The sixteenth century saw an effort to throw off some of these errors which had grown round the art. The invention of printing helped largely in disseminating knowledge throughout Europe, and the followers of medicine assumed a higher position.
AN APOTHECARY’S SHOP. FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century Tachenius wrote: “There is no new thing under the sun whatsoever, therefore the followers of Hippocrates have handed out, and as it were midwifed into the world, the same was from the beginning though our eyes were not so clear-sighted as to discern it”. To which Stephen Pasquier replied in the following rhyme:—
“Some Paracelse of novelty implead,
For which, judged crime, he erst was banished,
So Hippocrates, Chrysippus, and at Rome
Asclepiade, too, were new. They’d all one doom.
They who condemn new things condemn the old,
Or else do both misjudge and are o’er bold.”
During the crusades the surgeons naturally acquired a very large experience in the treatment of wounds—incised, lacerated, and contused. Baldwin was severely wounded before Jerusalem, having received a spear-thrust “through the thigh and the loins”. He fell fainting from his horse, but the most skilful leeches were summoned, “by whose art and skill the king and valiant athlete was enabled to recover from this deadly wound”. Baldwin was also wounded in the foot before Antioch, and the surgical talent available was baffled by the injury to such a degree that it was proposed to kill a Saracen after wounding him in the same part, so as to learn the proper course to pursue. Baldwin, however, refused to allow this crude attempt at experimental surgery to be made. There seem to be no medical records of the second crusade. In the third, the French king, Philippe Auguste, and our own Cœur de Lion suffered grievously from a disease, the symptomatology of which included extensive exfoliation of the skin, shedding of the nails, and loss of the hair. The disease is called Arnoldia by the chroniclers, and is variously conjectured to have been leprosy or syphilis. It could hardly have been leprosy, for both the royal sufferers recovered, Cœur de Lion being killed eight years later at the siege of Chalus, and Philippe Auguste dying of quartan ague twenty-four years after Richard. Of the fourth crusade we have no medical details. In the fifth, St. Louis of France was accompanied by his private physician Dudon and other leeches; among them was a lady doctor or phisicienne named Hernandis, who probably attended the queen in her confinement, which took place at Damietta. The expedition suffered terribly from scurvy, typhus, and other pestilences. The part played by water in the diffusion of disease would seem to have been recognised, though the methods of water examination would hardly satisfy a modern chemist. A piece of white linen was dipped in the water to be tested, and then dried; if there were any stains on the linen the water was condemned, but if not it was pronounced pure. The addition of four crushed almonds or beans was believed to make the water of the Nile safe for drinking. The method of disinfection adopted for the king’s tent was to fumigate it with a mixture of amber, chick peas, or lupine, which were macerated in wine, and then placed on live charcoal. In the sixth crusade, which took place twenty-two years later, vast numbers, including St. Louis himself, fell victims to ignorance of the elements of sanitation.