•LlbKAKV 
 
 !>0 
 
 'UNIVERVa 
 
 
 
 ■LiBKAii 
 
 LiibKAi;
 
 MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 DURING THE 
 
 MIDDLE AGES: 
 
 A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS, 
 
 FROM THE TIME OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO THE 
 
 CLOSE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE F. FORT, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE 
 
 EARLY HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF FREEMASONRY. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 J. W. BOUTON, 706 BROADWAY. 
 
 LONDON : 
 B. QUARITCH, 15 PICCADILLY. 
 
 1883.
 
 Copyright, 1883. 
 
 INC^UIREK P. * I>. CO. 
 
 PRINTERS, 
 
 LANCASTER, PA.
 
 iJ 'J.V.J. 
 
 ..::^'7 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN its general purpose the object of the treatise now published 
 under the preceding title may be stated to be an historical in- 
 quiry into the practical effect upon social life throughout the period 
 traversed, of that singular credence which involved preternatural 
 agencies. Perhaps no portion of society of the Middle Ages reveals 
 greater susceptibility to these curious influences than that appertain- 
 ing to the preservation and restoration of bodily vigor. 
 
 It is especially the tendency of this disquisition to elucidate, so 
 far as was deemed commensurate with the design of the work, the 
 more significant relationship existing — as understood in the period 
 designated — between supernal or angelic puissance and the human 
 or physical constitution. Conclusions reached and indications 
 drawn within the limits of the subject thus marked, will, it is be- 
 lieved, be found fully substantiated by reference to marginal anno- 
 tations. 
 
 The labor required to collect, investigate, and suitably arrange 
 indispensable material, will doubtless suggest itself to the reader. 
 This toil was largely increased on account of the author's profes- 
 sion — to the bar — oftentimes necessitating his vigilant attention 
 elsewhere ; although the gi eater part of the authorities quoted, con- 
 stituting an essential portion of his private collection, to some ex- 
 tent modified the more onerous perplexities of the task. In addition 
 to these, through the courtesy of the officials of the British Museum, 
 the writer was enabled to pursue his researches among the accumu- 
 lations in that institution. 
 
 The scope of the work includes the narration of medical art 
 under the Roman Emperors to Galen's time, and the modifying 
 
 (iii)
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 influences of the Alexandrine Schools in producing a regular system 
 of magic cures. The progress of this interesting phenomenon, as a 
 moralistic episode of the Middle Ages, concurrent with ancient 
 medical text-books in the cloisters, and the gradual development of 
 the science, aided by Arabic erudition in the Italian Universities, 
 together with alchemy and astrology, are also subjected to careful 
 scrutiny. Among other features of this history are treatises on the 
 curative power of gems, incantations, etc., an elaboration of the 
 condition and attempts to reform abandoned women at the several 
 epochs, and curious facts touching the status of physicians of both 
 sexes. 
 
 In the several appendices subjoined will be found original and 
 ancient records used in the preparation of the text, and reproduced 
 in full for more extended use. A complete analytical and subjective 
 index concludes the work, in order to facilitate its utility. 
 
 George F. Fort.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE. 
 Conquest of Greece by Rome attracts Grecian Artists to the Metropolis — 
 Arrival of Medical Men — Their Depraved Character — Romans Imitate the 
 Hellenistic Medical Art — Its Use Claimed by Priesthood — Curative force 
 of Number 3 — Cato's Hatred of Greek Medicine — Inhuman Surgery of 
 Archagathus — Immunities to Physicians in the Julian Age — Aesclepiades 
 Celebrated Founder of a School of Medicine — Royal Rescript Favors the 
 Professors of this Art — Thessalus and his Troop of Ambulatory Artificers 
 — Hospitals — Celsus' Encyclopedia of Medicine — Professors of this Art 
 Charged with Unscrupulous Deportment — Imperial Ordinance Published 
 to Correct this — Compensation how to be Paid — The Free System — Re- 
 script Reafhrmed in the year 321 — The Archiatri i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Galen : His Beneficial Influence on Medicine — Its Deplorable State Prior to 
 his Time — Arrests a Complete Downfall — Degeneration of the Empire at 
 this Epoch— Galen, a Native of Pergamos, in the Second Century — First 
 Studies Philosophy — Is Directed by a Dream to Devote Himself to Medi- 
 cine — Goes to Alexandria for Anatomical Instruction — Is Domiciled at 
 Rome — Excites Envy of the Professors There — Leaves this City on Ac- 
 count of their Indignities — No Complete Method before his Day — Galen 
 Conversa.nt with Mosaic Doctrines — Revered with Honors almost Divine . 29 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Alexandrine Schools, and How They Affected the Curative Art — Early 
 Organized — Literary Aggregation of Alexandria — The Writings of Medi- 
 cal Sages Preserved in the Great Library — Collections for this Pursuit 
 Made by the Ptolemies — Study of Natural History at Alexandria — Zoolog- 
 ical Garden — Erudite Professor of Medical Science at Alexandria — Loss 
 to this Art by the Conflagration of the Library there — Cleopatra's Skill in 
 Medicine — Botanical Studies — Decline of the Alexandrine Schools, and 
 its Cause— Rival Sects of Christianity — Disastrous Effects Produced by 
 
 These upon Medical Art 4- 
 
 (V)
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. PAGE. 
 
 Belief in Direct Demoniacal Influences— Adopted by the Christian Church 
 — Debasing Effect on Medicine — The Angelic Hierarchy and Its Special 
 Attributes — Power Over Earth and Its Denizens — Satanic Potency and 
 His Subordinates — Cause Sickness and Pain— Talmud and the Cabbala — 
 Rabbinical Lore and its Effect on Medicine — Potential Forces of Words- 
 Expel Disease — Development of INIagic Cures — Incantations by Hebrew 
 Letters ^4 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Christian Philosophers Influenced by the Cabbala — The Chaldaic System and 
 Magic Art Avowed by the Fathers — Treatise on Magic by Noah's Son — 
 Used to Avert Pestilence — Schools for Such Instruction in Alexandria — 
 The Curative Power of Apollonius the Magician — Spirits Invoked by 
 Occult Rites-^Cure Bodily ills — Care Prescribed in these Operations — 
 Theurgic Arts — Chaldaic Soothsayers Accorded Profound Insight into 
 Metals, Plants, etc. — Resemble Mediaeval Alchemists — Egyptian Incanta- 
 tions of Special Force Against Sickness — High Charges of these Practi- 
 tioners — Such Curatives the Basis of Subsequent Saintly Remedies — 
 Power of Names — Of Angels — Translated Chaldaic Names Lose their 
 Force — Jao or Jehovah — Pagans Use it to Cure 80 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Apollonius Claimed as Inventor of Magic Cures — His Marvellous Success — 
 Amulets Introduced as Preventatives Against Disease — Engraven with 
 Figures as Remedies — Gnosticism Developed this System — The Abraxas 
 Gems — Potency Increased by Ephesian Letters — Raphael as an Angel of 
 Cure — Medical Property of Abracadabra — Metrical Treatise on its Puis- 
 sance — Remedial Power of Certain Minerals— How Used and When Worn 
 as Charms — Decline of Classical Letters Provoked a Deterioration of Arts 
 and Sciences 93 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Antagonism of Angels of Light and of Darkness — All Diseases Spring from 
 the Evil Principle — Magic Avowed as a Science by the Church — Potency 
 to Cure of Cross Sign — Metrical Panegyric of this Curative — Early Use of 
 Reliques for Remedies Against Maladies — Puissance of a Wax Pellet — 
 Amulets Written on Parchment by Saints — Formula of Exorcising the 
 Principle of Disease — Amulets Against Bodily Infirmities Transplanted 
 from Paganism — Good and Evil as Attributes of Angels Applied to in the 
 Sortes or Hazards — Rescripts Forbid Chaldaic Art, etc., in the Cure of 
 Maladies — Imperial Ordinance Affords Security to Practitioners of Magic 
 Medicine — Laws of the Wisigoths Recognize the Force of Magic to Cause 
 Disease 106
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 vu 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. PAGE. 
 
