English medicine in the Anglo-Saxon times / by Joseph Frank Payne.

  • Joseph Frank Payne
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: English medicine in the Anglo-Saxon times / by Joseph Frank Payne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    refers to the Egyptians as the most accurate calcula- tors, in the astronomical computations necessary to draw up the Calendar; but he says nothing about Egyptian days in the sense here intended. The words of the tract are as follows :— ' There are many Egyptian days on which by no means or for any necessity is it allowable to let blood from man or beast, or to administer a (medicmal) potion. But of these days three are to be specially observed, viz., the eighth day of the Ides of April (April 6th), the first Monday in August, and the last Monday of December. This is to be carefully borne in mind, because aU the veins are then full. ' But if on those days an incision be made into man or beast, (the patient) shall die immediately either on the same day or on the third day, or (at least) shall not survive to the seventh day. And whoever shall take a potion shall die on the fifteenth day; and any one, male or female, born on those days shall die an evil death, and whoever on these days eats flesh of goose shall die on the fifteenth day.' The Latin text being somewhat obscure and corrupt, I give it in a footnote ^ 1 < • Plures sunt dies Aegyptiaci, in quibus nullo modo nec per ullam necessitatem licet homini vel pecori sanguinem minuere, nec potionem impendere, sed ex his tribus [tres] maxime obser- vandi, octavo Idus April, illo die lunis [sic], intrante Augusto: illo die lunis exeunte Decembri; illo die lunis, cum multa diligentia observandum est, quia omnes venae tunc plenae sunt. ' Qui in istis diebus hominem aut pecus incident, aut statiro aut in ipso die vel in tertio morietur, aut ad septimum diem non perveniet; et si potionem quis acceperit, quindecimo die morie- tur; et si masculus sive mulier in his diebus nati fuerint, mala morte morientur; et si quis de auca in ipsis diebus manducaverit, quindecimo die morietur.' (Op. cit., vol, vi, p. 350.)
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