Out of this feeling had grown up another practice, which made the development of medicine still more difficult—the classing of scientific men generally with sorcerers and magic-mongers: from this largely rose the charge of atheism against physicians, which ripened into a proverb, "Where there are three physicians there are two atheists."(306)
(306) "Ubi sunt tres medici ibi sunt duo athei." For the bull of Pius V,
see the Bullarium Romanum, ed. Gaude, Naples, 1882, tom. vii, pp. 430,
431.
Magic was so common a charge that many physicians seemed to believe it themselves. In the tenth century Gerbert, afterward known as Pope Sylvester II, was at once suspected of sorcery when he showed a disposition to adopt scientific methods; in the eleventh century this charge nearly cost the life of Constantine Africanus when he broke from the beaten path of medicine; in the thirteenth, it gave Roger Bacon, one of the greatest benefactors of mankind, many years of imprisonment, and nearly brought him to the stake: these cases are typical of very many.
Still another charge against physicians who showed a talent for investigation was that of Mohammedanism and Averroism; and Petrarch stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny Genesis and bark at Christ."(307)
(307) For Averroes, see Renan, Averroes et l'Averroisme, Paris, 1861,
pp. 327-335. For a perfectly just statement of the only circumstances
which can justify a charge of atheism, see Rev. Dr. Deems, in Popular
Science Monthly, February, 1876.
The effect of this widespread ecclesiastical opposition was, that for many centuries the study of medicine was relegated mainly to the lowest order of practitioners. There was, indeed, one orthodox line of medical evolution during the later Middle Ages: St. Thomas Aquinas insisted that the forces of the body are independent of its physical organization, and that therefore these forces are to be studied by the scholastic philosophy and the theological method, instead of by researches into the structure of the body; as a result of this, mingled with survivals of various pagan superstitions, we have in anatomy and physiology such doctrines as the increase and decrease of the brain with the phases of the moon, the ebb and flow of human vitality with the tides of the ocean, the use of the lungs to fan the heart, the function of the liver as the seat of love, and that of the spleen as the centre of wit.
Closely connected with these methods of thought was the doctrine of signatures. It was reasoned that the Almighty must have set his sign upon the various means of curing disease which he has provided: hence it was held that bloodroot, on account of its red juice, is good for the blood; liverwort, having a leaf like the liver, cures diseases of the liver; eyebright, being marked with a spot like an eye, cures diseases of the eyes; celandine, having a yellow juice, cures jaundice; bugloss, resembling a snake's head, cures snakebite; red flannel, looking like blood, cures blood-taints, and therefore rheumatism; bear's grease, being taken from an animal thickly covered with hair, is recommended to persons fearing baldness.(308)
(308) For a summary of the superstitions which arose under the
theological doctrine of signatures, see Dr. Eccles's admirable little
tract on the Evolution of Medical Science, p. 140; see also Scoffern,
Science and Folk Lore, p. 76.
Still another method evolved by this theological pseudoscience was that of disgusting the demon with the body which he tormented—hence the patient was made to swallow or apply to himself various unspeakable ordures, with such medicines as the livers of toads, the blood of frogs and rats, fibres of the hangman's rope, and ointment made from the body of gibbeted criminals. Many of these were survivals of heathen superstitions, but theologic reasoning wrought into them an orthodox significance. As an example of this mixture of heathen with Christian magic, we may cite the following from a medieval medical book as a salve against "nocturnal goblin visitors": "Take hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort, lupine, ash-throat, henbane, harewort, viper's bugloss, heathberry plant, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and fennel. Put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add much holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water. If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night visitors come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on his eyes, and cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the sign of the cross. His condition will soon be better."(309)
(309) For a list of unmentionable ordures used in Germany near the end
of the seventeenth century, see Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizinischer
Aberglaube in Bayern, Wurzburg, 1869, p. 34, note. For the English
prescription given, see Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wort-cunning, and
Star-craft of Early England, in the Master of the Rolls' series,
London, 1865, vol. ii, pp. 345 and following. Still another of these
prescriptions given by Cockayne covers three or four octavo pages. For
very full details of this sort of sacred pseudo-science in Germany, with
accounts of survivals of it at the present time, see Wuttke, Prof. der
Theologie in Halle, Der Deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, Berlin,
1869, passim. For France, see Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation
francaise, pp. 371 et seq.