Remarks on army surgeons and their works / by Charles Alexander Gordon.

  • Gordon, C. A. (Charles Alexander), Sir, 1821-1899.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on army surgeons and their works / by Charles Alexander Gordon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    29/132 (page 11)
    11 consisted of self-educated slaves and freedinen. And yet in so far as actual remuneration was concerned, it would appear that— III ancient Rome when men loved fighting, And wounds and scars took much deliglit in, Jien menders then had noble pay, Which we call surgeons to this day.* Turning to Britain, we learn from various sources that in the seventh century medicine was, among the Anglo-Saxons, studied and practised as a science, works on the subject having in all probability been introduced from Eome by the clergy of the day. Accounts are unfortunately wanting of the means by which the sick and wounded of the Fyrd f and other forces of the time were attended ; but considering the very small dif- ference that existed between the military and civil classes, we may presume that no special arrangements were required for the one beyond what were called for by the other. Eeligious houses were alike open to both, as soon after this time the cele- brated King Arthur himself experienced, when on the occasion of a battle having taken place between him and his nephevv iMedward,]; in which the latter was killed and the former mor- tally wounded, he was conveyed to the abbey of Glastonbury, the monks of which carefully tended him, and bestowed such surgical assistance as was in their power, until death released their royal patient from his sufferings. As illustrative of the state of the profession in the country at this time, I extract two formulae from the pages of Turner.§ The first is for the limgcn adlc, or pulmonary consumption, and in modern English reads thus :—Take white horehound and hyssop and rue, and sow-bread [cyclamen), and bryse wort and brown wort (both now unknown by those names), and parsley and groundsel, of each twenty pennyweights; and take one scster II full of old ale, and seethe the herbs till the liquor be half boiled away. Drink every day fasting a neapfull cold, and in the evening as much warm. The second is for fot adlc, or gout, and is as follows, namely : —Take the heads of tuberose isis (probably iris) and dry them very much, and take thereof a pennyweight and a half, and the pear tree and roman (rowan ?) 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 leech-craft,” so says * British Apollo, 1703, No. 3, quoted in “A Book about Doctors.” + Fyrd was the name of the first attempt at Militia in the time of the Saxon.s, and before that. See my papers on the “ History of the British Soldier,” now being published in the United Se>'vice Magazine. t “ Military History,” p. 33. § “ Anglo-Saxons,” vol. ii., p. 428.