Читать книгу Medicine in the Middle Ages. Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. Minor онлайн

8 страница из 45

“Young doctors just come from Salern(o)

Sell blown-up bladders for lantern.”

As we see, from perusing these numerous lampoons, physicians were not held in high esteem, notwithstanding the sacerdotal character in which the profession was invested. Meantime, in the Roman du Noveau Renard, we find a passage[4] that permits the supposition that physicians already possessed a certain amount of medical erudition; that they were acquainted with the works of Galen, and had full knowledge of all writers of the Arabian school, as well as that of the school of Salerno.

“Je faisoie le physicien

Et allegoie Galien,

Et montrois oeuvre ancienne

Et de Rasis et d’Avicenne,

Et a tous les faisoie entendre

In’estoie drois physiciens

Et maistre des practiciens.”

In revenge, the author of the “Romance of Renard” accords but little confidence to medical art, for he adds very maliciously:

“All belief in medicine is folly,

Trust it and you lose your life;

For it is a fact most melancholy—

Where one is cured two perish in the strife.”