Picturesque compounds.
Some of Gilbert’s over-elaborate compounds possess picturesque names as well, for instance, the potion of St. Paul and the ladder of Hermes.[1583] The latter was composed at Heliopolis on the altar of the sun and written not in letters but figures. It consists of sixty different simples and is called a ladder because the amount of these simples used in the compound is increased step by step. First one takes one ounce each of four simples, then two ounces each of four more, and so on for four species at a time, until the quantity of fifteen ounces is reached and the list of sixty simples is exhausted. This compound is asserted to be beneficial for rather more than fifteen ailments.[1584] Gilbert employs various Salernitan pills and they usually contain from ten to twenty ingredients each.
Empirica and an old-wife’s remedy.
When other remedies fail Gilbert has recourse, like Marcellus, to empirica. One by which many “under our charge” (in manu nostra) who were thought sterile have borne children is as follows.[1585] In the vigil of St. John the Baptist[1586] dig certain herbs by the roots from the earth before the third hour, repeating the Lord’s Prayer thrice and not speaking to anyone going or returning. In silence, too, extract the juice from the herbs and write on a piece of parchment these words, “The Lord said, ‘Increase’ x Uthiboth x ‘and multiply’ x thabechay x ‘and fill the earth’ x amath x.” If the man wears this writing about his neck, a boy will be born; if the woman wears it, a girl. Other empirica employ suffumigations with a tooth of a dead man and an herb that has grown through a hole in a stone. In another passage to aid child-bearing Gilbert recommends the water in which a murderer has washed his hands.[1587] He repeats the good old remedies for gout of binding frogs’ legs or asses’ hoofs or tortoises’ feet upon the patient’s extremities, right on right and left on left, but cites therefor the mysterious authority “Torror,” while “Funeius” is his source for the use of the magnet in the same way. Gilbert states, however, that he has little inclination towards these things, but that it is just as well not to omit what the ancients have said.[1588] In another passage he tells that a certain old woman has freed many persons from jaundice with the cooked juice of the plantagenet.[1589]
Use of red for small-pox: occult virtue.
Gilbert is credited with being the first to mention the employment of red colors in the treatment of small-pox.[1590] It is interesting to note that the passage in which he does this has to do also with the practices of old-wives and with the conception of occult virtue. He writes, “Old women of the countryside give burnt purple in drink, for it has the occult nature of curing variolae. The same is true of dyed cloths.”[1591] Here again therefore we seem to have a real discovery developed from or concealed beneath a bit of experimental magic. John of Gaddesden is said to have used scarlet cloths to cure a son of Edward I of small-pox.
Magical treatment of epilepsy.
The following very magical procedure is used for epilepsy and is called expertissimum.[1592] At the first access of the disease, when the patient falls to the ground, all his clothes except his shirt should be removed and placed at his feet. The nails of all his fingers and toes should next be clipped and wrapped in a cloth. A long white thorn is then to be split and the patient dragged feet first through the cleft as far as his middle. The thorn should then be cut into small bits and placed with the nail parings. Next the patient’s hair should be cut in three places. These clippings of hair and the knife used in the operation are then to be added to the other paraphernalia wrapped in the cloth, and the whole is to be buried underground, and the following words uttered. In the patient’s right ear, “Christ conquers”; in his left ear, “Christ reigns”; and to his face, “Christ commands.” Others perform the ceremony differently, cutting the patient’s shoe latchet into four pieces and burying them in the form of a cross at his head, feet, and either hand with some of his nails and hair. And the names of the three kings—that is, the Magi who came to adore Christ—should be worn about his neck.
Poisons and snake oil.
Gilbert’s account of poisons repeats such usual statements as that the saliva of a fasting man is poison for snakes,[1593] that the viper deposits its venom on a stone by the shore when entering the water to have commerce with the fish, and that there was a girl fed on poison who caused the deaths of kings who loved her and whose saliva killed animals who approached her.[1594] Gilbert cites for the last “Ruffus,” however, and not the Secret of Secrets. A medicinal unguent is made by cutting off the heads and tails of snakes, as in Galen’s directions for preparing theriac, and distilling an oil from them.[1595]