Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/290

 which scientific considerations alone prevailed, where the Church exercised no control whatever, and where all the different branches of the science were favored to an equal degree. They devoted their best energies, by oral teaching and by their writings, to the single object of communicating practical knowledge of the healing art to all who desired to obtain it; and, by the admirable example of their own lives, they furnished a high standard for the guidance of those who wished to reflect honor upon the name of physician.