If the man’s face is turned toward the doctor when he enters the sick room, “then he may live; if his face be turned from thee, have thou nothing to do with him.” “In case a man be lunatic, take of a mere-swine or porpoise, work it into a whip, swinge the man therewith; soon he will be well. Amen.”[660]
A salve against temptation of the devil contains many herbs, must have nine masses said over it, and must be set under the altar for a while; then it is very good for every temptation of the fiend, and for a man full of elfin tricks, and for typhus fever.[661]
Cancer is to be cured with goat’s gall and honey. Our forefathers made very light of such trifles as cancer and lunacy, it will be perceived. Joint pains (rheumatism) are cured by singing over them, “Malignus obligavit; angelus curavit; dominus salvavit,” and then spitting on the joints. “It will soon be well with him,” adds the Saxon leech, in his usual cheery manner.[662] Pepper is to be chewed for the toothache; “it will soon be well with them.” Horrible applications of pepper, salt, and vinegar were recommended to be applied to sore eyes. If the eyes were swollen, “take a live crab, put his eyes out, and put him alive again into the water, and put the eyes on the neck of the man who hath need; he will soon be well.”
There are light drinks “against the devil and want of memory,” “for a wild heart,” and “pain of the maw.” There is treatment for the bite of “a gangwayweaving spider,” and remedies in case a woman cannot “kindle a child.” Neuralgia and megrims are not the new disorders they are generally supposed to be, as we find remedies “for headache, and for old headache, and for ache of half of the head.”
“Poison” was lightly treated with holy water and herbs. Snake-bite was cured with ear-wax and a collect. For bite of an adder you said one word “Faul”; “it may not hurt him.” “Against bite of snake, if the man procures and eateth rind which cometh out of paradise, no venom will damage him. Then said he that wrote this book that the rind was hard gotten.” If, by chance, one drank a creeping thing in water, he was to cut into a sheep instantly and drink the sheep’s blood hot. Lest a man tire with much travelling over land, he must take mugwort and put it into his shoe, saying, as he pulls up the root, “I will take thee, artemisia, lest I be weary on the way;” and having taken it, he must sign it with the sign of the cross.
“Over the whole face of Europe, while the old Hellenic school survived in Arabia, the next to hand resource became the established remedy, and the searching incision of the practised anatomist was replaced by a droning song.”[663]
Such medical learning as existed amongst the Angles, Saxons, and Goths was found only in a corrupted state in the monasteries. As we have seen, the herbal remedies were, for the most, useless or worse, and the treatment was so intermingled with magic ceremonies and religious superstitious uses, that Greek science, so far as it related to the healing art, was all but smothered by absurdities.
“The Saxon leeches were unable to use the catheter, the searching knife, and the lithotrite; they knew nothing of the Indian drugs, and were almost wholly thrown back on the lancet wherewith to let blood, and the simples from the field and garden.”[664]
“For a very old headache” one must “seek in the maw of young swallows for some little stones, and mind that they touch neither earth, nor water, nor other stones; look out three of them, put them on the man; he will soon be well. They are good for head ache and for eye wark, and for the fiend’s temptations, and for the night mare, and for knot, and for fascination, and for evil enchantments by song.”[665]
As a specimen of a regular Anglo-Saxon prescription, take the following, as given in the MS. Cott.: Vitellius; c. 3:—