medicines were derived from the vegetable kingdom, and as they were chiefly those recommended by Galen, they were, and still are, called by his name.  Many important mineral medicines were introduced by the Arabians, particularly mercury, antimony, iron, etc.  There were in addition scores of substances, the parts or products of animals, some harmless, others salutary, others again useless and disgusting.  Minor surgery was in the hands of the barbers, who performed all the minor operations, such as bleeding; the more important operations, few in number, were performed by surgeons.

ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION

At this period astrology, which included astronomy, was everywhere taught.  In the “Gouernaunce of Prynces, or Pryvete of Pryveties,” translated by James Yonge, 1422,(26) there occurs the statement:  “As Galian the lull wies leche Saith and Isoder the Gode clerk, hit witnessith that a man may not perfitely can the sciens and craft of Medissin but yef he be an astronomoure.”

     (26) Early English Text Society, Extra Series, No.  LXXIV, p. 195,
     1898; Secreta Secretorum, Rawl.  Ms. B., 490.

We have seen how the practice of astrology spread from Babylonia and Greece throughout the Roman Empire.  It was carried on into the Middle Ages as an active and aggressive cult, looked upon askance at times by the Church, but countenanced by the courts, encouraged at the universities, and always by the public.  In the curriculum of the mediaeval university, astronomy made up with music, arithmetic and geometry the Quadrivium.  In the early faculties, astronomy and astrology were not separate, and at Bologna, in the early fourteenth century, we meet with a professorship of astrology.(27) One of the duties of this salaried professor, was to supply “judgements” gratis for the benefit of enquiring students, a treacherous and delicate assignment, as that most distinguished occupant of the chair at Bologna, Cecco d’Ascoli, found when he was burned at the stake in 1357, a victim of the Florentine Inquisition.(28)

     (27) Rashdall:  Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. 
     I, p. 240.

     (28) Rashdall, l.c., Vol.  I, p. 244.—­Rashdall also mentions that
     in the sixteenth century at Oxford there is an instance of a
     scholar admitted to practice astrology. l.c., Vol.  II, p. 458.

Roger Bacon himself was a warm believer in judicial astrology and in the influence of the planets, stars and comets on generation, disease and death.