He wanted leisure for writing the many things in medicine that he had learned in his travels in the East, so as to pass his precious treasure of knowledge on to succeeding generations; and then, too, he seems to have longed for that peace that would enable him not only to do his writing undisturbed, but to live his life quietly far away from the strife of men and the strenuous existence of a court and of a great school.

There was probably another and more intimate personal reason for his retirement. Abbot Desiderius of the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, not far away, had become a close and valued friend. Before having been made abbot, Desiderius and Constantine probably were fellow professors at Salerno, for we know that Desiderius himself and many of his fellow Benedictines taught in the undergraduate department there. Desiderius enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most learned men of the time when his election to the abbacy at Monte Cassino took him away from Salerno. His departure was a blow to Constantine, who had learned by years of friendship that to be near his intimate friend, the pious scholarly Benedictine, was a solace in life and a never failing incentive to his own intellectual work. Desiderius seems, indeed, to have been a large factor in influencing the great physician to write his books rather than devote himself to oral teaching, since the circulation of his writing would confer so much more of benefit on a greater number of people. Perhaps another element in the situation was that Desiderius was desirous of having the learned physician, the travelled scholar, at

Monte Cassino, for the sake of his influence on the scholarship of the abbey, and for the incentive that he would be to the younger monks to apply themselves to the varied field of knowledge which the Benedictines had chosen for themselves at this time.

Whatever hopes of mutual solace and helpfulness and of the joys of intimate close friendship may have been in the minds of these two most learned men of their time, they were destined to be grievously disappointed. Only a few years after Constantine's entrance into the monastery at Monte Cassino Desiderius was elected Pope. The humble Benedictine did not want to take the exalted position, but it was plainly shown to him that it was his duty, and that he must not shirk it. Accordingly, under the name of Pope Victor III, he became one of the great Popes of the eleventh century. One might think that he could have summoned Constantine to Rome, but perhaps he knew that his friend would prefer the quietude of the cloister, and then, too, probably he wanted to allow him the opportunity to accomplish that writing for which Constantine and himself had planned when the great physician entered the monastery.

All that we know for sure is that some twenty years of Constantine's life were spent as a monk in Monte Cassino, where he devoted his time mainly to the writing of his books. One bond of union there was. Each of the works, as soon as completed, was sent off to the Pope as long as he lived. On the other hand, though busy with his Papal duties, Pope Victor constantly stimulated Constantine, even from distant Rome, to go on with his work. There

were messages of brotherly interest and solicitude just as in the old days. The great African physician's best known work, the so-called "Liber Pantegni," which is really a translation of the " Khitaab el Maleki " of Ali Ben el-Abbas, is dedicated to Desiderius. Constantine wrote a number of other books, most of them original, but it is difficult now to decide just which of those that pass under his name are genuine. Many were subsequently attributed to him that are surely not his.

These translators of the Middle Ages proved to be not only the channels through which information came to their generations, but they were also incentives to study and investigation. It is when men can get a certain amount of information rather easily that they are tempted to seek further in order to solve the problems that present themselves. There are three great translators whose work meant much for the Middle Ages at this time. They were, besides Constantine in the eleventh century, Gerard of Cremona, in the twelfth, and the Jewish Faradj Ben Salim, at Naples, in the thirteenth. Gerard did in Spain for the greater Arabian writers what Constantine had accomplished for those of lesser import. Under the patronage of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, he published translations of Rhazes, Isaac Judæus, Serapion, Abulcasis, and Avicenna. His work was done in Toledo, the city in which, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, so many translators were at work making books for the Western world.

Constantine did much more than merely bring out his translations of Arabian works. He gave a zest to

the study of the old masters, issued editions of certain, at least, of the works of Hippocrates (“ Aphorisms ") and Galen ("Microtechnics "), and, in general, called attention to the precious treasure of medical lore that must be used to advantage if men were to teach the rising generation out of the accumulated knowledge of the past. Pagel, in Puschmann's "Handbook," does not hesitate to say that “a farther merit of Constantine must be recognized, inasmuch as that not long after his career the second epoch of the school of Salerno begins, marked not only by a wealth of writers and writings on medicine, but, above all, because from this time on the study of Greek medicine received renewed encouragement through the Latin versions of the Arabian literature. We may think as we will of the worth of these works, but this much is sure, that in many ways they brought about a broadening and an improvement of Greek knowledge, especially from the pharmacopeia standpoint."

Probably the best evidence that we have for Constantine's influence on his generation is to be found in what was accomplished by men who acknowledged with pride that he was their master, and who thought it a mark of distinction to be reckoned as his disciples.

Among these especially noteworthy is Johannes✓ Afflacius, or Saracenus (whose surname of the Saracen probably means that he, too, came from Africa, as his master did). He was the author of two treatises on "Fevers and Urines," and the socalled Cures of Afflacius." Some of these cures he directly attributed to Constantine. Then there is a

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Bartholomew who wrote a " Practica," or " Manual of the Practice of Medicine," with the sub-title, "Introductions to and Experiments in the Medical Practice of Hippocrates, Constantine, and the Greek Physicians." Bartholomew represents himself as a disciple of Constantine. This "Practica" of Bartholomew was one of the most commonly used books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries throughout Europe. There are manuscript commentaries and translations, and abstracts from it not only in the Latin tongues, but especially in the Teutonic languages. Pagel refers to manuscripts in High and Low Dutch, and even in Danish. The Middle High Dutch manuscripts of this " Practica " of Bartholomew come mainly from the thirteenth century, and have not only a special interest because of their value in the history of philology, but because they are the main sources of all the later books on drugs which appeared in very large num-/ bers in German. They have a very great historicoliterary interest, especially for pharmacology. •

To Afflacius we owe a description of a method of reducing fever that is not only ingenious, but, in the light of our recently introduced bathing methods for fever, is a little startling. In his book on "Fevers and Urines," Afflacius suggests that when the patient's fever makes him very restless, and especially if it is warm weather, a sort of shower bath should be given to him. He thought that rain water was the best for this purpose, and he describes its best application as in rainy fashion, modo pluviali. The water should be allowed to flow down over the patient from a vessel with a number of