Lyons in 1492.)—Celsi de medicina liber, etc., 1478.—Guidonis de Cauliaco cyrurgia, 1490. (A French version was printed in Lyons in 1498.)
(In France.) Christophori de Barzizus de febribum cognitione et cura, 1494.—Bernard de Gourdon, traduction de son "Lilium medicinae," 1495.
When Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks
in 1453, many of its Greek inhabitants, and particularly
those belonging to the more highly educated classes, fled
to Western Europe in order to escape from the tyranny
of the invaders. Not a few of these refugees brought with
them to Italy and France copies of the works of the classical
Greek authors, and on this account, as well as because of
their willingness to give instruction in their native tongue,
they met with a cordial welcome wherever they took up
their new abodes. Their arrival in Italy happened at a
most propitious time, for the interest in Greek literature
was at that period just beginning to develop among Italian
scholars. Previously, Greek had been an almost unknown
tongue in Italy. Petrarch, for example, is reported to
have said in 1360 that he did not know of ten educated men
in that country who understood Greek; and there is no
evidence to show that the number of such men increased
between 1360 and the time when the refugees from Constantinople
arrived. Many of the works of greatest importance
to physicians—such, for example, as the writings of
Hippocrates, of Galen, of Rufus of Ephesus, of Oribasius,
of Alexander of Tralles, and of several other classical
medical authors of antiquity—were accessible (in the
original) only to those who were familiar with the Greek
tongue. Consequently the arrival of these refugees from
Constantinople constituted a most important event in the
history of European medicine.
The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 owed its origin in part to the restless spirit of adventure which was abroad in Spain and Italy at that time, and also, in perhaps still larger measure, to the hope of gain which might be expected to follow the discovery of a shorter and more direct route to India. As regards the
