Excerpt from Valedictory: Delivered at the Annual Commencement of the Medical Department of Georgetown College The Greek learning and the Christian hospitals which had been established in that city then suddenly disappeared the learned men emigrated into the more westerly kingdoms of Europe, joined the schools which had been connected with the monasteries and abbacies in Italy, France, and Spain; and the schools of Charlemagne, founded at the advice of the Arab, became the future University of France - the ri vals of the schools of the Caliphs, the successful rivals by reason of a purer teaching.
It is remarkable of Saracenic Medicine, as it is called, that there never was infused into it any of the religions of the Crescent. When the Moslem conquered he was generous: he ceased to persecute. The spirit of toleration was of the most liberal character in Moorish Spain, and the medical teachings of the Arabs, after eight centuries of residence, preserved the evil traces of its Asiatic and Alexandrian ori gin. As before stated, the polytheism of Mesopotamia, the pharisaic spiritualism of the Jew, and the indwelling daemon Ology of Africa were combined in the school of Medicine of Spain. From all such ideas as these the followers of Ma bomet turned away with disgust, yet, having nothing better to offer, they permitted the teaching; but when the Greek learning was thrown back on Europe in the fifteenth century, and when printing had been just adopted, the teachers of medicine saw at once the superiority of the Old Hippocratic medicine over Galen and Avicenna, and from that time for ward, even in the schools of Spain, the old school prevailed in doctrine while the Arab method of teaching was incorporated therewith.
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