“Take endive, sowthistle, marygold, m’oney and nightshade, three handfuls of all, and seethe them in conduit water, from a quart to a pint, then strain it into a fair vessel, then delay it with a little sugar to put away the tartness, and then drink it when the sweat taketh you, and keep you warm; and by the grace of God ye shall be whole.”
“Take half an handful of rew, called herbe grace, an handful marygold, half an handful featherfew, a handful sorrel, a handful burnet, and half a handful dragons, the top in summer, the root in winter; wash them in running water, and put them in an earthen pot with a pottle of running water, and let them seethe soberly to nigh the half be consumed, and then draw aback the pot to it be almost cold, and then strain it into a fair glass and keep it close, and use thereof morn and even, and when need is oftener; and if it be bitter, delay it with sugar candy; and if it be taken afore the pimples break forth, there is no doubt but with the grace of Jesu it shall amend any man, woman or child.”
“Another very true medicine.—For to say every day at seven parts of your body, seven paternosters, and seven Ave Marias, with one Credo at the last. Ye shal begyn at the ryght syde, under the ryght ere, saying the ‘paternoster qui es in cœlis, sanctificetur nomen tuum,’ with a cross made there with your thumb, and so say the paternoster full complete, and one Ave Maria, and then under the left ere, and then under the left armhole, and then under the left the [thigh?] hole, and then the last at the heart, with one paternoster, Ave Maria, with one Credo; and these thus said daily, with the grace of God is there no manner drede hym.”
The Royal College of Physicians of London Established.
The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded by Henry VIII. for the repression of irregular and unlearned medical practice. The Letters Patent constituting the College were dated 23rd September, 1518. The king was moved to this by the example of similar institutions in Italy and elsewhere, by the solicitations of Thomas Linacre, one of his own physicians, and by the advice and recommendation of Cardinal Wolsey. Six physicians are named in the Letters Patent as constituting the College, viz., John Chambre, Thomas Linacre, and Ferdinand de Victoria, the king’s physicians; and Nicholas Halsewell, John Francis, and Robert Yaxlery, physicians, “and all men of the same faculty, of and in London, and within seven miles thereof, are incorporated as one body and perpetual community or college.”[840]
Dr. Chambre was a priest before he became a physician. He was educated at Oxford, studied at Padua, where he graduated in physic.
Dr. Thomas Linacre was a distinguished scholar and physician, who was born A.D. 1460. In 1484 he was elected a fellow of All Souls’, Oxford; the next year he went to Bologna, where he studied under Pulitian; he then went to Florence, where he became acquainted with Lorenzo the Great; from Florence, he went to Rome, and thence to Venice and Padua, which at that time was the most celebrated school of physic in the world, and took the degree of Doctor of Medicine with the highest applause. Linacre founded (1524) two Physic Lectures at Oxford and one at Cambridge, but “they were not performed till divers years after Linacre’s death, on account of the troubles concerning religion.”[841]
Dr. Andrew Borde, Carthusian monk, physician, wit and buffoon, lived in the reign of Henry VIII. He took his physician’s degree at Montpellier in 1532, and afterwards became one of the court physicians on his return to England. He was a learned, genial, and sensible doctor, but possessed “a rambling head and an inconstant mind,” as Anthony à Wood says. He wrote voluminously. His chief works, the Breviary of Health, The Dietary of Health, and The Book of the Introduction to Knowledge, have been edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, and published for the Early English Text Society in a volume which is one of the most entertaining works on medicine ever written. Borde earned his title of “Merry Andrew” (a name which has become a household word) from attending fairs and revels, and conducting himself with the buffoonery which ill became so learned a man. Doubtless, however, it endeared him to his countrymen of the period. His medical works are full of prescriptions for various complaints, and many of them are exceedingly valuable and fully equal to the best treatment followed now.
Thomas Vicary was probably born between 1490 and 1500, was not a trained surgeon, but “a meane practiser” at Maidstone. In 1525 he was junior of the three Wardens of the Barbers’ or Barber-Surgeons’ Company in London. In 1528 he was Upper or First Warden of the Company, and one of the surgeons to Henry VIII., at £20 a year. In 1530 he was Master of the Barber-Surgeons’ Company, and at the head of his profession till his death in 1561 or 1562. As Dr. Furnivall says, he was “the Paget of his great Tudor time.” Soon after the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII., at the request of the City of London, handed over the monastic hospitals, Bartholomew’s and others, to the Corporation of London. He gave to Bartholomew’s a small endowment (nominally £333 odd) out of old houses which he charged with pensions to parsons. The city raised £1000 for repairs and reopened the hospital for one hundred patients, and on 29th September, 1548, appointed Chief-Surgeon Vicary as one of the six new governors of the hospital. The reorganization of the hospital was in a large measure due to this excellent man and intelligent surgeon. In 1548 he published the first English work on Anatomy, The Anatomie of the Body of Man, which was reprinted by the Surgeons of Bartholomew’s in 1577. This text-book held the field for 150 years.[842]
Those who are interested in the origin of our oldest and greatest hospital in London will find much valuable information in the Truly Christian Ordre of the Hospital of S. Bartholomewes, 1552, published as Appendix XVI. in Dr. Furnivall’s Vicary, p. 291.