 Schools of Medicine in Alexandria After Galen — Professors of this xVrt En- 
 gage in Imperial Politics — Are Befriended by the Emperors of Rome — 
 Altered Condition of Alexandrine Art and Scientific Institutions — Medical 
 Culture Pursued There to the Mohammedan Conquest — This Art Main- 
 tained to a High Degree — Scientists in the IVth Century Vivisect Crimi- 
 nals — Treatises of Professors in Constantine's Time — Pharmaceutical 
 Knowledge of the Illustrious lonicus — His Surgery — The Eclecticism of the 
 Great Oribasius — Poisons — Strange Malady or Mania Described by Oriba- 
 sius — Opium Used as a Narcotic by Polytheistic Physicians — Cabbalistic 
 Conjurations Favored by Professors of Medicine — Fomial Division of 
 Magic into Medical or Curative Branches — Curative Properties of Gems, etc. 1 1 6 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Edicts Touching the Practice of Medicine in Rome — Laws of Valentinus of 
 The Fourth Century — Their Influence in the Western .Empire — Impotent 
 to Revive the Science — Treatise of a Gallic Professor — Avows Preternatu- 
 ral Cures — Other Gallic Medicists — Belief in Potency of Words — Disciples 
 of the .^sculapian Art — Prostration of Medical Science at this Epoch — 
 Curious Attestation of this Downfall — Charlatans Obtain Royal Favor — All 
 Maladies Traced to Supernatural Sources — Babylonian Characters of Great 
 Force — Era of TheodoriC the Gothic Ruler — Paucity of Famous Professors 
 at this Time — Gothic Disposition to Favor Medical Organization — Sched- 
 ule of Charges Allowed — Penalty of Death for Stupid Surgery — Ecclesias- 
 tical Medicists — Organization of Hospitals 129 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Monastic Institutions — Beneficial Effects in Preserving Art, etc. — Rapid 
 Degradation of Society in the Fifth Century — Monasteries Established 
 under Protection of Civil Law — Various Convents Constructed in Gaul — 
 Cultivate Medical Studies — Benedictine Monks — Conventual Infirmary — 
 Saintly Cures Fostered by the Cloisters — Exorcism of Diseases by Saints 
 — Miracles — Legends of Power of Martyrs 146 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Age of Charlemagne — His Enlightened Policy — Introduces Discipline in the 
 Monasteries — Liberal Arts and Sciences Regulated by the Chartularies — 
 The Emperor Adverse to Medical Attendance — His Israelitish Surgeon 
 — Saracen Gift of Medicaments to the Gallic Ruler — Founding of the Cel- 
 ebrated Monte Cassino — Its Great Services to Medicine — Noted Medical 
 Scholiasts of this Cloister — Nucleus of a Library of Medicine There — This 
 Art Pursued in Italian Monasteries under the Carlovingians — -Teutonic 
 Laws on Surgical Evidence — Social Status of Surgeons Recognized by 
 Edicts of Gothic Kings — Medicinal Art to be Taught in Monastic Schools 
 — Phlebotomy or Conventual Blood-letting 162
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. PAGE 
 
 Nature of Medical Culture Among Ancient Germans — Controlled by Sacer- 
 doty — Healing Virtues Attributed to the Mandragora — Used with Runic 
 Characters — Publicly Sold at Fairs — Magic Power of these EfiFigies — Magic 
 Ligations, Potions, etc., for Herds and Men — Teutonic Women Skilled in 
 Medicine — Curative Virtue of the Runes — Toxicology — Storm-Evokers or 
 Tempestarii — Profession of Curative Art Recognized at an Early Age — 
 Pagan Word for Surgeon — Ambulatory Physicians — Archaism of Germanic 
 Medical Derivatives — Formulas for Cure, of Ancient Magicians — Virgins 
 Specially Adapted to the Healing Art — Cure of Luxations 178 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Survival of Paganism in Christianity Affects Medical Economy — Abjuration 
 Formulas Recognize Supernatural Forces — Norse Deities of Avowed Per- 
 sonality — Index of Pagan Superstitions as Proscribed — Includes a System 
 of Curatives — Effigies of Medicinal Usage — Sortilege to Evoke Pestilence 
 — Such Remedies Characterized by the Ecclesiastics as " Execrabile" — 
 Sanitary Amulets — Ligatures, or Charmed Remedial Surgery — Preternat- 
 ural Virtue Recognized by the Chartulaiies of the Eighth Century — Pro- 
 gress of Saintly Cures — Great Faith in Reliquaries — Trade of Venetians in 
 Reliques — Theft of — Source of Wealth to Cloisters — Their Medical Pro- 
 perties '. 201 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Rise and Progress of Saint Gall — Its Influence on Art and Medical Culture 
 — Lazaretto for Lepers Early in the Ninth Centuiy at this Cloister — Gar- 
 dens for Botanical and Pharmaceutical 1 urposes — Hraban Maur Digests 
 in the Ninth Century a Glossary of Physiology in the Native Idiom for 
 Teutonic Students — Collection of Medical MSS. by His Monastery in the 
 Early Ages — Noted Professor of this Art — His Knowledge of Chemistry 
 — Miracle Cures — Curious Means of Preserving Infant Life — Precious 
 Relics — Sources of Monastic Affluence 215 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Monastery of Salerno — Celebrated for its Medical School in the Ninth Cen- 
 tury — Contest of Duplicity and Poison between a Bishop and a Salernite 
 Professor — MSS. of Hippocrates and Galen Carried in Journeys by Monks 
 —A Youthful Cleric and Medicel Student — Monkish Professor of this Art 
 —Progress of the Celebrity of Salerno in the Tenth and Eleventh Centu- 
 ries—Doubtful Methods of Increasing this Fame — A Monopoly of Cura- 
 tives Established by Force — Imperial Sufferers Seek Remedies There — 
 Metrical Version of Hygienic Advice to an English King — Archbishop as 
 Skilled Surgeon — Professional Writers of this Age — Avocation of Medi- 
 cine Exclusively in Hands of Clergy— Its Great Lucrativeness— Synods 
 Interdict its Practice by Ecclesiastics for Compensation 228
 
 CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. PAGE. 
 Arabic Influence on Medical Art in Europe— Rapid Rise of Mahometanism 
 Caused by Justice to Subjects and Conquered Provinces — Their Swift At- 
 tainment to Science — Saracens Welcome Christian Scholars — Latter Sect 
 Selected as Tutors to Haroun al Raschid — Translations into Arabic by 
 These — Galen's Medical Books Rendered in the Saracen Tongue — Hip- 
 pocrates' Treatises Preserved at Bagdad — Scholastic and Scientific Cul- 
 ture Arise in Arab-Spain — Sanitary Arrangements of Abderaham — Early 
 Writers on Medicine — Students Flock Tliither from Other Nations in 
 Europe, Asia, etc.— Moslem Ruler by a Rescript Organizes the Professors 
 of the Curative Art — His Interdict against Charlatans — Hospitals — Possi- 
 ble Early Knowledge of the Use of Aqua Vita: 244 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Academies of Spain Offer Great Inducements to European Scholars — Chris- 
 tian Scholars Scoffed at in Cordova — Scientific Culture is Introduced to 
 the North— Necromany Taught at Seville, etc. — Abbots go to Spain to 
 Learn Arabic Language and the Sciences — English Translation of the Al- 
 coran in the Twelfth Century — Gerard of Cremorne Translates Arab Medi- 
 cal Books into Latin — Frederick II., of Germany, Patronizes Saracen 
 Learning — Arab Savans in Sicily — Friar Bacon — Gerbert, Afterwards 
 Pope, Studies in Spain — Constans Afer, the Illustrious Medical Writer and 
 Translator — His Curious Adventures — Services to Erudition of Gerbert . 257 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Maladies Traced to Demoniac Sources — Holy Curatives Sanctioned by the 
 Church— Social Troubles and Bodily Ailments Caused by Demons — 
 Flowers Grown on Martyred Tombs of Great Sanitative Power — Healing 
 Force of Prayers — Imbeciles as Tenements of Foul Spirits — Curative Vir- 
 tue of a Saint's Hair — Monastic Treatment of Sick — Separate Division for 
 the Infirm — Eagerness of Monks to go on the Sick List— The Mediaeval 
 Lancet - Sorts of Medicaments in Vogue 27 1 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Medical Astrology — Its Adaptation to Ordinary Social Events — Charms for 
 Expelling Disease— Astrological Treatises of Friar Bacon — Virtue of Magic 
 Words — Alchemy — E.xtraction of " Spirits" — Medicinal Energy of Such 
 Extracts — Curative and Preventative Puissance of Stones or Gems — Ne- 
 cromancy — Mediaeval Scientists Admit the Power of Charms and Letter 
 Characters — Potency of Angelic Names for Cures — Enchanters' Spell — 
 Amulets in the Middle Ages — Prayers or Invocations Inscribed on Leaves, 
 etc. — Sanitary Angels — Stellar Influence Applied to the Curative Art — 
 Effigy of Diseased Part Fabricated to Obtain Remedy 2S7
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. PAGE, 
 
 'chemistry and Mediaeval Pharmacy— Medicaments— Alchemists Prepare 
 Salutar>' Remedies for Maladies— Notable Discoveries of these Enthusi- 
 asts—Subtle Powders — Distillation and Research for Essences— Aqua 
 Vit£e, or Eau de Vie — Discovered by Villannova — Thaddeus, the Great 
 ' Florentine Chemist of the Twelfth Century — Pharmacists in this Age — 
 ■ Venetian Glassware — Their Chemical Acquisitions — Extracts of Gold 
 Water, of Sovereign Potency — Albert Magnus and his Nickname — Lully, 
 the Renowned Alchemist — Agrippa's Familiar Demon 301 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Hospitals in the Middle Ages Developed from the Conventual Infirmary — 
 . Hospitia of Cloisters first used for Sick Strangers — Public Institutions of 
 this Character in the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries — Corps of 
 Trained Nurses — Regular Organization of Hospital Assistants — Use of 
 Sugar in Syrups at an Early Period in the Orient — Thorough Equipment 
 of Hospitals at Bagdad in A. D. 1173 — Salaried Physicians and Complete 
 Stores of Pharmacy — Insane Asylum for the Cure of Patients There — 
 Mediaeval Digest of Regulations for Church Plospitals — Charity Institu- 
 tions and Rules for Admissions — Leprosy — Seclusion of Lepers— Rever- 
 ence for this Disease — Cures of Varied Assortment — Lazarettos for Lepers 
 near City Entrances — Revolt of the Lepers— Jews Classed with these 
 Infects 317 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Abandoned Women : Their Relation to Medical Economy in the Middle 
 Ages — Legislation Against Them — Resort to Barber Shops — " Ambula- 
 tory Maidens" — Low Grading of Actresses and Laundresses — Mayor 
 Owns a House of Prostitution — Attire of Degraded Females — English 
 Cardinal Landlord of a Bordello, or Bawdy House — Great Number of 
 these Women among the Crusaders — Forbidden to Enter Wine Houses 
 — Prescribed Dress — Scholars Especially Liable to their Fascinations — 
 Municipal Ordinances — Attempts to Reform — Husbands Sought and 
 Obtained by Money 336 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Pestilences and Epidemics in the Middle Ages — These Oftentimes Predicted 
 — Defects in Sanitary Arrangements — Municipal Authorities Endeavor to 
 Repress Pestilence — The Death Penalty Passed upon Blundering Physi- 
 cians — The Yellow Plague in England — Terrible Ravages — Causes of 
 Epidemics Accurately Traced — Frequently Charged to Diabolical or Stel- 
 lar Influences — Awful Malady of 1348 — Great Mortality at Marseilles — Its 
 Route Along the Water Courses — Medical Skill Fails to Arrest it — Jews 
 Charged with Poisoning the Water — Female vSurgeons, etc. — Order of 
 Flagellants — Dancing Pestilence — Its Infects Abhor Red Colors .... 348
 
 CONTENTS, xi 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. page. 
 
 Mediaeval Universities for Medical Study — Parisian Schools — Great Excel- 
 lence of Italian Colleges— Favorable Regulations for Students — Great 
 Numbers Flock to Italy — Have their own Laws — Monetary Value of a 
 Celebrated Professor — Colleges Confer Knighthood — T :ir[jp Fffs t7 Siir 
 geons — Female Physicians-^Public Surgery — Beneficial Ordinances for 
 Medical Culture — Medical Books Translated Direct from Arabic — Text- 
 books on Comparative Anatomy — Regulations of Frederick II. for the 
 Study and Practice of Medicine — Schedule of Medical Fees 366 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Public Physicians Salaried by Municipalities — Translations from Arabic — 
 Hyperbolical Panegyric of Eminent Professors — Guild of Physicans in 
 Milan, Thirteenth Century — Corporation of Apothecaries — Union of Phar- 
 macists and Medicists Forbidden by Law — Distinction of Bologne's Medi- 
 cal Schools — High Salaries of Professors — Culture of Botany — Thaddeus, 
 Master of Villannova — His Commentaries of Hippocrates and Galen — 
 Anatomy — Physicians not Allowed to Marry till A. D. 145 1 • • .... 383 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Students and Student Life in the Middle Ages — Great Numbers at the Med- 
 ical Schools of Salerno and Bologna — Ordinances of Church Synods — 
 Montpelier — Mature Age of Mediaeval Students — Their Apartments Des- 
 ignated as Hospicia — Feuds between these and Civilians — Ecclesiastical 
 Authorities Interfere — Seditions — Popes Invariably Favor Students — Free- 
 booter Scholars — Rates of Lodgings Specified to Prevent Exactions — 
 Straw Bales used by Students for Seats — Examination of Graduates — 
 Books and Libraries for Consultation — Copyists — Great Prices for Manu- 
 scripts — Books not Dutiable — Standard Text-books Maintained by Muni- 
 cipalities for Accurate Transcripts 400 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Medicine in th_f Fniii-tppn th^rpntnry — Progress in Chemistry, Pharmacy and 
 Anatomy — Petrarch's Aversion to Physicians — Charges them with Men- 
 dacity — Their Greed — Pomposity and Elaborate Costume— The Poet's 
 Satires — Physicians go in State — Carry Medical Books with Them — De- 
 cline of the Salemite School — Commentators of Arabic Books of Medicine 
 — Public Lectures — Illustrious Patients Forced to Pledge Jewels for Medi- 
 cal Attendance — Celebrated Italian Professors — Medicine as Part of Gen- 
 eral Education — Authority of Arabic Writers Diminishes — ^Junction of 
 As trr^lngy and Ar^ dirjpp— Great Stipends Paid Medicists — Treatment of 
 Eye Maladies— Digest of Pharmacy — Style of Graduates — Early Knowl- 
 edge of Oriental Languages 420
 
 xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. page. 
 
