In the light of Chauliac's life it is indeed amusing to read the excursions of certain historians into the relationship of the Popes and the Church to science during the Middle Ages. Chauliac is typically representative of medieval science, a man who gave due weight to authority, yet tried everything by his own experience, and who sums up in himself such wonderful advance in surgery that during the last twenty years the students of the history of medicine have been more interested in him than in anyone who comes during the intervening six centuries. Chauliac, however, instead of meeting with any opposition, encountered encouragement, liberal patronage, generous interest, and even enjoyed the intimate friendship of the highest ecclesiastics and the Popes of his time. In every way his life may be taken as a type of what we have come to know about the Middle Ages, when we know them as we should, in the lives of the men who counted for most in them, and do not accept merely the broad generalizations which are always likely to be deceptive and which in the past have led men into the most absurd and ridiculous notions with regard to a wonderful period in human history.
That Guy de Chauliac was no narrow specialist is abundantly evident from his book, for while the "Great Surgery" treats of the science and art of surgery as its principal subject, there are remarks about nearly everything else relating to medicine, and most of them show a deep interest, a thorough familiarity, and an excellent judgment. Besides we have certain expressions with regard to intellectual matters generally which serve to show Guy as a profound thinker, who thoroughly appreciated just how accumulations of knowledge came to men and how far each generation or member of a generation should go and yet how limited must, after all, be the knowledge obtained by any one person. With regard to books, for instance, he said, "for everyone cannot have all the books, and even if he did have them it would be too tiresome to read them all and completely, and it would require a godlike memory to retain them all." He realized, however, that each generation, provided it took the opportunities offered it, was able to see a little bit farther than its predecessor, and the figure that he employs to express this is rather striking. "Sciences," he said, "are made by additions. It is quite impossible that the man who begins a science should finish it. We are like infants, clinging to the neck of a giant; for we can see all the giant sees and a little more."
One of the most interesting features of the history of Guy de Chauliac is the bibliography of his works which has been written by Nicaise. This is admirably complete, labored over with the devotion that characterized Nicaise's attitude of unstinted admiration for the subject. Altogether he has some sixty pages of a quarto volume with regard to the various editions of Guy's works.
The first manuscript edition of Guy de Chauliac was issued in 1363, the first printed edition in 1478. Even in the fourteenth century Guy's great work was translated into all the languages generally used in Europe. Nicaise succeeded in placing 34 complete manuscripts of the "Great Surgery": 22 of these are in Latin, 4 are in French, 3 are in English, 2 only in Provençal, though that was the language spoken in the region where much of Chauliac's life was passed, and one each in Italian, in Low Dutch, and in Hebrew. Of the English manuscripts, one is number twenty-five English of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; a second is number 3666 English of the Sloane collection in the British Museum, and a third is in the Library of the University of Cambridge.[26]
Paulin Paris, probably one of the best of recent authorities on the age and significance of old manuscripts, says in the third volume of his "Manuscrits Français," page 346, "This manuscript [of Guy de Chauliac's "Great Surgery">[ was made, if not during the life, then certainly very shortly after the death of the author. It is one of the oldest that can be cited, and the fact that an English translation was made so near to the time of the original composition of the book attests the great reputation enjoyed by Guy de Chauliac at this time, and which posterity has fully confirmed."
The Sloane copy in the British Museum contains some medical recipes at the end by Francis Verney. It was probably written in the fifteenth century. Its title is:
"The inventorie or the collectorie in cirurgicale parte of medicine compiled and complete in the yere of our Lord 1363, with some additions of other doctours, necessary to the foresaid arte or crapte (crafte?)."[27]
What we find in the period of manuscripts, however, is as nothing compared to the prestige of Guy de Chauliac's work, once the age of printing began. Nicaise was able to find sixty different printed editions of the "Great Surgery." Nine others that are mentioned by authors have disappeared and apparently no copies of them are in existence. Besides there are sixty editions of portions of the work, of compendiums of it and commentaries on it. Altogether 129 editions are extant. Of these there are sixteen Latin editions, forty-three French, five Italian, four Low Dutch, five Catalan, and one English. Fourteen appeared in the fifteenth century, thirty-eight in the sixteenth century, and seventeen in the seventeenth century. The fourteen editions belonging to the incunabula of printing, issued, that is, before the end of the fifteenth century, show what lively interest there was in the French surgeon of the preceding century, since printing presses at this precious time were occupied only with the books that were considered indispensable for scholars. The first edition of the "Great Surgery" was printed in 1478 at Lyons. Printing had only been introduced there five years before. This first edition, primus primarius or editio princeps, was a French translation by Nicholas Panis. In 1480 an Italian edition was printed at Venice. The first Latin edition was printed also in Venice in 1490.
It would be only natural to expect that the successors of Guy de Chauliac, and especially those who had come personally in contact with him, would take advantage of his thorough work to make still further advances in surgery. As matter of fact, decadence in surgery is noted immediately after his death. Three men taught at the University of Montpellier at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century, John de Tornamira, Valesco de Taranta, and John Faucon. They cannot be compared, Gurlt says, with Guy de Chauliac, though they were physicians of reputation in their time. Faucon made a compendium of Guy's work for students. Somehow there seemed to be the impression that surgery had now reached a point of development beyond which it could not advance. Unfortunate political conditions, wars, the withdrawal of the Popes from Avignon to Rome, and other disturbances, distracted men's minds, and surgery deteriorated to a considerable extent, until the new spirit at the time of the Renaissance came to inject fresh life into it.