Guy was not, as some writers have asserted, a professor of surgery in the University of Montpellier; he was simply a physician who had won at that institution the title of “Master in Medicine”--the highest grade conferred by the university authorities, and one which necessarily implied that the recipient had given a certain number of public readings on medical topics. And yet in actual practice Guy manifested a strong preference for the management of diseases which demanded surgical treatment. His writings, furthermore, make it clear that he had a strong affection for the institution in which he had been both a student and in some measure an instructor. The book which Guy de Chauliac wrote, and which bears the title “_La Grande Chirurgie_,” is described by Malgaigne,[70] one of the most distinguished French surgeons of the nineteenth century, in the following terms: “I do not hesitate to say that, with the single exception of the book written by Hippocrates, there is not a work on surgery, no matter in what language written, which ranks higher than, or is even equal to, the magnificent treatise of Guy de Chauliac.” Although most surgeons of the present day will scarcely assent to praise of such an extravagant nature, they will undoubtedly agree in according to this admirable author of the fourteenth century a high place of honor in the Temple of Fame. Nicaise, the editor of the most recent version of Guy de Chauliac’s treatise, speaks of him as the “founder of didactic surgery.” From 1363 A. D., the date of its first publication in manuscript, to 1478, a period of more than one hundred years, Guy’s book was universally regarded as the authoritative treatise on surgery. But this branch of medicine, it must not be forgotten, was, at that period of the Middle Ages, held in very small esteem by physicians generally, and therefore it is almost certain that Guy received no encouragement whatever from any outside source. All the greater credit, therefore, is due him for the admirable manner in which he carried on the task which he had set before himself during the last years of his life. Extraordinary as it appears to us to-day, the Montpellier School of Medicine, toward the end of the fifteenth century (that is, only a comparatively short time after Guy’s death), issued a decree that thereafter their pupils were not to study nor to practice surgery. From this and other well-authenticated facts it appears that the prejudice which existed at that period among physicians against surgery, was strong enough to render them blind to the reality that it was through the instrumentality of this very branch of medical activity that the school at Montpellier had gained such an increase in celebrity. They were unable to dispossess their minds of the idea that operative and all other surgical procedures were derogatory to the dignity of the educated physician.