Ferguson tells(22) that "there is in actual
circulation at the present time a chapbook . . . containing charms,
receipts, sympathetical and magicalcures for man and animals, . . .
which passes under the name of Albertus." But perhaps the greatest claim
of Albertus to immortality is that he was the teacher and inspirer
of Thomas Aquinas, the man who undertook the colossal task of fusing
Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, and with such success
that the "angelic doctor" remains today the supreme human authority of
the Roman Catholic Church.
(22) Bibliotheca Chemica, 1906, Vol. I, p. 15.
A man of much greater interest to us from the medical point of view is
Roger Bacon and for two reasons. More than any other mediaeval mind he
saw the need of the study of nature by a new method. The man who could
write such a sentence as this: "Experimental science has three great
prerogatives over other sciences; it verifies conclusions by direct
experiment; it discovers truth which they never otherwise would reach;
it investigates the course of nature and opens to us a knowledge of the
past and of the future," is mentally of our day and generation. Bacon
was born out of due time, and his contemporaries had little sympathy
with his philosophy, and still less with his mechanical schemes and
inventions.
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