*maei," and a shorter treatise on prognosis—the "Speculum." None of these, however, possesses any special importance.
John Arderne was born in England 1307 A. D., probably obtained his medical training in Montpellier, accompanied the English Army to France in the character of a "Sergeant-Surgion," and was present at the battle of Crécy (1346 A. D.). During the succeeding twenty-four years he practiced medicine in Wiltshire and Newark, and then settled for the remainder of his life in London. Although his practice included both internal diseases and those which required surgical treatment, the great reputation which he acquired was based chiefly upon his success in the latter field. Most of his writings, it appears, are still in the form of manuscript. They deal chiefly with surgery and are accompanied by drawings of the instruments which he employed. They possess one feature which distinguishes them from the majority of medical writings of the Middle Ages, viz., they abound in reports of cases observed and treated by the author; and, furthermore, the methods of treatment which he recommends are in most instances rational and of a relatively simple nature. The only one of Arderne's treatises which has been printed is that relating to fistula in ano. It bears the title, "John Arderne—Treatises of Fistula in Ano, Haemorrhoids, and Clysters; from an early fifteenth-century manuscript translation," and is edited by D'Arcy Power, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 139; London and Oxford, 1910. Arderne, we are told by Neuburger, puts forward two claims: 1, that he succeeded in curing a large number of cases of anal fistula, in proof of which he gives the names of the persons upon whom he operated successfully, many of whom are high up in the social scale; and, 2, that no other surgeon of whom he has any knowledge, either in England or on the continent of Europe, is able to cure the disease.
The three English physicians of whom I have here given very brief accounts, can scarcely be said to compare favorably with those men who, during the same period, brought fame to the medical schools of Bologna, Padua,
