We see that Galen is often drawn away by the beliefs of his time, to the most ridiculous prejudices and fancies, and that he is the defender of magical conjurations. He claimed that Æsculapius appeared to him one day in a dream and advised bleeding in the treatment of pleurisy by which he was attacked.
After Galen, Soranus of Ephesus used magical chants for curing certain affections. Scribonius Largus, a contemporary of the Emperor Claudius, indicated the manner of gathering plants, so that they might possess the strongest healing properties (the left hand must be raised to the Moon). Plants thus gathered cured even serpent bites. Archigenes suspended amulets on the necks of his patients. And although Pliny often declared that he wished “to examine everything in nature and not to speculate on occult causes” he reproduces in his works all the superstitious practices employed in medicine.
In the sixth century, Ætius, physician to the Court of Constantinople, acquired great surgical renown by the preparation of applications of pomades, ointments, and other topical remedies, in which superstition played a leading role.[56] Thus, in making a certain salve it was necessary to repeat several times in a low voice, “May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob accord efficacy to this medicine.” If one had a foreign body in the throat it was necessary to touch the neck of the patient and say, “As Jesus Christ raised Lazarus, and Jonah came out of a whale, come out thou bone”; or, better still, “The Martyr Blase and the Servant of Christ commands thee to come out of the throat or descend to the stomach.”[57]
After Ætius, we see Alexander of Tralles indulge in the same follies. In the colic he bids us use a stone on which is represented Hercules seated on a lion, a ring of iron on which was inscribed a Greek sentence, and, on the other, the diagram of the Gnostics (a figure composed of two equilateral triangles); and he adds that sacred things must not be profaned.
Against the gout, the same Alexander of Tralles recommended a verse from Homer, or, better still, to engrave on a leaf of gold the words mei, dreu, mor, phor, teus, za, zown. He conjured, by the words Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi, a plant he employed in the same disease. In quotidian fever he advised an amulet made of an olive leaf on which was written in ink, Ka Poi. A.[58]
In the thirteenth century, Hugo de Lucques said a Pater noster and other prayers to the Trinity to cure fractures of the limbs. But in the following century astrology replaced the magic of religious superstition. Arnauld de Villeneuve attributed to each hour of the day a particular virtue which influenced, according to the influence of the horoscope, the different parts of the body. According to Arnauld, we can use bleeding only on certain days when such and such a constellation is in place, and no other time; but the position of the moon more particularly needed attention. The most favorable time for phlebotomy was when Luna was found in the sign of Cancer; but the conjunction of the latter with Saturn is injurious to the effects of medicines, and especially of purgatives.[59]
His contemporary, Bernard de Gordon (of Montpellier), gives as a sure method of hastening difficult accouchments the reading of passages from the Psalms of David. He explains the humors of certain hours of the day in the following manner: the blood in the morning moves towards the sun, with which it is in harmony; but it falls towards evening, because the greatest amount of sanguification occurs during sleep. In the third hour of the day the bile runs downwards, to the end that it may not make the blood acid;[60] the black bile moves at the ninth hour and the mucus towards evening.
The efficacy of precious stones for bewitching, and many other superstitious ideas, were likewise noted by medical authors, notably Italian writers, as, for instance, Michel Savonarola, Professor at Ferrara, one of the most celebrated physicians of his age. In Germany, Agrippa of Nettesheim, philosopher, alchemist and physician, had a predilection for magic and the occult sciences, if we are to judge from his works published in 1530 and 1531, i.e., De incertitudianæ et vanitate scientiarum, De occulta philosophia, in which he mentions action induced at a distance and forsees the discovery of magnetism.
Like him, his contemporaries, Raymond Lulle, in Spain, and J. Reuchlin, published books on the Cabala (Kabbala), and, in Italy, Porta founded, at Naples, the Academy of Secrets, for the development of occult sciences, which are explained in his treatise De Magia Naturali.
At almost the same epoch, Paracelsus, Professor at Basle, claimed that he possessed the universal panacea; that he had found the secret of prolonging life, by magic and astrology, for he diagnosed diseases through the influence of the stars. After him, Van Helmont defended animal magnetism, and gave himself up to the study of occult science, in company with his student, Rodolphe Goclenius.