The custom of having for medical attendant one of the leading physicians of the day, if not actually the most prominent medical scientist of the time, which had obtained at Rome during the thirteenth century, was maintained at Avignon during the three-quarters of a {210} century in which the Papal See had its seat there. Just who the regular medical attendant of Clement V., the first of the Avignon Popes, was is not very sure. When he became seriously ill toward the end of his life, however, Arnold of Villanova, one of the professors of physic at Paris and probably the most distinguished living physician of the time, was summoned in consultation, and began his journey down to Avignon. This summons attracted widespread attention, which was still further emphasized by the fact that Arnold of Villanova died on the journey. It is not difficult to appreciate even at this distance of time how much weight the summoning of a physician from a long distance to attend His Holiness would have on the minds of the people, and how much it would tend to call their attention to the important medical school from which the great man came. People generally, who heard the facts, would want at least to have in attendance on them, if possible, a physician who had been graduated at the school from which Arnold of Villanova was summoned on his important medical mission. How much this would mean for the encouragement of scientific medicine as it was developing at the University of Paris can scarcely be overestimated. The distinct tendency of the Popes to keep in touch with the best men in medicine and surgery in their time is well illustrated by the case of Guy de Chauliac. This great French surgeon and professor at the University of Montpelier is hailed by the modern medical world as the Father of Modern Surgery. There is no doubt at all of his intensely modern character as a teacher, nor of his enterprise as a progressive surgeon. Few men have done more for advance in medicine, and his name is {211} stamped on a number of original ideas that have never been eclipsed in surgery. After studying anatomy very faithfully, especially by means of dissections, in Italy, where he tells us that his master at Bologna, Bertrucci, made a larger number of dissections scarcely more than thirty years after the supposed Papal decree of prohibition, he returned to Montpelier to become the professor of surgery there, and introduced the Italian methods of investigation into the famous old university.