Some of the doctrines in medicine that William of Salicet stated so clearly, sound surprisingly modern. The connection, for instance, between dropsy and _durities renum_ (hardening of the kidneys) shows how wonderfully observant the old master was. At the present time we know very little more about the dropsical condition associated with chronic Bright's disease than the fact that it constantly occurs where there is a sclerosis or contraction of the kidney. Bright in his study of albuminuria and contracted kidney practically taught us no more than this, except that he added the further symptom of the presence of albumin in the urine. It must have been only as the result of many carefully studied cases, followed by autopsies, that any such doctrine could have come into existence. There is a dropsy that occurs with heart disease; there is also a dropsy in connection with certain affections of the liver, and yet the most frequent cause is just this hardening of the kidneys {85} spoken of by this middle-of-the-Thirteenth Century Italian professor of medicine, who, if we would believe so many of the historians of medicine, was not supposed to occupy himself at all with ante and post-mortem studies of patients, but with the old-time medical authorities. Almost more surprising than the question of dropsy is the investigation as to the causes of the failure of healing by first intention. The modern surgeon is very apt to think that he is the only one who ever occupied himself with the thought, that wounds might be made to heal by first intention and without the occurrence of suppuration or granulation. Certainly no one would suspect any interest in the matter as far back as the Thirteenth Century. William of Salicet, however, and Lanfranc, both of them occupied themselves much with this question and evidently looked at it from a very practical standpoint. Many careful observations must have been made and many sources of observational error eliminated to enable these men to realize the possibilities of primary union, especially, knowing as they did, nothing at all about the external causes of suppuration and considering, as did surgeons for nearly seven centuries afterward, that it was because of something within the patient's tissues that the cases of suppuration had their rise.