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