CHAPTER I.
MEDICINE OF THE DRUIDS, TEUTONS, ANGLO-SAXONS, AND WELSH.

Origin of the Druid Religion.—Druid Medicine.—Their Magic.—Teutonic Medicine.—Gods of Healing.—Elves.—The Elements.—Anglo-Saxon Leechcraft.—The Leech-book.—Monastic Leechdoms.—Superstitions.—Welsh Medicine.—The Triads.—Welsh Druidism.—The Laws of the Court Physicians.—Welsh Medical Maxims.—Welsh Medical and Surgical Practice and Fees.

Medicine of the Druids.

The learned men of the Celto-Britannic regions were called Druids. They were the judges, legislators, priests, and physicians, and corresponded to the Magi of the ancient Persians and ChaldÆans of Syria. The etymology of the name is uncertain. The old derivation from d??s, an oak, is considered fanciful, and that from the Irish draoi, druidh = a magician, an augur, is by some authorities preferred. It is probable that they derived their knowledge from association with Greek colonists of Marseilles, as such writing as they used was in Greek characters, and they taught the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and a philosophy which Diodorus Siculus says was similar to that of the teaching of Pythagoras. Clement of Alexandria compared their religion to Shamanism. Whatever it was, it did not differ probably very widely from other systems which pretended to put its priests in direct communication with gods and demons. Its priests, says Sprengel, were simply impostors who pretended to exclusive knowledge of medicine and other sciences. Their women practised sorcery and divination, but by their medical skill were able to afford great assistance to the wounded in war. Plants were collected and magical properties ascribed to them. Lying-in women sought the aid of these Druidesses, who seem to have been wise women, somewhat after the character of gypsies. Mela says these women were called SenÆ. They pretended to cure the most incurable diseases and to raise tempests by their incantations.611 The Druids communicated their knowledge to initiates only, and they celebrated their mystic rites under groves of oaks. Whatever grew on that tree was considered a divine gift; their highest veneration was reserved for the mistletoe, which they called All-Heal, and which they considered a panacea for all diseases. Three other plants, called Selago, a kind of club-moss, or perhaps hedge-hyssop, Samulus, the brookweed or winter cress, and Vervain, were held to be sacred plants. The mistletoe must be gathered fasting, the gatherer must not look backward while doing it, and he must take it with his left hand. The branches and herbs were immersed in water, and the infusion then became possessed of the property of preserving the drinkers from disease. When the Selago and Vervain were gathered, a white garment was worn, sacrifices of bread and wine were offered, and the gatherer, having covered his hand with the skirt of his robe, cut up the herbs with a hook made of a metal more precious than iron, placed it in a clean cloth, and preserved it as a charm against misfortunes and accidents.612

Strutt says: “Faint is the light thrown upon the methods pursued by the Druids in preparing their medicines. Some few hints, it is true, we meet with, of their extracting the juice of herbs, their bruising and steeping them in water, infusing them in wine, boiling them and making fumes from them, and the like; it also appears that they were not ignorant of making salves and ointments from vegetables.”613

In Britain the magical juggles, ceremonies, and rites were carried to a greater excess than in any other Celtic nation. They made a great mystery of their learning, their seminaries were held in groves and forests and the caverns of the earth.614 Strutt thinks that their alphabet was derived from the Greek merchants, who came frequently to the island. Pliny says that the ancient Britons were much addicted to the arts of divination.615 Diodorus Siculus describes one of their methods. “They take a man who is to be sacrificed and kill him with one stroke of a sword above the diaphragm; and by observing the posture in which he falls, his different convulsions, and the direction in which the blood flows from his body, they form their predictions, according to certain rules which have been left them by their ancestors.”616

Strutt says:617 “The people were the more particularly inclined to make application to them for relief, because they thought that all internal diseases proceeded from the anger of the gods, and therefore none could be so proper to make intercession for them as the priest of those very deities from whom their afflictions came; for this cause also they offered sacrifices when sick; and if dangerously ill, the better to prevail upon the gods to restore them to health, a man was slain and sacrificed upon their altars.” The custom of human sacrifices doubtless afforded the Druids some knowledge of human anatomy. Their surgery was of a simple but useful character, and had to do principally with setting broken bones, reducing dislocations, and healing wounds; all this, of course, combined with magical ceremonies.618

Pliny refers to the magical practices of the Druids, and states that the Emperor Tiberius put them down, “and all that tribe of wizards and physicians.”619 He adds that they crossed the ocean and “penetrated to the void recesses of Nature,” as he calls Britannia. There, he tells us, they still cultivated the magic art, and that with fascinations and ceremonials so august that Persia might almost seem to have communicated it direct to Britain. “The worship of the stars, lakes, forests, and rivers, the ceremonials used in cutting the plants Samiolus, Selago, and Mistletoe, and the virtues attributed to the adder’s egg,” are thought by Ajasson to indicate the connection between the superstitions of ancient Britain and those of Persia.620

Medicine of the Teutons.

The Goths and other German peoples were from early times brought into relationship with the Romans, and had acquired some of the advantages of their civilization.

Originally their medical notions were not dissimilar to those of other barbaric nations. On the one hand, there was the belief in disease as the manifestation of the anger of supernatural beings who could be propitiated by prayers and magic rites; while on the other, the use of medicinal plants and the ministrations of old women were not less prominent. Tacitus points out the important part played by the women in the life of the Germans, and the good influence they exerted as nurses to the sick.

The Roman general Agricola, who was in Britain from A.D. 78-84, induced the noblemen’s sons to learn the liberal sciences.621 They must have acquired some knowledge of Greek and Roman medicine.

In the earliest ages, says Baas,622 women only seem to have practised medicine among the Germans and Celts. Medicine was deemed a profession unworthy of men, and it is not till the twelfth century that physicians are spoken of. Probably old women or Druidesses in ancient times were the only doctors of these peoples. Puschmann says that the Norwegians had a number of highly paid doctors in the tenth century, and that already a medical tax existed.623

In the time of the Vikings wounds were well attended to, amputations performed, and wooden legs were not uncommon. “Mention,” says Puschmann, “is also made of the operation called gastroraphy” (or sewing up a wound of the belly or some of its contents);624 lithotomy was performed successfully.

Wodan is the all-pervading creative and formative power who gives shape and beauty, wealth, prosperity, and all highest blessings to men.625

Eir was the goddess of physicians; Odin was a doctor; Brunhilda was a doctoress.

The ancient German nations offered to the gods sacrifices of human food, which they believed they enjoyed. These sacrifices were offered as thanksgivings or to appease their anger. When a famine or a pestilence appeared amongst the people, they concluded that the gods were angry, and they proceeded to propitiate them with gifts.626

Animal and especially human sacrifices had the most binding and atoning power.627

The Teutonic elves are good-natured, helpful beings. They fetch goodwives, midwives, to assist she-dwarfs in labour, and have much knowledge of occult healing virtues in plants and stones.628 But elves sometimes do mischief to men. Their touch and their breath may bring sickness or death on man and beast. Lamed cattle are said in Norway to be bewitched by them, and their avenging hand makes men silly or half-witted.629

Teutonic peoples have always had great faith in the normal influence of pure water.

The Germans believed in the magical properties of water hallowed at midnight of the day of baptism. Such water they called heilawÂc. They believed it to have a wonderful power of healing diseases and wounds, and of never spoiling.630 The salt which is added to holy water in the church will account for its keeping properties. But it is in medicinal springs, such as are called Heilbrunn, Heilborn, Heiligenbrunnen, that Teutonic faith has always exhibited the strongest devotion. Sacrifices, says Grimm, were offered at such springs. When the Wetterau people begin a new jug of chalybeate water, they always spill a few drops first on the ground. Grimm thinks this was originally a libation to the fountain sprite.631 The Christians replaced water-sprites by saints.

Fire was regularly worshipped, and there are many superstitions still existing which point to this phase of Teutonic religion. “The Esthonians throw gifts into fire, as well as into water. To pacify the flame they sacrifice a fowl to it.”632 Sulphur has always had an evil reputation. Murrain amongst cattle could only be got rid of by a Needfire. On the day appointed for banishing the pest, there must in no house be any flame left on the hearth, but a new fire must be kindled by friction after the manner of savages.633

Teutonic children born with a caul about their head are believed to be lucky children. The membrane is carefully treasured, and sometimes worn round the babe as an amulet. The Icelanders imagine that the child’s guardian spirit resides in it; midwives are careful not to injure it, but bury it under the threshold. If any one throws it away, he deprives the child of its guardian spirit.634

Anglo-Saxon Medicine.

It is difficult to discover what was the state of learning existing amongst the ancient Saxons before their conversion to Christianity. We know that soon after this event schools were established in Kent, with such good results that Sigebert (A.D. 635) established seminaries on the same plan in his own dominions. After this, as Bede informs us, there flourished a great number of learned men.635

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, came over into Britain A.D. 669, and did much to improve the learning of the country. He was accompanied by many professors of science, one of whom, the monk Adrian, instructed a great number of students in the sciences, especially teaching the art of medicine and establishing rules for preserving the health.636 Aldhelm, who according to Bede was a man of great erudition and was “wonderfully well acquainted with books,” very greatly contributed to the spread of education.

The state of medicine in England in Anglo-Saxon times is said by Strutt637 to have been very degraded. Medicine consisted chiefly of nostrums which had been handed down from one age to another, and their administration was usually accompanied with whimsical rites and ceremonies, to which the success was often in a great measure attributed. The most ignorant persons practised the profession, and particularly old women, who were supposed to be the most expert and were in high repute amongst the Anglo-Saxons. After the establishment of Christianity the clergy succeeded to the business carried on by the ancient dames, and it must be admitted that the superstitious element in their treatment of disease was not less prominent than in that of their venerable predecessors. Bede says638 that Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, taught that “It is very dangerous to let blood on the fourth day of the moon, because both the light of the moon and the tides are upon the increase.” Before any medicine could be administered, fortunate and unfortunate times, the changes of the moon and appearance of the planets, had to be considered.

Many medicinal books were amongst those which Ælfred the Great caused to be translated into the Saxon tongue. Some of them were embellished with illustrations of herbs, etc., so that about the tenth century some knowledge of medicine was diffused, and Strutt thinks there may have been persons whose only profession was medicine and surgery, besides the ecclesiastics who practised these arts, before the close of the Saxon government.639

The Anglo-Saxons, even after their conversion to Christianity, retained much of the superstition of their ancestors; they placed faith in astrology, and had some acquaintance with astronomy, which they obtained from the Romans, from whom they learned most of the arts and sciences. They had a good knowledge of botany, and their MS. were embellished with excellent drawings of the herbs and plants.640

Theodore brought with him a large collection of books, and set up schools in Kent, where many students were instructed in the sciences and the knowledge and application of medicine and the rules for the preservation of the health.641

The Rev. Oswald Cockayne has given us, in his translation of the Saxon Leech Book, a very curious and interesting citation from Helias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who wrote to King Ælfred in answer to his request to be furnished with some good recipes from the Holy Land:

“Patriarch Helias sends these to King Ælfred:642__

“So much as may weigh a penny and a half, rub very small, then add the white of an egg, and give it to the man to sip. It (balsam) is also very good in this wise for cough and for carbuncle, apply this wort, soon shall the man be hole. This is smearing with balsam for all infirmities which are on a man’s body, against fever, and against apparitions, and against all delusions. Similarly also petroleum is good to drink simple for inward tenderness, and to smear on outwardly on a winter’s day, since it hath very much heat; hence one shall drink it in winter; and it is good if for any one his speech faileth, then let him take it, and make the mark of Christ under his tongue, and swallow a little of it. Also if a man become out of his wits, then let him take part of it, and make Christ’s mark on every limb, except the cross upon the forehead, that shall be of balsam, and the other also on the top of the head. Triacle (????a???) is a good drink for all inward tendernesses, and the man, who so behaveth himself as is here said, he may much help himself. On the day on which he will drink Triacle, he shall fast until midday, and not let the wind blow on him that day: then let him go to the bath, let him sit there till he sweat; then let him take a cup, and put a little warm water in it, then let him take a little bit of the triacle, and mingle with the water, and drain through some thin raiment, then drink it, and let him then go to his bed and wrap himself up warm, and so lie till he sweat well; then let him arise and sit up and clothe himself, and then take his meat at noon, and protect himself earnestly against the wind that day; then, I believe to God, that it may help the man much. The white stone is powerful against stitch, and against flying venom, and against all strange calamities; thou shalt shave it into water and drink a good mickle, and shave thereto a portion of the red earth, and the stones are all very good to drink of, against all strange uncouth things. When the fire is struck out of the stone, it is good against lightenings and against thunders, and against delusion of every kind; and if a man in his way is gone astray, let him strike himself a spark before him. He will soon be in the right way. All this Dominus Helias, Patriarch at Jerusalem, ordered one to say to King Ælfred.” Mr. Cockayne tells us in his preface643 that Helias sent Alfred “a recommendation of scammony, which is the juice of a Syrian convolvulus, of gutta ammoniacum,644 of spices, of gum dragon, of aloes, of galbanum, of balsam, of petroleum, of the famous Greek compound preparation called ????a?? and of the magic virtues of alabaster. These drugs are good in themselves, and such as a resident in Syria would naturally recommend to others.” This very singular and instructive fact concerning King Ælfred is one of the most interesting things in Mr. Cockayne’s valuable work.

As to the age of the MS., the translator sets it down about A.D. 900. The sources of the information he ascribes to Oxa, Dun, and Helias; there is a mixture of the Hibernian and Scandinavian elements also. Some of the prescriptions are traceable to Latin writers, and large extracts are made from the Greek physicians. Paulus Ægineta is responsible for the long passage on hiccupings (or Hicket, as the Leech Book calls the malady), as chapter xviii. is almost identical with Paulus Ægin., lib. ii. sect. 57. Mr. Cockayne thinks that the number of passages the Saxon drew from the Greek would make perhaps one-fourth of the first two books. Whether they came direct from the Greek manuscripts or at second hand as quotations, it is not possible to say. Quoting M. Brechillet Jourdain,645 Mr. Cockayne says that it is shown that the wise men of the Middle Ages long before the invention of printing possessed Latin translations of Aristotle; there is every probability, therefore, that they would be familiar with the works of the Greek physicians. Some of them could translate Greek. If an Italian or Frenchman could acquire Greek and turn it into Latin, a Saxon might do as much. Bede and his disciples could certainly have done so. Bede says that Tobias, Bishop of Rochester, was as familiar with the Greek and Latin languages as with his own. “It appears, therefore,” concludes Mr. Cockayne, “that the leeches of the Angles and Saxons had the means, by personal industry or by the aid of others, of arriving at a competent knowledge of the contents of the works of the Greek medical writers. Here, in this volume, the results are visible. They keep, for the most part, to the diagnosis and the theory; they go back in the prescriptions to the easier remedies; for whether in Galen or others, there was a chapter on the e?p???sta, the ‘parabilia,’ the resources of country practitioners, and of course, even now, expensive medicines are not prescribed for poor patients.”646

In the very valuable Saxon Leechdoms647 we have an excellent account of the state of medicine as practised in England before the Norman Conquest. The Leech Book (LÆce Boc)648 is a treatise on medicine which probably belonged to the abbey of Glastonbury. The manuscript, thinks Mr. Cockayne, belonged to one Bald, a monk. The book, says the editor, is learned in a literary sense, but not in a professional, for it does not really advance man’s knowledge of disease or of cures. He may have been a physician, he was certainly a lover of books—“nulla mihi tam cara est optima gaza quam cari libri.” The work seems to imply that there was a school of medicine among the Saxons. In the first book, p. 120, we read that “Oxa taught us this leechdom”; in the second book, p. 293, we are told concerning a leechdom for lung disease that “Dun taught it”; again we find “some teach us.” So far as book learning was concerned, there was certainly a sort of medical teaching. It was perhaps merely taken from the Greek by means of a Latin translation of Trallianus, Paulus of Ægina, and Philagrios. As examples of reasonable treatment take that for hare-lip (or hair-lip as in the text): “Pound mastic very small, add the white of an egg, and mingle as thou dost vermilion, cut with a knife the false edges of the lip, sew fast with silk, then smear without and within with the salve, ere the silk rot. If it draw together, arrange it with the hand, anoint again soon.”649

Against pediculi quicksilver and old butter are to be mingled together in a mortar, and the resulting salve to be applied to the body. This is precisely the mercurial ointment of modern pharmacy used for the same purpose.

