Excerpt from A Century of Medicine at Padua There were two particular reasons why Padua flourished as the seat of a university. First, she made her way in the Lombard league and became the head of the towns of the Marches As in Florence so in Padua, there were internecine strug gles between guelf and ghibelline, though the terms did not bear the same or even a continuous mean ing. Chroniclers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were anti-imperial and yearned for a re publican golden age. The House of Este (ancestors of our own royal dynasty), the families of Camposanpiero, of Romano, and of Carrara were destined at different times to rule in Padua, and their feuds and fortunes, and their conflicts with the people, spell out the long story of her struggle for independence. Victory placed her in a pre dominant position among her peers, and her favour able situation in the plains of Lombardy made her not only something of a health resort, to which her healing springs contributed, but a natural emporium for the wool and thread spinning industries. Thus in the thirteenth century she was ready to cultivate the arts of peace, and her Bishop being then in Bologna enticed two of its professors to join Albertus Magnus, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas, at Padua. So began the long line of distinguished teachers who made her fame. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.