When first we hear of medical men in Great Britain they were commonly spoken of as _leeches_, as among the Danes and Saxons; later the clergy introduced books from Rome, and almost every Monastery had some brother possessed of more or less knowledge of the medicine of the day. The College of Salernum later gave great impetus to the study of medicine, even before the days of William the Conqueror, which was strengthened by the influence emanating from Naples, and particularly from Montpellier. For centuries the Catholic clergy were almost the only persons with sufficient education to study and practise physic; which profession became in time so lucrative that many of the monks abandoned their monasteries, neglecting their religious duties, and applied themselves to the study of medicine. To such an extent was this true that in 1163 the Council of Tours forbade monks staying out of the monastery for more than two months at a time, or teaching or practising physic. In taking this action the Council only repeated what had been ordained by decree of Henry III in 1216, and by the second Council of Lateran in 1139. No restraint was at first placed upon the secular clergy, and many of the Bishops and other church dignitaries gained both money and honor by acting as physicians to Kings and Princesses. Next to the clergy the Jews possessed the largest share of learning. Their nomadic life permitted an intercourse with the different nations of the world, which was denied to most others, and there were many who studied medicine and practised, not only among those of their own race but amongst Moors and Christians alike. The priests became extremely jealous of Jewish physicians and of lay surgeons, and endeavored to secure through Rome a formal excommunication of all who committed themselves to the care of a Jew, while by canon law no Jew might give medicine to a Christian. But so celebrated were the Jewish physicians, and so superior to everything else was men's desire for life and strength, that even the power of Rome could not exclude them from practice. Still less could the clergy restrain the lay surgeons from the performance of their craft, and though it would appear that at first, in England, the priests were not disposed to separate surgery from medicine, the Pope became jealous of so much interruption to the duties of the clergy and looked upon the manual part of surgery as detracting from clerical dignity. Accordingly were made numerous attempts to debar priests from the performance of surgical operations. In 1215 the ecclesiastics were prohibited by Pope Innocent III from undertaking any operation involving the shedding of blood, while by Boniface VIII at the close of the thirteenth century, and Clement V, about the beginning of the fourteenth century, surgery was formally separated from physic and the priests positively forbidden to practice it. It is to the Church then that we owe this absolute abandonment of