Religion, magic, and medicine were oddly mixed up by our Saxon forefathers. Thus the Leech Book tells us650 for the “dry” disease we should “delve about sour ompre (i.e. sorrel dock), sing thrice the Pater noster, jerk it up, then while thou sayest sed libera nos a malo, take five slices of it and seven peppercorns, bray them together, and while thou be working it, sing twelve times the psalm Miserere mei, Deus, and Gloria in excelsis deo, and the Pater noster; then pour the stuff all over with wine, when day and night divide, then drink the dose and wrap thyself up warm.” Here is an exorcism for fever. “A man shall write this upon the sacramental paten, and wash it off into the drink with holy water, and sing over it.... In the beginning, etc. (John i. 1). Then wash the writing with holy water off the dish into the drink, then sing the Credo, and the Paternoster, and this lay, Beati immaculati, the psalm (cxix.), with the twelve prayer psalms, I adjure you, etc. And let each of the two651 then sip thrice of the water so prepared.”652 The demon theory of disease was still in force; even at Glastonbury we find the following exorcism:653 “For a fiend sick man, when a devil possesses the man or controls him from within with disease; a spew drink, lupin, bishopwort, henbane, cropleek; pound these together, add ale for a liquid, let stand for a night, add fifty libcorns (or cathartic grains), and holy water. A drink for a fiend sick man, to be drunk out of church bell.”654

“Githrife, cynoglossum, yarrow, lupin, betony, attorlothe, cassock, flower de luce, fennel, church lichen, lichen, of Christ’s mark or crosse, lovage; work up the drink off clear ale, sing seven masses over the worts, add garlic and holy water, and drip the drink into every drink which he will subsequently drink, and let him sing the psalm, Beati immaculati, and Exurgat, and Salvum me fac, Deus,655 and then let him drink the drink out of a church bell, and let the mass priest after the drink sing this over him: Domine, sancte pater omnipotens.”656 Again, “For the phrenzied; bishopwort, lupin, bonewort, everfern,657 githrife, elecampane; when day and night divide, then sing thou in the church litanies, that is, the names of the hallows or saints, and the Paternoster; with the song go thou, that thou mayest be near the worts and go thrice about them, and when thou takest them go again to church with the same song, and sing twelve masses over them, and over all the drinks which belong to the disease, in honour of the twelve apostles.”658

The Leech Book has “a salve against nocturnal goblin visitors,” a remedy “against a woman’s chatter,” which is to go to bed, having eaten only a root of radish; “that day the chatter cannot harm thee.”659 Red niolin, a plant which grows by running water, if put under the bolster, will prevent the devil from scathing a man within or without. There is “a lithe drink against a devil and dementedness,” and a cure for a man who is “overlooked.”

If the man’s face is turned toward the doctor when he enters the sick room, “then he may live; if his face be turned from thee, have thou nothing to do with him.” “In case a man be lunatic, take of a mere-swine or porpoise, work it into a whip, swinge the man therewith; soon he will be well. Amen.”660

A salve against temptation of the devil contains many herbs, must have nine masses said over it, and must be set under the altar for a while; then it is very good for every temptation of the fiend, and for a man full of elfin tricks, and for typhus fever.661

Cancer is to be cured with goat’s gall and honey. Our forefathers made very light of such trifles as cancer and lunacy, it will be perceived. Joint pains (rheumatism) are cured by singing over them, “Malignus obligavit; angelus curavit; dominus salvavit,” and then spitting on the joints. “It will soon be well with him,” adds the Saxon leech, in his usual cheery manner.662 Pepper is to be chewed for the toothache; “it will soon be well with them.” Horrible applications of pepper, salt, and vinegar were recommended to be applied to sore eyes. If the eyes were swollen, “take a live crab, put his eyes out, and put him alive again into the water, and put the eyes on the neck of the man who hath need; he will soon be well.”

There are light drinks “against the devil and want of memory,” “for a wild heart,” and “pain of the maw.” There is treatment for the bite of “a gangwayweaving spider,” and remedies in case a woman cannot “kindle a child.” Neuralgia and megrims are not the new disorders they are generally supposed to be, as we find remedies “for headache, and for old headache, and for ache of half of the head.”

“Poison” was lightly treated with holy water and herbs. Snake-bite was cured with ear-wax and a collect. For bite of an adder you said one word “Faul”; “it may not hurt him.” “Against bite of snake, if the man procures and eateth rind which cometh out of paradise, no venom will damage him. Then said he that wrote this book that the rind was hard gotten.” If, by chance, one drank a creeping thing in water, he was to cut into a sheep instantly and drink the sheep’s blood hot. Lest a man tire with much travelling over land, he must take mugwort and put it into his shoe, saying, as he pulls up the root, “I will take thee, artemisia, lest I be weary on the way;” and having taken it, he must sign it with the sign of the cross.

“Over the whole face of Europe, while the old Hellenic school survived in Arabia, the next to hand resource became the established remedy, and the searching incision of the practised anatomist was replaced by a droning song.”663

Such medical learning as existed amongst the Angles, Saxons, and Goths was found only in a corrupted state in the monasteries. As we have seen, the herbal remedies were, for the most, useless or worse, and the treatment was so intermingled with magic ceremonies and religious superstitious uses, that Greek science, so far as it related to the healing art, was all but smothered by absurdities.

“The Saxon leeches were unable to use the catheter, the searching knife, and the lithotrite; they knew nothing of the Indian drugs, and were almost wholly thrown back on the lancet wherewith to let blood, and the simples from the field and garden.”664

“For a very old headache” one must “seek in the maw of young swallows for some little stones, and mind that they touch neither earth, nor water, nor other stones; look out three of them, put them on the man; he will soon be well. They are good for head ache and for eye wark, and for the fiend’s temptations, and for the night mare, and for knot, and for fascination, and for evil enchantments by song.”665

As a specimen of a regular Anglo-Saxon prescription, take the following, as given in the MS. Cott.: Vitellius; c. 3:—

For the foot-adle (the gout), “Take the herb datulus, or titulosa, which we call greater crauleac—tuberose isis. Take the heads of it and dry them very much, and take thereof a pennyweight and a half, and the pear tree and Roman bark, and cummin, and a fourth part of laurel-berries, and of the other herbs half a pennyweight of each, and six peppercorns, and grind all to dust, and put two egg-shells full of wine. This is true leechcraft. Give it the man till he be well.”

Venesection was in use, but it must have often done more harm than good, as its use was regulated, not so much by the necessities of the case as by the season and courses of the moon. Bede gives a long list of times when bleeding was forbidden. In the Cottonian library there is a Saxon MS., which tells us that the second, third, fifth, sixth, ninth, eleventh, fifteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth days of the month are bad for bleeding.

Medicine of the Welsh.

The Welsh claim that medicine was practised as one of “the nine rural arts,” by the ancient Cymry, before they became possessed of cities and a sovereignty, that is, before the time of Prydain ab Ædd Mawr, that is to say, about a thousand years before the Christian era.666

As in other nations of antiquity, the practice of medicine was in the hands of the priests, the Gwyddoniaid, or men of knowledge: they were the depositaries of such wisdom as existed in the land, and they practised almost entirely by means of herbs. The science of plants was one of the three sciences, the others being theology and astronomy.667

In the following Triad (one of the poetical histories of the Welsh bards) we learn that,—“The three pillars of knowledge, with which the Gwyddoniaid were acquainted, and which they bore in memory from the beginning: the first was a knowledge of Divine things, and of such matters as appertain to the worship of God and the homage due to goodness; the second, a knowledge of the course of the stars, their names and kinds, and the order of times; the third, a knowledge of the names and use of the herbs of the field, and of their application in practice, in medicine, and in religious worship. These were preserved in the memorials of vocal song, and in the memorials of times, before there were bards of degree and chair.”668

The Welsh do not appear to have had any gods of medicine or to have pretended to derive their knowledge of the healing art from any divinities. In the reign of Prydian the Gwyddoniaid were divided into three orders, Bards, Druids, and Ovates. The Ovates occupied themselves especially with the natural sciences. In the Laws of Dyvnwal Moelmud, “medicine, commerce, and navigation” were termed “the three civil arts.”669

This legislator lived about the year 430 B.C., at which early period it would seem that the art of medicine was encouraged and protected by the State.670

As Hippocrates lived 400 B.C., it has been thought possible that the British Ovates may have learned something of his teaching from the Phoceans, who traded between Marseilles and Britain. Later we have proof that the physicians of Myddvai held the Father of Medicine in great esteem.

It is customary amongst the English to ridicule the pretensions of the Welsh to the high antiquity of their knowledge of the arts and sciences, but classical writers bear witness to the wisdom and learning of the Druids. Strabo speaks of their knowledge of physiology. Cicero was acquainted with one of the Gallic Druids, who was called Divitiacus the Æduan, and claimed to have a thorough knowledge of the laws of nature. Pliny mentions the plants used as medicines by the Druids, such as the mistletoe, called Oll iach, omnia sanantem, or “All heal,” the selago (Lycopodium selago, or Upright Fir Moss), and the Samolus or marshwort (Samolus valerandi, or Water Pimpernel).671

One of the Medical Triads in the Llanover MS. is that by Taliesin; it runs thus:—

“There are three intractable substantial organs: the liver, the kidney, and the heart.

“There are three intractable membranes: the dura mater, the peritoneum, and the urinary bladder.

“There are three tedious complaints: disease of the knee joint, disease of the substance of a rib, and phthysis; for when purulent matter has formed in one of these, it is not known when it will get well.”

Howel Dda (or the good) in the year 930 A.D. compiled the following laws of the Court Physician:—

“Of the mediciner of the household, his office, his privilege, and his duty, this treats.

1. The twelfth is the mediciner of the household.

2. He is to have his land free: his horse in attendance: and his linen clothing from the queen, and his woollen clothing from the king.

3. His seat in the hall within the palace is at the base of the pillar to which the screen is attached, near which the king sits.

4. His lodging is with the chief of the household.

5. His protection is, from the time the king shall command him to visit a wounded or sick person, whether the person be in the palace or out of it, until he quit him, to convey away an offender.

6. He is to administer medicine gratuitously to all within the palace, and to the chief of the household; and he is to have nothing from them except their bloody clothes, unless it be for one of the three dangerous wounds, as mentioned before; these are a stroke on the head unto the brain; a stroke in the body unto the bowels; and the breaking of one of the four limbs; for every one of these three dangerous wounds the mediciner is to have nine score pence and his food, or one pound without his food, and also the bloody clothes.

7. The mediciner is to have, when he shall apply a tent, twenty-four pence.

8. For an application of red ointment, twelve pence.

9. For an application of herbs to a swelling, four legal pence.

10. For letting blood, fourpence.

11. His food daily is worth one penny half-penny.

12. His light every night is worth one legal penny.

13. The worth of a medical man is one penny.

14. The mediciner is to take an indemnification from the kindred of the wounded person, in case he die from the remedy he may use, and if he do not take it, let him answer for the deed.

15. He is to accompany the armies.

16. He is never to leave the palace, but with the king’s permission.

17. His saraad is six kine, and six score of silver, to be augmented.

18. His worth is six score and six kine, to be augmented.”

Elsewhere we meet with the following particulars:—

“Of the three conspicuous scars this is:

“There are three conspicuous scars: one upon the face; another upon the foot; and another upon the hand; thirty pence upon the foot; three-score pence upon the hand; six-score pence on the face. Every unexposed scar, fourpence. The cranium, fourpence.”672

“For every broken bone, twenty pence; unless there be a dispute as to its diminutiveness; and if there be a dispute as to the size, let the mediciner take a brass basin, and let him place his elbow upon the ground, and his hand over the basin, and if its sound be heard, let four legal pence be paid; and if it be not heard, nothing is due.”673

This singular test is explained in another passage, thus:—

“Four curt pennies are to be paid to a person for every bone taken from the upper part of the cranium, which shall sound on falling into a copper basin.”674

A very curious regulation was that if the physician got drunk and anybody insulted him, he could claim no recompense, because “he knew not at what time the king might want his assistance.”

The physicians of Myddvai flourished in the time of Rhys Gryg in the early part of the thirteenth century. His domestic physician was Rhiwallon, who was assisted by his three sons Cadwgan, Gruffydd, and Einion. They lived at Myddvai, in the present county of Caermarthen. By command of the prince, these physicians made a collection of the most valuable prescriptions for the treatment of the various diseases of the human body. This collection was not reduced to writing previously, though many of the recipes were no doubt in use some centuries before. The original manuscript is in the British Museum, and there is a copy in Jesus College, Oxford, in the Red Book, which has been published with an English translation by the Welsh MSS. Society.675 The descendants of this family of physicians continued to practise medicine without intermission until the middle of the last century. This most interesting volume also contains a second portion, which purports to be a compilation by Howel the physician, son of Rhys, son of Llewelyn, son of Philip the physician, a lineal descendant of Einion the son of Rhiwallon. Some medical prescriptions assumed the form of proverbs such as the following:—

Medical Maxims.

(From the Book of Iago ab Dewi.)

“He who goes to sleep supperless will have no need of Rhiwallon of Myddvai.

A supper of apples—breakfast of nuts.

A cold mouth and warm feet will live long.

To the fish market in the morning, to the butcher’s shop in the afternoon.

Cold water and warm bread will make an unhealthy stomach.

The three qualities of water: it will produce no sickness, no debt, and no widowhood.

To eat eggs without salt will bring on sickness.

It is no insult to deprive an old man of his supper.

An eel in a pie, lampreys in salt.

An ague or fever at the fall of the leaf is always of long continuance, or else is fatal.

A kid a month old—a lamb three months.

Dry feet, moist tongue.

A salmon and a sermon in Lent.

Supper will kill more than were ever cured by the physicians of Myddvai.

A light dinner, a less supper, sound sleep, long life.

Do not wish for milk after fish.

To sleep much is the health of youth, the sickness of old age.

Long health in youth will shorten life.

It is more wholesome to smell warm bread than to eat it.

A short sickness for the body, and short frost for the earth, will heal; either of them long will destroy.

Whilst the urine is clear, let the physician beg.

Better is appetite than gluttony.

Enough of bread, little of drink.

The bread of yesterday, the meat of to-day, and the wine of last year will produce health.

Quench thy thirst where the washerwoman goes for water.

Three men that are long-lived: the ploughman of dry land, a mountain dairyman, and a fisherman of the sea.

The three feasts of health: milk, bread, and salt.

The three medicines of the physicians of Myddvai: water, honey, and labour.

Moderate exercise is health.

Three moderations will produce long life; in food, labour, and meditation.

Whoso breaks not his fast in May, let him consider himself with the dead.

He who sees fennel and gathers it not, is not a man, but a devil.

If thou desirest to die, eat cabbage in August.

Whatever quantity thou eatest, drink thrice.

God will send food to washed hands.

Drink water like an ox, and wine like a king.

One egg is economy, two is gentility, three is greediness, and the fourth is wastefulness.

If persons knew how good a hen is in January, none would be left on the roost.

The cheese of sheep, the milk of goats, and the butter of cows are the best.

The three victuals of health: honey, butter, and milk.

The three victuals of sickness: flesh meat, ale, and vinegar.

Take not thy coat off before Ascension day.

If thou wilt become unwell, wash thy head and go to sleep.

In pottage without herbs there is neither goodness nor nourishment.

If thou wilt die, eat roast mutton and sleep soon after it.

If thou wilt eat a bad thing, eat roast hare.

Mustard after food.

He who cleans his teeth with the point of his knife may soon clean them with the haft.

A dry cough is the trumpet of death.”

One of the laws of Howel Dda permitted divorce for so trifling a cause as an unsavoury or disagreeable breath.676

Poppies bruised in wine were used to induce sleep. For agues the treatment was to write in three apples on three separate days an invocation to the Trinity; “on the third day he will recover.” Saffron was used for many complaints; it is a drug still largely used by the poor, who have unbounded faith in it, but it is almost inert. If a person lost his reason, he was ordered to take primrose juice, “and he will indeed recover.” There were regular tables of lucky and unlucky days for bleeding. Fennel juice was supposed to act as a sort of anti-fat, and the roots of thistles were given as a purgative. If a snake should crawl into a man’s mouth, the patient was to take camomile powder in wine. An irritable man was to drink celery juice; “it will produce joy.” As we might have expected, the leek was supposed to have many virtues; wives who desired children were told to eat leeks. Leek juice and woman’s milk was good for whooping cough. The juice was also used for deafness, heart-burn, headache, and boils. Mustard purifies the brain, is an antidote to the bite of an adder, is good for colic, loss of hair, palsy, and many other things. To ascertain the fate of a sick person, bruise violets and apply them to the eyebrows; “if he sleep, he will live, but if not he will die.”

Radishes were supposed to prevent hydrophobia. “That is the greatest remedy, to remove a bone from the brain (to trephine) with safety.” Dittany was the antidote for pain. Mouse-dung was used as a remedy for spitting of blood, and a plaster of cow-dung for gout. An eye-water was made from rotten apples. The berries of mistletoe were made into a confection as a remedy for epilepsy. “Let the sick person eat a good mouthful (they gave large doses in those days) thereof, fasting morning, noon, and night. It is proven.” Sage was supposed to strengthen the nerves (nerves in those days!). Nettles, goose-grass, blessed-thistle, and rosemary were favourite remedies. Then we have numerous curious charms and “medical feats discovered through the grace of God.” Here is one: “Take a frog alive from the water, extract his tongue (frogs have long been subject to vivisection), and put him again in the water. Lay this same tongue upon the heart of sleeping man, and he will confess his deeds in his sleep.” A charm for the toothache runs thus: “Saint Mary sat on a stone, the stone being near her hermitage, when the Holy Ghost came to her, she being sad. Why art thou sad, mother of my Lord, and what pain tormenteth thee? My teeth are painful, a worm called megrim has penetrated them, and I have masticated and swallowed it. I adjure thee, daffin O negrbina, by the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and God, the munificent physician, that thou dost not permit any disease, dolour, or molestation to affect this servant of God here present, either in tooth, eye, head, or in the whole of her teeth together. So be it. Amen.”

All the herbs and plants (so far as was possible) which were used in the doctor’s practice were directed to be grown by him in his garden and orchard, so that they might be at hand when required.

