In another work, however, the writer delivers himself with greater freedom. Speaking of newly-fledged medicos, he says: “They soon return from college, full of flimsy theories, to practise what they have learned. Galen and Hippocrates are continually in their mouths. They speak aphorisms on every subject, and make their hearers stare at their long, unknown, and high-sounding words. The good people believe that they can do anything, because they pretend to all things. They have only two maxims which they never violate: never mind the poor, never refuse money from the rich.” ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER[738] does not write very highly of the skill in surgery possessed by the Anglo-Normans. Speaking of the Duke of Austria, who took King Richard the First prisoner, his verses import that when “he fell off from his horse and sorely bruised his foot, his physicians declared that if it was not immediately smitten off, he would die; but none would undertake the performance of the operation; till the Duke took a sharp axe, and bid the chamberlain strike it off, and he smote thrice ere he could do it, putting the Duke to most horrid torture. And Holinshed tells us that in the time of Henry the Third there lived one Richard, surnamed Medicus, ‘a most learned physician, and no less expert in philosophy and mathematics;’ but makes not the least mention of surgery. Also some authors have attributed the death of Richard the First (wounded in the shoulder at the Castle of Chalezun), to the unskilfulness of those who had the care of the wound, and not from the quarrel’s being poisoned, as others have insinuated.”[739] The university title of Doctor was not known in England before the reign of Henry II.[740] RICHARD FITZ-NIGEL, Bishop of London, was apothecary to Henry II. Many bishops and dignitaries of the Church were physicians to kings and princes.[741] Most of the practitioners of medicine and teachers of physic were churchmen, either priests or monks. ST. HILDEGARD (1098-1179), Abbess of Ruppertsberg, near Bingen on the Rhine, was a famous physician and student of nature, who wrote a treatise on Materia Medica. Her pharmacy was in advance of her time, and to this eminent lady physician we are indebted for the attempts to disguise the nastiness of physic; she enveloped the remedy in flour, which was then made into pancakes and eaten.[742] Meyer says that her work entitled _Physica_ “is a treatise on Materia Medica, unmistakably founded on popular traditions.” Her visions and revelations concerning physical and medical questions are contained in her work “_Divinorum operum simplicis hominis liber_.” She was a true reformer within the Church, and her pure life was singularly devoted and unselfish; she was, in fact, a Woman Physician, who should be the patron saint of our lady doctors. CHAPTER V. THE SCHOOL OF SALERNO.