Resemblances to Egerton 821.
There then is introduced rather abruptly an account of the medicinal virtues of the vulture almost identical with that in the British Museum manuscript. Once again, too, herbs are to be plucked with repetition of the Lord’s Prayer.[2913] The use of characters to prevent a slaughtered pig from bleeding is introduced somewhat otherwise than in the other manuscript. Having first recommended as a cure for human sufferers from flux of blood the binding about the abdomen of a parchment inscribed with the characters in question, the author adds, “And if you don’t believe it, write them on a knife and kill a pig with it, and you will see no blood flow from the wound.”[2914]
Virtues of blood.
Considerable medicinal use is made of blood in this treatise. For cataract is recommended instilling in the eye the blood which flows from a certain worm (oudehsam?) when “you cut it in two near the tail.”[2915] To break the stone one employs goat’s blood caught in a glass vessel in a waning moon and dried eight days in the sun together with the pulverized skin of a rabbit caught in a waning moon and roasted over marble. These are to be mixed in wine and given in the name of the Lord to the patient to drink while he is in the bath.[2916] Another remedy consists of three drops of the milk of a woman nursing a male child given in a raw egg to the patient without his knowledge.[2917]
Pious incantations and magical procedure.
The work abounds in characters and in incantations which consist either of seemingly meaningless words or of Biblical phrases and allusions. These are very much like those in the manuscripts already considered and are often accompanied by elaborate procedure. For example, the prayer, “O Lord, spare your servant N., so that chastised with deserved stripes he may rest in your mercy,” is to be written on five holy wafers which are then to be placed on the five wounds of a figure of Christ on a crucifix. The patient is to approach barefoot, eat the wafers, and say: “Almighty God, who saved all the human race, save me and free me from these fevers and from all my languors. By God Christ was announced, and Christ was born, and Christ was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and Christ was placed in a manger, and Christ was circumcised, and Christ was adored by the Magi, and Christ was baptized, and Christ was tempted, and Christ was betrayed, and Christ was flogged, and Christ was spat upon, and Christ was given gall and vinegar to drink, and Christ was pierced with a lance, and Christ was crucified, and Christ died, and Christ was buried, and Christ rose again, and Christ ascended unto heaven. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Jesus, rising from the synagogue, entered the house of Simon. Moreover, Simon’s daughter was sick with a high fever. And they entreated Him on her behalf. And standing over her He commanded the fever and it departed.”[2918] To cure epilepsy an interesting combination of scriptural incantation and rather unusual magic procedure is recommended. Before the attack comes on, the words of the Gospel of Matthew, “Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert; and angels came and ministered unto Him,” are to be written on a wooden tablet with some black substance which will wash off readily. Then, when the fit comes on, this writing is to be washed off into a vessel with still water and given to the patient to drink in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “If you do this three times, God helping the patient will be cured.”[2919]
More superstitious veterinary practice.
Our manuscript further resembles Egerton 821 of the British Museum in containing remedies for beast as well as man. If a horse suffers from over-eating, one should learn his name and procure some hazel rods. Then one is to whisper in his right ear an incantation consisting of outlandish words accompanied by the Lord’s Prayer, and is to bind his thighs and feet with the rods. This ceremony, too, is to be repeated thrice.[2920]
The School of Salerno.
We now come to the consideration of treatises supposed to have been produced by the school of medicine at Salerno. But not only are the origins of the so-called School of Salerno “veiled in impenetrable obscurity,”[2921] much of its later history is scarcely less uncertain, and it is no easy matter to say what men and what writings may be properly called Salernitan, or when they lived or were composed. The manuscripts of Salernitan writings seem to have been found more frequently north of the Alps than in Italian libraries. It would perhaps be carrying scepticism too far to doubt if medicine developed much earlier or more rapidly at Salerno than elsewhere, since it seems certain that the town was famous for its physicians at an early date, and that we have medical writings of Salernitans produced in the early eleventh century. But one is inclined to view with some scepticism the assumption of historians of medicine[2922] that the word Salernitan represents a separate body of doctrine, or of method in practice, which may be sharply distinguished from Arabic medicine or from later medieval medicine as affected by Arabic influence. Rather the medical literature and practice of Salerno is an integral and scarcely distinguishable part of medieval medicine as a whole. Many Salernitan treatises themselves belong to the later medieval period, and very few of them can be shown to antedate Constantinus Africanus, whose translations seem to mark the beginning of Arabic influence. And on the other hand there are equally early medieval medical treatises, such as those we have hitherto been considering, which are not Salernitan and yet show no sign of Arabic influence. Thus the word Salernitan cannot accurately be identified with a first period of medieval Latin medicine based upon early or Neo-Latin translations of Greek medical authors and upon independent medical practice. Such activity was not confined to Salerno. But if we so employ the word Salernitan for a moment, there seems no reason for thinking that such a development would be very different from the Arabic and Byzantine continuations of Greek medicine. A place so open to Saracen and Byzantine influence as the coast of southern Italy is hardly the spot where we should look for a totally distinct medical development, and the influence of Celtic and Teutonic folk-lore upon medical practice would presumably be more felt north of the Alps. And it is to Salerno that Constantinus Africanus, the earliest known importer of Arabic medicine, comes.