Was Salernitan medicine free from superstition?
The notion, too, that the Salernitan or early medieval Latin medical practice was sound and straightforward and sensible and free from the superstition with which the holders of this opinion represent Arabic and later medieval medicine as overburdened, is also probably illusory. We have already seen evidence of rather extreme superstition in early medieval Latin medicine which shows no trace of Arabic influence, and the medical practitioners of Salerno are sometimes represented in the sources as empiricists or old-wives. The place was peculiarly noted for its female practitioners, of whom more anon; and one of the earliest mentions of a physician of Salerno is the account in Richer’s chronicle[2923] of the mutual poisoning of two rival physicians in 946 A. D. Here the Salernitan is described as lacking in Latin book-knowledge and skilful from natural talent and much experience. He was the queen’s favorite physician, but was worsted by another royal physician, Bishop Deroldus, in a debate which the king, Louis IV, instituted in order to find out “which of them knew more of the natures of things.” The defeated Salernitan then “prepared sorcery” and tried to poison the bishop, who cured himself with theriac and secretly poisoned his rival in turn. The Salernitan was then reduced to the humiliating position of being forced to beseech the prelate to cure him, but in his case the theriac only drove the poison into his foot, which had to be amputated by a surgeon. This tale, be it true or not, suggests that there were good Latin physicians and surgeons outside of Salerno at an early date as well as that Salernitan medicine was far from being free from magic and empiricism.
The Practica of Petrocellus.
It is fairer, however, to judge Salerno by its own best written productions rather than by the stories of perhaps jealous northerners, and we may note Payne’s comparison of the Practica of Petrocellus,[2924] written probably in the early eleventh century, with the earlier Leech-Book of Bald and Cild. Selected recipes, it may first be said, were translated from the Practica into Anglo-Saxon.[2925] Dr. Payne was impressed by “the complete freedom of the former from the magic and superstition which tainted the Anglo-Saxon and all other European medicine of the time.” Payne noted that the compounds of Petrocellus contained fewer ingredients, and regarded the Salernitan selection of drugs as “more intelligent.” The Salernitan formulae are “clear, simple, and written on a uniform system which implies traditional skill and culture.”[2926] “The pharmacy is generally very simple; and, as might be expected, there is an entire absence of charms and superstitious rites.”[2927] Such simplicity, however, is at best a negative sort of virtue; and we wonder if this early specimen of the School of Salerno is free from elaborate superstition for the very reason that the work is simple and elementary. The less medicine, the less superstition perhaps. Moreover, superstition is not quite absent, since Payne himself quotes the following recipe: “For those who cannot see from sunrise to sunset.... This is the leechcraft which thereto belongeth. Take a kneecap of a buck[2928] and roast it, and, when the roast sweats, then take the sweat and therewith smear the eyes, and after that let him eat the same roast; and then take fresh asses’ dung and squeeze it, and smear the eyes therewith, and it will soon be better with them.”[2929]
Its sources.
Petrocellus is thought to have used Greek writings directly without the intermediary of Arabic versions.[2930] He says in the introductory letter which opens the Practica that he reduces to brief form in the Latin language those “authors who have culled the dogmas of all cases from Greek places.”[2931] But these words might be taken to indicate that he has used Greek sources only indirectly, while the fact that the person to whom the work is addressed is called “dearest son” and “sweetest son” is rather in the style of Arabian and Hebrew medieval writers. He goes on to assure this person that everything in the work has been tested by experience and that nothing should be added to or subtracted from it.
Fourfold origin of medicine.
This introductory epistle also embodies an account of the origin of medicine which, while not exactly superstitious, is quite in the usual naïve and uncritical style so often employed by both ancient and medieval writers in treating of a distant past. Apollo and his son Esculapius, Asclepius and “Ypocras” are named as the four founders of the medical art. Apollo discovered methoyca, which presumably means methodism, but which Petrocellus proceeds to identify with surgery. Esculapius invented empirica, which is described as pharmacy rather than empiricism, although perhaps the distinction is slight. Asclepius founded loyca, which is probably meant for the dogmatic school. Hippocrates’ contribution was theoperica, which may mean therapeutics but is further described as the prognostication or “prevision of diseases.” It is in this same introductory epistle that Petrocellus makes the division of the brain into three cells of which we spoke in the chapter on Arabic occult science. Besides distinguishing the three cells as phantastic, logical, and mnemonic, he adds that good and evil are distinguished in the middle cell and that the soul is in the posterior one.
Therapeutics of Petrocellus.
In the Practica proper the method of Petrocellus is to take up one disease at a time, tell what the Greeks call it, and briefly describe it, sometimes listing its symptoms or causes, but devoting most of his space to such methods of curing it as diet and bleeding, simples and compounds. I saw no instance of astrological medicine nor of resort to amulets and incantations in the version published by Renzi from a twelfth century manuscript at Paris. But in a fragment of the work from a Milan manuscript where twenty-six lines are devoted to the treatment of epilepsy instead of but seven as in the other text,[2932] one is advised to use antimony in the holy water “which the Greeks bless on Epiphany” and to chant the Lord’s Prayer three times. If this passage be a later addition, it shows that Petrocellus was less inclined to superstitious methods than others and that his injunction that nothing should be subtracted from or added to his work was not well observed. But in any case it illustrates my previous point that the more medicine, the more superstition. In twenty-six lines on epilepsy one is much more likely to find something superstitious than in seven. Indeed, the treatment of epilepsy was so generally superstitious that my recollection is that any account of it of any considerable length which I have seen in medieval writings contained some superstition. In fact, even if Petrocellus wrote the longer passage, he could be praised for having resorted to charms and formulae only in the case of that mysterious disease.