Hecker attributes the madness to the recollection of the crimes committed by the people during the visitation of the Black Plague, to the previous inundations, the wretched condition of the people of Western and Southern Germany in consequence of the incessant feuds of the barons, to hunger, bad food, and the insecurity of the times. Dancing plagues had often occurred before; in 1237 more than a hundred children were suddenly seized by it at Erfurt, and several other dates are given by historians for similar occurrences. Physicians did not attempt the cure of the malady, but left it to the priests, as it was considered to be due to demoniacal possession.
Hecker says[801] that Paracelsus in the sixteenth century was the first physician who made a study of St. Vitus’s dance. The great reformer of medicine said: “We will not, however, admit that the saints have power to inflict diseases, and that these ought to be named after them, although many there are who, in their theology, lay great stress on this supposition, ascribing them rather to God than to nature, which is but idle talk. We dislike such nonsensical gossip, as is not supported by symptoms, but only by faith, a thing which is not human, whereon the gods themselves set no value.”
Pharmacy.
The drug dealers of the Middle Ages had little or no relationship to our apothecaries and pharmacists.
The word apotheca meant a store or warehouse, and its proprietor was the apothecarius. From the word apotheca the Italians derive their bottéga, and the French their boutique, a shop. The thirteenth and fourteenth century apothecary, therefore, was altogether a different person from our own. It is probable that the Arabian physicians about the time of Avenzoar, in the eleventh century, began to abandon to druggists the business of compounding their prescriptions; the custom would then have spread to Spain, Sicily, and South Italy, where the Saracen possessions lay. This explains how so many Arabic terms became introduced into chemical nomenclature, such as alembic. Persons who prepared preserves, etc., were called confectionarii, and they made up medicines, and those who kept medicine shops were called stationarii. The physicians at Salerno had the inspection of the stationes.
Beckmann finds no proof that physicians at that time sent their prescriptions to the stationes to be dispensed. He says: “It appears rather that the confectionarii prepared medicines from a general set of prescriptions legally authorized, and that the physicians selected from these medicines kept ready for use, such as they thought most proper to be administered to their patients.”[802]
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Faith Healing.—Charms and Astrology in Medicine.—The Revival of Learning.—The Humanists.—Cabalism and Theology.—The Study of Natural History.—The Sweating Sickness.—Tarantism.—Quarantine.—High Position of Oxford University.