His fate would have been even more tragic than that of the shipwrecked Arnald had he not cheated the purifying fagots of the church by dying opportunely on the eve of his execution for heresy.

But if his spirit had cheated the fanatics, his body could not, and his bones were burned for his heresy.

He had dared to deny the existence of a devil, and had suggested that the case of a patient who lay in a trance for three days might help to explain some miracles, like the raising of Lazarus.
His great work was Conciliator Differentiarum, an attempt to reconcile physicians and philosophers.

But his researches were not confined to medicine, for he seems to have had an inkling of the hitherto unknown fact that air possesses weight, and his calculation of the length of the year at three hundred and sixty-five days, six hours, and four minutes, is exceptionally accurate for the age in which he lived.

He was probably the first of the Western writers to teach that the brain is the source of the nerves, and the heart the source of the vessels.