In Feudal times it was the custom to educate the girls belonging to the nobility in practical medicine; also in surgery, especially that variety of surgery applied to wounds. This was immensely useful, inasmuch as their fathers, brothers, husbands or lovers were gallant “Knights,” who ofttimes returned from combat or tourney mutilated or crippled. It was the delicate hand of titled ladies that rendered similar service to strange foreign knights who might be brought wounded to the castle gates. This is why the knights of old rendered such devout homage to the gentler sex—knowing their kindness and love in time of distress, when bleeding wounds were to be staunched and fever allayed. In a Troubadour song, _Ancassin et Nicolette_, we find this passage: “Nicolette, in great alarm, Asked about his pain; Found out of joint his arm, Put it in again; Dressed with herbs the aching bone— Plants to her had virtues known.” Although the church was hostile to the philosophy of Aristotle, whose works were publicly burned in 1209 A.D. by order of the Council, Pierre de Vernon published, in the same thirteenth century, a short poem by the title _Les Enseignements d’Aristote_, the object of which was to vulgarize the scientific portion of the great Greek author’s Encyclopedia. This treatise commenced as follows: “Primes saciez ke icest tretiez Est le secre de secrez numez, Ke Aristotle le Philosophe y doine, La fiz Nichomache de Macedoine A sun deciple Alisandre en bone fei, Le grant, le fiz, a Philippe le Rei, Le fist en sa graunt vielesce.” Which, translated from old French, reads: “From whence learn that this treatise is the secret of secrets, that Aristotle the philosopher, son of Nichomachus, gave to his pupil, Alexander the Great, son of King Philip, and which was composed in his old age.” In recalling the fact that Aristotle was the son of Nichomachus, Pierre de Vernon probably desired to call the attention of his readers more to the knowledge of medicine that the author derived from his father, the celebrated physician, than to the brilliant pupil of Plato. Among the interesting passages in this poem we distinguish some that advise abstinence to persons whose maladies are engendered by excesses at table: “One man cannot live without wine, While another without it should dine; For the latter, ’tis clear, All grape juice and beer For his own stomach’s sake should decline.” The author claims drinking at meals induces gastralgia from acidity of the stomach: “The signs of bad stomach thus trace: Poor digestion, a red bloated face, With out-popping eyes, Palpitation, and sighs. With oppression, as though one did lace.”