Gems were not only held to exercise a beneficent influence when worn in rings or held in the mouth, but were also administered internally. Amongst the long list of medicines made for Edward I. during his last illness, in 1307, is ‘a comforting electuary made with ambergis, musk, pearls, and jacinths, and pure gold and silver.’ Lower down in the list occurs ‘a precious electuary called Dyacameron,’ and a fifteenth-century book of prescriptions shows that this was composed of ginger, cinnamon, clove, and other spices, black, white, and long pepper, musk, ambergris, ‘the bone of a stag’s heart,’ coral, pure gold, and shavings of ivory, amongst other things. This same book shows a still more elaborate preparation, called ‘The Duke’s Electuary,’ containing fifty ingredients, but mostly herbal, and not so precious or indigestible as these others. These electuaries, which were a kind of medicated sweetmeat, seem to have been taken in large quantities, as Richard de Montpelier, King Edward’s apothecary, prepared over 280 pounds of electuaries made with sugar. These cost a shilling the pound, while Dyacameron ran up to 13s. 4d. the pound, and four ounces of rose comfits (sucurosset) flavoured with pearls and coral cost £3, 13s. 4d. Oriental ambergris to put in the king’s food and in his claret was another expensive item. But all these drugs and all the care of Master Nicholas de Tyngewyk, his physician, of whose skill the king held a high opinion, proved unavailing.
A list of drugs provided for the Scottish expedition in 1323 is chiefly of interest as showing that the virtue of a fine-sounding name for a medicine was recognised some six centuries before Mr. Ponderevo hit on the sonorous Tono-Bungay. Here are some of the items; Oxerocrosium, Diaterascos, Apostolicon, Dyaculon, Ceroneum, Popilion, Agrippa, Gracia Dei—all of them compounds of the patent medicine types; Galbanum, Armoniak, Apoponak, Bedellum, Collofonium, Mastik, and Dragon’s blood—simpler vegetable preparations; Seruse, Calamine, Litharge, and Tutie—which are mineral substances: Tutie being ‘bred of the sparkles of brasen furnaces, whereinto store of the mineral Calamine beaten to dust, hath been cast.’ Of the high-sounding preparations Popilion was so called from its containing poplar leaves; Diaterascos was a plaster compounded of pitch, wax, acetic acid, and various aromatics; Ceroneum was a similar plaster without the acid, containing rather more aromatics and also saffron, aloes, and litharge; and Dyaculon was a third variety of plaster, very remotely, if at all, connected with the adhesive Diachylon plasters of modern times. ‘The oynment that is called Agrippa’ was still used in the fifteenth century for deafness, and at that date Apostolicon was made as follows: Take equal quantities of ‘vermod (wormwood), smallache (water parsley), centori, waybred (? plantain), and the rote of osmond and als muche of egremoyne (agrimony) as of all the others,’ seethe in vinegar and add an ounce of ‘medwax (beeswax) that is multen in woman’s milk’ (a favourite solvent). To this is added alum, galbanum, pitch, and turpentine, and the whole worked up into an ointment. If this is not sufficiently elaborate for your purpose, ‘Her is makyng of Gracia Dei: Take betanye, pympernel and vervayn, of ilkon an handfull, bothe crope and rote, and wasshe hem clene and stamp hem smalle and do hem in a new erthen pote and put therto a galon of white wyne, and if you may get no white wyne take red, and sethe them till yt come to a potell:’ let it cool, strain through canvas, seethe again, and add half-a-pound of ‘gud mede wax, bot loke the wax be molten first, and woman’s milke of knave child and a pond of rosyn and a pond of gome litarge and a pond of galbanum and a pond of popanelke (? opoponax) and a pond of arestolog rotundum (birth-wort) and an unce of mastike wel poudred,’ stir well and then ‘do als mykill baume (balsam) als weies a peny and a ferthyng and lete it sethe whil you may say iij Miserere mei deus all the hole salme’; take off the fire, add gum turpentine, and stir till melted, strain and skim off any dirt with a feather. When cold it should be worked up between the hands until it becomes of sticky consistency, it is then to be spread on clean linen or leather, and is good for all manner of sores that be perilous. There is another method of preparing Gracia Dei which was used by ‘Hopkyn of the fermory of Killyngworth,’ that is to say in the infirmary at Kenilworth Priory, and a third, devised by ‘the gude erl of Herforth’ which is much more elaborate, the herbs used being ‘betany, vervayne, pympernel, comfrey, osmond, dayshy, mousher (mouse-ear) weybrede, rib (? rhubarb), milfoile (the yarrow, which in Saxon leechdom seems to have been held good for everything from headaches to snake-bites), centory, anence, violete, flos campi (? campion), smalache, sauge, and egremoyn.’
