Excerpt from The Hahnemannian Monthly, Vol. 31: January to December, 1896

Guy dc Chauliac was the great French surgical author of the fourteenth century, and his teachings, although showing but little originality, were the chief authority for fully two hundred years. His summary of the five methods of wound treatment of his day is striking to say the least: 1. The sect Of Roger, Roland and the Four Masters poulticed them. 2. That of Bruno and Theodoric anointed them with wine. 8. The school of Salicet and Lanfranc dressed them with ointments and plas ters. 4. Military men and Germans treated them with conjur ations, potions, Oil, wool and cabbage leaves. 5. Finally, women and many other fools said: The Lord was pleased to give it me; the Lord will cure me when he sees fit; blessed be the name of the Lord. The old Frenchman was evidently not as gallant as his modern fellow-countrymen.

As surgery moved to France early in the fourteenth century, so again, in the beginning of the fifteenth, we find it returning to Italy. This period is noted for the introduction Of gun powder into warfare (1388) and for the invention of printing Of necessity, they had an influence on wound treat ment and on the dissemination Of surgical literature. The only writer of anv consequence during this century, and that at its close, over one hundred years after Guy dc Chauliac, was John de Vigo (of Rome), whose work ran through many editions and was extensively translated. He first described the new dis ease syphilis, and the new injury gunshot wounds, for which he advised the hot iron and boiling Oil. The art of printing soon gave birth to the composite systems of surgery so popular to-day, the first two being known as the Venetian and the Geneva (or Gesner's) collections, in which the most important works were edited together and illustrated by wood-cuts. Ive can get an idea of the slow spread of knowledge in these days, however, from the fact that the so-called Marian Operation was kept a family secret nearly two hundred years after the publi cation Of the method by two well-known authors; and yet this is not to be wondered at when we think of the status of sur gery and when we read a remark by Michael Angelo Blondus, which shows the narrow university spirit of the time. He says: It is more honorable to err with Galen and Avicenna than to acquire glory with others, and it is better to die by a regular physician than to live by a quack.

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