What would have been its fate if the mind of Europe had been ready for Roger Bacon's ferment, and if men had turned to the profitable studies of physics, astronomy and chemistry instead of wasting centuries over the scholastic philosophy and the subtleties of Duns Scotus, Abelard and Thomas Aquinas? Who can say? Make no mistake about the quality of these men--giants in intellect, who have had their place in the evolution of the race; but from the standpoint of man struggling for the mastery of this world they are like the members of Swift's famous college "busy distilling sunshine from cucumbers." I speak, of course, from the position of the natural man, who sees for his fellows more hope from the experiments of Roger Bacon than from the disputations of philosophy on the "Instants, Familiarities, Quiddities and Relations," which so roused the scorn of Erasmus. MEDIAEVAL MEDICAL STUDIES IT will be of interest to know what studies were followed at a mediaeval university. At Oxford, as at most of the continental universities, there were three degrees, those of Bachelor, Licentiate and Doctor. The books read were the "Tegni" of Galen, the "Aphorisms" of Hippocrates, the "De Febribus" of Isaac and the "Antidotarium" of Nicolaus Salernitanus: if a graduate in arts, six years' study in all was required, in other faculties, eight. One gets very full information on such matters from a most interesting book, "Une Chaire de Medecine au XVe Siecle," by Dr. Ferrari (Paris, 1899). The University of Pavia was founded in 1361, and like most of those in Italy was largely frequented by foreigners, who were arranged, as usual, according to their nationalities; but the students do not appear to have controlled the university quite so much as at Bologna. The documents of the Ferrari family, on which the work is based, tell the story of one of its members, who was professor at Pavia from 1432 to 1472. One is surprised at the range of studies in certain directions, and still more at the absence of other subjects. A list is given of the teachers in medicine for the year 1433, twenty in all, and there were special lectures for the morning, afternoon and evening. The subjects are medicine, practical medicine, physics, metaphysics, logic, astrology, surgery and rhetoric: very striking is the omission of anatomy, which does not appear in the list even in 1467. The salaries paid were not large, so that most of the teachers must have been in practice: four hundred and five hundred florins was the maximum.