Galen was the last author of distinction that practised physic and surgery at Rome, A.D. 160; he was educated at the Alexandrian school, and would have done deeds of wonder, had dissection been permitted in Rome, but being confined to the anatomy of monkeys, and the other lower animals, he was only able to add to the surgery of his day, a Treatise on Bandages; his works upon Anatomy rank high. He has entered more minutely into the different species of ruptures than his predecessors, but throughout his writings he is a contemptible dictator.
The compilation of Oribasius, who lived about the end .of the fourth century, may be passed over in silence in its relation to surgery, but not so that of ./Etius of Amida, who studied at the Alexandrian school, A.D. 500, in which are many observations on surgical operations, and some on the effects of the Guinea worm.
Paulus iEgineta, who lived in 640, and practised at Alexandria and Rome, wrote an excellent work on Surgery, containing all the improvements of his day; he invented some operations, of which trache otomy was one, and improved others, particularly lithotomy. He also improved the doctrine of, and operation for aneurism, and is the first who treats of fracture of the patella; he was bold and decisive in his practice, opening the temporal or occipital artery, or external jugular vein in affections of the eyes or head, and relieving strangulated hernia by an operation.
Nothing but a chaos presents itself from this pe riod to the beginning of the tenth century. Tor rents of northern barbarians inundated the Roman empire, and swept man and civilization from the fairest provinces of Europe; and, almost in imme diate succession, the hosts of Saracens, under Amrou, viceroy of Egypt, set fire to the noblest monument of antiquity, the Alexandrian library. Thus nearly three centuries were buried in ob livion, with respect to the sciences, literature, and the arts; while war, and all its attendant horrors, raged from the Euxinc to the Atlantic.
The Arabians, at last contented with their con quests, requested, in 820, the Greek Emperor at Constantinople, to give them some of their best li terary and scientific works; among those sent were Galen's, translated into the Syrian language, in which astrology and superstition were mingled with medicine. In the works of Rhazes, Halyabbas, and Avicenna, we have no facts or remarks con cerning surgery, which are not to be found in Galen, excepting those relating to spina ventosa.
Avcnzoar wrote on surgery, but apologizes for condescending to write on a subject so contemptible, for in his days, surgery was practised in Arabia by the servants of the physicians, while all ope rations on the female sex were performed by wo rn en.
Albucasis ranks highest of the Arabian surgeons; he has given a long list of surgical operations, and an equally formidable catalogue of instruments and machines, fit to terrify the operator himself, much more the patient- At this period they plunged amputated stumps into boiling pitch. In an Arabian work, by Abi Osbia, we have a catalogue of 300 medical writers, who have justly merited oblivion, being mutilated translations of the Greeks, adta- terated with the magic and astrological fables of the Arabians.
In consequence of the tyranny and aristocratic despotism which reigned over Europe, the sciences, literature, and the arts remained in obscurity, and even in Greece, theological controversies absorbed all other kinds of literature or science until the middle of the fifteenth century, when they again began slowly to revive. The revival of literature
and science is probably solely to be attributed to the crusades. In England, it was actually near the end of the fifteenth century before medicine was cultivated at Oxford as a regular science, and even at the medical schools on the Continent, the diploma of surgery was conferred after one year's study of anatomy. At the famous school of Salernum, where this law existed, and where there was com piled a system of medicine, entitled " Schola Salernitana," only one chapter is devoted to sur gery, and that on fistulas. The degrees of bachelor and doctor had no doubt been conferred at Paris during the reign of Charlemagne, in 1231, but generally on the clergy and monks, who practised physic at this epoch, and who were, in consequence of the barbarous anathema pronounced by the Council of Tours, in 1163, prohibited from per forming any surgical operations; in consequence of this, surgery was again formally separated from medicine, and practised only by the most illiterate of the laity. The Eedesia /Pillared a Sanguine continued long a satisfactory cloak for preventing the study either of anatomy or the practice of sur gery. Gilbertus Anglicus is the first who wrote on surgery in England, which was about the year 1300; he copied chiefly Rhazes. Ilernardus Gordon, a native of Scotland, and John of Arden, are said to have flourished at this period; the latter wrote a work, entitled the Chirurgery. From the Ilth to the middle of the 15th century, numerous works were published, but all mere compilations, or ex-. tracts From Arabian authors; from this mass we ought to except a treatise on Surgery, written by Guido de Cauliaco, or Guy de Chauliac, professor at Montpelier, who lived at Avignon in 1363, which continued for many years the sole classical work in France. For from this period until the day of the great Pare, surgery was degraded to the lowest possible degree. Pare, in his first editions of his works, styles himself Barbier chirurgien."I'here were then bitter civil wars carried on between the clerical physicians and these unfortunate barber surgeons. Vidus Vidius, however, published a splendid Latin edition or Greek surgery in 1544. The great Par6, enlightened by the labours of \re salius, Fallopius, and Eustachius, gave birth to an able work on surgery, founded on anatomy, in 1585, which had been previously published in separate treatises. Ile has been considered by some the in ventor of the ligature on wounded arteries, but as that merit clearly belonged to Celsus, he must be viewed merely as the reviver of that important surgical means of stopping hemorrhage; for in the dark ages the ligature had fallen into disuse, and the boiling pitch, cautery, escharotics, and astrin gents had succeeded in their place; he is entitled however to the merit of discovering the curved needle. Pare, who was a military surgeon during the reigns of Henry the II., Francis the II., Charles the IX., and Henry the III. of France, is the first surgeon who gives a scientific account of gun-shot wounds, which treatise is truly valuable in con sequence of its simplicity. In 1560 Botallus pub lished a treatise " De Curandis Vulneribus Sclope torum;" and in 1561, Pierre Franco, a celebrated lithotomist, published '' TraitC des belies, de la pierre, de la cataracts et autres maladies des yeux," a work of considerable merit.