A study of the general history of the Arabic Period reveals that the Arabs, previously obscure and uncivilized, emerged rapidly from the demi-savage state, and took the first rank among the polished nations of the world. During the earliest portion of this period these people were religious vandals and destructive fanatics, but later embraced with enthusiasm and persistence a study of the humanities, and endeavored to repair their early ravages by collecting the _débris_ of the literary and scientific monuments of Greece; but, though they cultivated medicine with zeal and success, they added little to the Greek treasures. Later, Arabia was overrun by hordes from the deserts of Tartary, a people yet more barbarous and unknown, who established themselves in all parts of the globe then under Saracenic dominion, and by their brutal despotism degraded the Arabians to a condition approaching that from which they had emerged. This seems to have been ever the result of Turkish conquest. Meanwhile the Greek nation, which was for so many ages at the head of civilization, gradually lost its power, virtue, courage, glory, and independence, and continued to descend, until now it exercises no influence whatever on the course of events. During the course of the Arabic Period only one Grecian physician merits mention on account of his writings, and in these there was nothing-new except what he had borrowed without credit from the Saracens. The Empire of the West,--that is the western part of the ancient Roman Empire,--after subjugation by barbarians from Germany and Scandinavia, fell under a cloud whose darkness overwhelmed it. Its people, however, gradually received new life by commingling their blood with that of the invaders. Later they were able to repulse the Saracens{098} who poured in upon them from Spain; then they turned their armies against each other, and wrought mutual havoc and ruin for several centuries. Again, roused by religious fanaticism, as had been the Mohammedans previously, they rushed by thousands upon the plains of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, which had been for centuries occupied by the Arabs; and their adventures and enterprises, and the new and varied scenes through which they passed, gave rise among the "Francs" to some taste for poetry and works of imagination During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries governments became more stable, liberal institutions were created, the rust of ignorance gradually disappeared, and by the end of the Arabic Period there were really apparent brilliant streaks of mentality in the horizon of the nations of Europe. In this progressive movement the study of medicine shared. In the thirteenth century it was worthily represented in Italy, in Paris, and became established in Montpellier. Notwithstanding, up to this time physicians apparently only knew how to timidly follow in the track of the Arabians, and approached little, or not at all, in their studies, the purer lore of the Greeks.