Caesarius of Heisterbach, calls the university of that city "the headquarters of medical wisdom"; but at the same time he expresses regret that the physicians of that school not only do not believe in miraculous cures, but speak of them ironically. It was one of the characteristics of the institution that the teachers, both the medical and the philosophical, were, at a very early period, allowed great freedom of thought and speech; but, as time went on, this liberty became very much curtailed. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were, it appears, many Jews among the students at Montpellier, not merely in the department of medicine, but also in the other departments of the university.
The medical schools of Salerno and Montpellier seemed, at this early period (thirteenth century), to possess more individuality than did the similar organizations at Bologna, Padua and Paris; for limited periods of time each of them in turn enjoyed a certain amount of fame by reason of the fact that some teacher or writer of special distinction happened then to be officially connected with the school. In other words, it was the fame of the man and not of the school, that induced students to visit Bologna or Padua, or Paris, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. At a somewhat later period (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) all three of these institutions stood out prominently before the world as celebrated medical schools, with distinctive characteristics. To be invited to occupy a chair in one of these institutions conferred honorable distinction upon the incumbent selected, and when I reach that period, farther on in this history, I shall describe each one of the more important schools separately. In dealing with the earlier epoch, however, it seems best to devote our attention more particularly to individual physicians than to the schools with which they may happen to be connected.
Among the physicians belonging to the latter half of the thirteenth and the first quarter of the fourteenth century there is one whose proper place in the history of medicine is by no means easy to determine, and who yet played a part of no small importance. This man was Pietro
