Mondeville was himself a broadly educated scholar, who considered that the surgeon should know everything worth while knowing about medicine, for his work was greater than that of the physician. While he had high ideas, however, of the value of theoretic knowledge, he insisted above all on the value of practical training. He said, in his textbook on surgery, as to what the training of the surgeon should be:

“A surgeon who wishes to operate regularly ought first for a long time to frequent places in which skilled surgeons often operate, and he ought to pay careful attention to their operations and commit their technique to memory. Then he ought to associate himself with them in doing operations. A man cannot be a good surgeon unless he knows both the art and science of medicine, and especially anatomy. The characteristics of a good surgeon are that he should be moderately bold, not given to disputations before those who do not know medicine, operate with foresight and wisdom, not beginning dangerous operations until he has provided himself with everything necessary for lessening the danger. He should have well-shaped members, especially hands with long slender fingers, mobile and not tremulous, and with all his members strong and healthy, so that he may perform all the proper operations without disturbance of mind. He must be highly moral, should care for the poor for God’s sake, see that he makes himself well paid by the rich, should comfort his patients by pleasant discourse, and should always accede to their requests if these do not interfere with the cure of the disease.” “It follows from this,” he says, “that the perfect surgeon is more than the perfect physician, and that while he must know medicine he must in addition know his handicraft.”

The other great French surgeon of the fourteenth century was Guy de Chauliac, who well deserves the name of father of modern surgery. He was educated in a little town in the South of France, made his medical studies at Montpellier, and then went on a journey of hundreds of miles to Italy in order to make his postgraduate studies. While it is not generally realized, for some seven centuries before the nineteenth Italy was the home of graduate teaching in all departments. Whenever a man in any country in Europe, from the beginning of the twelfth until the end of the eighteenth century, wanted to secure opportunities for the higher education that were not available in his home country, he went down into Italy. At the beginning of the nineteenth century France usurped Italy’s place for half a century, and Germany pre-empted the position to a great degree during the latter half of the nineteenth. The journey to Italy in the Middle Ages was more difficult, and involved more expense and time, than would even the voyage from America to Europe in our time; yet many a student from France, Germany, and England made it for the sake of the postgraduate opportunities, and it is matter for professional pride that this was particularly true of our medieval colleagues in medicine and surgery.

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SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS OF GUY DE CHAULIAC, NOS. 1, 2, 3, AND 4 (FOURTEENTH CENTURY);
AND SURGICAL APPARATUS OF HANS VON GERSSDORFF, NOS. 5, 6 AND 7 (FIFTEENTH CENTURY)

After plates in Gurlt’s “Geschichte der Chirurgie”

1.Trepan
2.Balista used for extraction of arrows
3.Cauterizing shears with cannula for cauterization of the uvula
4.Bistoury
5.Extension arrangement for reducing upper arm dislocations, called “The Fool”
6.Screwpiece for extending a knee contracture
7.Extension apparatus in the form of armour-arm and armour-leg plates
(“harness instruments”) for contractures of the elbow and knee joints

To know Guy de Chauliac’s works well is to have ready contradictions at hand to practically all of the objections so frequently repeated as to the lack of scholarly work during the Middle Ages. For instance, Guy de Chauliac insisted on the value of experience rather than authority, and of original work rather than mere copying. He criticized in bitter satire John of Gaddesden’s book on medicine, called after the fashion of the time by the poetical title “Rosa Anglica,” of which he said: “Last of all bloomed the scentless Rose of England, which on its being sent to me I hoped to find bearing the odour of sweet originality. But instead of that I encountered only the fictions of Hispanus, of Gilbert, and of Theodoric.” His mode of satirical expression is all the more interesting and significant, because it shows that the men of the time were critically minded enough as regards many of the passages in the writings of their predecessors with which fault has been found in the modern time, though we have usually been inclined to think that medieval readers accepted them quite uncritically. Chauliac’s bitterest reproach for many of his predecessors was that “they follow one another like cranes, whether for love or fear I cannot say.”

Chauliac’s description of the methods of anæsthesia practised by the surgeons of his time, especially in cases of amputation, is particularly interesting to us because the anæsthetic was administered by inhalation. Chauliac says: