Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/330

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for his broad-minded views regarding religious matters, and was both hated and feared by his enemies. According to trustworthy chronicles, Arnold of Villanova died at sea in 1311, within sight of the coast of Genoa, while he was on a voyage (probably from Sicily) to visit the Court of Clement V. In 1316 the Inquisition pronounced most of his philosophical and theological writings heretical, and ordered them to be destroyed.

A complete collection of the medical writings of Arnold of Villanova, so far at least as they were then known to exist, was printed at Lyons, France, in 1586. It is said that many of the treatises which this author wrote have been lost. Of those which have come down to our time there are only three which call for any special comment—Arnold's "Breviarium," a compendium of the practice of medicine; his "Commentary on the Regimen Salernitanum," the sales of which, according to Neuburger, reached an enormous figure; and a work which bears the title "Parabolae medicationis secundum instinctum veritatis aeternae, quae dicuntur a medicis regulae generales curationis morborum." (Basel, 1560.) The latter treatise, which might with propriety be given the simple title of "General Rules regarding the Treatment of Diseases," is dedicated (1300 A. D.) to Philippe le Bel, King of France. It contains a number of chapters on the principles of general pathology, and others on special pathology and therapeutics, with relation both to internal diseases and to those which particularly interest the surgeon. It also furnishes 345 aphorisms, many of which embody truths of the highest importance and reveal the author to have been a man of independent judgment, of wide experience, and of a philosophical type of mind.

In the "Parabolae" and the "Breviarium," says Neuburger, are to be found the most marked evidences of the knowledge and ability which this great physician possessed. He then adds:—


Arnold attached much importance to hygiene and the proper regulation of the diet as effective measures in preventing diseases, and he formulated an admirable set of rules for the ordering of