The first medical practitioners in England, of whom we have any record, were the Druids: these philosophers, theologians and soothsayers, also practised medicine and surgery, and were skilled in anatomy and physic. To add to the veneration in which they were held, to impress the ignorant masses with the idea that they had power with the gods and could prevail, and perhaps to cultivate a belief in the efficacy of the remedies provided, they mingled incantations and charms with their medicaments and nostrums. Their panacea was the mistletoe, cut from the sacred oak, with a consecrated hook of gold held in holy hands, on a mysterious night when the propitious beams of the waxing moon fell upon it; wrapped for a while in a sanctified cloth and treasured up in the holy of holies of the woodland god, this strange parasitic growth was deemed possessed of many virtues and was named All-heal. Two other herbs, the selago and samolus were also in those days highly valued for their medicinal efficacy.
To every healing herb a divinity was assigned by the Druids, and the good gods were ever ready to help suffering |2| humanity against the evil genii who presided over the poisonous and unwholesome.
These priests also considered the creeping through tolmens (or perforated stones) good for many diseases. Their best charm, however, was the anguineum, or snake’s egg, produced (’tis said) from the saliva and frothy sweat of a cluster of snakes writhing in a tangled mass, tossed in the air by the fierce hissings of the serpents, and caught ere it fell to the ground in a clean white cloth. A genuine egg, though encased in gold, would float against a running stream and do many another marvel. The Druid seems to have been a herbalist, a believer in the faith or prayer cure, as well as a homœopathist, for in taking the diseased plant, the mistletoe, to cure diseases he anticipated the doctrine of similia similibus curantur.
Even in those old days, according to Tacitus, there were female physicians who competed with the practitioners of the other sex. The wives of the Druids exercised the calling of sorceresses, causing considerable evil by their witchcrafts, but caring for warriors wounded in battle. Later on women seem to have enjoyed a pre-eminence as physicians and surgeons in England. Thus are we told that a “Mayd” treated a wounded “Squyre,”
Meekely shee bowed downe, to weete if life
Yett in his frosen members did remaine;
And, feeling by his pulses beating rife
That the weake sowle her seat did yett retaine,
Shee cast to comfort him with busy paine.