Andrew Borde and his medical works / by Hector A. Colwell.
- Colwell, Hector A. (Hector Alfred), 1875-
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Andrew Borde and his medical works / by Hector A. Colwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![dysshe of colcle water, and than may you take the wormes out of the water and kyl the[m] on your nayle, the worme is a lytle greater than ye worme in a man’s hande.” A few words about the treatment of lunatics must conclude our sketch of the “ Breviary.” Pictures and tapestries are to be banished from the sick-room, all things are to be of a sweet savour, and the patient must be kept from musing and studying. He must be amused and kept from injuring himself or others, but he must also be kept in fear of one man, and, if needs be, of another; when necessary he must be punished and beaten. In a long chapter on demoniacal possession our author relates how, when he was in Rome, a woman was taken to St. Peter’s that the devils which possessed her might be exorcised ; he, however, did not wait for the whole business, but, remembering what happened to certain pigs upon an occasion recorded in Scripture, discreetly withdrew. The foregoing extracts have naturally been chosen because of their quaintness, but it is only fair to Borde to say that he generally shews sound good sense. The weird remedies are the outcome of a blind groping after cures for diseases of whose pathology the physician was ignorant. In the “ Dietary ” especially his common sense is strongly to the fore, and even in the “ Breviary ” he ventures to con- trovert a statement of Aristotle and to supply an alternative theory of his own. Some of the statements in the “ Dietary ” are as true to-day as when they were written, and are indeed quite up to date. Thus, as regards building, the house is to be built near a good supply of fresh water, away from marshy soil, and so situated that a plentiful supply of fresh air is available. Urinals and privies are to be far away from the house, whose owner is further advised not to empty <tf pysse-pottes ” in the chimneys. The practice of emptying these vessels out of windows has been made familiar to us by Hogarth, but perhaps it is not so well known that on one occasion the practice in question led the operator to a prebendal stall. Louis IX. of France was on his way to matins in the small hours of the morning when a certain](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22445468_0024.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
