About the beginning of the ninth century, when the greater Christian writers were supporting fetich by theology, Almamon, the Moslem, declared, "They are the elect of God, his best and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties." The influence of Avicenna, the translator of the works of Aristotle, extended throughout all Europe during the eleventh century.

The Arabians were indeed much fettered by tradition in medical science, but their translations of Hippocrates and Galen preserved to the world the best thus far developed in medicine, and still better were their contributions to pharmacy: these remain of value to the present hour.( 303) (303) For the great services rendered to the development of medicine by the Jews, see Monteil, Medecine en France, p.

58; also the historians of medicine generally.

For the quotation from Almamon, see Gibbon, vol.
x, p.42.For the services of both Jews and Arabians, see Bedarride, Histoire des Juifs, p.

115; also Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, tome i, p.191.For the Arabians, especially, see Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire, Histoire d'Espagne, Paris, 1844, vol.iii, pp.