Montpellier represented for the West of Europe then very nearly what Salerno did for Italy and Eastern Europe. It very probably attracted many of the English and Scotch students of medicine, though not all the names supposed to be of British origin have proved to be so with the development of our knowledge. Montpellier has survived, however, while Salerno disappeared as a force in medical education. Its story would well deserve telling in detail, and doubtless the new national spirit of the French after the war will prove an incentive to the writing of it. CHAPTER V LATER MEDIEVAL MEDICINE Medicine in the later Middle Ages, that is, from the tenth to the middle of the fifteenth centuries, was greatly influenced by the medical schools which arose in Italy and the West of Europe during this period. These were organized mainly in connection with universities, Salerno, Montpellier, Bologna, Paris, Padua, in the order of their foundations, so far as they can be ascertained. These university medical schools represented serious scientific teaching in medicine, and certainly were not more prone to accept absurdities of therapeutics and other phases of supposed medical knowledge than have been the universities of any other corresponding period of time. Five centuries represent a very long interval in the history of humanity, and provide opportunities for a great many curious developments and ups and downs of interest, all of which must not be considered as representing any particular generation or even century in the history of that time. The absurdities came and went quite as in more modern times; but all the while there was an undercurrent of solid medical knowledge, founded on observation and definite clinical research, superadded to the information obtained from the classics of medicine.