The treatment prescribed by the monks, who were ready to cure the body as well as the soul, consisted mainly of holy water, prayer, the touching of relics, and a number of decoctions of herbs, the properties of which they were acquainted with. Many of these physician monks wandered about the country devoting themselves to the wants of the sick.
During the eleventh century hospitals began to spring up in various parts of the country and over Europe. They seem to have originated at the time of the crusades. Lacroix says: “The Johannists, and the brotherhoods of St. Mary and St. Lazarus devoted themselves to missions of charity in the East; in France, there were the brothers of St. Antony and of the Holy Ghost; and throughout the world the heroic chevaliers of St. John of Jerusalem or of the Templars, whose countless establishments combined the triple character of conventual church, almshouse, and fortress, and who, attired in a dress both military and monastic, wore a mantle similar to that seen in the statues of Æsculapius, as a sign of the double mission—beneficent and warlike—which they had sworn to fulfil”.
Each of these orders had a special form of treatment, and took charge of specific diseases. Thus, the Templars paid special attention to those pilgrim soldiers and travellers particularly troubled with ophthalmia, scurvy, or those suffering from wounds. The Johannists professed the cure of epidemical disease and pestilence. The order of St. Antony looked after those stricken with dysenteries and those complaints known as St. Anthony’s fire, while the Lazarists treated leprosy, small-pox, and pustular fevers. The first school of nurses of which we have record, is one organised by Hildegarde, Abbess of Rupertsberg, who died 1180. These nuns gave great assistance in the hospitals. Thus the monks about the twelfth century tended the bodies as well as the souls, and even accompanied armies on military expeditions in that capacity.
In the thirteenth century faculties were established at Montpellier, Salerno, and Paris, by the order of papal bulls, to grant degrees in medicine. In order to obtain the title of master physician, the candidate had first to become a clerk, then pass an examination before masters or doctors selected from the staff of the college by the Bishop of Maguelonne.
The barbers at this time came to occupy an important position in medicine, and were promoted to the rank of subordinate surgeons, chiefly for blood-letting and minor accidents.
In the fourteenth century medicine had rapidly progressed in Europe, and the celebrated physician and surgeon Lanfranc founded the St. Cosmo College at Paris, the examinations of which all surgeons were obliged to pass. A decree was also passed by the King of France in 1352 prohibiting any one who was not an apothecary, student, or mendicant monk from practising medicine. The king, we find, also exempted the master barbers from doing duty as watchmen, as “the barbers being nearly all of them in the habit of practising surgery, great inconvenience might arise if they were absent from their houses when sent for during the night”.
In France, the little barbers, as they were called, travelled about on foot from village to village with a bag containing their drugs and remedies, while the great barbers, or sworn surgeons, astride their hacks with tinkling bells to announce their approach, wore long robes trimmed with fur, and other rich apparel. They were usually accompanied by an assistant and several servants, who carried their cases of instruments, which always included scissors, nippers, a probe or éprouvette, razors, lances, and needles. He also carried five kinds of ointments, viz., basilicon, apostles’ ointment, the white ointment, yellow ointment, and the dialtœa ointment for subduing local pain.
Guy de Chauliac, who was physician to three successive popes, stated “he never went out on his visits without taking several clysters and plain remedies, besides gathering herbs in the field, so as to treat diseases in a proper manner”.
Even at that early time the credulity of the public became imposed upon by quacks, and Lacroix tells us of an English surgeon, one Goddesden, who had two sorts of prescriptions, one for the rich and another for the poor; he sold at a high price to the barbers a so-called panacea, which the latter sold at a large profit, and this was simply a mixture of frogs pounded in a mortar. In one of his books there is a short chapter on disagreeable diseases, as he terms them, “which work their own cure, and bring no grist to the doctor’s mill”.
In the fifteenth century the practice of medicine became more and more influenced and dominated by the occult sciences, and especially astrology. All mankind was ruled by the stars, and the cause of various diseases was attributed to the conjunction of certain planets. “They believed the blood rose during the daytime towards the sun, and descended into the lower extremities at night; that at the third hour the bile subsided, so that its acid properties might not be mixed with the course of the blood; and that at the second hour the atrabilis, and in the evening the phlegm, subsided.” Such illusions and erroneous beliefs stopped the progress of science, and threatened to turn a noble art into mere charlatanry. In this country the surgeons mostly practised as apothecaries; and we are told that when Henry V. invaded France in 1415, the only surgeon he had in his camp was one Thomas Morstede, who was with difficulty induced to accompany the army, bringing with him twelve assistants.