Instances of early medieval additions to ancient medicine.
A good instance of the working over by men of the early medieval period of the medical writings of the late Roman period is provided by a manuscript of the ninth or tenth century at Berlin.[2869] It now consists of a number of fragments whose original order can no longer be determined. These are made up of extracts from different sources or from other collections, but the collection also bears the mark of its last compiler who has introduced new remedies of his own and words derived from the vernacular of his day. Even extracts on fevers taken from the old Latin adaptation of Galen[2870] are added to by some Christian physician, who introduces among other things some incantations, such as, “I adjure you, spots, that you go away and recede from and be destroyed from the eye of the servant of God.”[2871] The manuscript also comprises more than one tract on how dreams or the fate of the patient or child born can be foretold from the day of the moon.[2872] Another tract[2873] tells how God made the first man out of eight parts, of which the first was the mud of the earth and the last the light of the world. This would seem to be rather a novel departure from the usual four element theory but perhaps involves ancient Gnostic error. The author further argues that individual divergences of character depend upon the preponderance of one or another of the eight constituents of the body.
Leech-Book of Bald and Cild.
The Anglo-Saxon Leech-Book of Bald and Cild[2874] has been called “the first medical treatise written in western Europe which can be said to belong to modern history.”[2875] It was produced in the tenth century. However, it extracts a good deal from late Greek medical writers, such as Paul of Aegina and Alexander of Tralles, and cites Pliny, “the mickle leech,” for the cure of baldness by application of dead bees burnt to ashes,[2876] a remedy also found in the Euporista ascribed to Galen. On the whole, however, it uses parts of animals somewhat less than Pliny, although sometimes a powdered earthworm is recommended, or a man stung by an adder is to drink holy water in which a black snail has been washed, or the bite of a viper is to be smeared with ear-wax while thrice repeating “the prayer of Saint John.”[2877] And a man about to engage in combat is advised to eat swallow nestlings boiled in wine.[2878] Herbs are as useful against a woman’s tongue as birds against a foeman’s steel, for we are told: “Against a woman’s chatter; taste at night fasting a root of radish; that day the chatter cannot harm thee.”[2879] There are directions for plucking herbs similar to those in Pliny,[2880] and the significance which he ascribed to cart ruts is paralleled by the injunction, after one has treated a venomous bite by striking five scarifications, one on the bite and four around it, to “throw the blood with a spoon silently over a wagon way.”[2881] Eight virtues of the stone agate are enumerated.[2882]
Magical procedure and incantations.
Not only such occult virtues of animals, vegetables, and minerals, but also magical procedure and incantations abound in the work. In a prescription “for flying venom and every venomous swelling” butter is to be churned on a Friday from the milk of a “neat or hind all of one color,” and a litany, paternoster, and incantation of strange words are to be repeated nine times each.[2883] A great deal of superstitious use is made of such Christian symbols, names, and forms of prayer as the sign of the cross, the names of the four evangelists, and masses, psalms, and exorcisms. Fear of witchcraft and enchantment is manifested, and the ills both of man and beast are frequently attributed to evil spirits. “A drink for a fiend-sick man” is on one occasion “to be drunk out of a church bell,” with the accompaniment of much additional ecclesiastical hocus-pocus.[2884] “If a horse is elf-shot, then take the knife of which the haft is horn of a fallow ox, and on which are three brass nails. Then write upon the horse’s forehead Christ’s mark, and on each of the limbs which thou may feel at. Then take the left ear; prick a hole in it in silence. This thou shalt do; then take a yerd, strike the horse on the back, then it will be whole. And write upon the horn of the knife these words, Benedicite omnia opera domini dominum. Be the elf what it may, this is mighty for him to amends.”[2885]
A superstitious compound.
Neither Bald and Cild nor their continuator shared Pliny’s prejudice against compound medicines. In the third book by the continuator is described “a salve against the elfin race and nocturnal visitors, and for women with whom the devil hath carnal commerce.” One takes the ewe hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort, lupin, ashthroat, henbane, harewort, viper’s bugloss, heatherberry plants, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and fennel. These herbs are put in a vessel and placed beneath the altar where nine masses are sung over them. They are then boiled in butter and mutton fat; much holy salt is added; the salve is strained through a cloth; and what remains of the worts is thrown into running water. The patient’s forehead and eyes are to be smeared with this ointment and he is further to be censed with incense and signed often with the sign of the cross.[2886]
Summary.
The “modern” character of Bald’s and Cild’s book cannot be said to have produced any diminution of superstition as against the writings of antiquity. But we do find native herbs introduced, also popular medicine, and probably a considerable amount of Teutonic and perhaps also Celtic folk -lore, which, however, has been more or less Christianized. Indeed the connection between medicine and religion is remarkably close.