CHAUCER’S DESCRIPTION OF A PHYSICIAN. THE DOCTOR OF PHYSIC.
| With us there was a doctour of phisike; In all this world, ne was there none him like To speake of phisike and of surgerie, For he was grounded in astronomie. He kept his patient a full great dell In houses: by his magike naturell Well couth he fortune the assendent Of his image for his pacient. He knew the cause of every malady, Whether it were of cold, heate, moist, or dry. And whereof engendered was each humour. He was a very parfit practisour; The cause I knew, and of his haime the roote, Anon he gave to the rich man his boot. Full ready had he his apoticaries To send him drugs and his lectuaries; For each of them made other for to winne, Their friendship was not new to beginne. Well he knew the old Esculapius, And Diascorides, and eke Ruffus, And Hippocrates, and Galen, Serapion, Rasis, and Avicen, Aberrois, Damascene, and Constantin, Bernard, Galisden, and Gilbertin Of his diet measurable was he, For it was of no superfluitie; But of great nourishing and digestible. His study was but little on the Bible. In sanguine and in percepolad withall Lined with taffata and with sendall; And yet he was but easy of dispence. He kept that he won in time of pestilence; For gold in phisike is a cordial, Therefore he loved gold speciall. |
It appears from this quaint and satirical picture, that, in our Chaucer’s days, astrology formed part of a physician’s study. It also plainly proves that a disgraceful collusion prevailed between medical practitioners and their apothecaries, mutually to enrich each other at the expense of the patient’s purse and constitution. The poet, moreover, seems to tax the faculty with irreligion: that unjust accusation was not uncommon; hence the old adage, “Ubi tres medici, duo athei.” To the disgrace of many illiberal persons of the present age, we have known some of our most able and praiseworthy physiologists charged with materialism.
DÆMONOMANIA.
This disease is perhaps the most distressing species of insanity; since, with the exception of the miserable belief of being possessed by the evil spirit, the patient is often in full possession of his other faculties, and will even endeavour to reason with his attendants, with some apparent plausibility, on the very aberration that constitutes the malady.
The word ‘dæmon’ among the ancients was not considered as specific of an evil spirit; on the contrary, it signified genius, intellect, mind. Δαιμόνιον, from δαίμων, meant wisdom, science. The first notions of dæmons were probably brought from Chaldea, whence they spread amongst the Persians, Egyptians, and Greeks. Gales maintains that the original institution of dæmons was an imitation of the Messiah. The Phœnicians called them Baalim. So far do these early opinions prevail, that among the Anabaptists we find a sect called Dæmoniac, who believe that devils shall be saved at the end of the world.
Plato gave the name of dæmons to the benevolent spirits who regulated the universe. The Chaldeans and Jews considered them as the causes of all human maladies. Saul was agitated by an evil spirit, and Job and Joram suffered under a similar visitation.
Dæmonomania differs widely from the mental disease called Theomania. In the latter state of insanity the patient fancies that he is placed in communication with the Deity or his angels; in the former, he feels convinced that he has become the prey of the destroyer of mankind.