Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle AgesWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Medicine, Medieval; Physicians
The treatment of snake bites and the bites of other poisonous animals
was supposed to follow the principles laid down for the bite of a mad
dog, especially as regards the encouragement of free bleeding and the
use of the cautery.
Lanfranc has many other expressions that one is tempted to quote,
because they show a thinking surgeon of the old time, anticipating many
supposedly modern ideas and conclusions. He is a particular favorite of
Gurlt's, who has more than twenty-five large octavo, closely printed
pages with regard to him. There is scarcely any development in our
modern surgery that Lanfranc has not at least a hint of, certainly
nothing in the surgery of a generation ago that does not find a mention
in his book. On most subjects he has practical observations from his own
experience to add to what was in surgical literature before his time. He
quotes altogether more than a score of writers on surgery who had
preceded him and evidently was thoroughly familiar with general surgical
literature. There is scarcely an important surgical topic on which Gurlt
does not find some interesting and personal remarks made by Lanfranc.
All that we can do here is refer those who are interested in Lanfranc to
his own works or Gurlt.
MONDEVILLE
The next of the important surgeons who were to bring such distinction to
French surgery for five centuries was Henri de Mondeville. Writers
usually quote him as Henricus. His latter name is only the place of his
birth, which was probably not far from Caen in Normandy. It is spelled
in so many different ways, however, by different writers that it is well
to realize that almost anything that looks like Mondeville probably
refers to him. Such variants as Mundeville, Hermondaville, Amondaville,
Amundaville, Amandaville, Mandeville, Armandaville, Armendaville,
Amandavilla occur. We owe a large amount of our information with regard
to him to Professor Pagel, who issued the first edition of his book ever
published (Berlin, 1892). It may seem surprising that Mondeville's work
should have been left thus long without publication, but unfortunately
he did not live long enough to finish it. He was one of the victims that
tuberculosis claimed among physicians in the midst of their work. Though
there are a great number of manuscript copies of his book, somehow
Renaissance interest in it in its incompleted state was never aroused
sufficiently to bring about a printed edition. Certainly it was not
because of any lack of interest on the part of his contemporaries or any
lack of significance in the work itself, for its printing has been one
of the surprises afforded us in the modern time as showing how
thoroughly a great writer on surgery did his work at the beginning of
the fourteenth century. Gurlt, in his "History of Surgery," has given
over forty pages, much of it small type, with regard to Mondeville,
because of the special interest there is in his writing.[20]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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