1. That it shall be based upon the best attainable authorities.

2. That these authorities shall be accurately represented.

3. That the compendium shall be reasonably comprehensive.

In neither of these respects is the compendium of Gilbert liable, I
think, to adverse criticism.

The book is, undoubtedly, the work of a famous and strictly orthodox
physician, possessed of exceptional education in the science of his
day, a man of wide reading, broadened by extensive travel and endowed
with the knowledge acquired by a long experience, honest, truthful and
simple minded, yet not uncritical in regard to novelties, firm in his
own opinions but not arrogant, sympathetic, possessed of a high sense
of professional honor, a firm believer in authority and therefore
credulous, superstitious after the manner of his age, yet harboring,
too, a germ of that healthy skepticism which Roger Bacon, his great
contemporary, developed and illustrated.

I believe, therefore, that we may justly award to the medical pages of
the Compendium not only the rather negative praise of being written
as well as the work of any of Gilbert's contemporaries, but the more
positive credit of being thoroughly abreast of the medical science of
its age and country, an "Abstract and brief chronicle of the time."

The surgical chapters of the work are unique in a compendium of
medicine, and merit even more favorable criticism.

The discouragement of the practice of medicine and surgery on the