Treatises of fistula in ano, hæmorrhoids, and clysters / by John Arderne, from an early fifteenth-century manuscript translation. Ed., with introduction, notes, etc., by D'Arcy Power.
- John Arderne
- Date:
- 1910
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Treatises of fistula in ano, hæmorrhoids, and clysters / by John Arderne, from an early fifteenth-century manuscript translation. Ed., with introduction, notes, etc., by D'Arcy Power. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![The directions for making Nerbone plaister (p. 91) show the difficulties in reckoning small subdivisions of time. Arderne directs that the melted diachylon should be allowed to stand without moving by the space of a “ pater noster ” and an “ ave maria.” I asked a patient recently, the Mother Superior of a Convent, how long it would take to repeat these prayers, and she replied about three quarters of a minute. When I next saw her, after she had spent a sleepless night with a clock in front of her, she said that the question had interested her, and she found that a pater and an ave took exactly half a minute. Dr. Norman Moore draws attention (“ The Progress of Medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital,” 1888, p. 13) to a similar method employed by John Mirfeld, a Canon of the priory of St. Bartholomew, who wrote a general treatise on medicine—Breviarium Bartholomei—about the year 1380. He says, “ Mirfeld treated chronic rheumatism by rubbing the part with olive oil. This was to be prepared with ceremony. It was to be put into a clean vessel while the preparer made the sign of the cross and said the Lord’s Prayer and an Ave Maria, and when the vessel was put to the fire the Psalm, ‘Why do the heathen rage,’ was to be said as far as the verse ‘Desire of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance.’ The Gloria, Pater Noster, and Ave Maria are to be said, and the whole gone through seven times. ‘ Which done let that oil be kept.’ ” . . . “ The time occupied I have tried,” says Dr. Norman Moore, “ and found to be a quarter of an hour.” The charm against Cramp (p. 102) was obtained from one who was at Milan when Lionel, Duke of Clarence, married Violante, the daughter of Galeazzo Visconti, at the door of the Cathedral, on June 5th, 1368. Five months of continuous jousts, feasts and revels were followed by the inevitable consequences of delirium tremens and epileptiform convulsions. The sober testimony to the profligacy of the times given in the receipt for making confection of Sanguis Veneris (p. 89) is the natural outcome of the conditions described in Dr. Furnivall’s “ Early English Meals and Manners” (Early English Text Society, Original Series, No. 32). The boys and girls of the upper classes were transferred arme3 en nos arme3 et en nos heaumes voisent devant dit n’re corps, c’est assavoir ]’un pur la guerre de 1103 arme3 entiers quartelle3, at l’autre pur la paix de noz bages des plumes d’ostrace, ove quarter baneres de mesme la sute, et qe chacun de ceaux q’porteront les dite3 baneres ait sur sa teste un chapeau de no3 armes.” “Nichols’s Royal Wills,” p. 68. See also “ Notes and Queries,” Series ii, 1861, vol. xi, pp. 224 and 294.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31350409_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
