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

  • Wilfrid Bonser
Date:
1963
Catalogue details

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.

    54/492 (page 14)
    Alfred, that the decay of literacy during the period of the earlier incursions was such that no contemporary records would then have been written. The two chief contemporary documents are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Bede carries Anglo- Saxon annals down to the year 731. After this there is a hiatus of contemporary evidence for the next century and a half. The Chronicle then continues the narrative till the end of the Anglo- Saxon period. The Chronicle, as contemporary evidence, dates from the time of Alfred. The period preceding his reign was then recorded as tradition, but current events were chronicled from his reign. The Chronicle is usually but a bald narrative entered under each year. It expands, however, in three periods : namely, for the reigns of Alfred and Edward the Elder, for those of /Ethelred the Unready and Edmund Ironside, and for those of Edward the Confessor and Harold. Occurrences of famines and pestilences are duly recorded throughout. Copies of the Chronicle were kept up simultaneously at different religious houses. It is therefore sometimes necessary to specify which manuscript contains the information quoted. A local outbreak of pestilence may have been recorded in only one copy, such as that kept at Canterbury, Peterborough, or Worcester. Bede in his Ecclesiastical History provides invaluable information for the early period. Histories of individual cures by saints or by means of their relics throw much light upon the ‘general practice’ of his day, which, as has already been mentioned, was then in the hands of the Church. The Ecclesiastical History was translated into the vernacular by King Alfred. Medical terms wall be quoted from both Latin and Anglo-Saxon versions. Bede’s two shorter historical works, the Lives of the Holy Abbots of Wearmouth and farrow and the Life and Miracles of St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, also provide useful examples of healing by saintly men. The preface to this last-mentioned work gives details of Bede’s tests for accuracy until he was satisfied that his narrative portrayed the truth as far as it was to be ascertained. He says it was first submitted, for perusal and correction, to Herefrid, abbot of Lindisfarne; it was then read during two days by the elders and teachers of the congregation of Lindisfarne, and ‘accurately weighed and examined in all its parts, [but] there was nothing at all found which required to be altered’.