 gt^^jg r^f Phycjfinpc; \^ y^-^ MitlHlfi . Agcs ^Their Practice — Clergy Eagerly 
 Adopt this Profession — Tts T .ucrativeness — Interdicted the Monks — De- 
 cretals of Synods — Physicians Confined to the Laity — Pharmacists Sell 
 Drugs and Confections — Gallic Disgust of Medicaments — Specimen of 
 German Surgery of the Twelfth Century— Mediaeval Surgical Practices — ■ 
 Barbers and Phlebotomy — Fame of Jewish Physicians — Unscrupulous 
 Charlatans — High Ecclesiastics Disprove Medicine— Contempt of Scien- 
 tific Treatment — Clerical Division of Medicine — -Popular Respect for Prac- 
 titioners — Often Satirized by Romancers — Fees According^to_^ealthor 
 
 _Indigenceof^atieiits 444 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 A. 
 
 Lex Wisigothorum, De Medicis et Aegrotis, A. D. 504 467 
 
 B. 
 Assisse et Bone Usauge De Hyerusalem, A. D. 1090 468 
 
 C. 
 Constitutiones Regni Siculi, Titulus XXXIV 470 
 
 D. 
 Ordonnances des Rois Le France, A. D. 1311 472
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 MEDICAL ECOI^OMY 
 
 DURING THE 
 
 MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Conquest of Greece by Rome attracts Grecian Artists to the Metropolis — 
 Arrival of Medical Men — Their Depraved Character — Romans Imitate 
 the Hellenistic Medical Art — Its Use Claimed by Priesthood — Curative 
 force of Number 3— Cato's Hatred of Greek Medicine— Inhuman Surgery 
 of Archagathus — Immunities to Physicians in the Julian Age — Aescle- 
 piades Celebrated Founder of a School of Medicine — Royal Rescript 
 Favors the Professors of this Art — Thessalus and his Troop of Ambula- 
 tory Artificers — Hospitals — Celsus' Encyclopedia of Medicme — Profes- 
 sors of this Art Charged with Unscrupulous Deportment — Imperial 
 Ordinance Published to Correct this — Compensation how to be Paid — 
 The Free System — Rescript Reaffirmed in the year 321 — The Archiatri. 
 
 BY the conquest of Greece through the invincible armies of 
 Lucullus and Pompey, the capital of the Roman govern- 
 ment remained without serious rival in the development of 
 those arts which were to embellish the great metropolis. An 
 immediate result of the subjugation of the Greek provinces, 
 was the steady and ceaseless tide of artistic labor towards 
 Rome, where the attraction of enlarged emoluments for their 
 skill quickly drew these adventurers/ Mingled with thetroops 
 
 > Cicero attests the inroads of Grecian learning, and admits its superiority. 
 Tuscul., I. I. Horace, Epistolse, H. i, likewise avows it in the following metrical 
 
 formula : 
 
 " Graccia capta ferum victorem cepil, et artes 
 Intulit agresti Latio : sic horridus ille 
 Defluxit numerus Saturninus ; et gravi virus 
 Munditise pepulere," etc. V. 156.
 
 2 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 of rhetoricians, philosophers^ and poets, the first to present 
 themselves in the universal concurrence, were numerous 
 medical men.-'' Although the increasing luxury and conse- 
 quent diminishing forces of the Romans necessitated more 
 frequent recourse to the secrets of curative or preservative 
 art subsequent to the Augustan era, it would appear that, as 
 early as the time of Cato, foreign physicians were domiciled in 
 the Latin emporium, plying their craft and obtaining enormous 
 compensation for professional services.* The earliest of these 
 stranger empirics in chronological gradation were Etruscans, 
 whose skill in fine arts and science largely aided in aggrandiz- 
 ing and embellishing the ancient Roman metropolis.* How- 
 ever welcome may have been these ancient Etruscans, the 
 subsequent arrival in Rome of adventurous Greek physicians, 
 excited the anger and contempt of the illustrious Censor.* 
 
 The vigilant and political scrutiny of Cato had, prior to the 
 total extinction of Grecian nationality beneath the ponderous 
 pressure of victorious Latin arms, realized the possible domi- 
 nation of Hellenistic art on the people of Rome.^ It may in- 
 deed be accredited that the specific charges urged by the 
 distinguished patrician against Greek medical adventurers, were 
 
 ^ Rhetoricians, by an ancient decree of the Roman Senate, were liable to forci- 
 ble expulsion from the city. Sueton. De Claris Rhetoribus, cap. i, seq., and Aii- 
 liiis Gellius, Noctes Atticoe, Lib. XV., c. 2. Touching the statue to Musa, Sue- 
 ton. Vita Augusti, cap. 59. 
 
 ' Dio Cassias, apud fin. Hadriani Historiae, Lib. LXIX., cap. 22. 
 
 *Gaupp, De Professoribus et Medicis eorumque Privilegiis in jure Romano, p. 
 26. 
 
 •'•Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Tom. i, p. 32. Egyptians also, 
 at a later period, practiced medical art at Rome. " Adveneruntque ex ^.gypto 
 talium vitiorum medici, banc solam operam afferentes, magna sua pra;dia." Plinii, 
 Ilistorirc Naturalis, Lib. XXVL, cap. 3. 
 
 •'I'linii, Historic Naturalis, Lib. XXIX., c. 6-7. 
 
 ' Plutarch, Vita Catonis Major, c. 23, reproduces Cato's letter to his son on 
 this sul)ject. " Quid Athenis exquisitum habeam, et quod bonuni sit illorum literas 
 inspicere, non pcrdiscere, vincam. Ncquissimum et indocile genus illorum : et 
 hoc i)Uta vatem dississc : Quandocunque ista gens suas literas dabit, omnia cor- 
 runqiit." Plinii, op. cit., Lil). XXIX., cap. 7. 
 
 I
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 3 
 
 grounded in justice, and in exact accord with the unequivo- 
 cally vile conduct of these surgical charlatans, who prostituted 
 the dignity of a divine art to debased purposes of extorting gain 
 from credulous and suffering patrons.* So long, indeed, as the 
 cohesive principle remained intact and unshattered in those 
 patriarchial elements with which the older families of Rome 
 were constituted, the use and application of medicine passed 
 under the immediate direction of the Pater-familias." 
 
 The Latins appear to have had, in the more remote adop- 
 tation of medical practice, a comparative immunity from 
 hierarchical intervention, within whose sacerdotal seclusion was 
 absorbed and jealously maintained the custody of medicine 
 and other arts/" At Rome, where exclusive practice of medi- 
 cine was not claimed by the priesthood, Cato," with other 
 families, was especially zealous in the use and administration of 
 this domestic medication, and on this subject drew up a short 
 treatise, still extant. 
 
