As to Arab medicine, see Withington, as cited, pp. 139, 170; and Sprengel, _History of Medicine_, French tr. vol. ii (1815), pp. 262-64--a passage which contradicts Sprengel's previous disparagements. Compare p. 343. The _histoire particulière_ in this chapter (v of Sect. 6) generally countervails the hostile summaries. Sprengel proceeded on the prejudice (i, 215) that there was no "rational science" anywhere before the Greeks; as if there were not many irrational elements in the science not only of the Greeks but of the moderns. A much better qualified historian of Arab medicine, Dr. Lucien Leclerc, writes (_Histoire de la médecine arabe_, 1876, i, 462) that in the eleventh century "the medical productions [of the Arabs] continue to develop an independent aspect, and have already a certain stamp of originality. Already the Arabs feel themselves rich on their own footing. We see appearing certain writings not less remarkable for the novelty of the form than for the value of the substance." Again, Dr. Ernst von Meyer, the historian of chemistry, sums up (_Hist. of Chemistry_, M'Gowan's tr. 2nd ed. p. 28), that "the germs of chemical knowledge attained to a marvellous growth among the Arabians." It may be noted that there is record of a hospital in Bagdad at the beginning of the ninth century, and that there were many there in the tenth (Leclerc, i, 559). A rational argument is brought against Semitic "faculty" by Dr. Cunningham, it should be admitted, in the contention that the Phoenicians figured poorly as copyists of Greek art (_Western Civilisation_, p. 69, following Renan). But this argument entirely ignores the element of time that is needed to develop any art in any civilisation. The Phoenician civilisation was overthrown before it had time to assimilate Greek art developments, which themselves were the work of centuries even in a highly favourable set of conditions. Nöldeke, though less unscientific than Spiegel, partly follows him in insisting that Phoenician architecture copied Egyptian, and that the later Semites copied the Greek, as if the Greeks in turn had not had predecessors and guides. Starting with the fixed fallacy that the Semites were "one-sided," he reasons in a circle to the effect that their one-sidedness was "highly prejudicial to the development of science," while compelled to admit the importance of the work of the Babylonians in astronomy. (_Sketches from Eastern History_, Eng. tr. pp. 15-18.)