He advocated amputation of the breast for the cure of cancer, and described extirpation of the uterus.

Just how successful this last operation may have been as performed by him does not appear; but he would hardly have recommended it if it had not been sometimes, at least, successful.
That he mentions it at all, however, is significant, as this difficult operation is considered one of the great triumphs of modern surgery.
But Paul of Aegina is a striking exception to the rule among Byzantine surgeons, and as he was their greatest, so he was also their last important surgeon.

The energies of all Byzantium were so expended in religious controversies that medicine, like the other sciences, was soon relegated to a place among the other superstitions, and the influence of the Byzantine school was presently replaced by that of the conquering Arabians.
THIRTEENTH-CENTURY MEDICINE The thirteenth century marks the beginning of a gradual change in medicine, and a tendency to leave the time-worn rut of superstitious dogmas that so long retarded the progress of science.

It is thought that the great epidemics which raged during the Middle Ages acted powerfully in diverting the medical thought of the times into new and entirely different channels.

It will be remembered that the teachings of Galen were handed through mediaeval times as the highest and best authority on the subject of all diseases.