It is sometimes a little difficult for casual students of the time to understand the marvellous reputation acquired by this medieval physician. It should not be, however, when we recall the enthusiastic reception and procession of welcome accorded to Cimabue's Madonna, and the almost universal acclaim of the greatness of Dante's work, even in his own time. In something of that same spirit Bologna came to appreciate Taddeo, as he is familiarly known, looked upon him as a benefactor of the community, and voted to relieve him of the burden of paying taxes. He came to be considered as a public institution, whose presence was a blessing to his fellow citizens, and whose goodness to them should be recognized in this public way. One is not surprised to hear Villani, the well-known contemporary historian, speak of him as the greatest physician in Christendom. The feelings of the citizens of Bologna, it may well be confessed, were not entirely unselfish, or due solely to the desire to encourage a great scientific genius. Few men of his generation had done more for the city in a material way quite apart from whatever benefits he conferred upon the health of its citizens than Dr. Taddeo. It was he who organized medical teaching in the city on such a plane that it attracted students from all over the world. Bologna had had a great law school before this, founded by Irnerius, to which students had come from all over the world. With the advent of Taddeo from Florence, and his success as a medical practitioner, there began to flock to his lectures many students who spread his fame far and wide. The city council could scarcely do less than grant the same privileges to the medical students and teachers of Taddeo's school as they had previously accorded to the faculty of law and its students. The city council recognized quite as clearly as any board of aldermen in the modern time how much, even of material benefit, a great university was to the building up of a city, though their motives were probably much higher than that, and their enlightened policy had its reward in the rapid growth of Bologna until, very probably at the end of the thirteenth century, it had more students than any university of the modern time. The number was not less than fifteen thousand, and may have been twenty thousand. To this great university success Taddeo and his medical school contributed not a little. The especially attractive feature of his teaching seems to have been its eminent practicalness. He himself had made an immense success of the practice of medicine, and accumulated a great fortune, so much so that Dante, in his "Paradiso," when he wishes to find a figure that would represent exactly the opposite to what St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominicans, did for the love of wisdom and humanity, he takes that of Taddeo, who had accomplished so much for personal reputation and wealth.