Among the somewhat scattered and more or less eminent men of this period was Gerard, of Cremona in Lombardy, a man of great purity and studiousness, who arduously pursued all that Latin authors could teach him, and, not being able to procure in Italy certain manuscripts which dated from the time of Ptolemy, determined to go to Toledo in search of an Arabian translation. At this time he was unacquainted with Arabic, but soon mastered it, and--armed with this powerful resource, which no other physician had possessed since the time of Constantine the African--he could not see so many Arabic works devoted to all branches of science as were gathered at the Spanish University without a desire to translate and transmit the same to his own country; hence he gave the remainder of his life to this work. He rendered into Latin the treatises of Hippocrates and Galen, of Serapion, and of all the famous Arabian authors from the time of Phazes, including the _Canon_ of Avicenna and the work on surgery by Albucassis. He died at the age of seventy-three, in 1187, at Cremona, and left all his books to the monastery of St. Lucy, within whose walls he was buried. William{091} of Salicet, born at Plaisance in the first years of the thirteenth century, became a professor in the University of Bologna, and later at Verona. He wrote extensively on medicine, and earned a reputation as a surgeon that preserves his fame to the present day. It is claimed that his status in medical literature depends, in large measure, upon the fact that he was, perhaps, the first to refuse slavish obedience to preceding authors, preferring, instead, to draw upon the results of personal study and experience. He died in 1280.