"Gradually, however, a beneficial transformation of customs in this matter began to be manifest. Physicians {192} who were scientifically trained began to take up surgery with enthusiasm, and from that time (end of twelfth century) dates the visible uplift of this specialty. Eventually the most noteworthy literary events and remains of the representatives of the great schools of the Middle Ages--Salerno, Bologna, Paris and Montpelier--concern quite as much the department of surgery as of practical medicine. These medieval literary contributions constitute the principal steps in the historical development of scientific surgery. The Crusades represent an extremely important influence upon the perfecting of the surgery of wounds. Italian surgeons in large numbers took prominent parts therein. They took the abundant opportunities afforded them to gather experience, which they used to great advantage in their practice and in their teaching after their return home. From Roger, the first and most important of the representatives of the Salernitan school (whose life occupies the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century), and down to Guy de Chauliac (who died toward the end of the fourteenth century), in a space therefore of not quite two hundred years, a complete breach with the blood-fearing traditions of the Arabs was made. In no European land does one fail to find evidence of intense as well as successful scientific occupation with surgery."