Hugo de Lucgnes, in fractures of the bone, employed a powder composed of ginger and cannella, which he used in connection with the “Lord’s Prayer,” in the meantime also invoking the aid of the Trinity. He treated hernia by cauterization, and leprosy by inunctions of mercurial ointment.
If therapeutics made only slight progress in the thirteenth century, we cannot say as much for other branches of the medical and natural sciences.
Arnauld de Villeneuve, physician, chemist and astrologer, particularly distinguished himself by discovering sulphuric, nitric and hydrochloric acids, and also made the first essence of turpentine.
Lanfranc attracted large numbers of students to the College of Saint Come, and exhibited his skill as an anatomist and surgeon. In one of his publications he gives a very remarkable description of chancres and other venereal symptoms.
At the Faculty of Montpellier, which was founded in 1220 A.D., we see as the Dean Roger of Parma, and as professor Bernard de Gordon, who left a very accurate account of leprosy and a number of observations on chancres following impure connection; these observations are valuable, inasmuch as they are corroborated by Lanfranc and his contemporary, Guillaume de Saliceto, of Italy, two centuries before the discovery of America.
Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) and Roger Bacon also belonged to the thirteenth century.
Albert de Ballstatt, issue of a noble family of Swabia, monk of the order of St. Dominicus, after studying in the principal schools of Italy and Germany, arrived at Paris in 1222 A.D., and soon had numerous auditors, among whom may be mentioned Saint Augustin, Roger Bacon, Villeneuve, and other distinguished men. His lectures attracted such crowds of students from the University that he was obliged to speak from a public place in the Latin Quarter, which, in commemoration of his success, was called Place Maitre Albert, afterwards corrupted to Place Maubert.
His writings were encyclopedic, their principal merit being commentaries on the works of Aristotle, of whom but little was known at that period; he studied also the Latin translations of the Arabian school, and reviewed Avicenna and Averrhoes, adding to such works some original observations.
Albert the Great, or Albertus Magnus, the name posterity has bestowed on this genius, was also much occupied with alchemy, and passed for a magician. He was considered a sorcerer by many, as he was said to evoke the spirits of the departed, and produced wonderful phenomena.
Albert’s works on natural history, his botany and mineralogy are, in reality, taken from the works of Aristotle, as well as his parva naturalis, which is only a reproduction of the Organon of the Greek philosopher; nevertheless, Albert deserves credit for his good work in relighting the torch of science in the Occident.