Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/287

This page needs to be proofread.

divided into four parts or books, the topics treated in which comprise most of those usually discussed in works on surgery. Under the heading "Wounds of the Intestine," in Book III., there occurs this most remarkable piece of advice, viz., "to insert into the intestinal canal a small tubular piece of elder and then to stitch the raw edges of the bowel together over it."

Another treatise on surgery, entitled "Chirurgia Jamati," was published at Salerno before the end of the twelfth century. Its authorship is attributed to Jamerius, and in many respects it resembles closely the treatise of Roger.

The "Regimen Sanitatis" was not, it appears, the only treatise on medicine which was published at that period in the form of a poem. Gilles de Corbeil (Petrus Aegidius Corboliensis), who had received his professional training at the school of Salerno and was afterward appointed the personal physician of King Philip Augustus in Paris (1180-1223 A. D.), wrote versified treatises on these two groups of topics—"The pulse, the urine, and the beneficial characteristics of composite remedies," and "The signs and symptoms of the different maladies." Both of these treatises were received everywhere throughout Europe with great favor and they maintained their popularity for a period of over four centuries. A French translation (by C. Vieillard) of the treatise on urology was published in Paris in 1903. An edition of the "De signis et symptomatibus aegritudinum" was printed in Leipzig in 1907. The following five lines are quoted by Neuburger; and they certainly display the remarkable gift possessed by Aegidius for condensing a large amount of information into a very small space:—


DE CONDITIONIBUS URINAE

Quale, quid, aut quid in hoc, quantum, quotiens, ubi, quando,
Aetas, natura, sexus, labor, ira, diaeta,
Cura, fames, motus, lavacrum, cibus, unctio, potus,
Debent artifici certa ratione notari,
Si cupit urinae judex consultus haberi.