AN ALCHEMIST’S LABORATORY
From MS. Add. in British Museum. 10,302.
If the physician of the ninth century believed in relics and holy water, his successor of the fourteenth century placed his reliance mainly on astrology. He was a learned man; he had read all the authors enumerated by Chaucer; he had also read all that was necessary to make an astrologer. This branch of medical science was of the highest importance. “A Physician”—see Skeat’s Notes to the Canterbury Tales, ...—“must take heed and advyse hym of a certain thing, that faileth not, nor deceyveth, the which thing the Astronomer of Egypt taught, that by conjunction of the Moone with sterres fortunate cummeth dreadful sickness to good end: and with contrary Planets falleth the contrary, that is, to evill ende.” The physician therefore treated his patient with reference to fortunate hours. This was “magik naturel” as opposed to magic forbidden. Also when he framed images of wax for his patient, making them at a fortunate moment. He also understood what were considered the four elementary qualities—hot, moist, cold, dry,—the mixture of these qualities determined the nature of a man. The physician, it will be observed, did not keep or sell his own drugs; for that purpose he went to the apothecaries, who were distinguished from the physicians chiefly by their ignorance as to the astrological part of medicine they knew—that is, the power and use of the drugs they imported, collected, and sold, but they did not know the proper moment of administering them. The physician observed diet very carefully; he was dressed in a manner which proclaimed the high opinion he entertained of his importance, and he believed in aurum potabile, gold that could be administered as a medicine.
In another place (Knight’s Tale), Chaucer describes in general terms the medical treatment of the time:—
“Al were they sore y-hurt, and namely oon,
That with a spere was thirled his brest boon.
To othere woundes, and to broken armes,
Some hadden salves and some hadden charmes
Fermacies of herbes, and eek save
They dronken.”