The thermal baths of Bath : their history, literature, medical and surgical uses and effects, together with the Aix massage and natural vapour treatment / by Henry William Freeman.
- Freeman, Henry William, 1842-1897
- Date:
- 1888
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The thermal baths of Bath : their history, literature, medical and surgical uses and effects, together with the Aix massage and natural vapour treatment / by Henry William Freeman. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
43/468 page 5
![mouth was translated, gives the table showing the long line of illustrious British Kings, which he traces up to Adam himself. Whether Geoffrey believed the stories he tells with every time and circumstance or not we cannot say, but Dr. Giles (as well as other translators) seemed to think he did. Be this as it may, the learned antiquary adds a contemptuous note of warning to his readers of the absurdity of the royal pedigree.^ Now, the ordinary vulgar version of Bladud is to be found in all the Guides, and for a hundred and ninety years it has had currency in connecflion with the swine, so that it is needless to repeat it here. What is so curious is the difficulty of ascertaining when and how this swinish story became first associated with the history of so august a prince as Bladud. The earliest mention which we can find of the porcine family and the important part they played in Bladudian times, is in Peirce's Memoirs published in 1697. Peirce was not an imaginative person, nor was he given to romance, although he was credulous even to supersti- tion, but this does not explain the historical problem of the pigs. He says, it is true, he got the whole story from an old manuscript Chronicle that I have by me, though it hath much larger stories of other 1 The translator directs the reader's attention to the anachronisms in the table. For instance, between the reigns of Brutus and Leil, is an interval of 156 years ; and yet Geoffrey makes the capture of the Ark contemporaneous with the reign of Brutus, and the building of Solomon's temple with that of Leil, Now the interval between these two events cannot by any ]3ossibility be extended beyond eighty years. It is, more- over, impossible to bring the chronology of the British kings themselves into harmony with the dates before Christ, as there is no mention made of the exact interval between the taking of Troy and Brutus's landing in Britain. Geoffrey inscribes his work to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, son of Henry the Second.—(I. 1.)](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21053212_0043.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
