The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser].

  • Wilfrid Bonser
Date:
1963
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    450/492 (page 410)
    410 ORGANIC DISEASES AND THEIR TREATMENT The evidence as to peor is summed up by Bosworth and Toller as follows: ‘It seems to denote an inflamed swelling or ulcer; it is mentioned in connection with wens’ [for peor and for a ‘shooting’ wen—i.e. one causing a sharp pain, the Third Leechbook prescribes various herbs to be drunk in good ale] ‘in reference to the eye it is said to be the same as “fig”’ [‘against peor-ddl in the eyes which is called gefigo, and in Latin is called cimosis’—Cockayne glosses avKO)ai.s —3 herbs and yolk of egg are prescribed] ; 1 2 it is men tioned in close connection with the same disease’ [in the Lac- nunga]. 3 Grattan and Singer note that ‘theor seems usually connected with the chest and is then perhaps roughly “bronchial trouble” ’. 4 The forty-seventh section of the First Leechbook gives many pre scriptions with many and various ingredients for peor, including Christian incantations. In one, purgative and emetic drinks are to be taken—or, as the Anglo-Saxon naively puts it, ‘afterwards drink a strong drink that will run up and down’. In another various herbs are to be made into a ‘salve’ of the consistency of dough, placed on a linen cloth and warmed, together with the body, at the fire; the concoction is then to be smeared on the part affected. In a third the patient is to be bled under each ankle in turn. In a fourth, a cupping-horn is to be used ‘where the disease has settled’. In two of the recipes the patient is instructed to cover himself so as to be warm after he has taken the dose of medicine prescribed. In some cases the cure is a matter of time, and the application is often complicated. One concoction, for instance, after having stood for three nights, is to be drunk for thirty nights in all. In another leechdom frequent fomentations are prescribed: ivy and three other herbs are to be poured and laid on a hot stone in a trough, a little water is to be poured upon them, so as to ‘let it send forth steam on the body where need is’: this again is to be ‘if peor remain in one place’. 5 The word peor is also found compounded with other words: peor-drenc, for instance, is a drink for peor-adl, while pedr-gerid 1 Leechbook III, xxx. 2 Leechbook I , ii. 23. Bosworth and Toller define gefigo as ‘a disease with fig shaped swellings’. 3 Lacn. 37-43 (lxxi-lxxvii) {peor), 44 (lxxviii) {uic, ‘fig’, i.e. a fig-shaped swelling, which here at least = haemorrhoids). 4 See Grattan and Singer, Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine, p. no, note 2. 5 Leechbook III, xxx: cf. also Lacn. 42 (lxxvi).