visit Bologna in the hope of obtaining relief through operative interference. The operation, however, did not prove successful, and death occurred shortly afterward.
Magati effected, in a quiet and unostentatious manner, a number of desirable reforms in surgical procedures. Thus, for example, he pointed out how undesirable it is, in most cases, to change the dressings of a wound so frequently as was, at that period, the common practice. The process of cicatrization, he insisted, is not effected by the efforts of the surgeon, but is fundamentally the work of Nature. Then, in addition, he protested against the practice of introducing wicks and pledgets of lint into wounds. These criticisms and this advice, says von Gurlt, had been given many times before by different ancient authors, but they undoubtedly had to be repeated from time to time.
The treatise in which Magati has written these things bears the following title: "De rara medicatione vulnerum, seu de vulneribus raro tractandis, libri duo," Venice, 1616 and 1676; also Nuremberg, 1733.
Final Extinguishment of the Long-standing Feud between the Surgeons and the Physicians in Paris.—At several points in the course of this sketch of the history of medicine, I have called attention to the fact that, during the centuries preceding those which are reckoned by certain authors as belonging to modern times, surgeons as a class were generally looked upon, especially in the larger cities of France, as decidedly inferior to physicians. The first attempt at something like systematic instruction in surgery was made by the Brotherhood of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian at Paris. This organization, which was founded by Jean Pitard about the middle of the thirteenth century, was composed of a group of barbers who felt a strong desire to secure for themselves a better training than was obtainable by the generality of barbers in those days. The latter were known as "surgeons of the short gown," while the more ambitious men, who belonged to the group mentioned above, were known as "surgeons of the long gown." With the progress of time this smaller group of barbers really succeeded in making better surgeons of themselves, but in
