mathematicians, and confine ourselves to the strictly medical sciences. The followers of the prophet looked upon the dissection of human bodies with still greater horror than did the mediæval Christians, and their religious guides held that even the question as to its legality was itself unlawful. Yet it was an Arabic writer who first pointed out the imperfections of the Galenic anatomy. When the physician Abdallatif was in Egypt, the conversation turned one day upon the superiority of observation to mere reading; and some one remarked that there was a great heap of skeletons and dead bodies at Maks. So Abdallatif went there, and found a hill consisting rather of corpses than of earth, and with more than 20,000 skeletons exposed on the surface. The delighted physician proceeded to examine these, and at once noticed that the lower jaw consists of one bone, and not of two as described by Galen. He tells us that he examined 200 lower jaws in every possible way, and got others to examine them also, both in his presence and absence, and they all came to the same conclusion. Similarly he observed that the sacrum is composed of a single bone, and he expresses his intention, "if Providence permits," of writing a book of revised anatomy comparing Galen with nature.

The Arabs invented the apothecary, whom they called "Sandalani," sandal-wood forming a common ingredient both of internal medicines and outward applications, though the peculiar virtues of the oil do not seem to have been recognised. An ambitious or fortunate apothecary sometimes developed into a physician, as is shown by the following anecdote, which also exemplifies the exaggerated importance which the Arabs, and the mediæval physicians after them, paid to uroscopy. Issa al-Sandalini was standing one day at his shop door in Bagdad, when a harem attendant went by carrying a urine glass to a neighbouring physician. "Whose is that?" asked Issa. "Some old woman's.' "Say rather the mother of a mighty prince," replied the joking apothecary. The Caliph al-Mahdi heard the story, and when his favourite wife presented him with a son,

the fortunate Issa was astonished to receive £150, two robes of honour, and an appointment at the palace. He was equally prosperous under al-Mahdi's son, Harun alRashid. That immortal Caliph, disgusted with the corpulence of his cousin, Issa ben Giafar ben al-Mansur, declared he would give £5000 to any one who would make him thin, and that the patient should pay an equal sum. Issa, the apothecary, got the money, but his mode of treatment has unfortunately not been preserved. Arabic physicians seem to have been specially skilful in the treatment of corpulence. Here is another instance: King Sancho, of Leon, was so fat that he could no longer mount a horse, or even walk without support. Wherefore his subjects ridiculed him, and finally deposed and drove him out of the kingdom in the spring of the year 958. He fled, or rather was carried, to his grandmother, Tota, Queen of Navarre, who swore to restore him at any cost, even that of alliance with the Saracens; so she sent an embassy to the great Caliph of Cordova, Abdurrahman III., requesting an army and a physician. Both were sent, and both were successful. The Saracen armies were accompanied by apothecaries, for we hear that on one occasion the General Afchin (about A.D. 830) wrote an imaginary prescription, and sent it to all the apothecaries in the camp in order to test their honesty. Some declared that they had no such drugs, but others made up the prescription in various ways, and these he dismissed as ignorant pretenders.

Arabia Felix was the land of myrrh and frankincense, and we owe to the Arabs the introduction of several new remedies, of which senna was the chief; but it would be difficult to name half a dozen drugs the use of which certainly originated with them. Some they borrowed from the Hindus, as, for instance, aconite and mercury, which were employed externally in certain skin diseases, and they were indebted to that people in other sciences as well as medicine. We have seen that the chief Hindu medical works were early translated into Arabic, and Hindu physicians were to be found in the ninth century, both at Bag

dad and Gondisapor. Harun al-Rashid's uncle, Ibrahim, was once so ill that the caliph's physician, Gabriel Bachtishua, gave him up, so Giafar, the vizier, recommended the Hindu, Sahleh, son of Bahleh. Sahleh declared confidently that he would cure the patient, and the caliph celebrated this favourable prognosis by a grand banquet. Hardly had he finished when the news came that the prince was dead, and Harun thereupon cursed the grand vizier, the Hindu physician, and Hindus generally, for that he had feasted while his uncle was dying. Then, having drank warm wine, mixed with salt and water, till he got rid of all he had eaten, he went to Ibrahim's house, and sat on the floor mourning. Sahleh, however, declared the prince was still alive, and to prove it ran a pin under his thumb nail, and put something in his nostrils, which made him sneeze. In due time he completely recovered, and Harun confessed that the Hindus were ever better physicians than the Greeks.

