Dentistry was practised, but it was considered by the Arabs, as by the Greek and Roman doctors, a very inferior branch of the profession, and was, for the most part, as with ourselves, till very recently relegated to uneducated persons. Midwifery also was, to a great extent, neglected by the higher class of physicians. The Arabian faculty esteemed most highly medicine proper, though pharmacy and materia medica were especially studied. The professors were paid by the State, and handsomely as a rule. Their text books were the works of the Greek physicians, especially Hippocrates and Galen. A sort of matriculation examination was required before a student could enter the great schools, and he was subjected to professional examinations (not very severe, presumably) before he was permitted to practise. The Arabian physicians were usually men of the highest culture; not only were they men of science, but of philosophy and literature also. Great mystery was combined with Arabian medical practice; astrology was the handmaid of medicine, and charms entered largely into therapeutics. The physicians wrote prescriptions with purgative ink; so that “take this!” was meant literally when the doctor gave the patient his prescription. It had to be swallowed in due form. Although the great civilizations of the East date their origins from a period far more remote than those of the West, they have lagged far behind the West in progress. Professor Freeman defines European society as progressive, legal, monogamous, and, for the last fifteen hundred years, a Christian society; the East he defines as stationary, arbitrary, polygamous, and Mahometan.[719] The dominant note of Oriental history is sameness; a monotony which enables us to read in the story of to-day that which took place amongst Eastern peoples a thousand years ago. The history of a single city of Europe is of infinitely greater interest to the student of humanity and the history of civilization than that of a whole nation of the East. The history of Florence alone is of greater importance, from this point of view, than that of all China. There is, however, one marvellous history, that of Mahomet and his creed, which excels in interest that of any other man of the Oriental nations. “Nowhere,” says Freeman, “in the history of the world can we directly trace such mighty effects to the personal agency of a single mortal.”[720] CHAPTER III. RISE OF THE MONASTERIES. Alchemy the parent of Chemistry.