 Among sovereign remedies which he recommends as infalli- 
 ble, is the colewort or brassica. He held the Number Three 
 in highest veneration, similar to the Phythagoreans, and hesi- 
 tated not to commit to writing a magic formula by the aid of 
 which luxations and fractures were readily cured.^^ This house- 
 hold system of medicine undoubtedly subserx^ed an excellent 
 and salutary purpose so long as the healthy vigor and robust 
 
 ^Gaupp, De Professor, et Medic, p. 26. The statue to yEsculapius, described 
 by Callistratus, Descriptiones, cap. 10, typified the sacred origin of medicine. 
 » PHnii, op. cit., Lib. XXIX., cap. 8. 
 
 ^'' Salverte, Sciences Occultes, pp. 330-345, and Matter, Ecole D'Alexandrie, 
 Tom. II., p. 19. 
 
 ^' De Re Rustica, cc. 2, 39 and 70. He appears to have possessed a receipt- 
 book of curatives especially adapted to slaves and cattle. • Cato advises the use 
 of a certain preparation by which gourmands might indulge in excessive drinking 
 without inebriety. lb., cap. 156. 
 
 ^'^ " Et luxatum si quod est, bis die aqua calida foveto, brassicam tritam appo- 
 nito, cito sanum feciet." De Re Rustica, cap. 157. Women were urged to freely 
 use this specific : " Et si mulier eo lotio locos fovebit, nunquam ii virosi fieunt," etc. 
 For advice to use magic words over luxations, vide lb. cap. 160.
 
 4 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 vitality of the Latins were left unimpaired by the luxurious 
 influences which gradually crept into the metropolis upon the 
 footsteps of invincible legions and victorious heroes, and pre- 
 served a probable existence down to the Julian age. 
 
 The earliest Greek medical operators, who as surgeons 
 sought the Roman capital, where their services were gradually 
 became indispensible, deduced their origin from the most 
 degraded of the conquered populace — such for example as 
 attended on the public and private baths, servants in the 
 gymnasiums of the diverse municipalities of Greece, or 
 assistants in the Hellenistic pharmacies." Frequently these 
 adventurers arriving from their country as slaves and bond- 
 men, and quickly assuming at Rome the title and condition 
 of freedmen, opened booths on the public streets and offered 
 their wares for sale — medicaments prepared by themselves." 
 In these places the indolent and unoccupied assembled, for 
 the purpose of whiling away the time, as in modern cafes and 
 in quest of the news of the day.^"" Consequently the practi- 
 tioners of medicine at Rome presented no unusual attraction 
 for the gracious respect of the citizens; and as the healing art 
 remained in the hands of freedmen, it was regarded indeed 
 as a vile and degraded traffic, suitable only for the servile con- 
 dition of slaves. 
 
 Greed of gold, unscrupulous of the means by which their 
 thirst for gain might be satisfied, and totally depraved, these 
 practitioners of a craft originally sanctioned under the 
 attributes of divinity, soon acquired the uncompromising 
 hatred of the Roman patricians, and among these M. Porticus 
 Cato, the famed Censor.'® So profound, indeed, was his con- 
 
 '3" Sed quod ad medicinam attinet, eadem olim potissimum a servis libertisque 
 exercitam esse satis constat." Gaiipp, De Professor, et Medicis, etc., p. i6, and 
 Buddeus, Critica Sacra, p. 22. 
 
 " P'riedlander, Geschichte der Ileilkunde, p. 137. 
 
 '^ Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. i, p. 73 ; and Hirschel, Geschichte der 
 Medezin, p. 72. 
 
 ""' Plutarchus, Vita Catonis Major, cap. 22, and Plinii, Histor. Naturalis, Lib. 
 XXIX., cap. 6.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 5 
 
 tempt for Grecian physicians, and Hellenistic art and science, 
 that he wrote to his son, then sojourning at Athens, to avoid 
 a searching study of those arts and letters, which, although 
 desirable as an agreeable pastime, were utterly unworthy 
 serious attempt of acquisition. Moreover, that the wily Greek 
 would surely impress the Latin mind with corrupting influences ; 
 and as a transcendant instrument of debasement should be 
 cited their physicians, who, as urged the indignant Roman, 
 had sworn by mutual oaths to exterminate all barbarians by 
 the potential means of medicine — and yet they require enor- 
 mous fees from those whom they attend, in order the more 
 readily to captivate the confidence of those selected as victims." 
 He concludes by emphatically interdicting his son the society 
 of medical men. 
 
 Notwithstanding the hate of Cato seems exaggerated and 
 ridiculous, it is but just to avow that the Greek physicians 
 who came to Rome in his day and later were, as hitherto 
 mentioned, men of intriguing character, and having the single 
 object in view to acquire affluence, were not over scrupulous 
 as to the means by which such fortune should be obtained.'** 
 
 At least this is the portraiture sketched out b}' Galen." 
 From whatever causes were developed Roman hatred, it ap- 
 pears to have extended back as far as the second century prior 
 to the Christian era, to the time of Archagathus, a Peloponne- 
 sian surgeon who came to the city of Rome in order to ex- 
 ercise his vocation. From the Senate he received the right of 
 citizenship, Jus Quiritum, and a medical booth purchased for 
 him with public funds. He subsequently lost the respect of 
 the patricians and fell into contempt on account of the cruel 
 
 ^' " Turn etiam magis si medicos suos hunc mittet. Jurarent inter se barbaros 
 necare omnes niedicina. Et hoc ipsum mercede faciunt, ut fides iis sit, et facile 
 disperdant. Nos quoque dictitant barbaros, et spurcius nos, quani alios opicos, 
 appelatione fredant. Interdixi tibi de medicis." Plinii, op. cit., Lib. XXIX., c. 
 7, and Plutarch, op. cit., cap. 23. 
 
 1* Plinii Histor. Natural., Lib. XXIX., cap. 8. 
 
 '' Galeni De Libris propriis, cc. i and 2.
 
 6 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 nature of his surgical operations, which, as in more ancient 
 times, consisted in cauterizing and incisions.^" 
 
 On Archagathus was bestowed the dishonorable nomen- 
 clature of Vulnarius et Carnifex, as a just appellation for his 
 reckless and indifferent cruelty .'^^ Towards the age of Julius 
 Caesar, Greek physicians began to acquire greater privileges, 
 induced, perhaps primarily, by the increasing interest and 
 zeal for Grecian arts and letters, which swept into the capital 
 like a rising flood, and gave a decided character to its orna- 
 mentation. One of the foreign surgeons who appears to have 
 fully merited the considerate immunities extended to medical 
 men at this period, yEsclepiades of Bithynia, succeeded in 
 grounding his curative system upon a philosophic or scientific 
 basis.'^^ 
 
 Although this celebrated physician was not entirely exempt 
 from the debasing tendencies which inspired the conduct, so 
 reprehensible, of his associates, and caused them to have re- 
 course to a nefarious charlatanism and shameful trickery, yet 
 he was honored with the amity of the illustrious orators, Cras- 
 sus and Cicero.'^^ This generous friendship may have arisen 
 from the graces of intellectual culture, the undisguised talents, 
 and attractive personality of /Esclepiades. He came to Rome 
 skilled in the highest exercise of elocutionary art, and in the 
 pronouncing of philosophical discourses was already distin- 
 guished: more conversant with the fluency of rhetoric and 
 precision of grammar, it had been his well-defined intention to 
 open a series of public readings on dialectics. 
 
