It may be wondered, then, how the tradition of opposition to surgery, which is so common in history, had its origin. Nearly always for these exaggerated stories {194} there is some basis of truth. For instance, with regard to the opposition to Vesalius, the origin of the stories of persecution by the Church and ecclesiastical authorities is evidently the fact that he was very much opposed by the old-time physicians and surgeons, who believed in Galen and thought it worse than heresy to break with him. It is the opposition of scientists, or pseudo-scientists, to scientific progress that constitutes the real bar to advance, and has over and over again been attributed to religious motives, when it is really due to that very human overconservatism, which so constantly places men in the position of opponents to novelties of any kind, no matter how much of value they may eventually prove to have. There has always existed a certain prejudice against surgery on the part of physicians--meaning by that term, for the moment, those who devote themselves to internal medicine. This feeling has never quite died out. There were times in the Middle Ages when it was very marked. Not a little of the feeling is due to professional jealousy, and that, it is to be feared, like the poor, we shall have always with us. Professor Allbutt has in the address at St. Louis, already quoted from, a very interesting passage with regard to the College of St. Côme at Paris, in which this jealousy between physicians and surgeons is very well brought out. I quote it here in order to illustrate once more that opposition of scientists to scientific advance, for personal reasons, which has always existed, is still one of the features of the history of science, and will probably always continue to be a noteworthy phase of scientific progress. It will serve at the same time to furnish to those who cannot think that these stories with regard to the hampering of surgical development are {195} entirely without foundation, some basis for them that will account for their universality, but will only render clearer the intolerance of those who have constantly perverted the meaning of this opposition to persecution on the part of Church authorities. Ecclesiastics not only had nothing to do with this, but more often than not were the active factors in such amelioration of the conditions it brought about as very much to lessen its effects.