In the table of weights and measures used by the ancient Welsh physicians, we learn that twenty grains of wheat make one scruple, four podfuls make one spoonful, four spoonfuls make one eggshellful, four eggshellfuls make one cupful. The physician also for his guidance had the following curious table:—Four grains of wheat = one pea, four peas = one acorn, four acorns = one pigeon’s egg, four pigeon’s eggs = one hen’s egg, four hen’s eggs = one goose’s egg, four goose’s eggs = one swan’s egg.

“For treating a stroke on the head unto the brain, a stroke in the body unto the bowels, and the breaking of one of the four limbs, the wounded person was to receive three pounds from the one who wounded him; and that person had also to pay for the medical treatment of the sufferer a pound without food, or nine-score pence with his food, and the bloody clothes.”677

The physicians of Myddvai recognised five kinds of fevers; viz., latent, intermittent, ephemeral, inflammatory, and typhus. The doctor’s “three master difficulties” were a wounded lung, a wounded mammary gland, and a wounded knee joint. “There are three bones which will never unite when broken—a tooth, the knee pan, and the os frontis.”

CHAPTER II.
MOHAMMEDAN MEDICINE.

Sources of Arabian Learning.—Influence of Greek and Hindu Literature.—The Nestorians.—Baghdad and its Colleges.—The Moors in Spain.—The Mosque Schools.—Arabian Inventions and Services to Literature.—The great Arab Physicians.—Serapion, Rhazes, Ali Abbas, Avicenna, Albucasis, and Averroes.

At the time of the incursions of the barbarians of the North, when Spain, the South of France, Italy, and North Africa, with their adjacent islands, were ravaged by these hordes, multitudes of those who could escape so far found a refuge in the East; and there is good reason for supposing that by such means a vast store of the accumulated knowledge of civilized Europe found its way to Eastern lands. Science in its turn has come back to us through the Saracens, who afterwards invaded Southern Europe.678

It is not correct to speak of the Arabians or the Saracens as the source of the culture which is known as Arabian and Saracenic. The magnificent civilization of the Greek world fell to pieces like a noble but ruined temple, and its precious relics went to form a score of other civilizations which ultimately arose from its ruins. It was not the Semitic peoples of Arabia which restored the philosophy and science of the decayed GrÆco-Roman world, it was the Persians, the Greeks of Asia Minor, the people of Alexandria, and the cultured Eastern nations, generally, which having been subdued by the Arabs, at once began to impart to their conquerors the culture which they lacked. The ignorant followers of the Prophet who burned the Alexandrian Library knew not what they did; the time was to come when Greek culture was to reach them partly from the city whose literary treasures they had destroyed, and partly through Syrian and Persian influences. By these roads came the medical sciences to the Saracens. The second library of Alexandria, consisting of 700,000 volumes, was destroyed by them, A.D. 642; but we must conclude that many medical and other scientific works were preserved, as the Jews and the Nestorians (banished from Constantinople to Asia) first made the Arabians acquainted with Greek authors by translating them into Syriac, whence they were in turn translated into Arabic. Justinian I. (A.D. 529) banished the Platonists of Athens, when ChosrÖes I., surnamed Nushirwan, or “the generous mind,” one of the greatest monarchs of Persia, hospitably received them at his court. He caused the best Greek, Latin, and Indian works to be translated into Persian, and valued GrÆco-Roman medical science so highly that he offered a suspension of hostilities for the single physician Tribunus.

The East in a great measure owed its acquaintance with the rich treasures of Greek literature to the heresy of Nestorius. Nestorius was a Syrian by birth, and became bishop of Constantinople. Having denied that the Virgin Mary ought to be called “Mother of God,” he was summoned to appear before the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), and was deposed. Nestorian communities were formed, and the heretical opinions rapidly spread, patronized as they were for political purposes by the Persian kings. The Mahometan conquests in the seventh century, by overthrowing the supremacy of orthodoxy, afforded great encouragement to the Nestorians, as by denying that Mary was the mother of God, as the Catholics maintained, the Nestorians in calling her the mother of Christ more nearly approached the Mahometan conception of a pure monotheism. Barsumas, or Barsaumas, bishop of Nisibis (435-485 A.D.), was one of the most eminent leaders of the new heresy. He succeeded in gaining many adherents in Persia. Maanes, bishop of Ardaschiv, was his principal coadjutor; he was the means of propagating the Nestorian doctrines in Egypt, Syria, Arabia, India, Tartary, and even China.

The Caliphs.

In the time of Mohammed himself (569-609), the Arabians had physicians who had been educated in the Greek schools of medicine living amongst them. Pococke mentions a Greek physician named Theodunus, who was in the service of HajÁj Ibn YÚsuf in the seventh century. He wrote a sort of medical compendium for the use of his son. HajÁj seems also to have employed another Greek doctor named Theodocus, who had numerous pupils.679

The House of Ommiyah encouraged the cultivation of the sciences. The Caliph Moawiyah, who resided at Damascus, founded schools, libraries, and observatories there, and invited the learned of all nations, especially Greeks, to settle there, and teach his people their arts and sciences.680

In the seventh century, Alexandria under the rule of Islam was in possession of many medical schools in which the principles of Galen were taught.681

Alkinani, an Arabian Christian, who afterwards was converted to Islamism, was chiefly instrumental in introducing medical teaching into Antioch and Harran from Alexandria.682

The Caliph Almansor had studied astronomy. Almamon, the seventh of the Abbassides, collected from Armenia, Syria, and Egypt all the volumes of Grecian science he could obtain; they were translated into Arabic, and his subjects were earnestly exhorted to study them. “He was not ignorant,” says Abulpharagius, “that they are the elect of God, His best and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties.” Succeeding princes of the line of Abbas, and their rivals the Fatimites of Africa and the Ommiades of Spain, says Gibbon, were the patrons of the learned, “and their emulation diffused the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand and Bochara to Fez and Cordova.”683

It was Almamon who caused the works of the fathers of Indian medical science to be translated first into Persian and then into Arabic; thus it was that the Saracens became familiar with the medical wisdom of Susruta and Charaka in the eighth century of our era.684

Charaka is frequently mentioned in the Latin translations of Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Rhazes (Al Rasi), and Serapion (Ibn Serabi).685

Chaldee works at this time were also translated into Persian. In the first centuries of the Hijra the Caliphs of Baghdad caused a considerable number of works upon Hindu medicine to be translated into Persian.686 At the time of Mohammed there existed a famous school of medicine at Senaa in Southern Arabia, the principal of which, Harit Ben Kaldah, had learned his profession in India.687

When the son of Mesuach, a young Nestorian Christian, first entered Baghdad, it is said688 that he appeared to have discovered a new world. He applied himself to the study of medicine, philosophy, and astronomy. He became a “treasure of learning,” and was chosen to attend Prince Almamon, the son of Haroun-al-Raschid, who, when he became Caliph in 813, invited learned men of all religions and of all nations to his court, collected from them the names of all the great authors and the titles of their books which had been published in Greek, Syriac, and Persian, and then sent to all parts of the world to purchase them.

The Arabs studied Aristotle; and when Western Europe had long been sunk in intellectual darkness and had forgotten him, the Saracens taught him to the Christians of the West. “He was read at Samarcand and at Lisbon,” says Freeman, “when no one knew his name at Oxford or Edinburgh.”689 In his own tongue at Constantinople and Thessalonica he had never been forgotten. Such learning and science as the Saracens did not receive from India, such as the Arabic numerals, came to them from the West. They developed and improved much, but they probably invented nothing. Freeman says690 that after careful investigation he observed three things: first, that whatever the Arabs learned was from translations of Greek works; secondly, that they made use of only an infinitesimal portion of Greek literature; thirdly, that many of their most famous literary men were not Mahometans at all, but Jews or Christians.691 Greek poetry, history, and philosophy had little charm for them. Gibbon says there is no record of an Arabian translation of any Greek poet, orator, or historian.692

Learned Nestorians, Jacobites, and Jews in Persia and Syria occupied themselves with translations from Greek authors, and contributed greatly to the extension of Western culture in Eastern lands.693 To the world at large Mahomet was but an impostor; to the Arab of the seventh century he was a true prophet and the greatest of benefactors.

When the Persian king reproached the Arabs with their poverty and their savage condition, the reply of the Saracen envoy contains a grand summary of the immediate results of Mahomet’s teaching.694

“Whatever thou hast said,” replied Sheikh Maghareh, “respecting the former condition of the Arabs is true. Their food was green lizards; they buried their infant daughters alive; nay, some of them feasted on dead carcases and drank blood; while others slew their relations, and thought themselves great and valiant, when by such an act they became possessed of more property; they were clothed with hair garments; knew not good from evil; and made no distinction between that which is lawful and that which is unlawful. Such was our state. But God, in His mercy, has sent us by a holy prophet a sacred volume, which teaches us the true faith.”695

George Backtischwah, or Bocht Jesu, was a Greek physician, a descendant of the persecuted Christians of the Greek empire, who embracing the heresy of Nestorius had been compelled to fly for safety and peace to the Persians. Al-Manzor (754-775) invited Backtischwah to his court, and this physician was the first to present to the Arabians translations of the medical works of the Greeks. The Nestorians had founded a school of medicine in the province of Gondisapor, which was already famous in the seventh century. From this school issued a crowd of learned Nestorians and Jews, famous for their knowledge of medicine and surgery, but still more for their ability to endow the East with all the treasures of Greek literature.696

Baghdad.

The city of Baghdad was built by the Caliph Almansor, in A.D. 763, on the ruins of a very ancient city; it soon became the most splendid city in the East. Almansor had personally cultivated science, and was a lover of letters and of learned men. He offered rewards for translations of Greek authors on philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine.

A college was established by the Caliph which ultimately became famous. Public hospitals and a medical school were also established by the same enlightened ruler. Meryon says697 that there is reason to suppose that in the laboratories established at Baghdad for the preparation of medicines the science of chemistry may have first originated.698

The son of Mesuach presided over the translations of the works of Galen and all the treatises of Aristotle into Arabic; but when they had extracted the science from Greek literature, they consigned all the rest of it to the flames, as dangerous to the Moslem faith.699

Many Christian physicians were employed at Baghdad.

The vizier of a Sultan gave two hundred thousand pieces of gold to found a college at Baghdad, which he endowed with an annual revenue of fifteen thousand dinars.700 Under the reign of Haroun-al-Raschid and his successors this school flourished vigorously, and many translations of Greek medical works were made therein.

The Arabians have greatly distinguished themselves in the science of medicine. In the city of Baghdad eight hundred and sixty physicians, says Gibbon, were licensed to practise. The names of Mesua and Geber, of Rhazis and Avicenna are not less famous than are those of the greatest names amongst the Greeks themselves. The independent medical literature of the Saracens arose in the ninth century, and gradually developed till it reached the zenith of its glory in the eleventh. The mosques were then the universities, and besides that of Baghdad, Bassora, Cufa, Samarcand, Ispahan, Damascus, Bokhara, Firuzabad, and Khurdistan, not omitting the schools of the Fatimites in Alexandria, were centres of Eastern science and art, and the equally famous universities of Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Almeria, Murcia, Granada, and Valencia, sustained in Europe the dignity of the Arabian learning. When the conquest of Africa was complete, Spain was invaded, and about the year 713 was reduced to a Moslem province. Cordova became not less distinguished for learning than Baghdad, and many writers were given to the world from the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia. Gibbon says that above seventy public libraries were opened in the cities of Andalusia.

In the words of Professor Nicholl, “The Semitic race is essentially unscientific, and adverse to the presentation of philosophical or moral truth in a scientific form. The Indo-European genius, on the contrary, tends irresistibly towards intellectual system, or science.” This will at once be perceived when we examine the Vedas, the works of any Greek author, or those of Teutonic speculative writers, and then turn to any Semitic books. We instantly perceive that in the latter we have nothing but belief or intuition, with more or less of the doctrine of Revelation or Inspiration. In the works of Aryan origin, on the contrary, we are at the opposite pole; we have speculation, inquiry, an insatiable desire to solve the mystery of things—the analytical spirit which asks a reason for every phenomenon in the universe. In the Semitic races this resolves itself into either a living faith and a pure life corresponding thereto, or into a reckless fanaticism founded on fatalism. In the Aryan races we have the most daring intellectual activity, or the driest dogmatism.701

It was in Spain that the Semitic and Aryan intellects met and happily blended. Spain remembered the advantages of Roman influences long after they were withdrawn. The Goths, who spread themselves over the Peninsula, preserved the remains of the civilization which the Romans had left; and the Jews, afterwards to be treated with such cruel and base ingratitude by the nation which they had so greatly benefited, advanced the cause of education by their numerous schools and learned writers.702

On this stage, then, we find the Semitic and the Indo-Germanic races transferring to each other the characteristics with which they were most happily endowed by nature.

The mosque schools of the Arabians were conducted on the model of the Alexandrian schools. The old Egyptian and Jewish colleges were to some extent the prototypes of these, and some writers think that our own universities were suggested by those of the Saracens. How great and famous some of these must have been, may be learned from the fact that, as we have stated, no less than six thousand professors and students were collected together at Baghdad at one time. There were lecture rooms, laboratories, hospitals, and residences for teachers and students, besides the great halls which must have been required for the vast libraries which the Caliphs collected. It was in Spain perhaps that Saracenic learning shone most brilliantly. In the early part of the eighth century was founded the noble university of Cordova, the city which, under Arabian rule, was called the “Centre of Religion, the Mother of Philosophers, the Light of Andalusia.” It contained 300 mosques, 200,000 houses, and 1,000,000 inhabitants, besides forty hospitals.703

Abou-Ryan-el-Byrouny (died 941) travelled forty years studying mineralogy, and his treatise on precious stones, says Sismondi,704 is a rich collection of facts. Aben-al-BeÏthar of Malaga travelled over all the mountains and plains of Europe in search of plants, and rendered most important services to botany. He wandered over the sands of Africa and the remotest countries of Asia, examining and collecting animals, fossils, and vegetables, and published his observations in three volumes, which contained more science than any naturalist had previously recorded.705

In one sense the Arabians were the inventors of chemistry, and never was the science applied to the arts of life more beneficially than by the Saracens in Spain.

Mahomet was skilled in the knowledge of medicine, and certain of his aphorisms are extant concerning the healing art. Gibbon says706 that the temperance and exercise his followers preached, deprived the doctors of the greater part of their practice. The only medicine recommended by the Koran is honey (see Surah xvi. 71). “From its (the bee’s) belly cometh forth a fluid of varying hues, which yieldeth medicine to man.” There is evidence of a belief in magic in the Koran as a charm against evil, and of incantations capable of producing ill consequences to those against whom they were directed. The 113th chapter of the Koran was written when Mohammed believed that, by the witchcraft of wicked persons, he had been afflicted with rheumatism. Mohammedan peoples use as amulets to avert evil from themselves or possessions, a small Koran encased in silk or leather, or some of the names of God, or of the prophets or saints, or the Mohammedan creed engraven on stone or silver.

Da’wah, or the system of incantation used by Mohammedans, is employed to cause the cure, or the sickness and death of a person. The Mohammedans have an elaborate system of exorcism, which is fully explained by Mr. Thomas Patrick Hughes.707

Uroscopy, or the art of judging diseases by inspection of the urine, was a great feature of Arabian as of Greek medical practice. It was, however, with the former usually conducted with jugglery and charlatanism, and there was seldom anything scientific about it.

As the religion of the Moslems forbade dissection, the sciences of anatomy and physiology and the art of surgery remained as they were borrowed from the Greek writers.

The Arabian faculty always stipulated for their fees beforehand; they disapproved of gratuitous treatment, because, as they declared, “no one gets even thanks for it!”

There must have been female doctors, who, in the East, had abundant opportunities for practice, as men were not permitted by the customs of the times to examine women. These female obstetricians performed the gravest operations, such as embryotomy and lithotomy.708

Hospitals were established at Damascus for lepers, the poor, the blind, and the sick, under the rule of the Caliph Walid.

Paper is an Arabic invention. True, it has been made from silk from the remotest ages in China, but by the Arabs it was first made at Samarcand, A.D. 649; and cotton paper, such as we use now, was made at Mecca, A.D. 706. The art was soon afterwards introduced by the Arabs into Spain, where it was brought to the highest perfection.709 Gunpowder was known to the Arabs a hundred years before Europeans mention it.710 The compass was used by them nearly two centuries before the Italians and French used it. The number of Arabic inventions which we unsuspectingly enjoy, without being aware of their origin, is prodigious. Could we bring to light the literary treasures of the Escurial, we should know something of the industrious host of Arabians who have done so much for the learning of the Western world, and whose names and deeds have received from us no recognition. Their historical, geographical, and scientific dictionaries and histories would alone entitle them to the gratitude of an age which would know how to appreciate them.

Sismondi says that “Medicine and philosophy had even a greater number of historians than the other sciences; and all these different works were embodied in the historical dictionary of sciences compiled by Mohammed-Aba-Abdallah, of Granada.”

The Great Arabian Physicians.

Honain, a Christian physician, flourished at Baghdad in the middle of the ninth century. He travelled in Greece that he might perfect himself in the language, and he read the works of all the great writers of that country. On his return to Baghdad he was invited by the Caliph to undertake the translation of the Greek authors. His best known translation is The Aphorisms of Hippocrates with the Commentaries of Galen. He wrote on midwifery, and was a good oculist.