 After some years of flourishing success as teacher of elocu- 
 
 ^"Medicina cum ferro et poculo occurrit," Tertullian, Contra Gnosticos, cap. i. 
 
 " riinii, op. cit., Lib. XXIX., cap. 6, and Gaupp, De Professor, et Medicis, 
 p. 27. 
 
 ''■''■ "Mutata et rpiam postea yEsclepiades invenerat." Plinii Histor. Naturalis, Lib. 
 XXIX., ca]-). 5. The deplorable state of medicine in Rome in yEsclepiades' day 
 may be galliered from liis professional treatises. Fragmcnta, p. 37. 
 
 *•' Cicero, Dc Oratore, II., c. i.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 7 
 
 tion,^* then in high repute in Rome,^'' he abandoned the career 
 of letters and devoted himself assiduously to the practice of 
 medicine. The successful resurrection of an apparent cadaver 
 excited popular interest, and advanced him to the apex of 
 professional glory."" The medical economy of yEsclepiades 
 involved largely the use of wine as a medicament and fre- 
 quent baths of cold water as a sanitary clement.'-' During the 
 government of the Roman commonwealth by the Senate, in 
 early ages, the practitioners of medicine possessed, as a body, 
 no legal status, neither were they distinguished as artisans of 
 curative craft from the more ignorant operative; but entirely 
 abandoned to their own conscience and skill, to advance the 
 art without the inducement of municipal recognition. The 
 enlightened policy of Julius Csesar elevated the character of 
 the surgeons and physicians of the metropolis by conceding 
 to them the franchises of citizenship.-* By such judicious con- 
 cessions, this valuable profession was at once made honorable 
 in the eyes of the people, and henceforth stood forth as an 
 avocation which had obtained the honors of specific illustra- 
 tion at the hands of the celebrated warrior and statesman. 
 
 Of the scholars of ^sclepiades, whose scientific abilities 
 and skill aided in elevating the dignity of the curative art, 
 Antoninus Musa was without question the most commenda- 
 ble, inasmuch as his successful treatment of the future Em- 
 peror Augustus, by means of cold lotions and saturated wraps, 
 saved him from a dangerous illness.'"''' Marcus Artorus, also a 
 medical disciple of ^sclepiades, at the battle of Philippi cer- 
 
 2* On the pharmaceutical writings of /Esclepiades, Fragmenta, p. 4. 
 
 ^SQuintill. De Orat., Instit., Lib. I., c. i. 
 
 2*6 Like skill attributed to Rhazes in 998, Leo Afric. De Med. et Philosoph., 
 cap. 27. 
 
 ^'' Fragmenta, p. 120, seq. * 
 
 28 Suetonius, Vita Julii Caesar., cap. 42. Reserved from expulsion l)y Augustus, 
 lb., Vita Augusti, cc. 42 and 84. 
 
 29Plinii Natur. Histor., Lib. XXIX., c. 5, Livii Histor. Rom., Lib. CXXV., 
 c. 2, and Sueton. Vita Augusti, c. 81. For this successful result a bronze statue 
 of Musa was erected to commemorate imperial gratitude, lb. cap. 19.
 
 I 
 
 8 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 tainly contributed to the kind recognition which the profession 
 ultimately obtained from this emperor, by saving his sover- 
 eign's life.^° 
 
 Of all the prerogatives with which the devotees of medical 
 science had been previously endowed, none equalled the grate- 
 ful immunities of Augustus after his preservation by Musa. 
 By a rescript promulgated by the imperial authorities, all sur- 
 geons were declared thenceforth forever free from public im- 
 positions of every description and enfranchised of all taxes, 
 while at the court of the emperor a highly salaried surgeon 
 was regularly engaged.^' Such arrangements unquestionably 
 largely aided in permanently establishing the social dignity of 
 members of this avocation, and contributed to the develop- 
 ment of medical science. Since the time of Julius Cssar, 
 great numbers of Greek surgeons were domiciled in Rome; 
 about which period the names of several army surgeons of 
 this nationality appear. 
 
 For example, Glyken is mentioned as a field-officer in that 
 capacity to consul Pansa; while under the four first emperors, 
 Cassius, who applied opium as a medicinal alleviant,^^ Calpen- 
 tranus, Arruntius, Albutius, Reubrius, Q. Stertinus, and Chark- 
 les,^^ were selected as royal physicians. Themison of Laodicea, 
 a scholar of the ^Esclepidean system, and enjoying the friend- 
 ship of Cicero,^* prepared, it is stated, the earliest encyclopaedia 
 of chronic maladies. 
 
 •''" Leasing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 79. 
 
 =" Gaupp, De Professoribus et Medicis eorumque Privilegiis in Jure Romano, 
 pp. 50 and 52. Notwithstanding the acknowledged elevation of medicine through 
 the favors accorded its professors by early emperors, frequent mention is made of 
 manumitted and enslaved male and female physicians during tlie first and second 
 century. Sueton. Vita Caligulte, c. 81, and lb. in Vita Nero, cap. 2. 
 
 ■''^ Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 80. 
 
 ^"' I'linii Historite Naturalis, Lib. XXIX., cap. 5, and Suetonius, Vita Tiberii, 
 cap. 79. This physician discovered the symptoms of the emperor's sudden death 
 by feeling his pulse, on leaving a banquet : existimans tcntatas ab eo venas, lb. 
 
 ■'"Also his surgeon, Cicero De Oratore, I. c. 14. Themison was highly lauded 
 by Thcssalus. Galeni, De Methodo Medendi, Lib. L, cap. 2. Vide Plinii, op. cit., 
 cap. 5.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 5, 
 
 Although in a measure successful in the treatment of dis- 
 eases, this surgeon was severely satirized by Juvenal,^' who 
 accuses him of great slaughter in the experiments incident to 
 the application of a new theory.^® Such of the disciples of 
 Themison as Scribonius Largus and Vectius Valens, the 
 surgeon of Claudius, who drew up treatises on subjects cognate 
 with medicine, sought the popular remedies of peasants and 
 huntsmen, whose superstitious notions they readily engrafted 
 upon the body of their system. For instance, the liver of a 
 dead athlete was a sov^ereign talisman against epilepsy.^^ 
 Scribonius made the earliest known direct application of elec- 
 tricity to cure bodily infirmities, although the continuance of 
 science within the close custody of the hierarchy in more 
 ancient times, doubtless electrical forces were well understood 
 and skilfully adapted to maintain the vulgar belief in the ex- 
 traordinary potency of the sacerdoty.^^ 
 
 It was at this period in the first century that Nero, to dis- 
 tinguish his personal surgeon, Andromachus of Crete, the in- 
 ventor of the Theriac,'^" from other medical men, elevated him 
 to the dignity of Archiater, or Superpositus Medicorum/" 
 
 ^^Satira, Lib. X., v. 221. 
 
 ^*By a law of the German Empire, A. D. 1532, physicians experimenting with 
 the lives of their patients are to be treated as highway robbers and broken on the 
 wheel. Carciani, Leg. Barb, cap. 134; Tom. I., p. 543. 
 
 ^" " Item ex jecinore gladiatoris particulam aliquam datam consumat." Scribonii 
 Largi Composit. Medic, cap. II., \ 17. Ad comitialem Morbum. He adds, 
 however, lb., \ 18: "Remedies of this kind are outside of medicine — extra med- 
 icinam — but are known to have been very successful." One of his maxims was 
 that men were easier cured than women ; boys, than girls ; especially post com- 
 plexum et devirginationem, lb., p. 26. On Valens, vide Plinii, op. cit., c. 5. 
 