‘... led through the middle of the city.’
When these simple remedies were not successful recourse could always be had to charms—either sheer pagan gibberish or rhyming prayers and invocations of saints. It was obviously appropriate for the sufferer from toothache to appeal to St. Appolonia, who was tortured by having her teeth broken with a mallet, but it was less obvious why a man with the falling sickness should cut his little finger and write with his blood the names of the three kings, Jasper, Balthazar, and Melchior, on a piece of parchment and hang it round his neck; nor do I know why SS. Nichasius and Cassian should be invoked against any ‘erwig or any worme that is cropyn into a mans bed.’ It was as well in any case to be sure that the charm was genuine, as Roger atte Hache found in 1382. His wife, Joan, being ill, he accepted the word of one Roger Clerk of Wandsworth that he was skilled in medical lore and paid him 12d. to undertake her cure. Clerk took a leaf of parchment out of a book and sewed it up in cloth of gold and bade Joan put it round her neck. When she got no better her husband grew suspicious and summoned Clerk for fraud. Clerk, being asked to explain the value of the piece of parchment, said that it was a good charm for fever and contained the words ‘Anima Christi sanctifica me’ and other similar pious expressions, but upon examination it was found that there were no such words upon it, and as he proved to be ignorant of physic and illiterate, it was adjudged that he should be led through the middle of the city, with trumpets and pipes, riding on a horse without a saddle, with the parchment and a whetstone (the recognised symbol of a liar) hung round his neck, and in front of him the unseemly emblem of the medical profession.
V
THOSE IN AUTHORITY
It is a common delusion, or, not to beg the question before producing evidence, a common opinion, that England in olden times, by which I mean that vague period when all words were spelled with an ‘e’ at their end and most with a ‘y’ in the middle, was a ‘merrie’ place. This idea is held not only by the laudatores temporis acti, who find it safer to repine for a past which can never be recovered than to enthuse over a future which may arrive and prove disappointing, but also by those energetic persons who set out to make the world enjoy itself and imagine that their schemes for compulsory happiness will really only restore a lost gaiety to the nation. Life in the Middle Ages was undoubtedly more highly coloured, more varied, more picturesque, but that it was merrier is at least a doubtful assumption. As the life of a people is reflected in their arts, we may compare the life of the Middle Ages to the quaint, irregular lines of some unimproved village street, or to the older parts of such towns as Winchester and Guildford, and contrast it with the mid-Victorian era, the flattest and dullest of all periods, as typified by Brixton, or with the frivolity of the present day, portrayed in the outbreak of terra-cotta and white wood flimsinesses all over the country. But the picture is not complete. In the background, behind the straight sameness of ‘Alma Terrace,’ or the quirked and joggled sameness of ‘Mafeking Avenue,’ lies nothing more terrible than the ‘desirable residence’ or the ‘eligible mansion.’ Behind your picturesque old-world cottages frowns the shadow of the feudal fortress. And, as Huxley remarked to the young man who said that he did not see what difference it would have made to him if his great-grandfather had or had not been a monkey, ‘it must have made a lot of difference to your great-grandmother.’