Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/343

 prejudices and jealousies were not sufficiently powerful to block the triumphant career of this man of solid merit and high character.

''The State of Medicine and Surgery in Countries Other than Italy and France During the Later Portion of the Middle Ages.''—From the account given by Neuburger it appears that the seeds planted by the famous teachers of medicine and surgery in Italy and France during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had begun to take root in England and in the Low Countries to the north of France, and were in fact already producing some good fruit in those lands. Thus, for example, there have been handed down to our time the names of four physicians who attained a certain degree of eminence in England during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—Gilbertus Anglicus, John of Gaddesden, John Mirfeld and John Arderne.

Gilbertus Anglicus, who was the first English medical writer to secure a certain degree of celebrity among the physicians of continental Europe, wrote a compendium of medicine that was commonly called the "Laurea anglica." The book contains, along with some good original observations and the records of his own experience, not a few wearisome theoretical discussions; and at the same time it reveals the fact that the author was inclined to favor remedial measures of a superstitious nature. In the last chapter of his compendium, however, he makes the very practical suggestion that distillation may be resorted to when one desires to purify water that is contaminated. Gilbertus, after obtaining his preliminary training in England in the early part of the thirteenth century, visited some of the leading schools on the continent, among others those of Salerno and Montpellier, in which latter city he appears to have practiced medicine for a certain length of time.

John of Gaddesden, who is also spoken of as Johannes Anglicus, was born about 1280 A. D. and died in 1361. He was therefore a contemporary of Guy de Chauliac. He is said to have been a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and to have held the positions of Prebendary of St. Paul's,