 38 Salverte, Sciences Occultes, p. 98, and Goujet, Ongin des Arts et Metiers, Tom. 
 III., p. 104. 
 
 3^ Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 84. 
 
 ^o Gothofredus, Comment in Cod. Theodos., Tom. V., pp. 52 and 55 seq. for 
 the minute details concerning the character and significance of this dignity. 
 Gaupp, De Professor, et Medic, in Jure Romano, p. 38, states that the name of 
 Archiater is not met with in the Digestse. Vide Du Cange, Med. et Infimi Lati- 
 nit. sub V. Archiatria.
 
 lo HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Notwithstanding the interest manifested by Augustus and his 
 immediate successors to the imperial throne, in aggrandizing 
 the social rank of physicians and surgeons, and although in 
 numerous, instances this watchful zeal was duly appreciated 
 by those who used the enfranchisement thus granted, to ad- 
 vance more swiftly toward an affluent independence with rea- 
 sonable scruples, there were, unfortunately, other devotees to 
 the curative art who boldly abused the privileges of their con- 
 dition. 
 
 Of these, Thessalus of Tralles at Rome*^ was indeed a typ- 
 ical example. Originally sprung from a servile source, by his 
 sagacity, prudence, and impenetrable hypocrisy he attained to 
 a wide-spread celebrity. In attendance upon his patients, he 
 assumed the role of servant rather than physician. The econ-. 
 omy of his medical art seems to have consisted mainly in per- 
 mitting the diseased and infirm to act entirely to suit individ- 
 ual impulse and to force away other surgeons, of whose ap- 
 proaches he asserted himself to be a guard of undiminishing 
 watchfulness. Living constantly among and accompanied by 
 the vilest of the populace, such as cobblers, weavers, tailors, 
 and equally degraded artisans, who idolized him,*'^ he publicly 
 and impudently taught a physician need know nothing of 
 medicine ; and that the entire body of this art could be read- 
 ily acquired in six months.*^ 
 
 In his attendance upon the sick and infirm, Thessalus was 
 invariably escorted by a troop of ambulatory artificers whom 
 he denominated his disciples, similar to the ancient Pytha 
 goreans. The noise and tumult wliich necessarily arose when- 
 ever this empiric appeared may be readly imagined, — a cus- 
 
 *' On the fatal antagonism of his system to that of Galen, vide De Methodo 
 Medendi, Lib. IV., c. 4. 
 
 ^■^ Friedlander, Geschichte der Ileilkundc, p. 140, and Reynouard, Ilistoire de 
 la Medccinc, Tom. I., p. 401. 
 
 *^ Lessing, (Jleschichte der Modezin, Th. I., p. 84. Galen seems to have enter- 
 tained a sincere respect for the medical acquirements of Thessalus' son, who lived 
 on familiar terms witli Archaeles, king of Macedonia, Com. in Hippoc. De Na- 
 tura Ilominis, I'roem., Tom. XI.\., p. 12.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. II 
 
 torn which the pungent pen of a Roman satirist has made 
 ridiculous." T© such extent indeed was the pompous inso- 
 lence of Thessalus carried that he wrote a letter to Nero, 
 boldly asserting that before him no physician had ever in- 
 vented anything useful to the preservation of health or the 
 cure of maladies, and that he alone had discovered the verita- 
 ble, the indisputable accessory to such cases/^ As an able 
 diagnostician, Soranus under the emperors Trajan and Had- 
 rian, accurately delineated the essential differences of diseases, 
 and wrote a work on chronic maladies. But the most illustri- 
 ous surgical skill emanating from the methodical system of 
 Themison and the second century, may be justly claimed for 
 Caelius Aurelianus, a Numidian, among whose merits the cen- 
 sure has been joined that his treatise on acute and chronic 
 diseases^" is a Latin version of Soranus. In this shape the 
 writings of Soranus passed into the hands of the mediaeval 
 monks and were largely used by them in conjunction, as we 
 shall hereafter observe, with Hippocrates and Galen, and the 
 practical administration of medicine.*' 
 
 To this epoch should be assigned the creation of the Vale- 
 tudiarium and Veterinarium,'"^ in order the more fittingly to 
 treat infirm and disabled soldiers and their horses. Frequent 
 notice is made of surgeons recruited for the Roman legions 
 under the distinctive nomenclature of medici legionum and 
 medici cohortum. Soranus, surnamed the younger, in order 
 to distinguish him from the renowned physician of the first 
 century, also a follower of the school of Themison, 2:>i'epared 
 
 ^* Martial, Epigram, V. v. 9. 
 
 **Galeni, De Methodo Medendi, Lib. I., c. 2: Thessalus charges; "Hippo- 
 crates, inquit, noxia prcecepta tradidit." lb. 
 
 *8 Still extant under the title: Acutis Morbis et Chronicis Libri Octo. The 
 methodical system pursued and described in Lib. V., De Morbis Chronicis. 
 
 ^^Richerius, Historiar. Lib. IV., cap. 50, in the middle of the tenth century, 
 avows his acquaintance with the writings of Soranus. 
 
 *«Celsus, De Medicina, praef., and Vegitius, De Re Militar. 2, 10; 3, 2, and 
 Columella, De Re Rustica, cc. 7, 5, 14.
 
 12 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 an elaborate work on obstetrical treatment — a branch of sur- 
 gery anciently intrusted to female care/^ and in the Roman 
 Empire regulated by proper legislation.'^" Soranus the 
 younger is known as the oldest historian of the curative 
 art." 
 
 Moschion, apparently his disciple, distinguished himself as 
 author of the first treatise on midwifery, entitled De Mulierum 
 Passionibus Liber.^'^ He especially cautioned in such cases 
 against an antiquated custom of severing the umbilical cord 
 with a wooden or glass fragment, but in the place of these 
 directed the use of a sharp blade.''^ Roman zeal for the cul- 
 tivation of a taste for natural history and the kindred science 
 of medicine, unattached to the inflexible demands of a system, 
 influenced two illustrious citizens of the Empire to acquire 
 the mastery of the entire range of contemporary sciences, and 
 although subject to the curious superstitions of the age, to 
 become profoundly skilled in a knowledge of the curative art. 
 Of these, Aulus Cornelius Celsus, in the time of Augustus, 
 carefully collated an enormous encyclopaedia, of which the 
 sections treating of medicine are yet extant, in eight books.^* 
 
 In this work we possess a magnificent specimen of the in- 
 tellectual industry and scientific research of an enthusiastic 
 scholar; written in a vigorous but somewhat inelegant style, 
 whose classical frame is at times so varied by unusual words 
 as to render his meaning obscure, he has, notwithstanding, col- 
 lected the wisdom of preceding ages and aggregated in exact 
 adjustment the productions of learning of Hippocrates and 
 
 ^"Goujet, Orig. des Arts et Metiers, Tom. I., p. 216. 
 
 ^"XII. Tabul. Leg.,c. V., ^ 4. 
 
 ^^ Faljriciiis, Biblioth. Gra-ca, Tom. XI., p. 714. 
 
 '"^ Friedlander, Gcschiclite der Heilkunde, p. 144. 
 
 ^■'' Lcssing, Geschichte der Medc/in, Th. I., p. 87. 
 