Serapion the Elder (of Damascus), who flourished in the ninth century, was a Syrian physician, of whom little or nothing is known except that he wrote two works, one of which is in the Bodleian in MS., entitled Aphorismi magni momenti de Medicina Practica. The other is entitled KunnÁsh, and has been translated into Latin.

The classical period of Arabian medicine begins with—

Rhazes, “the Arabic Galen,” whose real name was AbÚ Becr Mohammed Ibn ZacarÍyÁ Ar-Razi, was born at Rai, near ChorÁsÁn, probably about the middle of the ninth century after Christ. His famous work, On the Small Pox and Measles, was translated from the original Arabic into Syriac, and from that language into Greek. This is the first extant medical treatise in which the small-pox is certainly mentioned.711 This famous book has been published in various languages about thirty-five times; a greater number of editions, says Dr. Greenhill, than almost any other ancient medical treatise has passed through. He was skilled in philosophy, astronomy, and music, as well as in medicine, which he began to study when he was forty years old. He became one of the most celebrated physicians of his time, and was appointed physician to the hospital at Rai, and afterwards to that of Baghdad, where he became so famous as a teacher that pupils flocked to him from all parts. He afterwards resided at the court of Cordova. He died at an advanced age about A.D. 932. More than two hundred titles of his works have been preserved; but his small-pox treatise is the only one which has been published in the original Arabic. It is a remarkable and a very interesting fact that he explained the nature of the small-pox and measles by the theory of fermentation.712

The largest work of Rhazes is Al-HÁwÍ, or the Comprehensive book, commonly called “Continens.” In the Latin translation this fills two folio volumes. Although little more than a sort of medical commonplace book, it has a value in that it has preserved for us many fragments from the works of ancient physicians which we should not otherwise have possessed. Another important work of Rhazes is the KetÁbu-l-MansÚri, or Liber ad Almansorem, so called from being dedicated to Mansur, prince of ChorÁsÁn. It was intended to instruct the physician in everything which it was necessary for him to know. It is chiefly a compilation, but was a popular text-book in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Rhazes taught the external use of arsenic, mercurial ointments, and sulphate of copper, and the internal use of brandy, nitre, borax, coral, and gems.

Ali Ben el Abbas (Ali Abbas), who lived in the latter part of the tenth century, was a Persian physician, who wrote a medical text book, entitled the Royal Book. Up to the time of Avicenna, this was the standard authority on medicine amongst the Arabs, and was several times translated into Latin. In the theory of medicine and partly in its practice he followed the Greeks, but imitated the use of the excellent materia medica of the Arabs. He wrote also on ophthalmology and obstetrics.

Avicenna, or Ebn Sina, was called “the Prince of Physicians,” and was the greatest philosopher produced by the Arabs in the East. He was born in the province of Bokhara, in 980 A.D. It is related that at the age of sixteen he had learned all the science of a physician. Having cured Prince Nouh of a serious malady, he became a court favourite. After travelling for a while he composed his great work, the Canon of Medicine, by which his name was made famous both in Asia and Europe for several centuries. In the midst of the troubles of an adventurous life, he wrote a hundred gigantic books, the greatest of which was the Al-SchefÀ.

Ishak Ben Soleiman (830-940) wrote on dietetics, and is said to have been the first to introduce senna.

Serapion the Younger (about 1070). His work, De Simplicibus Medicamentis, was published in Latin at Milan in 1473.

Mesue the younger (about 1015) was a pupil of Avicenna, and physician to the court at Cairo. He rendered great services to pharmacy by teaching the method of preparing extracts from medicinal plants.

Albucasis was a skilful Arab physician, who wrote a work on surgery, entitled Al Tassrif, which contains much ingenious matter on the appliances of practical surgery. He died at Cordova about 1106. His work treats of the application of the actual cautery, so much employed by the Arabs, of ligation of arteries in continuity, of the danger of amputating above the knee or elbow, of stitching the bowel with threads scraped from the intestinal coat, operations for hare-lip and cataract, and fistula by cutting, ligature and cautery. He advised the use of silver catheters as now employed, in place of the copper ones used previously. He recommended anatomy as a valuable aid to surgery.713

Avenzoar, one of the most famous of Arabian physicians, was born near Seville in the latter part of the twelfth century. He was instructed in medicine by his father, whose family had long been connected with the healing art. He was the rational improver of Arabian medicine by the rejection of useless theories, and asserted for medicine a place among the advancing sciences of observation. He made it a constant practice to analyse the medicines he used, so that he might acquaint himself with their exact composition. He was loaded with favours by the prince of Morocco, and died at the age of ninety-two in A.D. 1262.

Ebn Albaithar (died about 1197) was a Moorish Spaniard, renowned for his medical and botanical science. He traversed many regions of the west of Africa and Asia to enlarge his botanical knowledge. He passed some years at the court of Saladin, and wrote on the Virtues of Plants, and on poisons, metals, and animals.

Averroes, or Ebn Rosch, was born at Cordova in 1126. He learned theology, philosophy, and medicine from the great teachers of his time. He was the greatest Arabian inquirer in the West, as Avicenna was in the East. He exercised the greatest influence both in his own and succeeding ages. He has been called “the Mohammedan Spinoza,” having been a religious freethinker. The study of Aristotle awakened in him a species of pantheism. He was more a philosopher than a physician, but as he had made important observations in medicine, he deserves a place amongst the heroes of the healing art. He was bitterly persecuted amongst his co-religionists for treating the Koran as a merely human work. He taught that the small-pox never attacks the same person more than once. In practice he held very rational views of the action of remedies, and taught that the work of the doctor was chiefly to apply general principles to individual cases. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle so famous as to have gained him the name of “the Commentator.” He expounded the Republic of Plato. He was a most voluminous writer, and was considered by his contemporaries and by our schoolmen as a prodigy of science.714

There is a very interesting account of the Indian physicians at the court of Baghdad in a translation made from a MS. in the Rich collection in the British Museum.715 The history is from the work of Ibn Abu UsaibiÂh, who lived at the beginning of the thirteenth century of our era.

Kankah the Indian was a great philosopher as well as a physician; he investigated the properties of medicines “and the composition of the heavenly bodies” (!).

Sanjahal, another learned Indian, wrote on medicine and astrology. From the science of the stars he applied himself to the symptoms of diseases, on which he wrote a book in ten chapters. He gave the symptoms of four hundred and four diseases. He also wrote on The Imagination of Diseases. ShÁnÁk wrote on poisons and the veterinary art. Jawdar was a philosopher and a physician who wrote a book on nativities. Mankah the Indian was learned in the art of medicine, and “gentle in his method of treatment.” He lived in the days of Haroun-al-Raschid.

Salih, son of Bolah the Indian, was “well skilled in treatment, and had power and influence in the promotion of science.”

Kankah the Indian, says Prof. H. Wilson, was very celebrated in the history of Arabian astronomy. He says that it is certain that the astronomy and medicine of the Hindus were cultivated anteriorly to those of the Greeks, by the Arabs of the eighth century. “It is clear that the Charaka, the Susruta, the treatises called NidÁn on diagnosis, and others on poisons, diseases of women, and therapeutics, all familiar to Hindu science, were translated and studied by the Arabs in the days of Haroun and Mansur, either from the originals, or translations made at a still earlier period into the language of Persia.”716

We may conveniently mention here the famous Jew of Spain, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides (died 1198), a native of Cordova, who was profoundly learned in mathematics, medicine, and other arts. He retired to Egypt, where he wrote books on medicine, which were much read. He advised his patients never to sleep in the daytime, and at night only on the side. He recommended them not to retire to rest till three to four hours after supper.717

Medical etiquette was rather strict. “Operations performed by the hand, such as venesection, cauterization, and incision of arteries, are not becoming a physician of respectability and consideration. They are suitable for the physician’s assistants only. These servants of the physician should also do other operations, such as incision of the eyelids, removing the veins in the white of the eye, and the removal of cataract. For an honourable physician nothing further is becoming than to impart to the patient advice with reference to food and medicine. Far be it from him to practise any operation with the hand. So say we!”718

Dentistry was practised, but it was considered by the Arabs, as by the Greek and Roman doctors, a very inferior branch of the profession, and was, for the most part, as with ourselves, till very recently relegated to uneducated persons. Midwifery also was, to a great extent, neglected by the higher class of physicians. The Arabian faculty esteemed most highly medicine proper, though pharmacy and materia medica were especially studied. The professors were paid by the State, and handsomely as a rule. Their text books were the works of the Greek physicians, especially Hippocrates and Galen. A sort of matriculation examination was required before a student could enter the great schools, and he was subjected to professional examinations (not very severe, presumably) before he was permitted to practise. The Arabian physicians were usually men of the highest culture; not only were they men of science, but of philosophy and literature also. Great mystery was combined with Arabian medical practice; astrology was the handmaid of medicine, and charms entered largely into therapeutics. The physicians wrote prescriptions with purgative ink; so that “take this!” was meant literally when the doctor gave the patient his prescription. It had to be swallowed in due form.

Although the great civilizations of the East date their origins from a period far more remote than those of the West, they have lagged far behind the West in progress. Professor Freeman defines European society as progressive, legal, monogamous, and, for the last fifteen hundred years, a Christian society; the East he defines as stationary, arbitrary, polygamous, and Mahometan.719 The dominant note of Oriental history is sameness; a monotony which enables us to read in the story of to-day that which took place amongst Eastern peoples a thousand years ago. The history of a single city of Europe is of infinitely greater interest to the student of humanity and the history of civilization than that of a whole nation of the East. The history of Florence alone is of greater importance, from this point of view, than that of all China. There is, however, one marvellous history, that of Mahomet and his creed, which excels in interest that of any other man of the Oriental nations. “Nowhere,” says Freeman, “in the history of the world can we directly trace such mighty effects to the personal agency of a single mortal.”720

CHAPTER III.
RISE OF THE MONASTERIES.

Alchemy the parent of Chemistry.

Learning in Europe was greatly advanced by the foundation of the famous monastery of Monte Cassino, by St. Benedict, near Naples, in the year 529. The religious houses of this order, of which Monte Cassino was the parent, were the means of sheltering in those troublous times the men who devoted themselves to literature and secular learning, as well as to the severities of the religious life. In these peaceful abodes men learned how to make the desert blossom as the rose, agriculture and other civilizing occupations were studied and successfully practised, and from the sixth century to the ninth such medical knowledge as existed in Europe chiefly emanated from these abodes of piety, industry, and temperance. Missionaries issued from them to convert and civilize the nations; and wherever the monks went, they acted as the healers of the sick, as well as the spiritual advisers of the sinner. Everywhere they cultivated medicinal plants, whose properties they learned to understand; by interchange of thought and comparison of opinions every monastery, with its constant going and coming of the brethren, became an exchange of knowledge: the science of Spain was carried to Italy, that of Italy to France and England, which in their turn contributed to the general stock of information such items of knowledge as they possessed. “If science,” says Schlegel,721 “was then of a very limited range, it was still quite proportioned to the exigencies and intellectual cultivation of the age; for mankind cannot transcend all the degrees of civilization by a single bound, but must mount slowly and in succession its various grades.”

Alcuin (735-804), the great reviver of learning in the eighth century, was an ecclesiastic who instructed Charlemagne and his family in rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and divinity. “France,” says a great writer, “is indebted to Alcuin for all the polite learning it boasted in that and the following ages. The universities of Paris, Tours, Fulden, Soissons, and many others, owe to him their origin and increase.” By the benefits he obtained from Charlemagne for the Christian schools which he founded, education began to revive in Europe, and by the Emperor’s command schools were established in every convent and cathedral throughout his vast empire, wherein not clerics alone, but the sons of the nobility who were destined for a secular life, could receive the highest education at that time attainable. “The monasteries became a kind of fortress in which civilization sheltered itself under the banner of some saint; the culture of high intelligence was preserved there, and philosophic truth was reborn there of religious truth. Political truth, or liberty, found an exponent and a defender in the monk, who searched into everything, said everything, and feared nothing. Without the inviolability and the leisure of the cloister, the books and the languages of the ancient world would never have been transmitted to us, and the chain which connects the past with the present would have been snapped. Astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, civil law, physic and medicine, the profane authors, grammar, and the belles lettres, all the arts, had a succession of professors uninterrupted from the first days of Clovis down to the age when the universities, themselves religious foundations, brought science forth from the monasteries. To establish this fact it is enough to name Alcuin, Anghilbert, Eginhard, Treghan, Loup de TerriÈres, Eric d’Auxerre, Hincmar, Odo of Clugny, Cherbert, Abbon, Fulbert.”722

The Origin of Chemistry.

The great importance of the science of chemistry in its connection with that of medicine, compels some allusion to its origin. Without question alchemy was the forerunner of chemistry. Beginning in the search for the means of transmuting base metals into gold, it ultimately endowed us with a far more precious knowledge—the art of preparing many of our most valuable medicines.

The first authentic account of alchemy is an edict of Diocletian about A.D. 300, in which a diligent search is ordered to be made in Egypt for all the ancient books which treated of the art of making gold and silver, that they might be destroyed. This shows that the pursuit must have been of great antiquity. Fable credits Solomon, Pythagoras, and Hermes amongst its adepts. We find nothing more about it till its revival by the Arabians some five or six hundred years later.723

The word Alchemy is mentioned for the first time by the Byzantines. The art of transmuting metals under the name of Chemia, is first spoken of by Suidas, who wrote in the tenth century. The Byzantines began to make chemical experiments about the seventh century; all the books they quote were attributed to Hermes. What is known as the Hermetic philosophy was synonymous with alchemy, but the books were really the work of the monks of the period.724

The earliest works on alchemy which we possess are those of Geber of Seville, who lived probably about the eighth or ninth century. His works were entitled Of the Search of Perfection, Of the Sum of Perfection, Of the Invention of Verity. He divided metals into the more or less perfect, gold the most perfect, silver the next, etc. His aim was to convert inferior metals into gold; that which should turn base metals into gold would be also a universal medicine, would cure or prevent diseases, prolong life, and make the body beautiful and strong. The philosopher’s stone would embrace in itself all perfections. Alchemy led to chemistry; it is even declared by some to have been the mother of chemistry. Some have thought that without the hope of making gold and other precious things, men would never have been inspired to investigate the secrets of nature and sustained in the arduous and often dangerous work of the chemist. But this is to take far too low a view of the scientific mind in all ages. The search for truth, the passion for investigating and interrogating nature has happily never wholly depended upon mercenary motives, and men have devoted their lives as ardently to scientific researches, by which they could never have hoped to gain a single penny, as did those alchemists of old, who bent over their crucibles in the vain search for the perfect magistery.725

Gibbon says,726 “The science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to the industry of the Saracens. They first invented and named the alembic for the purposes of distillation, analysed the substances of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and affinities of alkalis and acids, and converted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary medicines.” Gibbon somewhat exaggerates. Analysis and affinity were discovered at a much later period. It was Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who advanced chemical science towards its present high position.

Nonnus (10th century) wrote “a compendium of the whole art of medicine,” in 290 chapters. It is a mere compilation, and the author is only worthy of remembrance in medical history as the earliest Greek medical writer who mentions distilled rose-water, an article originally derived from the Arabians.

CHAPTER IV.
RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES.

School of Montpellier.—Divorce of Medicine from Surgery.

An important era in the history of medicine in Europe was the rise of the universities. It is not possible to fix precisely the date of the foundation of these great centres of learning, but we may sufficiently for our purpose fix the twelfth century as approximately the period in which Bologna, Montpellier, Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris were regularly established.

Cambridge University took its rise in all probability somewhere in the twelfth century, “originating in an effort on the part of the monks of Ely to render a position of some military importance also a place of education.”727

The most ancient universities in Europe are said to be those of Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, and Salamanca. The following dates are approximate: Bologna, 1116; Oxford, 879; Cambridge, twelfth century; Cordova, 968; Paris, 792, renovated 1200; Palenza, 1209, removed to Salamanca, 1249. Salamanca was founded 1239; Naples, 1224; Montpellier, 1289; Rome, 1243; Salerno, 1233.728

The University of Bologna was famous as a school of law and letters so early as the twelfth century. In the next it became distinguished for its medical teaching. It was in such perfection that its professors were classed as physicians, surgeons, barber surgeons, and oculists. But still, anatomy, except in so far as it assisted the surgeon, was neglected. Roger, Roland, Jamerio, Bruno, and Lanfranc, seemed alone to have paid much attention to it, and then only to borrow from Galen.729 The medical faculty became celebrated after 1280, when Thaddeus Florentinus was a teacher in it.

The University of Padua was founded 1179.

In 1268 it possessed three teachers of medicine and the same number of teachers of natural science.

Montpellier was the first great rival of Salerno as a school of medicine. Its charter dates from 1229.

Medicine was not taught at Paris during the twelfth century. John of Salisbury, writing in the year 1160, says that those who desired to study medicine had to go either to Salerno or Montpellier. But, says Laurie,730 physicians of eminence are recorded as having taught at Paris after this date, and the subject was formally lectured upon not later than 1200. Degrees or licences in physic were granted in 1231.

The University of Naples was founded in 1224, by the Emperor Frederick II. Originally all the faculties were represented, but in 1231 medicine was forbidden, as by Imperial decree it could only be taught at Salerno.

The University of Prague was founded in 1348 by Charles IV. of Bohemia, as a complete university from the outset.

