Licence: In copyright
Credit: Mediaeval medicine / by G. Henslow. 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.
8/12 (page 432)
![[i.e. exactly fixed] on him about his neck, if he have good belief on God, he shall never have it any more all his life.” The practice of suspending models of healed limbs in the heathen temples was adopted by Christians, as may be seen in foreign churches on the Continent to this day. The first important Christian writer on medicine was Aetius of Amida ■ on the Tigris (a.d. 627-5G5). He is the first to mention Eastern drugs, such as cloves and camphor; and he it was that invented the name “ Lign-aloes ” for a wood of a tree* of the East, because it was bitter like aloes, hence the term “ Wood-aloes.” A medical writer contemporary with Aetius (of the sixth century) was one who strongly advocated the use of charms and amulets. Thus: ‘ An amulet for quartan ague which I have proved by many experiments. Take a live dung-beetle, put him in a red rag, and hang him round the patient’s neck. For epilepsy take a nail of a wrecked ship, make it into a bracelet, and set therein the bone of a stag’s heart taken from its body whilst alive; put it on the left arm ; you will be astonished at the result.’t Potatos (introduced in the 16th century) are to this day not infrequently carried in the pocket by Englishmen to keep off rheumatism ! Aetius’s work is distinguished by its long list of complicated pre- scriptions, and he was the first to introduce Scriptural phrases ; thus, if a patient had a bone in the throat the physician was ordered to say:— “ Bone, come forth, like as Lazarus from the tomb and Jonah from the whale.” Then the physician should seize him by the throat and say; “ Blasius the martyr saith, ‘ Either come up or go down.’ ” Not only were very complicated recipes characteristic of the fourteenth century, but St. Blasius still seems to have ruled tEe throat. Thus for the swelling of the neck the recipe is : “ Make a vow to Saint Blase and mark thy neck with a thread, and make a candle so long and offer it to an image of him.” The idea of evil spirits causing diseases is very ancient. Thus, in Persia, the evil deity Ahriman created by his evil eye 99,999 diseases, apparently in the form of demons. To cure these there were three kinds of doctors—knife-doctors, herb-doctors, and word-doctors, apparently comparable to surgeons, physicians, and priestly healers by the Holy Word. “ He is the healer of healers, and benefits the soul also.” t With regard to the astrological theory of diseases and cures it ap- parently arose from the ancient custom—as in Egypt—of placing different parts of the body under the protection of special divinities. Thus, in head affections the supposed demon was told that he was attacking, not a mere mortal, but the great god Ra himself, and that he had better escape speedily to avoid the wrath of the deity, just as the gout had to fly before Solomon. This doctrine passed by way of the Gnostics into mediasval medicine, the pagan gods being replaced by Christian saints and partly by the heavenly bodies, especially the planets and signs of the zodiac. The most remarkable instance of the persistence of these curious as- sumptions is seen in Culpeper’s ‘ Herbal,’ first published in 1658. It has * Aquilaria Agalloclmm. t Quoted by Withington, op. cit. p. 131. J Withington, op. cit. pp. 35-6.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22397309_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
