Early medical and biological science : extracted from ʻEarly science in Oxford' / by R.T. Gunther.

  • Robert Gunther
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Early medical and biological science : extracted from ʻEarly science in Oxford' / by R.T. Gunther. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    much decayed, so that they might have the use of wholesome air in times of pestilential sickness/ The master of the hospital, who was in priest's orders, had at his command a valuable assortment of amuletic medicines with which to cure his patients. It boasted St. Edmund the Confessor’s comb,1 one of the ribs of St. Andrew the Apostle, the bones of St. Stephen, and the skin of the patron saint of the hospital. ‘ Those who were troubled with continuall headaches, frenzies or light-headed, were by kembing their heads with St. Edmund’s combe, restored to their former healthe; or The Hospital of St. John, c. 1250 After Matthew Paris. Brit. Mas. Roy. MS. 14 C vii, f. 221. those troubled with a weaknesse of joynts or halting, were by the handling and applying those bones to the places affected, restored to their pristine state/ The equipment may have been worth as much as is an ounce of radium to a modern hospital, and with the recru¬ descence of superstition after the great war of 1914 might have had a modern value had it survived. The second Hnfirmarie for ye sicke’, or St. John’s Hospital, appears to have been founded in or before the reign of King John, who gave it lands. It was refounded in 1233 by Henry III, who gave it a new site and buildings, a mill, and Statutes. The care of the infirmary and its inmates was vested in a ‘ sacrist ’, who, as one of the brethren, wore a gown of brown stuff with a cross on the left breast, and over this a cloak marked with a double cross in front. Considerable portions of the old buildings 1 Edmund the martyr was born at Abingdon, which accounts for his comb being preserved in the neighbourhood. Edward the Confessor was also born near Oxford, at Islip.
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