It is sometimes thought that after the Roman medicine, which was an imitation of the Greek (though Galen well deserves a place by himself, and Galen is usually thought of as a Roman though he wrote in Greek and had obtained his education at Pergamos in Asia Minor), there was an interregnum in medicine until our own time. This is, however, quite as much of an assumption as to suppose that the Egyptians had no medicine--as we used to until we knew more about them--or that old-time medicine is quite negligible because we were ignorant of its value, The Middle Ages had much more of medicine than we are likely to think, and just as soon as the great universities arose at the end of the {368} twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries, medicine gained a new impetus and flourished marvellously. These university medical schools of the later Middle Ages are models in their way, and put us to shame in many things. According to a law of the Emperor Frederick II issued for the Two Sicilies in 1241, [Footnote 23] three years of preliminary study were required at the university before a student might take up the medical course, and then he had to spend four years at medicine, and practise for a year under the supervision of a physician of experience before he was allowed to practise for himself. The story of the medicine of this time is all the more wonderful because subsequent generations forgot about it until recent years, and supposed that all of this period was shrouded in darkness. It was probably one of the most brilliant periods in medical history. Some of the men who worked and taught in medicine at this time will never be forgotten. [Footnote 23: For the complete text of this law, the first regulating the practice of medicine in modern times, also the first pure drug law, see Walsh's _The Popes and Science_, New York, Fordham University Press, 1908.]