School of Montpellier.

The origin of the medical school of Montpellier is obscure. Probably it originated in the tenth century, and there is little doubt that the Jews of Spain were concerned in its foundation. The Arabs found firm friends in the Jewish people of Spain, their monotheism proving a bond of union which ensured the sympathy of each, and the school of Montpellier became the rallying-point of Arabian and Jewish learning. Europe has rendered too little gratitude for the intellectual blessings bestowed on her by the Hebrews. A nation of Eastern origin, and having very extensive relations with Eastern commerce, the Israelites acted as the medium for transmitting the intellectual and material wealth of Eastern countries to Western peoples. We owe to them much of our acquaintance with Saracenic medicine and pharmacy. They translated for us Arabic books, and they introduced to Western markets the precious drugs of far-distant Eastern lands. The school of medicine of Montpellier first became famous in the beginning of the twelfth century. Averroism prevailed, and a practical empirical spirit distinguished the school from the dogmatic and scholastic teaching of other universities. It has been attempted to show that a Jewish doctor from Narbonne first taught medicine at Montpellier. When Benjamin of Tudela went to the university in 1160, he says that he found many Jews amongst the inhabitants. Adalbert, Bishop of Mayence, went to Montpellier in 1137 to learn medicine from the doctors, “that he might understand the deeply hidden meaning of things.” In 1153 the Archbishop of Lyons went there for treatment, and John of Salisbury said that medicine was to be acquired either at Salerno or Montpellier. Men called the school the “Fountain of Medical Wisdom,” and it soon rose to great importance on account of its unlimited freedom in teaching.731

Cardinal Conrad made a law that no one should act as a teacher of medicine in the university who had not been examined in it and received a licence to teach. In 1230 it was ordered that no one should practise medicine until he had been examined, and that to the satisfaction of two masters in medical science chosen as examiners by the bishop. To engage in practice without the certificate of the examiners and the bishop was to incur the sentence of excommunication.732 Surgeons, however, were not compelled to undergo examination. Medicine flourished at Montpellier with great independence; it was not merged with the other faculties, and it was not subjected to clerical influences.733 Even Louis XIV. was obliged to withdraw a decree ordering the union of the medical with the other faculties.734

Every student was compelled (1308) to attend medical lectures for at least five years, and to practise medicine for eight months, before being allowed to graduate. In 1350 the degree of Magister had to be taken in addition.735

The most brilliant period in the history of the medical school of Montpellier was that of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Its fame was sounded throughout the world. From all parts invalids went to Montpellier to seek its famous physicians. King John of Bohemia, and the Bishop of Hereford, were of the number.

Divorce of Medicine from Surgery.

Surgery became separated from medicine in Alexandria, but it was not until the middle of the twelfth century that the ecclesiastics were restrained from undertaking any bloody operations. The universities rejected surgery under the pretext, “ecclesia abhorret a sanguine” (the church abhors the shedding of blood). It is therefore to this epoch, as Mr. Cooper says,736 that we must refer the true separation of medicine from surgery; the latter was entirely abandoned to the ignorant laity.

At the Council of Tours, A.D. 1163, the practice of surgery was denounced as unfit for the hands of priests and men of literature, the consequence being that the surgeon became little better than a sort of professional servant to the physician, the latter not only having the sole privilege of prescribing internal medicines, but even that of judging and directing when surgical operations should be performed. Then the subordinate surgeon was only called upon to execute with his knife, or his hand, duties which the more exalted physician did not choose to undertake; and, in fact, he visited the patient, did what was required to be done, and took his leave of the case, altogether under the orders of his master.737

John of Salisbury, one of the most learned men of the twelfth century, gives an account of the state of medicine in that period, which is very suggestive. “The professors of the theory of medicine are very communicative; they will tell you all they know, and, perhaps, out of their great kindness a little more. From them you may learn the nature of all things, the causes of sickness and of health, how to banish the one and how to preserve the other; for they can do both at pleasure. They will describe to you minutely the origin, the beginning, the progress, and the cure of all diseases. In a word, when I hear them harangue, I am charmed; I think them not inferior to Mercury or Æsculapius, and almost persuade myself that they can raise the dead. There is only one thing that makes me hesitate. Their theories are as directly opposite to one another as light and darkness. When I reflect on this, I am a little staggered. Two contradictory propositions cannot both be true. But what shall I say of the practical physicians? I must say nothing amiss of them. It pleaseth God, for the punishment of my sins, to suffer me to fall too frequently into their hands. They must be soothed, and not exasperated. That I may not be treated roughly in my next illness, I dare hardly allow myself to think in secret what others speak aloud.”

In another work, however, the writer delivers himself with greater freedom. Speaking of newly-fledged medicos, he says: “They soon return from college, full of flimsy theories, to practise what they have learned. Galen and Hippocrates are continually in their mouths. They speak aphorisms on every subject, and make their hearers stare at their long, unknown, and high-sounding words. The good people believe that they can do anything, because they pretend to all things. They have only two maxims which they never violate: never mind the poor, never refuse money from the rich.”

Robert of Gloucester738 does not write very highly of the skill in surgery possessed by the Anglo-Normans. Speaking of the Duke of Austria, who took King Richard the First prisoner, his verses import that when “he fell off from his horse and sorely bruised his foot, his physicians declared that if it was not immediately smitten off, he would die; but none would undertake the performance of the operation; till the Duke took a sharp axe, and bid the chamberlain strike it off, and he smote thrice ere he could do it, putting the Duke to most horrid torture. And Holinshed tells us that in the time of Henry the Third there lived one Richard, surnamed Medicus, ‘a most learned physician, and no less expert in philosophy and mathematics;’ but makes not the least mention of surgery. Also some authors have attributed the death of Richard the First (wounded in the shoulder at the Castle of Chalezun), to the unskilfulness of those who had the care of the wound, and not from the quarrel’s being poisoned, as others have insinuated.”739

The university title of Doctor was not known in England before the reign of Henry II.740

Richard Fitz-Nigel, Bishop of London, was apothecary to Henry II. Many bishops and dignitaries of the Church were physicians to kings and princes.741 Most of the practitioners of medicine and teachers of physic were churchmen, either priests or monks.

St. Hildegard (1098-1179), Abbess of Ruppertsberg, near Bingen on the Rhine, was a famous physician and student of nature, who wrote a treatise on Materia Medica. Her pharmacy was in advance of her time, and to this eminent lady physician we are indebted for the attempts to disguise the nastiness of physic; she enveloped the remedy in flour, which was then made into pancakes and eaten.742 Meyer says that her work entitled Physica “is a treatise on Materia Medica, unmistakably founded on popular traditions.” Her visions and revelations concerning physical and medical questions are contained in her work “Divinorum operum simplicis hominis liber.” She was a true reformer within the Church, and her pure life was singularly devoted and unselfish; she was, in fact, a Woman Physician, who should be the patron saint of our lady doctors.

CHAPTER V.
THE SCHOOL OF SALERNO.

The Monks of Monte Cassino.—Clerical Influence at Salerno.—Charlemagne.—Arabian Medicine gradually supplanted the GrÆco-Latin Science.—Constantine the Carthaginian.—ArchimatthÆus.—Trotula.—Anatomy of the Pig.—Pharmacopoeias.—The Four Masters.—Roger and Rolando.—The Emperor Frederick.

The connecting link between the ancient and the modern medicine was the school of Salerno. It is true that Hippocrates and Galen in Arabian costume re-entered Europe after a long absence in the East, when the Moors occupied a great part of Spain; but great as was this Saracenic influence on medical science, it was not to be compared with the powerful and permanent influence secured by the native growth of medical science which sprung up on Italian soil.

The origin of this celebrated mediÆval institution is involved in obscurity; it has been generally understood to have sprung from the monastery of Monte Cassino, founded by St. Benedict in the sixth century. St. Benedict probably possessed some medical knowledge, and it is certain that many of his order did. The Benedictines had houses in La Cava and Salerno. The legends of the wonderful cures wrought by St. Benedict would naturally attract crowds of sufferers to the doors of the learned and charitable monks. There would consequently be abundant opportunities for the study of diseases and their remedies; and though there was probably little enough of what could strictly be called scientific medical practice, there was doubtless as much effort to cure or mitigate suffering as was consistent with the rule of a learned religious order. Some writers think that the famous school of Salerno existed as early as the seventh century, that Greek thought and traditions lingered there long after they had ceased to exist in other parts of Italy; and they argue that as it was, as is now clearly shown, a purely secular institution, it was independent in origin and constitution of any monastic connection. Others maintain that it was founded by the Arabs; but, as Daremberg points out,743 the first invasions of the Saracens in Sicily and Italy, dating from the middle of the ninth century, had for their objects simply pillage and slaughter; and there is nothing whatever to show in the whole course of their devastations the slightest desire to found literary or scientific institutions. The Saracens never sojourned at Salerno, and before the end of the eleventh century there is no trace of Arabian medicine in the works written by the great teachers of Salerno. It is as unnecessary as it is unjust to seek any other origin for the Salernian school than that of the Benedictines of Monte Cassino.744 Bede, Cuthbert, Auperth, and Paul were brought up at that monastery, and we know that medicine was always cultivated to a certain extent in those ancient abodes of learning and religion. As Balmez says concerning Monte Cassino,745 “the sons of the most illustrious families of the empire are seen to come from all parts to that monastery; some with the intention of remaining there for ever, others to receive a good education, and some to carry back to the world a recollection of the serious inspirations which the holy founder had received at Subiaco.” It seems, therefore, that the origin of the medical school of Salerno was somewhat on this wise: a lay spirit of science was developed, and many young men having no aptitude for the monastic life, but desirous to devote themselves entirely to the healing art as an honourable and lucrative profession, doubtless desired to form themselves into a society or school for this end; they would receive encouragement from their more liberal and enlightened monastic teachers to settle in a beautiful and healthy resort of invalids such as Salerno had long been considered, and to pursue their medical studies under the supervision of the men most competent to instruct them. Dr. Puschmann, quoting from S. de Renzi,746 states that in documents of the years 848 and 855, Joseph and Joshua are named as doctors practising there. The Lombard Regenifrid lived there in the year 900; he was physician to Prince Waimar of Salerno. Fifty years later the doctor Petrus was raised to the bishopric of Salerno. Many doctors of this time were clerics, but there were also many who were Jews.747 This ancient people, hated and persecuted in every other relation of life, were popular as physicians in the Middle Ages. The books studied and expounded were Hippocrates and Galen, which were translated into Latin before A.D. 560.748

Its cosmopolitan sentiments probably gave rise to the story that is told in an ancient Salernian chronicle, rediscovered by S. de Renzi, to the effect that the school was founded by four doctors; namely, the Jewish Rabbi Elinus, the Greek Pontus, the Saracen Adala, and a native of Salerno, who each lectured in his native tongue.749

It is said that Charlemagne in 802 A.D. greatly encouraged this Salerno school by ordering Greek works of medicine to be translated from the Arabic into Latin. Salernum, in consequence of the medical and public instructions given by the monks in the neighbouring monastery, became known as a civitas Hippocratica.750

Bertharius, abbot from 856, was a very learned man; and it is stated that there are still in existence two manuscripts of his which contain a collection of hygienic and medicinal rules and prescriptions.751

Alphanus (SECUNDUS) (flourished about 1050), a distinguished monastic philosopher and theologian, wrote a treatise on The Union of the Soul and Body, and another on The Four Humours. He carried with him, when he removed to Florence, many manuscripts and a great quantity of medicines. During the eleventh century Salerno rose to great importance, not only from its situation as a port from which the Crusaders departed to the wars, but from the daily widening influence of its medical school.

Petrocellus wrote on the practice of medicine about 1035; he was the author of the Compendium of Medicine. Gariopontus (died before 1056) wrote a work entitled Passionarius Galeni. These are the two most ancient works of this school which have reached our times, says Daremberg. The medicine of Salerno before the year 1050 was a combination of methodism in its doctrines and of Galenisms in its prescriptions.752 We find, says Baas,753 in Gariopontus the first intimation of the inhalation of narcotic vapours in medicine, while the ancients could only produce anÆsthesia by compression and the internal use of such drugs as mandragora and belladonna. Herodotus says754 that the Scythians used the vapour of hemp seed to intoxicate themselves by inhaling it, but this was not for medicinal purposes.

Desiderius was abbot of Salerno, and afterwards became Pope Victor III. in 1085. He is said to have been medicinÆ peritissimus.755

About this time flourished Constantine, the Carthaginian Christian, whose fame was European, and who finally placed Salerno in the front as a great and specialized public school of medicine. He travelled far in the East, and is said to have learned mathematics, necromancy, and the sciences in Babylon. He visited India and Egypt, and when he returned to Carthage he was the most learned man of his time in all that related to medical science. Naturally he was suspected of witchcraft, and he fled for refuge to Salerno. Robert Guiscard the Norman held him in the highest favour, and under his protection he published many works of medicine of his own, and made many translations of medical books from the Arabic. He ultimately retired to the monastery of Monte Cassino, where he died in 1087. We may safely date the establishment of the splendid reputation of the Salerno school from the time of his settlement there.756

Daremberg does not allow that the influence of Constantine was so great as is generally supposed. He points out that it was not in the middle of the eleventh but at the end of the twelfth century that Arabian medicine was substituted in the school of Salerno, as in the West generally, for the GrÆco-Latin. And it is perfectly true that if we examine the medical writings of this period we find very little progress from the times of the ancients, except in pharmacy and the knowledge of drugs and their properties. Daremberg’s researches go to prove that many of Constantine’s works, previously supposed to have been original, were but cunningly disguised translations from the Arabic. By altering the phraseology, and suppressing such proper names as would have led to suspicion of the origin of his treatises, he obtained credit for a great mass of literary work which had really another source.757

Jean Afflacius, a disciple of Constantine, wrote The Golden Book on the Treatment of Diseases, and another work On the Treatment of Fevers.758 Daremberg says that these works of Afflacius show no more traces of Arabian influence than the works of his contemporaries.

He advised that the air of the sick-room should be kept cool by the evaporation of water, and he administered iron in enlargement of the spleen.

ARCHIMATTHÆUS lived soon after Constantine; his name occurs about the year 1100 as the author of two important books on medicine, The Instruction of the Physician and The Practice. The former work is occupied with advice, sometimes exaggerated, on the dignity of the healing art; and though it appears childish enough to our more sophisticated age, it is not without evidence of a desire to instruct the doctor in all that relates to the welfare of the patient and the dangers incurred by any deviation from the strictest code of professional rectitude. It is unfortunately, however, blended with so much that is crafty and sly that it approaches in some directions very closely to charlatanism. ArchimatthÆus very minutely instructs the doctor how to comport himself when called to visit a patient.759

He should place himself under the protection of God and under the care of the angel who accompanied Tobias. On the way to the patient’s home he should take care to learn from the messenger sent for him the state of the patient, so that he may be, on reaching the bedside, well posted in all that concerns the case; then if, after he has examined the urine and the state of the pulse, he is not able to make an accurate diagnosis, he will at least be able, thanks to his previous information, to impress the patient with the conviction that he completely understands his case, and so will gain his confidence. The author considers it very important that the sick person, before the arrival of the physician, should send for a priest to hear his confession, or at least promise to do so; for if the doctor were to see reason to suggest this himself, it would give the patient cause to suppose that his case was hopeless. “Upon entering the house of his patient, the physician should salute all with a grave and modest air, not exhibiting any eagerness, but seating himself to take breath; he should praise the beauty of the situation,760 the good arrangements of the house, the generosity of the family; by this means he wins the good opinion of the household, and gives the sick person time to recover himself a little.” After the most careful directions as to the examination of the patient, the author takes the doctor from the house with as much artfulness as he has brought him hither. He is to promise the patient a good recovery, but privately to the friends he is to explain that the illness is a very serious one: “if he recovers, your reputation is increased; if he succumbs, people will not fail to remember that you foresaw the fatal termination of the disease.” If he is asked to dine, “as is the custom,” he is to show himself neither indiscreet nor over-nice. If the table is delicate, he is not to become absorbed in its pleasures, but to leave the table every now and then to see how the patient progresses, so as to show that he has not been forgotten while the doctor was feasting. He is honestly to demand his fee, and then go in peace, his heart content and his purse full. In the Practice of the same author, we have, says Daremberg, a true Clinic, the first work of the kind since the Epidemics of Hippocrates; it exhibits a skilful practitioner, a good observer, and a bold therapeutist. The doctrines and methods are those of Hippocrates and Galen, but not of the Arabs. It is also interesting as proving that at this period the distinction was established between the true physicians and the common physicians, or the specialists and the general practitioners or physician-apothecaries.

