Holding in his hand the bones with which these unfortunates were compelled to signal their approach from a distance. From a window in the cathedral of Bourges (thirteenth century).
Leprosy is a terrible scourge. Its nature is misunderstood. Often severe but curable cases of eczema are confounded therewith, and harmless victims are condemned to a death in life—perpetual banishment to filthy cabins in the woods. Cholera and smallpox every now and then break out in a neighborhood, and they are almost always fatal. Nothing really can be done to check them except to pray to the saints. Such diseases are (say the best informed) communicated "in the air"; consequently any ordinary isolation is useless. On the whole, they ravage the villages more than they do the castles, though hardly because the castle folk are able to take more effective physic. Yet often enough a baron and his entire family may be swept away. Very seldom is it suggested that pure water, cleanliness, and rational schemes of isolation can accomplish much to defeat the apparent desire of heaven to devastate an entire duchy.
Other diseases are fearfully common. The sufferers from nervous complaints make up small armies. The general terrors and wars of the times, the brooding fears of the devil, hell, and the eternal torment, the spectacle of the fearful punishments, and, on the other hand, the sheer ennui of life in many castles and in certain ill-ruled convents, drive men and women out of their wits. Such sufferers are lucky if they are treated with kindness and are not, as being "possessed of devils," clapped in a dungeon.
Finally, it should be said that lucky is the mother who does not have one-third to one-half of all her offspring die in the act of birth. Every entrance of a babe into the world is a dice throwing with death, even if the mid-wife is clever. Once born, the children are likely to be so injured in the initiatory process that they will be physically imperfect or dangerously weakened. This is true even in the royal families; how much more true in the peasant huts! It is not surprising that the average man of the Feudal Ages can give and sustain hard blows. Only the strongest have been able to survive the ordeals of birth and childhood.
To fight these dangers, one must invoke both human and divine aid. Good Christians usually feel that the healing saints avail more than do physicians or wise women. If you have indigestion, invoke St. Christopher; if dropsy, St. Eutropius; if fever, St. Petronila; for the pest, St. Roch; for insanity, St. Mathurin; for kidney complaint, St. René; for cramps, St. Crampan—and so with many other ills. Nevertheless, one need not trust solely to prayers. Only great people, however, employ regular physicians (mires). Villeins commonly have in a "good woman," much better than a sorcerer. The breath of an ass drives poison from a body. The touch of a dead man's tooth cures toothache. If you have a nosebleed, seize the nose with two straws shaped like a cross. If the itch troubles you, roll yourself naked in a field of oats. Georges, the peasant, will tell you that such remedies seldom fail.
A local professor of the healing art is Maître Denis, the executioner. Since he knows so well how to mutilate bodies, he ought to be able to understand the converse process of curing them. He has wide reputation as a healer of broken bones, and he often sells his patients a panacea for multifarious ills—"the fat of a man just hung."
There is at least this to be said for the peasants: the science of their healers will agree almost as much with that of later physicians as does that of the contemporary "physicians" themselves. The Church has not given any too great encouragement to medicine. The mighty St. Ambrose has said that the proper healing is by prayers and vigils. Only clerics of the inferior orders are allowed to study medical science, and the dissection of dead bodies is decidedly discountenanced.[82]
At the castle the ordinary functionary to abate bodily ills is Maître Louis, the baron's barber. When not scraping chins, he was very likely giving the castle folk their monthly bleedings, without which it is very hard to keep one's health. The bleedings take place, if possible, in the great hall near the fire, and are undergone regularly by both sexes. When the St. Aliquis forces are called to war, Maître Louis goes with them as barber-surgeon, and he really has considerable skill in setting fractures and cauterizing and salving wounds, as well as with a few powerful drugs—mostly purgatives—which probably help those of his patients who have the strongest constitutions to recover.
Professional Physicians
When one of the baron's own family is seriously sick, it is usual to send to Pontdebois for a professional physician. About two years ago Conon himself fell into a fever. They brought to him Maître Payen, who claimed to have learned his art as mire by travel among the schools of medicine—at Salerno in Sicily, at Montpellier in the Languedoc country, and even at Cordova among the Infidels, although the baron swore angrily (after he was gone) that he had never been nearer any of these places than Paris.