CHAPTER I.
MEDICINE OF THE DRUIDS, TEUTONS, ANGLO-SAXONS, AND WELSH.
Origin of the Druid Religion.—Druid Medicine.—Their Magic.—Teutonic Medicine.—Gods of Healing.—Elves.—The Elements.—Anglo-Saxon Leechcraft.—The Leech-book.—Monastic Leechdoms.—Superstitions.—Welsh Medicine.—The Triads.—Welsh Druidism.—The Laws of the Court Physicians.—Welsh Medical Maxims.—Welsh Medical and Surgical Practice and Fees.
Medicine of the Druids.
The learned men of the Celto-Britannic regions were called Druids. They were the judges, legislators, priests, and physicians, and corresponded to the Magi of the ancient Persians and Chaldæans of Syria. The etymology of the name is uncertain. The old derivation from δρῦσ, an oak, is considered fanciful, and that from the Irish draoi, druidh = a magician, an augur, is by some authorities preferred. It is probable that they derived their knowledge from association with Greek colonists of Marseilles, as such writing as they used was in Greek characters, and they taught the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and a philosophy which Diodorus Siculus says was similar to that of the teaching of Pythagoras. Clement of Alexandria compared their religion to Shamanism. Whatever it was, it did not differ probably very widely from other systems which pretended to put its priests in direct communication with gods and demons. Its priests, says Sprengel, were simply impostors who pretended to exclusive knowledge of medicine and other sciences. Their women practised sorcery and divination, but by their medical skill were able to afford great assistance to the wounded in war. Plants were collected and magical properties ascribed to them. Lying-in women sought the aid of these Druidesses, who seem to have been wise women, somewhat after the character of gypsies. Mela says these women were called Senæ. They pretended to cure the most incurable diseases and to raise tempests by their incantations.[611] The Druids communicated their knowledge to initiates only, and they celebrated their mystic rites under groves of oaks. Whatever grew on that tree was considered a divine gift; their highest veneration was reserved for the mistletoe, which they called All-Heal, and which they considered a panacea for all diseases. Three other plants, called Selago, a kind of club-moss, or perhaps hedge-hyssop, Samulus, the brookweed or winter cress, and Vervain, were held to be sacred plants. The mistletoe must be gathered fasting, the gatherer must not look backward while doing it, and he must take it with his left hand. The branches and herbs were immersed in water, and the infusion then became possessed of the property of preserving the drinkers from disease. When the Selago and Vervain were gathered, a white garment was worn, sacrifices of bread and wine were offered, and the gatherer, having covered his hand with the skirt of his robe, cut up the herbs with a hook made of a metal more precious than iron, placed it in a clean cloth, and preserved it as a charm against misfortunes and accidents.[612]
Strutt says: “Faint is the light thrown upon the methods pursued by the Druids in preparing their medicines. Some few hints, it is true, we meet with, of their extracting the juice of herbs, their bruising and steeping them in water, infusing them in wine, boiling them and making fumes from them, and the like; it also appears that they were not ignorant of making salves and ointments from vegetables.”[613]
In Britain the magical juggles, ceremonies, and rites were carried to a greater excess than in any other Celtic nation. They made a great mystery of their learning, their seminaries were held in groves and forests and the caverns of the earth.[614] Strutt thinks that their alphabet was derived from the Greek merchants, who came frequently to the island. Pliny says that the ancient Britons were much addicted to the arts of divination.[615] Diodorus Siculus describes one of their methods. “They take a man who is to be sacrificed and kill him with one stroke of a sword above the diaphragm; and by observing the posture in which he falls, his different convulsions, and the direction in which the blood flows from his body, they form their predictions, according to certain rules which have been left them by their ancestors.”[616]
Strutt says:[617] “The people were the more particularly inclined to make application to them for relief, because they thought that all internal diseases proceeded from the anger of the gods, and therefore none could be so proper to make intercession for them as the priest of those very deities from whom their afflictions came; for this cause also they offered sacrifices when sick; and if dangerously ill, the better to prevail upon the gods to restore them to health, a man was slain and sacrificed upon their altars.” The custom of human sacrifices doubtless afforded the Druids some knowledge of human anatomy. Their surgery was of a simple but useful character, and had to do principally with setting broken bones, reducing dislocations, and healing wounds; all this, of course, combined with magical ceremonies.[618]
Pliny refers to the magical practices of the Druids, and states that the Emperor Tiberius put them down, “and all that tribe of wizards and physicians.”[619] He adds that they crossed the ocean and “penetrated to the void recesses of Nature,” as he calls Britannia. There, he tells us, they still cultivated the magic art, and that with fascinations and ceremonials so august that Persia might almost seem to have communicated it direct to Britain. “The worship of the stars, lakes, forests, and rivers, the ceremonials used in cutting the plants Samiolus, Selago, and Mistletoe, and the virtues attributed to the adder’s egg,” are thought by Ajasson to indicate the connection between the superstitions of ancient Britain and those of Persia.[620]
Medicine of the Teutons.
The Goths and other German peoples were from early times brought into relationship with the Romans, and had acquired some of the advantages of their civilization.