A remarkable and interesting feature in the history of the school of Salerno is the fact that some of its most famous professors of medicine were ladies. About the year 1059, Trotula, a female physician, wrote a well-known book on the diseases of women, and their treatment before, during, and after labour. She discusses all branches of pathology, even of the male sexual organs.761 It was supposed that she was the wife of John Platearius the elder, and that she belonged to the noble family of Roger. Her person and name were at one time considered legend and myth, but M. Renzi’s investigations have proved her to be sufficiently historical. Trotula lived at Salerno, as is shown by the Compendium Salernitanum, and she practised in that city, as is clear from her work on the diseases of women. Her name occurs variously as Trotula, Trotta, and Trocta.762

Abella wrote a treatise De Natura Seminis Humani; she was a colleague of Trotula’s. Costanza Calenda was the daughter of the principal of the medical school, and was distinguished both for her beauty and her talents; she left no writings. Mercuriadis and Rebecca Guarna were doctresses of the fifteenth century. They wrote chiefly on midwifery and diseases of women.763

Copho, in the early part of the twelfth century, was an anatomist, and probably a Jew; he wrote the Anatomy of the Pig. Students were instructed in dissections by operating on dead animals when, as in those days, human bodies were not accessible. The pig was killed by severing the vessels of the neck, and was then hung up by the hind legs, and when the blood had escaped the body was used for teaching purposes; it was not dissected in the modern sense at all, the examination consisting merely in observation of the great cavities and the vital organs, according to the suggestions of Galen and the old anatomists.764

Nicholas PrÆpositus, about 1140, was the president of the school, and wrote a famous book called the Antidotarium—a Pharmacopoeia as we should call it. This book of recipes was compiled from the works of the Arabian doctors Mesues, Avicenna, Actuarius, Nicolaus Myrepsus, as well as from Galen. It is interesting as giving the forms which the compounders of the prescriptions were sworn on their oath to observe; they promised to make up all their potions, syrups, etc., “secundum prÆdictam formam,” and they further promised that their drugs should be fresh and sufficient. It shows also that there was a habit of writing a prescription when a patient was visited; this, it seems, was a custom which originated with the Arabian physicians.765

Nicholas was also the author, says Dr. Baas,766 of a work called “Quid pro Quo,” which was a list of drugs which were equivalent to other drugs, and might be used as substitutes for each other in case of either running short. Dr. Baas says our expression “Quid pro Quo” originated from this.

The writings of BartholomÆus and of Copho the Younger (between 1100 and 1120), says Daremberg, are of great interest in the history of medicine; they show how great was the freedom of spirit which existed at Salerno at this time. Copho described certain diseases which were not referred to in the works of other writers of Salerno; for example, ulceration of the palate and trachea, polypi, scrofulous tumours of the throat, condylomata, etc. BartholomÆus and Copho also held certain original ideas as to the classification of fevers. Copho distinguished between medicine for the rich and for the poor: the rich are delicate, and must be cured agreeably; the poor wish only to be cured at as little cost as possible. Thus the nobles must be purged with finely powdered rhubarb, the poor, with a decoction of mirobalanum, sweetened or not. Naturally the more precious drugs would be used for the wealthy, and probably the poor, who could not afford the complicated and terrible confections of mediÆval pharmacy, might have congratulated themselves on being treated with a few simples instead of the precious messes which the wealthy had to swallow.

Johannes Platearius deserves notice as having been the inventor of the term “Cataracta,” in place of the ancient Egyptian “ascent” and the Greek “hypochosis,” in classical Latin “suffusio humorum” (Hirsch).767

MatthÆus Platearius was the son of the above; he composed a Practica Brevis and other books on medicine; it is not certain at what precise date they flourished.

Ægidius “Corbolensis,” canon of Paris, physician to Philip Augustus, king of France (1165-1213), wrote a poem on the decline of Salerno as a medical school; he describes the doctors as caring nothing for books which were not full of recipes, and the professors as merely beardless boys.

The famous but somewhat mysterious “Four Masters” were commentators on the surgery of Roger and Roland.

Musandinus wrote on the diet of the sick; bleeding was recommended for the want of appetite in convalescents, and patients were rather to be purged to death than permitted to die constipated.

Bernard the Provincial recommends wine for the delicate stomachs of bishops; he said they could not bear emetics unless they were administered on a full stomach. His treatise was written between the years 1150 and 1160. He did much to simplify the materia medica of his time, advising the poor not to waste their means on costly foreign drugs, but to gather simples from the fields. It is interesting to find in the thirteenth century police regulations which required in many cities of Italy that physicians should inspect druggists’ shops and see that their medicines were pure and fresh. Pharmacy, it seems, was already becoming divorced from medical practice.768

In the middle of the twelfth century there appeared a didactic poem called Schola Salernitana, Flos MedicinÆ, or Regimen Sanitatis, or Regimen Virile. This celebrated work went through hundreds of editions.769

Dr. Handerson, in his translation of Baas’ History of Medicine, says it had other titles than those given above, as Medicina Salernitana, De Conservanda Bona Valetudine, Lilium Sanitatis, Compendium Salernitanum, etc. The work was for centuries the physician’s vade mecum. It is not known who was the author; originally it was put forth as emanating from “the whole school of Salerno to the king of England,” namely, Robert, son of William the Conqueror, who was cured of a wound at Salerno in 1101. The poem consisted of some two thousand lines. Dr. Handerson gives the following translation of a few lines of this curious work:—

It has been translated into English by Thomas Paynell in 1530, by John Harrington in 1607, and by Alexander Croke in 1830.

The poem is a composite work, and its form was doubtless adopted for facility of committing to memory an important text-book of health rules.

Roger, or Ruggiero, known as Roger of Parma or of Palermo, lived about 1210, was a student, and for a long time a professor in Salerno. He was a celebrated surgeon, who practised trepanning of the sternum and stitching of the intestine. He was the first to describe a case of hernia pulmonis, to use the term seton, and to prescribe the internal use of sea-sponge for the removal of bronchocele.770 He knew how to arrest hÆmorrhage by styptics, sutures, and ligatures.

He was the earliest special writer on surgery in Italy.771 His later editor Rolando exhibits an acquaintance with surgery, which shows that, although the art had not been previously written upon in Italy, it was very well understood at Salerno. De Renzi says that some of the operations described are trephining, the removal of polypi from the nose, resection of the lower jaw, the operation for hernia and lithotomy. Malignant tumours of the rectum and uterus are referred to.772

Salerno was the first school in Europe in which regular diplomas in medicine were granted to students who had been duly instructed and had passed an examination in accordance with the requirements of the legal authorities. The great patron of Salerno, Frederick II., in the year 1240 confirmed the law of King Roger, passed in the year 1137, or as some say in 1140, with reference to licences to practise medicine. That ancient enactment was that, “Whoever from this time forth desires to practise medicine must present himself before our officials and judges, and be subject to their decision. Any one audacious enough to neglect this shall be punished by imprisonment and confiscation of goods. This decree has for its object the protection of the subjects of our kingdom from the dangers arising from the ignorance of practitioners.”773

Frederick’s law was: “Since it is possible for a man to understand medical science, only if he has previously learnt something of logic, we ordain that no one shall be permitted to study medicine until he has given his attention to logic for three years. After these three years he may, if he wishes, proceed to the study of medicine. In this study he must spend five years, during which period he must also acquire a knowledge of surgery, for this forms a part of medicine. After this, but not before, permission may be given him to practise, provided that he passes the examination prescribed by the authorities and at the same time produces a certificate showing that he has studied for the period required by the law.” “The teachers must, during this period of five years, expound in their lectures the genuine writings of Hippocrates and Galen on the theory and practice of medicine.” “But even when the prescribed five years of medical study are passed, the doctor should not forthwith practise on his own account, but, for a full year more he should habitually consult an older experienced practitioner in the exercise of his profession.”

“We decree that in future no one is to assume the title of doctor, to proceed to practise or to take medical charge, unless he has previously been found competent in the judgment of teachers at a public meeting in Salerno, has moreover by the testimony in writing of his teachers and of our officials approved himself before us or our representatives in respect of his worthiness and scientific maturity, and in pursuance of this course has received the state-licence to practise. Whoever transgresses this law, and ventures to practise without a licence, is subject to punishment by confiscation of property and imprisonment for a year.” “No surgeon shall be allowed to practise until he has submitted certificates in writing of the teachers of the faculty of medicine, that he has spent at least one year in the study of that part of medical science which gives skill in the practice of surgery, that in the colleges he has diligently and especially studied the anatomy of the human body, and is also thoroughly experienced in the way in which operations are successfully performed and healing is brought about afterwards.”774

For centuries after this barbers in other countries practised surgery without let or hindrance.

The doctor was bound to give advice to the poor gratis, and to inform against apothecaries who did not make up his prescriptions in accordance with the law. The doctor’s fee in the daytime within the town was half a gold tarenus; outside the city he could demand from three to four tareni, exclusive of his travelling expenses.775 Doctors were not permitted to keep drug-shops. Apothecaries were obliged to compound the medicines in conformity with the doctor’s prescriptions, and the price they charged was regulated by law. Inspectors of drug-shops were appointed to visit and report. The punishment of death was imposed on the officials who neglected their duties.776 These laws have served as the pattern for succeeding enactments for the regulation of medical education and practice.

In 1252 King Conrad created the school of Salerno a university, but King Manfred in 1258 by his restoration of Naples University left Salerno only its medical school.

On the 29th of November, 1811, a decree of the French Government put an end to the oldest school of medicine in Europe.

Daremberg concludes his admirable treatise on the school of Salerno with a pathetic account of a visit which he made to that city in 1849; he tells how he wandered through its streets, once so active with the movements of the students and professors of the medical sciences, and he laments that not a single remembrance of its illustrious masters remains to remind the visitor of its ancient glories. Not a stone of the edifices, not an echo of its traditions, not even a manuscript in any library remains to remind us of the learned and venerable men and women who did so much for medicine in those dark ages. A few years back I visited Salerno myself, and I found not even a decent hotel in which to remain a night or two. I rested at the best hostelry I could find, and after dinner proposed to the friend who accompanied me, that on the following day we should visit PÆstum and see its noble ruined temples. As we chatted and turned over the pages of the visitors’ book, we came across a long and doleful account of an Englishman who some few years previously had visited PÆstum from Salerno, and was captured by brigands; he was detained their prisoner for many weeks, and only at last liberated, after threats of mutilation, by the payment of a heavy ransom. We did not go to PÆstum; we left Salerno early the following morning and went to Amalfi. The hotel was gloomy and crumbling into decay, the rooms were all empty, the landlord was suggestive of the host in some of the old stories of our boyish days. Thus has Salerno fallen. Most travellers now make La Cava their headquarters, and do not stay at Salerno at all.

CHAPTER VI.
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

The Crusades.—Astrology.

The Crusades were of the highest importance to the development of Western civilization; they brought the European world into contact with the ancient wisdom of the East, they greatly stimulated commerce, aroused a spirit of restlessness and inquiry, and thus enlarged men’s minds, stimulated them to adventure and heroic deeds, improved the art of war and the invention of arms, etc. By bringing the Crusaders into contact with the Saracens many new medicines were introduced into practice; physicians followed the armies to the East, and thus had opportunities of studying the healing art as practised in the midst of ancient civilizations. To a great extent the present advantages we enjoy are due to the influence of the Crusades, which brought to Europe many arts and sciences we should not have otherwise learned.

One of the evil consequences of the Crusades was the introduction into Europe of epidemic diseases and contagious disorders which have always had their home in the East. Thus were introduced the plague, leprosy, and the disorders which are bred of filth and promiscuous living.

In the thirteenth century very few who possessed either medical or surgical skill were not priests or monks, chiefly mendicants. The profession became very lucrative, and so many monks devoted themselves to the healing art that they neglected their spiritual duties, and were consequently forbidden to leave their monasteries for a longer period than two months at a time.777 In this century astrology was closely related to the practice of medicine. It was believed that an intimate association existed between the heavenly bodies and those of men, and no cure could be attempted without consulting the astrological oracle.

M. Jules Andrieu says that medical science, “like the other sciences, began by being astrological. The first encyclopÆdia was astrology.”778 Certainly it was one of the modes most anciently and universally practised for discovering the most important things relating to the lives and fortunes of those who believed in it. It was flattering to men to believe that the heavenly bodies are interested in their welfare, and the events of life were awaited with resignation and composure by those who believed they were regulated by the stars in their courses; they applied themselves therefore to diagrams and calculations to learn the simplest and most obvious details of their lives.

M. LittrÉ, member of the Institute and the Academy of Medicine at Paris, in his Fragment de MÉdecine RÉtrospective,779 describes seven “miracles” which took place in France at the end of the thirteenth century at the tomb of St. Louis. He states the simple facts as written in the chronicles of the period. He does not dispute them, does not ridicule nor ignore them, but endeavours to give a pathological interpretation of them. He notices in the first place that at the moment of cure the patient felt a sharp pain—the part affected seemed to be stretched or touched, and sometimes a sort of cracking sensation in the bone was experienced, then movements became possible, although the lengthening of the limb and the possibility of moving it freely were not experienced immediately; the cure was not so sudden, a period of weakness, long or short, always followed the miracle, and the part only gradually regained its use. The cracking of the bone is just what the surgeon finds when he moves a joint which has become fixed by disuse; without breaking down these adhesions, he can do nothing to restore the articulation. In cases of rheumatic paralysis a similar state of things is observed. Of course in the accounts of the healing at the tomb of St. Louis we expect to find errors and exaggerations due to the preoccupation and ignorance of those who wrote the reports, but we at once recognise the cracking and the pain as genuine pathological details; we should not expect a natural cure without these symptoms. To what shall we attribute them? M. LittrÉ gives the explanation in the words of M. le docteur Onimus, published in La Philosophic positive sur la Vibration nerveuse.780 The ascending action or vibration expresses the influence of the physical on the moral; the descending action or vibration expresses the influence of the moral on the physical. In these cases it is the descending action which we have to consider. This action is exerted on the muscular portion of the affected part; it contracts energetically; it breaks down the pathological adhesions if they exist; it restores the bones violently to their place; this done, the patient is in a condition to use the limb, but not without passing through a period of debility which requires time for recovery. It is a violent extension produced by muscular contractions. Surgery has frequently to break down such adhesions and destroy false anchyloses. Here the force is not exerted by a strange hand, but by an influence which is exerted on the muscles themselves, and this in a far more beneficent manner than surgery can afford. What is the exciting cause of these energetic contractions? That which we find in all miracles of this sort—a strong persuasion, a complete confidence. Under a profound emotion born of these sentiments, the patient, feeling that the cure was in the extension of the part, had a belief which he could understand. Of course such faith is not possible in every case. On one side there must be the mental condition which can receive in its fulness the emotion born of persuasion and confidence, and on the other that the lesions must be susceptible of cure. To a certain degree there are lesions which escape all this sort of treatment. Herbert Spencer points out781 that muscular power fails with flagging emotions or desires which lapse into indifference, and conversely that intense feeling or passion confers a great increase in muscular force. It is brain and feeling generated by the mind which give strength to the person who thinks strongly.

Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), one of the greatest of the schoolmen, combined with his religious speculations so great a knowledge of physical science and mechanics that he was reputed as a sorcerer. He constructed automata, some of which could speak; wrote on anatomy, physiology, botany, chemistry, astronomy, magnetism, acclimatization of plants and animals, etc. He digested, interpreted, and systematized the whole of the writings of Aristotle in accordance with the teaching of the Church. He was called, not only “Albert the Great,” but “the Universal doctor.” To his labours and those of Thomas Aquinas may be explained the reverence for Aristotle entertained by the clergy of the Roman and Anglican churches even to the present day.

Thomas Aquinas (1225 circ.-1274), was the great Dominican theologian who wrote the Summa TheologiÆ. In his famous work he incidentally dealt with medical and physiological questions. The source of all motion is the heart. The soul is created anew in each conception. Moisture, heat, and Æther alone are necessary for the generation of an individual; the lower animals originate even from putrefying matter. He wrote commentaries on the works of Aristotle, and derived many of his scientific ideas from this great master. The biology of St. Thomas, as may be imagined, is exceedingly feeble, yet it too often forms the only knowledge of the subject which continental clergymen possess.

Raymond Lulli (1235-1315) was a man of great intellect, who sought the secrets of transmutation of metals and the philosopher’s stone. He was a bold thinker, an astrologer, and a physician of great repute. Naturally he was accused of magic. His acquaintance with the Arabians directed his mind to the study of chemistry. He wrote on medical subjects, the titles of his best known works being De Pulsibus et Urinis, De Medicina Theorica et Practica, De Aquis et Oleis.

Roger Bacon (1214-1298). By theologians he was believed to be in league with the devil, because of his belief in astrology and his scientific attainments. It is probable that his reputed invention of certain optical instruments was really due to his acquaintance with Arabic, as the Arabians were familiar with the camera, burning glass, and microscope, which have been attributed to him. Neither is it the fact that he invented gunpowder, as is usually supposed. Bacon wrote voluminously on theology, philosophy, and science. Although he believed in astrology and the philospher’s stone, he had a true scientific idea of the value of experiment, which forcibly reminds us of the Francis Bacon which future ages would reveal.

“Experimental science,” he said, “has three great prerogatives over all other sciences: (1) it verifies their conclusions by direct experiments; (2) it discovers truths which they could never reach; (3) it investigates the secrets of nature, and opens to us a knowledge of past and future.”782 As an instance of his method, Bacon gives an investigation into the phenomena of the rainbow, which is doubtless a very remarkable example of inductive research.

