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DURING THE LATTER HALF OF THE MIDDLE AGES SURGERY ASSUMES THE MOST PROMINENT PLACE IN THE ADVANCE OF MEDICAL SCIENCE

During the first half of the fourteenth century, as has been shown in the preceding chapter, Henri de Mondeville was largely successful in rendering Paris the most prominent centre of medical activity in France, if not in Western Europe generally. His life, however, was short, and his position as one of the leading surgeons of the French Army subjected him to many and prolonged interruptions, for which reasons he was not able to complete his excellent treatise on surgery. No physician of the same intellectual capacity and of equally strong character appears to have been living in Paris at the time of De Mondeville's death, and consequently the importance of that city as a centre of medical education diminished rapidly after that event. On the other hand, the Medical School at Montpellier in the southern part of France began at about this period, under the influence of Arnold of Villanova (probably a small town in Catalonia, Spain, in the diocese of Valencia), to acquire importance.

Arnold of Villanova and the Medical School of Montpellier.—Arnold of Villanova was born about 1240 A. D., of humble parentage. He obtained his early education in a Dominican cloister, and afterward devoted all his energies to the study of languages (especially Hebrew), theology, philosophy, the natural sciences (physics, alchemy), and medicine. Paris and Montpellier were the principal cities in which he prosecuted those studies. Already as early