The first pharmacopoeia was issued, as we have seen, from the Hospital at Gondisapor, but of more importance are the works on materia medica ascribed to Mesuë the Younger (1015), of whom we know little more than the name. These formed the foundation of the Western pharmacopoeias, were published in more than thirty editions, and were consulted up to the beginning of the last century. In them we find most of the drugs which were either introduced or brought into more general use by the Arabs, such as senna, rhubarb, camphor, cloves, cassia, manna, musk, nutmeg, tamarind, cubebs, orange, lemon, gold, pearls, ambergris, bezoar stone, syrups, juleps, and the products of distillation, such as rose-water and alcohol.

The following is an extract from the Gondisapor pharmacopoeia preserved by the younger Mesuë: "A confection of poppies profitable (with God's help) to one who spits blood in inflammation of the chest, and in pleurisy. Take confection of roses and gum-arabic, of each three drachms; starch, tragacanth, poppies, of each two drachms; liquorice juice,

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two drachms; spodium (impure zinc oxide?) and saffron, each half a drachm. Make up with syrup of poppies, and give in rain water, myrtle syrup, or syrup of poppies."

Besides the above-mentioned services to medicine, the Arabs also carefully described several new diseases, especially small-pox and measles; we shall see that it was probably from them that the first regulations as to medical education were copied, and, above all, that it was their writings which mainly contributed to that brilliant though abortive revival of learning which marks the thirteenth century.

NOTE.

Al-Hakem II. (to take one of many instances) built twenty-seven additional schools at Cordova, and paid the teachers out of his own pocket.

The story of Sancho is from Dozy (Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne, iii. 80). The physician, Chasdai ben Chaprout, was a Jew educated in the Arab schools.

The existence of Mesue the Younger rests mainly on the evidence of Leo Africanus, a most unreliable writer, who says that he was physician to Hakem Bimrillah, and died 1015. If so, he may have lectured at the "House of Wisdom". But as no Arabic authority mentions him, and no Arabic versions of his works are known, some consider that a Latin compiler of the tenth or eleventh century has assumed the name.

XXXIII. THE DARKEST AGE.

MANY people object to the epithet "dark" as applied to the middle ages, and some have even wished themselves back in that romantic epoch of chivalry and troubadours, crusades and cathedral building; but there can be little doubt of the propriety of the term when used to indicate the state of Western Europe from the fifth to the eleventh century. Science and literature, if we may use those words at all, were confined to the clergy, and how little they possessed the following facts will show. A Spanish synod of the

seventh century decreed that no one should receive priest's orders in future unless he could at least read the psalms and the baptismal service. In Italy, about the same time, a patriotic historian can find only three schools, and he doubts whether much more than bad reading was taught at any of them. France was still more unfortunate, for we are told that under Charles Martel what schools remained were presided over by discharged soldiers, who could neither read nor write. England was a brilliant exception. Archbishop Theodore had brought with him from Tarsus a Greek library, and the school of Canterbury produced men who could read Homer, and, what is more to our purpose, could translate Dioscorides. But with this exception Greek was unknown in Western Europe, and Greek was still the key to all higher knowledge, especially in medicine. Latin versions of some Galenic treatises, indeed, existed, but they were so little known that Constantine the African could boast in the eleventh century that he was the first to translate that author. Celsus, whose work might have formed an excellent text-book, was almost entirely forgotten, and though Cassiodorus urged his monks to read the Methodic Compendium of Cælius Aurelianus, the extreme rarity of the manuscripts indicates that his advice was seldom followed.

The Empiric school reigned without a rival, but that great medical sect had sadly degenerated since the days of Heraclides. Two legs of its famous "tripod" had given way altogether, for the later Empirics were incapable of scientific "observation," and would not have understood the meaning of "analogy". "History" still remained, but was chiefly comprised in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, from which such medical writers as Theodore Priscian, Pliny Valerianus, Quintus Serenus, and Sextus Placitus largely borrowed, preferring always the more marvellous statements of that credulous compiler, and adding a few absurd or disgusting prescriptions of their own. The following examples may suffice: " Asses' dung dried and used as a dentifrice," says Priscian, "will immediately cure toothache,