Roger Bacon proved himself far in advance of his time by his insistence of the supremacy of experiment. So different was his mental attitude in this regard from the temper of his time that Whewell finds it difficult to conceive how such a character could then exist.783 He learned much from Arabian writers, but certainly not from them did he learn to emancipate himself from the bondage to Aristotle which everywhere enslaved them. Doubtless he learned from Aristotle himself to call no man master in science, for the Stagyrite declared that all knowledge must come from observation, and that science must be collected from facts by induction.784 Probably the truth about Aristotle is that Bacon’s objections were directed against the Latin translations of the Greek philosopher, which were very bad ones. Of both Avicenna and Averroes he speaks respectfully, and it is doubted whether any passages in Bacon’s works can be construed into opposition to Aristotle’s own authority.785

Wood says786 that Roger Bacon was accounted the fourth in order of the chief chemists the world had ever produced, their names being (1) Hermes Trismegistus, the first chemist, (2) Geber, (3) Morienus Romanus, (4) Roger Bacon, (5) Raymond Lulli, (6) Paracelsus.

Roger Bacon made such prodigious chemical experiments at Oxford and Paris “that none could be convinced to the contrary but that he dealt with the devil.”

Jean Pitard (1228-1315) founded the surgical society in France, which exercised a very important influence on the development of the healing art in that country, under the title of the “College de Saint CÔme.”787 At a time when surgery of the lower character was practised by barbers, this important corporation of educated men broke off from the inferior association and combined to form an academy of the higher surgery.

Peter de Maharncourt was an Oxford student, so “excellent in chemical experiments that he was instituted Dominus Experimentorum.”788 He not only worked in metallurgy, but interested himself in “the experiments of old women, their charms, magical spells, and verses that they used to repeat when they applied or gave anything to their patients.”

Nicholas Myrepsus (circ. A.D. 1250), “Actuarius,” i.e. physician-in-ordinary, wrote a vast work on materia medica, containing 2,656 prescriptions for every disease, real or imaginary, which afflicts our race. He had studied at Salerno.

John Actuarius (circ. 1283) was a medical genius in advance of his age. He wrote a useful materia medica and a treatise on the kidney secretion, in which he explains the use of a graduated glass for estimating the amount of sediments, which he classifies according to their colours. He appeared, says Haeser, “like the last flickerings of a dying flame” just before the Turks destroyed the glorious work of the Greeks in the civilized world.

In Edward the First’s reign the king’s physician had twelve pence per day for his expenses in visiting the Countess of Gloucester, the king’s daughter, when she was ill.789

The art of poisoning was brought to considerable perfection in the Middle Ages, and there is abundant evidence of the fact that women were commonly agents in it.790

In Edward the Third’s reign the ladies of the household were both nurses and doctors. Regular practitioners were few, and the mistress of the house and her maidens were compelled to do the best they could in their absence. Medicinal herbs were cultivated in every garden, and were either dried or made into decoctions and kept ready for use. Many of these fair practitioners were reputed to be very skilful in medical practice. Chaucer, in the “Nonne-Prestes Tale,” has left a faithful picture of the domestic medicine of the period in the character of Dame Pertelot.

CHAPTER VII.
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

Revival of Human Anatomy.—Famous Physicians of the Century.—Domestic Medicine in Chaucer.—Fellowship of the Barbers and Surgeons.—The Black Death.—The Dancing Mania.—Pharmacy.

Revival of Human Anatomy.

Brighter days dawned for medical science after the close of the thirteenth century, up to which era the Saracenic learning prevailed. While human dissections were impossible, the sciences of anatomy and philosophy had made no advance beyond the point at which they were left by Galen, and as he dissected only animals they were necessarily left in a very imperfect state. It is not known precisely when human dissection was revived; probably the school of Salerno, under the influence of Frederick II., has a right to the honour. In 1308, however, we find the senate of Venice decreeing that a body should be dissected annually,791 and it is known that such dissections took place at Bologna in 1300. We have, however, nothing very definite on the subject till a few years later. Italy gave birth to the first great anatomist of Europe.

The father of modern anatomy was Mondino, who taught in Bologna about the year 1315. Under his cultivation “the science first began to rise from the ashes in which it had been buried.”792 His demonstrations of the different parts of the human body at once attracted the notice of the medical profession of Europe to the school of Bologna. He died in 1325. Though he had a penetrating faculty of observation, he was not altogether original, as he copied Galen and the Arabians. He divided the body into three cavities: the upper, containing the animal members; the lower, the natural members; and the middle, the spiritual members. His anatomy of the heart is wonderfully accurate, and he came very near to the discovery of the circulation of the blood.793 He described seven pairs of nerves at the base of the brain, and was evidently acquainted with the anatomy of that organ.

He is said to have had the assistance of a young lady, Alassandra Giliani, as prosector. Anatomical demonstrations in those days were, at the best, very imperfect. The demonstrator did not actually himself dissect; this was done by a barber-surgeon with a razor, the lecturer merely standing by and pointing out the objects of interest to the students with his staff. Nor did the process occupy much time; four lessons served to explain the mysteries of the human frame: the first was on the abdomen, the second on the organs of the chest, the third on the brain, and the fourth on the extremities.794 The bodies were buried, or placed in running or boiling water, to soften the tissues and facilitate their examination. Dissections first took place at Prague in 1348, Montpellier after 1376, Strasburg, 1517. In Italy, sometimes, a condemned criminal was first stabbed in prison by the executioner, and then conveyed at once to the dissecting room, for the use of the doctors.

The most famous physicians of this period were:—

Petrus Apono, or Pietro of Abano (1250-1315), a famous physician, who lived at Abano near Padua, and who had studied medicine and other sciences at Padua and Paris. He travelled in Greece and other parts, acquired a knowledge of the Greek language, and was a devoted student of the works of Averroes. He endeavoured to mediate between the Arabian and the Greek physicians in their controversies on medicine, and wrote with that view his work, entitled the Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et precipue medicorum. He knew enough of physiology to be aware that the brain is the source of the nerves, and the heart that of all the blood-vessels. He meddled with astrology, and was accused of practising magic, of possessing the philosopher’s stone. He was found guilty on his second trial by the Inquisition; but as he died before the trial was completed, he was merely burned in effigy.

Jacob de Dondis (1298-1359) was a physician, who was a professor at Padua, and was famous as the author of an herbal with plates containing descriptions of simple medicines.

Arnold of Villa Nova (1235-1312), physician, alchemist, and astrologer, did much to advance chemical science, and whose work, the Breviarium PracticÆ, is not a mere compilation. He advised his pupils, when they failed to find out what was the matter with their patients, to declare that there was “some obstruction of the liver,”—a practice much in vogue even in the present day. He was the first to administer brandy, which he called the elixir of life (Baas). He discovered the art of preparing distilled spirits (Thomson).

Collections of medical cases first began to be preserved in an intelligible form in the thirteenth century; they were called consilia. Those by Fulgineus (before 1348), by Montagnana (died 1470), and by Baverius de Baveriis, of Imola (about 1450), are said to be interesting.795

Gordonius was a Scottish professor at Montpellier, who in 1307 wrote the Practica seu Lilium MedicinÆ; it went through several editions, and was translated into French and Hebrew.

Sylvaticus (ob. 1342) wrote a sort of medical glossary and dictionary.

Gilbertus Anglicanus (about 1290) wrote a compendium of medicine, also called Rosa Anglicana, a work of European reputation, said to contain good observations on leprosy.

John of Gaddesden was an Oxford man and a court physician, who between 1305 and 1317 wrote the Rosa Anglica seu Practica MedicinÆ,—a work which, though of little merit, remained popular up to the sixteenth century. Some of his remedies are very curious. For loss of memory he prescribed the heart of a nightingale, and he was a firm believer in the efficacy of the king’s touch for scrofula. For small-pox he prescribed the following treatment, as soon as the eruption appeared: “Cause the whole body of your patient to be wrapped in scarlet cloth, or in any other red cloth, and command everything about the bed to be made red. This is an excellent cure.” Again, for epilepsy, the method of cure was as follows: “Because there are many children and others afflicted with the epilepsy, who cannot take medicines, let the following experiment be tried, which I have found to be effectual, whether the patient was a demoniac, a lunatic, or an epileptic. When the patient and his parents have fasted three days, let them conduct him to a church. If he be of a proper age, and of his right senses, let him confess. Then let him hear Mass on Friday, and also on Saturday. On Sunday let a good and religious priest read over the head of the patient, in the church, the gospel which is read in September, in the time of vintage, after the feast of the Holy Cross. After this, let the priest write the same gospel devoutly, and let the patient wear it about his neck, and he shall be cured. The gospel is, ‘This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.’” These quotations are both from the Medical Rose; and as the author was at the head of his profession, numbered princes amongst his patients, and was extolled by writers of the time, it doubtless fairly represents the practice of the period. The medicine of the period embraced the demon theory of disease and the belief in the efficacy of amulets, or more correctly of characts.

Domestic Medicine in Chaucer’s Time.

Chaucer (1340-1400), in the Nonnes Preestes Tale, tells us how in his time people took care of their health by attention to diet; and how, when folk were sick, and doctors not handy, nor medicines to be had at the chemist’s close by, the wise women were able, not only to prescribe skilfully, but to supply the requisite medicines from their own store or garden.

Chaucer has indicated for us, in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, who were the great medical authors studied by English physicians of the period.

Besides Æsculapius, whose works certainly could not have reached the “Doctour of Physicke,” he read Dioscorides, the famous writer on Materia Medica (A.D. 40-90). Rufus (of Ephesus, about A.D. 50). Old Hippocras = Hippocrates. Hali = Ali Abbas (died 994). Gallien = Galen. Serapion; there were two, the elder and the younger. Rasis = Rhazes (A.D. 850-923). Avicen = Avicenna (died 1170). Averriois = Averroes (died 1198). Damascene = Janus Damascenus, alias Mesue the elder (780-857). Constantin = Constantinus Africanus (1018-1085). Bernard = Bernardus Provincialis (about 1155). Gatisden = John of Gaddesden (about 1305). Gilbertin = Gilbert of England (about 1290).

“His study was but little on the Bible,” says the poet, who also intimates that as gold in physic is a cordial, he was partial to fees.

Fellowship of Barbers and Surgeons.

On the 10th of September, 1348, says Anthony À Wood,796 “appeared before Mr. John Northwode, D.D., Chancellor of the University of Oxford, John Bradey, Barber, Richard Fell, Barber Surgeon, Thomas Billye, Waferer, and with them the whole Company and Fellowship of Barbers within the precincts of Oxford, and intending thenceforward to join and bind themselves in amity and love, brought with them certain ordinations and statutes drawn up in writings for the weal of the Craft of Barbers, desiring the said Chancellor that he would peruse and correct them, and when he had so done, to put the University seal to them. Thus the Barbers of Oxford were formed into a Corporation, one of their ordinations being that no man nor servant of the Craft of Barbers or Surgery should reveal any infirmity or secret disease they have, to their customers or patients. Of which, if any one should be found guilty, then he was to pay 20s., whereof 6s. 8d. was to go to Our Lady’s box, 6s. 8d. to the Chancellor, or in his absence, to the Commissary, and 6.s. 8d. to the Proctors.” The Barbers, Surgeons, Waferers, and makers of singing bread were all of the same fellowship. They all continued in one society till the year 1500, when the Cappers or Knitters of Caps, sometimes called Capper-Hurrers, were united to them.797 In 1551 the Barbers and Waferers laid aside their charter and took one in the name of the City; but Wood says they lived without any ordination, statutes, or charter till 1675, when they received a charter from the University.798

The Black Death.

A great pestilence desolated Asia, Europe, and Africa in the fourteenth century, which was known as The Black Death. Its origin was oriental, and it was distinguished by boils and tumours of the glands, accompanied by black spots. Many patients became stupefied and fell into a deep sleep; they became speechless, their tongues were black, and their thirst unquenchable. Their sufferings were so terrible that many in despair committed suicide. Those who waited upon the sick caught the disease, and in Constantinople many houses were bereft of their last inhabitant. Guy de Chauliac, the physician (born about 1300), bravely defied the plague when it raged in Avignon for six or eight weeks, although the form which it there assumed was distinguished by the pestilential breath of the patients who expectorated blood, so that the near vicinity of the persons who were sick was certain death. The courageous de Chauliac, when all his colleagues had fled the city, boldly and constantly assisted the sufferers. He saw the plague twice in Avignon—in 1348, and twelve years later. Boccacio, who was in Florence when it raged in that city, has described it in the Decameron. No medicine brought relief; not only men, but animals sickened with it and rapidly expired. Boccacio himself saw two hogs, on the rags of a person who had died of the plague, fall dead, after staggering a little as if they had been poisoned. Multitudes of other animals fell victims to the epidemic in the same way. In France many young and strong persons died as soon as they were struck, as if by lightning. The plague spread over England with terrible rapidity. It first broke out in the county of Dorset; advancing to Devonshire and Somersetshire, it reached Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, and London. The annals of contemporaries record the awful fact that throughout the land only a tenth of the population remained alive. The contagion spread from England to Norway. Poland and Russia suffered later in a similar manner, although the disease did not always manifest itself in the same form in every case. Only two medical descriptions of the disease have come down to us—one by Guy de Chauliac, the other by Raymond Chalin de Vinario. Chauliac notices the fatal coughing of blood; Vinario in addition describes fluxes of blood from the bowels, and bleeding at the nose. What were the causes which produced so dreadful a plague, it is impossible to discover with certainty.

Dr. Hecker, to whose work on the subject799 I am indebted for the information concerning it, says that “mighty revolutions in the organism of the earth, of which we have credible information, had preceded it. From China to the Atlantic the foundations of the earth were shaken, throughout Asia and Europe the atmosphere was in commotion, and endangered, by its baneful influence, both vegetable and animal life.”

In 1337, 4,000,000 of people perished by famine in China in the neighbourhood of Kiang alone. Floods, famines, and earthquakes were frequent, both in Asia and Europe. In Cyprus a pestiferous wind spread a poisonous odour before an earthquake shook the island to its foundations, and many of the inhabitants fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies after inhaling the noxious gases. German chemists state that a thick stinking mist advancing from the east spread over Italy in thousands of places, and vast chasms opened in the earth which exhaled the most noxious vapours.

The Dancing Mania.

In the year 1374 a strange delusion arose in Germany, a convulsion infuriating the human frame, and afflicting the people for more than two centuries. It was called the dance of St. John or of St. Vitus, and those affected by it performed a wild dance while screaming and foaming with fury. The sight of the afflicted communicated the mania to the observers, and the demoniacal epidemic soon spread over the whole of Germany and the neighbouring countries to the north-west.

Bands of men and women went about the streets forming circles hand in hand, and danced madly for hours together, until they fell in a state of exhaustion to the ground. They complained, when in this state, of great oppression, and groaned as if in extreme pain, till they were tightly bandaged round their waists with cloths, when they speedily recovered. While dancing they were insensible to external impressions, but their minds were in a condition of great exaltation, and they saw in their fancies heavenly beings and visitants from the world of spirits. At Aix-la Chapelle, at Cologne, and in 1418 at Strasburg, the “Dancing Plague” infatuated the people by thousands.800

Hecker attributes the madness to the recollection of the crimes committed by the people during the visitation of the Black Plague, to the previous inundations, the wretched condition of the people of Western and Southern Germany in consequence of the incessant feuds of the barons, to hunger, bad food, and the insecurity of the times. Dancing plagues had often occurred before; in 1237 more than a hundred children were suddenly seized by it at Erfurt, and several other dates are given by historians for similar occurrences. Physicians did not attempt the cure of the malady, but left it to the priests, as it was considered to be due to demoniacal possession.

Hecker says801 that Paracelsus in the sixteenth century was the first physician who made a study of St. Vitus’s dance. The great reformer of medicine said: “We will not, however, admit that the saints have power to inflict diseases, and that these ought to be named after them, although many there are who, in their theology, lay great stress on this supposition, ascribing them rather to God than to nature, which is but idle talk. We dislike such nonsensical gossip, as is not supported by symptoms, but only by faith, a thing which is not human, whereon the gods themselves set no value.”

Pharmacy.

The drug dealers of the Middle Ages had little or no relationship to our apothecaries and pharmacists.

The word apotheca meant a store or warehouse, and its proprietor was the apothecarius. From the word apotheca the Italians derive their bottÉga, and the French their boutique, a shop. The thirteenth and fourteenth century apothecary, therefore, was altogether a different person from our own. It is probable that the Arabian physicians about the time of Avenzoar, in the eleventh century, began to abandon to druggists the business of compounding their prescriptions; the custom would then have spread to Spain, Sicily, and South Italy, where the Saracen possessions lay. This explains how so many Arabic terms became introduced into chemical nomenclature, such as alembic. Persons who prepared preserves, etc., were called confectionarii, and they made up medicines, and those who kept medicine shops were called stationarii. The physicians at Salerno had the inspection of the stationes.

Beckmann finds no proof that physicians at that time sent their prescriptions to the stationes to be dispensed. He says: “It appears rather that the confectionarii prepared medicines from a general set of prescriptions legally authorized, and that the physicians selected from these medicines kept ready for use, such as they thought most proper to be administered to their patients.”802

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

Faith Healing.—Charms and Astrology in Medicine.—The Revival of Learning.—The Humanists.—Cabalism and Theology.—The Study of Natural History.—The Sweating Sickness.—Tarantism.—Quarantine.—High Position of Oxford University.

Faith-healing.

Medicine in mediÆval Christian history is simply the history of miracles of healing wrought by saints or by their relics. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, for example, is full of saintly cures and marvels of healing. The study of medical science under such circumstances could have had but little encouragement. Doctors were but of secondary importance where holy relics and saintly personages were everywhere present to cure.

In the Catholic Church there are special saints who are invoked for almost every sort of disease.

