Dante: The Central Man of All the World | Page 9

statement as to the property of gunpowder: "One may cause
to burst from bronze, thunderbolts more formidable than those
produced by nature. A small quantity of prepared matter causes a
terrible explosion accompanied by a brilliant light. One may multiply
this phenomenon so far as to destroy a city or an army." Anticipating
the use of even motor boats and automobiles driven by gasoline, this
thirteenth century scientist wrote: "Art can construct instruments of
navigation such that the largest vessels governed by a single man will
traverse rivers and seas more rapidly than if they were filled with
oarsmen. One may also make carriages which, without the aid of any
animal, will run with remarkable swiftness." This man whose clarity of
vision anticipated those discoveries of the nineteenth century, left three
disciples after him,--John of Paris, William of Mara and Gerard
Hay--who followed their master's methods, especially of testing by
observation and by careful searching of authorities, every proposition
that came up for study.
Perhaps the most striking argument in favor of the experimental
attitude of Dante's century is that afforded by certain facts in the history
of medicine of that epoch. Then surgery began to make vast strides.
Pagel, regarded in our time as the best informed writer on the history of
medicine, has this to say of the surgery in Dante's age. "The stream of
literary works on surgery flows richer during this period. While
surgeons are far from being able to emancipate themselves from the
ruling pathological theories, there is no doubt that in one department,
that of manual technics, free observation came to occupy the first place
in the effort for scientific progress. Investigation is less hampered and
concerns itself with practical things and not with artificial theories.
Experimental observation was in this not repressed by an unfortunate
and iron-bound appeal to reasoning." (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. There were universities at
Oxford, Paris, Cologne, Montpelier, Orleans, Angers. Spain had four
universities; Italy, ten. The number of students in attendance must
amaze us if we think that higher education did not then prevail.
Professor Thomas Davidson in his History of Education, says: "The
number of students reported as having attended some of the universities
in those early days almost passes belief, e.g. Oxford is said to have had
about 30,000 about the year 1300 and half that number as early as 1224.
The numbers attending the University of Paris were still greater. The
numbers become less surprising when we remember with what poor
accommodations--a bare room and an armful of straw--the students of
those days were content and what numbers of them even a single
teacher like Abelard could, long before, draw into lonely retreats."
That in the twelfth and following centuries there was no lack of
enthusiasm for study, notwithstanding the troubled conditions of the
times, is very clear. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, education
rose in many European states to a height which it had not attained since
the days of Seneca and Quintilian.
The curriculum followed by a student in Dante's time embraced the
seven liberal arts of the Trivium and the Quadrivium, namely Grammar,

Dialectic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astrology. The
higher education comprised also Physics, Metaphysics, Logic, Ethics,
and Theology. Of the cultural effect of the old education, Professor
Huxley spoke in the highest praise on the occasion of his inaugural
address as rector of Aberdeen University. "I doubt," he said, "if the
curriculum of any modern university shows so