“Should a man declare his wife just wedded be pregnant and she deny the charge, it is well to conduct the accused woman to the house of some prudent female friend, and then that three ventrieres be summoned who may regard the suspect. If they declare her to be in a family way, the provost shall call the midwives as witnesses as before stated; but if the sage femmes declare the accused is not pregnant, then shall the wife have cause against her husband; but better is it when the husband, seeing the wrong wrought, shall humble himself and beg pardon.”
Midwives were sworn, according to statutes and ordinances, which contained formulæ reports to be presented to the judges, to visit girls who complained of having been raped; fourteen signs of such deflowerment were admitted in testimony. Laurent Joubert has transcribed three of such reports, of which we will reproduce only one that was addressed to the Governor of Paris on October 23d, 1672:
“We, Marie Miran, Christophlette Reine, and Jeannie Porte, licensed midwives of Paris, certify to whom it may concern, that on the 22d day of October in the present year, by order of the Provost of Paris, of date 15th of aforesaid month, we visited a house in Rue Pompierre and there examined a girl aged thirty years, named Olive Tisserand, who had made complaint against one Jaques Mudont Bourgeois, whom she insisted deflowered her by violence. We examined the plaintiff by sight and the finger, and found as follows:
“Her breasts relaxed from below the neck downwards; mammaæ marcidæ et flaccidæ; her vulva chafed; os pubis collisum; the hair on the os pubis curled; pubes in orbem finuata; the perineum wrinkled; perinæum corrugatum; the nature of the woman lost; vulva dissoluta et mercessans; the lips of private pendant; labia pendenta; the lesser lips slightly peeled; labiorum oræ pilis defectæ; the nymphæ depressed; nymphæ depressæ; the caroncles softened; carunculæ dissolutæ; the membrane connecting the caroncles retracted; membrana connecteus inversa; the clitoris was excoriated; clitoris excoriata; the uterine neck turned; collum uteri; the vagina distended; finus pudoris; in fact, the lady’s hymen is missing; hymen deductum; finally, the internal orifice of the womb is open; os internum matricis. Having viewed this sad state of affairs, sign by sign, we have found traces omnibus figillatum perspectis et perforutatis, etc., and the above-named midwives certify to the before-mentioned Provost that the aforesaid statement under oath is true.”
Physicians were not obliged by the magistrates to determine the nature of rapes on women; all gynecological questions were remanded to midwives. In truth, among all the physicians of antiquity only Hippocrates discussed uterine complaints and Ætius studied obstetrics. It was only in the sixteenth century that midwifery took its place among the medical sciences, thanks to Rhodion, Ambroise Parè, Reif, Rousset, and Guillemeau. Shortly before this time, that is to say, in the fifteenth century, Jacques de Foril published his “Commentaires” on generation, his ideas being derived from Avicenna; his notions, however, were absurd, being wholly based on astrological considerations. He pretended that an infant is not viable in the eighth month, because in the first month the pregnant woman is protected by Jupiter, from whom comes life; and in the seventh month by the moon, which favorizes life by its humidity and light; while in the eighth month or reign of Saturn, who eats children, the influence is hostile. But on the ninth month the benevolent influence of Jupiter is again experienced, and for this reason the infant is more apt to be alive at this period of gestation.
To the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages we must attribute the prejudice that, the human body being in direct connection with the universe, especially the planets, it was impossible for physical change to occur without the influence of the constellations. Thus astrology came to be considered as an essential part of medicine. This belief in the influence of the stars came from the Orient, and was carried through Europe after the crusades.
As to the treatise on “Diseases of Women,” attributed to Trotula, a midwife of the school of Salerno, it is only a formulary of receipts for the use of women—baths in the sea-sands under a hot sun to thin ladies suffering from overfat; signs by which a good wet-nurse may be recognized: a method of kneading the head, the nose, and the limbs of new-born children before placing them in swaddling clothes; the use of virgin wine mixed with honey as a remedy for removing the wrinkles of old age.
“The Commentaires of Bernard de Provincial informs us,” says Daremberg, “that certain practices, not only superstitious but disgusting, were common among the doctrines of Salerno; one, for instance, was to eat themselves, and also oblige their husbands to eat, the excrement of an ass fried in a stove in order to prevent sterility; likewise, to eat the stuffed heart of a diseased sow in order to forget dead friends,” etc.
We can form some judgment, from such observations, as to the therapeutic wisdom of these doctrines of the school of Salerno. It is true, however, that at this epoch but little medicine save that of an unique and fantastic order was prescribed. Gilbert, the Englishman, advised, with the greatest British sang froid, tying a pig to the bed of a patient attacked by lethargy; he ordered lion’s flesh in case of apoplexy, also scorpion’s oil and angle-worm eggs; to dissolve stone in the bladder, he prescribed the blood of a young billy-goat nourished on diuretic herbs.
Peter of Spain, who was archbishop, and afterwards Pope, under the name of John XXI., was a man whom historians claim was more celebrated as a physician than as Pope; it was this Peter who adapted the curious medical formulary known by the title of Circa Instans, and, had improved on the invention. Those who wore on their bodies the words “Balthazar,” “Gaspar” and “Melchior” need never fear attacks of epilepsy; in order to produce a flux in the belly, it was only necessary to put a patient’s excrement in a human bone and throw it into a stream of water.