• St. Agatha, against sore breast.
• St. Agnan and St. Tignan, against scald head.
• St. Anthony, against inflammations.
• St. Apollonia, against toothache.
• St. Avertin, against lunacy.
• St. Benedict, against the stone, and also for poisons.
• St. Blaise, against the quinsey, bones sticking in the throat, etc.
• St. Christopher and St. Mark, against sudden death.
• St. Clara, against sore eyes.
• St. Erasmus, against the colic.
• St. Eutrope, against dropsy.
• St. Genow and St. Maur, against the gout.
• St. Germanus, against children’s diseases.
• St. Giles and St. Hyacinth, against sterility.
• St. Hubert, against hydrophobia.
• St. Job and St. Fiage, against syphilis.
• St. John, against epilepsy and poison.
• St. Lawrence, against diseases of the back and shoulders.
• St. Liberius, against the stone and fistula.
• St. Maine, against the scab.
• St. Margaret and St. Edine, against danger in child-bed.
• St. Martin, against the itch.
• St. Marus, against palsy and convulsions.
• St. Otilia and St. Juliana, against sore eyes and the headache.
• St. Pernel, against the ague.
• St. Petronilla, St. Apollonia, and St. Lucy, against the toothache.
• —— and St. Genevieve, against fevers.
• St. Phaire, against hÆmorrhoids.
• St. Quintam, against coughs.
• St. Rochus and St. Sebastian, against the plague.
• St. Romanus, against demoniacal possession.
• St. Ruffin, against madness.
• St. Sigismund, against fevers and agues.
• St. Valentin, against epilepsy.
• St. Venise, against chlorosis.
• St. Vitus, against madness and poisons.
• St. Wallia and Wallery, against the stone.
• St. Wolfgang, against lameness.

Pettigrew803 gives the above list, but probably it might be considerably extended.

Charms and Astrology.

A curious little MS. volume was discovered amongst the MSS. at Loseley, which contained a Latin grammar, a Treatise on Astrology, various medical recipes and precautions, with forms for making wills. It had probably been a monk’s manual. The writing was the character of the fifteenth century. Some of the medical recipes and astrological precautions are said to be taken from “Master Galien (Galen), leche,” thus:—“For all manner of fevers. Take iii drops of a woman’s mylke yt norseth a knave childe, and do it in a hennes egge that ys sedentere (or sitting), and let hym suppe it up when the evyl takes hym.—For hym—that may not slepe. Take and wryte yese wordes into leves of lether: Ismael! Ismael! adjuro te per Angelum Michaelum ut soporetur homo iste; and lay this under his bed, so yt he wot not yerof, and use it all-way lytell, and lytell, as he have nede yerto.” Under the head,—“Here begyneth ye waxingge of ye mone, and declareth in dyvers tymes to let blode, whiche be gode. In the furste begynynge of the mone it is profetable to yche man to be letten blode; ye ix of the mone, neyther be (by) nyght ne by day, it is not good.”804

One Simon Trippe, a physician, writing to a patient to excuse himself for not being able to visit him, says: “As for my comming to you upon Wensday next, verely my promise be past to an old pacient of mine, a very good gentlewoman, one Mrs. Clerk, wch now lieth in great extremity. I cannot possibly be with you till Thursday. On Fryday and Saterday the signe wilbe in the heart; on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, in the stomake; during wch tyme it wilbe no good dealing with your ordinary physicke untill Wensday come sevenight at the nearest, and from that time forwards for 15 or 16 days passing good.”805

This is very similar to what we find in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, where (A.D. 686) “a holy Bishop having been asked to bless a sick maiden, asked ‘when she had been bled?’ and being told that it was on the fourth day of the moon, said: ‘You did very indiscreetly and unskilfully to bleed her on the fourth day of the moon; for I remember that Archbishop Theodore, of blessed memory, said that bleeding at that time was very dangerous, when the light of the moon and the tide of the ocean is increasing; and what can I do to the girl if she is like to die?’”806

Holinshed says807 that a lewd fellow, in the sixth year of Richard the Second, “took upon him to be skilful in physick and astronomy,” predicted that the rise of a “pestilent planet” would cause much sickness and death amongst the people; but as the pestilence did not appear, the fellow was punished severely. Stow records808 that one Roger Bolingbroke, in the second year of Henry the Sixth (1423), was accused of necromancy and endeavouring by diabolical arts to consume the king’s person. He was seized with all his instruments of magic and set upon a scaffold in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where he abjured his diabolical arts in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and many other prelates. The punishment for witchcraft was hanging or burning alive.

Strutt says809 that it was extremely dangerous in those days to pretend to any supernatural knowledge; as every one believed in the influence of malignant spirits, and that they were obedient to the call of the necromancers. “No contagion could happen among the cattle of a farmer, but the devil was the cause, and some conjurer was sought out; so that if any wretched vagabonds of fortune-tellers could be found, they were instantly accused of this horrid crime, and perhaps burnt alive.”810

The Revival of Learning.

Pope Nicholas V. (1389-1455) was a man of great intellectual sympathies. He was not devoted to any one branch of learning, but was “a well-informed dillettante, wandering at will wherever his fancy led him.” Æneas Sylvius said of him: “From his youth he has been initiated into all liberal arts; he is acquainted with all philosophers, historians, poets, cosmographers, and theologians; and is no stranger to civil and canon law, or even to medicine.” He was the patron of scholars, and was equally devoted to ecclesiastical and profane literature. Although he was the son of a physician, it is not true that he was ever one himself, as has been stated.811 It is pleasant, however, to reflect that this pope, whose name is most intimately associated with the revival of learning, probably imbibed much of the scientific lore of his time which his father’s profession would encourage, and that taste for learning and that liberal spirit which has always been associated with the medical profession. The Humanists—as those who devoted themselves to the Humanities, such as philology, rhetoric, poetry, and the study of the ancient classes, were called—found a friendly reception at the papal court.

Nicholas of Cusa was the reforming Cardinal Bishop of Brixen (1401-1464). Giordano Bruno called him “the divine Cusanus.” In physical science he was greatly in advance of his age, and he united moral worth with intellectual gifts of the highest order.

Pope Pius II., better known in literature as Æneas Sylvius, pope from 1458 to 1464, was also a great friend to the Humanists, a man of great intellectual power. He stands forth in history as “the figure in whom the mediÆval and the modern spirit are most distinctly seen to meet and blend,” ere the age of science begins to strangle the age of superstition. Professor Creighton says that Pius II. is the first writer “who consciously applied a scientific conception of history to the explanation and arrangement of passing events.”812

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), “the Faust of the Renaissance,” excelled not only as an artist, but in all kinds of experimental investigation. He was an anatomist, botanist, physiologist, and chemist. Had he applied himself wholly to science, he would have been foremost in that branch to which he devoted his wonderful energies. He was one of the greatest and earliest of natural philosophers. He has been declared to have been “the founder of the study of the anatomy and structural classification of plants, the founder, or at least the chief reviver, of the science of hydraulics—[the discoverer of] the molecular composition of water, the motion of waves, and even the undulatory theory of light and heat. He discovered the construction of the eye and the optical laws of vision, and invented the camera obscura. He investigated the composition of explosives and the application of steam power.”813

Matthew de Gradibus, of Fiuli, near Milan, in 1480 composed treatises on the anatomy of the human body. He first described the ovaries of the female correctly.

Gabriel de Zerbis (about 1495), of Verona, an eminent but verbose anatomist, dissected the human subject, and recognised the olfactory nerves. He mentioned the oblique and circular muscular fibres of the stomach.

Alexander Achillini (1463-1512), of Bologna, the pupil of Mondino, is known in the history of anatomy as the first who described the two bones of the ear (tympanal bones), the malleus and incus. In 1503 he showed that the tarsus (or ankle and instep bones) were seven in number, so painfully and slowly was such a simple thing in human anatomy settled in those times. He was more accurately acquainted with the intestines than any of his predecessors.

Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1536) was born at Cologne, and was a profound student of what is known as “Occult Philosophy,” a strange jumble of astrology, alchemy, cabalism, theology, and the teaching of the so-called “Hermetic Books.” This sort of thing has of late years again become fashionable under the revived name of Theosophy.

He seems to have been sufficiently harmless; but as he knew much more of physical science than was considered consistent with good churchmanship in those times, he was persecuted by the monk Catilinet, and was forced to fly from place to place.

Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522) was the first great German humanist. His services to learning were chiefly in connection with the restoration of Hebrew and Greek letters in Germany. He worshipped truth as his god, was interested in philosophy, especially in that of the Cabala, in which he sought a theosophy which should reconcile science with religion. His sentiments brought him into conflict with the Inquisition, but by appeal to Rome, after a long and tedious process, the trial was quashed; the consequence being that the lovers of learning and progress banded themselves together against the opponents of learning, and assured the progress of the principles of the Renaissance in Germany. Reuchlin was the author of a celebrated work, entitled De Verbo Mirifico.

The Sweating Sickness.

The disease known as the sweating sickness first made its appearance in England in 1485, after the battle of Bosworth. It followed in the rear of Henry’s victorious army, and spread in a few weeks from Wales to the metropolis. It is described by Hecker814 as being “a violent inflammatory fever, which, after a short rigor, prostrated the powers as with a blow; and amidst painful oppression at the stomach, headache, and lethargic stupor, suffused the whole body with a fetid perspiration.”

Holinshed815 describes it thus: “Suddenlie a deadlie burning sweat so assailed their bodies and distempered their blood with a most ardent heat, that scarce one amongst an hundred that sickened did escape with life; for all in maner as soone as the sweat took them, or within a short time after, yeelded the ghost. Two lord mayors and six aldermen died within one week. Many who went to bed at night perfectly well were dead on the following morning; the victims, for the most part, were the robust and vigorous. One attack gave no security against a second; many were seized even a third time.” The whole of England was visited by this plague by the end of the year. When it reached Oxford, professors and students fled in all directions, and the University was entirely deserted for six weeks. Medicine afforded little or no relief. Even Thomas Linacre, the founder of the Royal College of Physicians in 1518, does not in his writings say a word about the disease. As the doctors failed to help the people, their common sense had to suffice them in their need. They decided to take no violent medicine, but to apply moderate heat; take little food and drink, and quietly wait for twenty-four hours—the crisis of the disorder. “Those who were attacked during the day, in order to avoid any chill, immediately went to bed in their clothes; and those who sickened by night did not rise from their beds in the morning; while all carefully avoided exposing to the air even a hand or foot.”816

The five years preceding the outbreak of this epidemic had been unusually wet, and inundations had been frequent. It is probable that this was one of the causes which contributed to the unhealthy condition of the atmosphere. The disease partook of the character of rheumatic fever, with great disorder of the nervous system.817 In addition to the profuse and injurious perspiration, oppressed respiration, extreme anxiety, nausea, and vomiting, indicating that the functions of the eighth pair of nerves were disturbed, were the general symptoms of the malady. A stupor and profound lethargy indicated cerebral disturbance, possibly from a morbid condition of the blood.

Tarantism.

Tarantism was a disease somewhat akin to the dancing mania. Nicholas Perotti (1430-1480) first described it. It was believed to originate from the bite of the Apulian spider, called the tarantula, as it was named by the Romans. Those who were bitten, or who believed themselves to have been bitten, became melancholic and stupefied, but greatly sensible to the influence of music. As soon as they heard their favourite melodies, they sprang up and danced till they sank exhausted to the ground. Others became hysterical, and some even died in a paroxysm of tears or laughter. By the close of the fifteenth century Tarantism had spread beyond the boundaries of Apulia in which it originated, and many other cities and villages of Italy were afflicted with the mania. Thus when the spider made his appearance the merry notes of the Tarantella resounded as the only cure for its bite, or the mental poison received through the eye, and thus the Tarantali cure became established as a popular festival.818

Quarantine, according to William Brownrigg, who wrote in 1771 a book on the plague, was first established by the Venetians in 1484. Dr. Mead was probably the source of this information.819

Theories connected with the origin of the soul have continued to occupy the attention of theologians, philosophers, and physicians from the time of Pythagoras to our own day. Up to the ninth century their speculations were entirely idle, when Theophilus made his discovery of the capillary vessels of the male organs—a discovery which was further developed when in the fifteenth century Mattheus de Gradibus first enunciated the idea that these organs and the ovaria of birds are homologous structures; and thus originated the knowledge of the germ cells known as the ova of De Graaf.820

The fame of the University of Oxford was so high in the early part of the fifteenth century (1420) that a MS. in the Bodleian, quoted by Anthony À Wood,821 says that other universities were but little stars in comparison with this sun. “Other studies excel in some particular science, as Parys, in divinity; Bologna, law; Salerno, physick; and Toulouse, mathematics; but Oxford as a true well of wisdom doth goe beyond them in all these. The bright beams of its wisdom spread over the whole world.”

The practice of medicine became daily more honourable.

Holinshed says,822 in his description of the people in the Commonwealth of England, that “Who soeur studieth the lawes of the realme, who so abideth in the vniuersitie giuing his mind to his booke, or professeth physicke and the liberall sciences—and can liue without manuell labour, and thereto is able and will beare the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman, he shall for monie haue a cote and armes bestowed vpon him by heralds—and reputed for a gentleman euer after.”

Medicine was a flourishing study at Cambridge, especially at Merton College, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.823

The origin of syphilis in Europe has been the subject of much learned discussion. It appeared with such violence and frequency in the year 1490 in France, Italy, and Spain, that the scourge was considered to have only then been introduced into Europe from America.

“Its enormous prevalence in modern times,” says Dr. Creighton,824 “dates, without doubt, from the European libertinism of the latter part of the fifteenth century.” It is pretty certain that syphilis had existed in Europe from ancient times. What appeared with so much virulence and such wide distribution in 1490 was simply a redevelopment of the malady on a scale hitherto unknown.

CHAPTER IX.
MEDICINE IN ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU.

Hospitals in Mexico.—Anatomy and Human Sacrifices.—Midwives as Spiritual Mothers.—Circumcision.—Peru.—Discovery of Cinchona Bark.

Little or nothing is known of the ancient history of Mexico and Peru. Mexico, anciently called Anahuac, was probably conquered by the Aztecs, who founded the city of Mexico about 1325. It was discovered in 1517. Peru was long governed by the Incas, said to be descended from Manco Capac, who ruled in the eleventh century. It was explored and conquered by Pizarro, 1524-1533.

For the purposes of this work the history of these countries dates from the time of their discovery, as the Spaniards in their blind fanaticism destroyed most of their literature. Don Juan de Zumarraga was one of the darkeners of human intelligence; he diligently collected all the Mexican manuscripts, especially from Tezcuco, the literary capital of the Mexican empire, and burned them in one great bonfire in the market-place of Tlatelolco.825

Las Casas says that there were public hospitals in the cities of Mexico, Tlascala, and Cholula, expressly endowed for the relief of the sick. As surgeons attended the Mexican armies, it is evident that they had attained some skill in medicine and surgery. They used the temazcalli, or vapour-bath, practised bleeding, and knew the medicinal properties of many herbs. They professed to have learned this wisdom from their ancestors, the Tultecas, whose knowledge of chemistry they likewise extolled. As human sacrifices were of daily occurrence in the city of Mexico, they must have acquired some knowledge of anatomy, which would assist them in the practice of surgery.826

Midwives were treated by the ancient Mexicans with great deference. They were termed “spiritual mothers,” and were believed to be under the immediate inspiration of the god Tezcatlipoca. Aglio says that the treatment of lying-in women was very similar to that among the Jews.827

The ancient Mexicans practised circumcision, and venerated the Tequepatl, or flint knife, with which the rite was performed.828

Among the many vegetable products which America introduced to Europe were maize, potatoes, chocolate, tobacco, ipecacuanha, and Peruvian bark, from which we obtain quinine. The discovery of this valuable medicine was due to the Jesuit missionaries. The second wife of the viceroy, the Count of Chinchon, accompanied him to Peru. In 1628 she was attacked by a tertian fever. Her physician was unable to cure her. At about the same time an Indian of Uritusinga, near Loxa, in the government of Quito, had given some fever-curing bark to a Jesuit missionary. He sent some of it to Torres Vasquez, who was rector of the Jesuit College at Lima and confessor to the viceroy. Torres Vasquez cured the vice-queen by administering doses of the bark.... The remedy was long known as Countess’s Bark and Jesuit’s Bark, and LinnÆus gave the name Chinchona [after the viceroy Chinchon] to the genus of plants which produces it.... Various species of this precious tree are found throughout the eastern cordillera of the Andes for a distance of 2,000 miles. We owe guaiacum, sarsaparilla, sassafras, logwood, jalap, seneka, serpentaria, and many other valuable drugs to the same part of the world.

Frezier, in his voyage to the South Sea and along the coasts of Chili and Peru in the years 1712, 1713, and 1714, says concerning Lima: “There is an herb called Carapullo, which grows like a tuft of grass, and yields an ear, the decoction of which makes such as drink it delirious for some days. The Indians make use of it to discover the natural disposition of their children. All the time when it has its operation, they place by them the tools of all such trades as they may follow—as by a maiden, a spindle, wool, scissors, cloth, kitchen furniture, etc.; and by a youth, accoutrements for a horse, awls, hammers, etc.; and that tool they take most fancy to in their delirium, is a certain indication of the trade they are fittest for, as I was assured by a French surgeon, who was an eye-witness to this verity.”