" (The Popes and Science,
p. 172.)
As to medical practice in the thirteenth century, interesting data are
furnished by the Bulletin of Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Journal of
the American Medical Association, January, 1908. The former publication
gives us remarkable instances of surgical operations and of the
treatment of Bright's disease, matters which we might have thought
possible only in the nineteenth century; the latter publishes in full
the law for the regulation of the practice of medicine issued by Emperor
Frederick II in 1240 or 1241. According to that law binding on the two
Sicilies, three years of preparatory university work were required
before the student could begin the study of medicine. Then he had to
devote three years to the study of medicine and finally he had to spend
a year under a physician's direction before a license was issued to him.
In connection with this high standard of a medical education, the law
of Frederick II forbade not only the sale of impure drugs under penalty
of confiscation of goods, but also the preparation of them under penalty
of death--stern legislation, anticipating by nearly seven centuries the
American Pure Drug Law. (The Popes and Science, p. 419.)
Undoubtedly the experimental demonstration and original observation of
Dante's time sprang either from the training or pedagogical methods of
the great universities of that period.
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