieces of gold. Issa ben Chalata, one of the two pupils whom George Bakhtichou had brought with him to Bagdad, was left behind to look after the Caliph's health. He proved faithless to his trust, however; and, as soon as it was discovered that he was selling his supposed influence with the Caliph, he was not only dismissed in disgrace but all his property was confiscated. After this disagreeable experience the Caliph did his best to induce George to return to Court, but the latter was then unable to travel,