 ''^Tliis work, entitled De Medicina Libri Octo, appears to have been much 
 used in the Middle Ages. MSS. copies of the tenth century are still in existence. 
 Choulant, Prodromus Novre Edit. Celsi, p. 2, asserts that Celsus' writings have suf- 
 fered neglect on account of their unusual Lalinity, which caused them to be left: 
 " doctoijue indvere."
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 13 
 
 ^^sclepiades, Archagathus/^ and Israelitish^" and Arabic^' 
 physicians. 
 
 The character of this encyclopaedia may justly open a ques- 
 tion touching the practical skill of its compiler, but the results 
 of his labors embody the substantial elements of a science, 
 and fully illustrate the epoch which produced the medical 
 digest. A few of the operations described by Celsus may be 
 reproduced. One of these, the cure of stammering by cutting 
 the lingual ligament, although carefully portrayed,"** was cer- 
 tainly known at the time of Cicero.'''' 
 
 An additional and not less instructive phase of Latin so- 
 ciety is exhibited by the encyclopaedist in a description of the 
 means by which an artificial growth of the preputium may be 
 produced, and further the so-called process of infibulation."" 
 The other celebrated scholar, Cajus Plinius Secundus, of 
 Como, on a more enlarged scale indeed than Celsus, and with 
 almost superhuman forces, mastered the entire range of na- 
 tural science and arts, and reduced them into encyclopaediac 
 form. The thirty-seven books of Natural History present a 
 marvelous repertoire of manifold wisdom, in the midst of 
 which the vast culture and sagacious reflection of the illustri- 
 ous author are the chief embellishment. 
 
 In its broadest signification Pliny was less a friend than an 
 inactive enemy to physicians and surgeons, yet he aggregated, 
 with the most scrupulous care and vigilant search into diver- 
 sified sources and by the most untiring industry, such natural 
 productions, endowed with medicinal properties, as should 
 elicit the profoundest attention of coeval medical men. 
 
 Conforming to the elaborate development of social sensu- 
 ousness, the principal object of the curative art seems to have 
 
 ^•'Celsi, De Medicina, Lib. V., c. 19, \ 27. 
 ^''Ibicl, Lib. v., c. 19, | 11, and c. 22, \ 4. 
 
 57 Ibid, Lib. V., c. 18, | 16. 
 
 58 Ibid, Lib. VIL, c. 12, g 4. 
 
 59 De Divinat. II., c. 46. 
 
 «0Celsi, op. cit.. Lib. VIII., c. 25, I 3.
 
 14 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 been the invention of unusual remedies, strangely compounded, 
 while the medical adviser assumed the attitude of a profes- 
 sional empiric. 
 
 Out of this system grew unnumbered receipt-books prepared 
 for practical use, the value of which was attested by actual 
 experiment. None of these collections attained the celebrity 
 enjoyed by the comprehensive work on herbal medicaments of 
 Dioscorides, a native of Anazarabia, in the reign of Nero. 
 This compilation maintained its repute with undiminished 
 vitality through the Middle Ages*^ to modern times.*^ 
 
 Among vegetable remedies known and recommended by 
 Dioscorides, were ginger, pepper, aloes, sugar or saccharine 
 matter, etc. In addition to these he suggests the free use of 
 elm bark against pustular maladies. Rules were established 
 by him for the prompt detection of adulterated medicaments^ 
 while his intimacy with metallic remedies, whose preparation 
 evidentl}/ required an apparatus of fine implements, presup- 
 poses a knowledge of chemical action."' Influenced by the 
 illogical credulity of his age, Dioscorides professed absolute 
 faith in the curative property of dove's milk for opthalmic dis- 
 orders, quartain fever and hysteria. 
 
 Under the beneficent rule of Trajan a slight progress was 
 made towards a more exact understanding of the anatomical 
 construction of the human body. Rufiis of Ephesus wrote a 
 treatise on anatomy which reproduces with accuracy the gen- 
 eral condition of this science at that period."' . 
 
 He used almost exclusively the labors of Herophile and 
 
 *'I'hotii, Bibliotheca, p. 156, asserts that it was known positively to be in exis- 
 tence in the ninth century. In the year 1198 reference is made by the annalist of 
 an English convent, to the presentation of a copy of Dioscorides De Virtuti- 
 bus Herbarum; Swaphami, Coenobii Burg. Histor. sub an. cit. Dioscorides was 
 also military surgeon under Claudius, Prasfat. ad Dioscorid., p. 11. 
 
 "'■'Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 92. 
 
 "■'' Lessing, Geschichtc der Medezin, Th. I., p. 92. 
 
 *^ Celsus, De Medicina, Prxf., p. 19, states the absolute necessity of dissecting 
 cadavera, but declares vivisection as " crudele et supervacuum " — cruel and 
 useless.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 15 
 
 Eudemus, and sometimes dissected apes, in the pursuit of 
 personal information."^ The incessant struggle of more ad- 
 vanced physicians and theorists to give the economy of medi- 
 cine a homogeneous form animated by the quickening princi- 
 ple of a spiritual essence, originated a sect of devotees, the 
 founder of whom, Athenaeus of Cilicia, a renowned Roman 
 surgeon, in the year 68, declared that the dynamic force of 
 the soul or pneuma was the indispensable element of medical 
 art.*^® No new principles seem to have existed among the 
 practitioners of this school ; but, on the contrary, refuge was 
 had to the expansive teachings of more ancient philosophers 
 and sophists, whose fundamental theories were intimately in- 
 terwoven with the pneuma or soul-power. According to their 
 sophistical expounder, the eventualities of a healthy or infirm 
 existence were without variance derived from the movable and 
 fleeting essence designated, to which, as especially subject to 
 its influences, Athenaeus added the four elements, not in their 
 material types, but in the dynamical qualities, which he classi- 
 fied as forces."^ 
 
 Since indeed these material essences were so finely spirit- 
 ualized, it became in the highest degree perplexing to know 
 by what approaches a transition to the application of medical 
 knowledge could be made practicable, consequently a Lacede- 
 monian, Agathines, in the year 90, opened a new school of 
 medicine, which while accepting the dynamic force of the 
 pneuma or soul, boldly selected the choicest theories and best 
 usages from other sects. From this systematic adaptation of 
 alien schools arose the name of Eclecticism.''* 
 
 To this system properly belonged Archigenes, the Syrian, 
 
 ^^ Lessing, op. cit., Th. I., p. 89. 
 
 "^ Friedlander, Geschichte.der Heilkunde, p. 143. 
 
 ^^ Freidlander, Geschichte der Heilkunde, p. 143. Vide Osterhausen, Disser 
 tatio exhibit. Sectse Pneumaticorum Medicor. Histor. passim and Galen, Opera., 
 Tom. VII., p. 57. 
 
 ^8 Friedlander, op. cit., p. 144, and Lessing, Geschichte der Medczin, Th. I., 
 p. 94.
 
 1 6 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 a most distinguished and enlightened professor of this avoca- 
 tion about the year lOO. His eminent abihties and cultured 
 skill enabled him to practice the healing art at will through- 
 out its entire scope, especially in its strictest pathological 
 branches. Little is known of him beyond the gracious com- 
 mendation of Galen,'*'* although it is claimed that he was ele- 
 vated to the archiatria by Hadrian as a just recognition of 
 transcendent talents.™ Touching his erudition and quarrel- 
 some nature the attestation of writers is unanimous, while the 
 just commendation is as freely awarded of brilliancy and 
 subtilty of genius, especially in the accuracy of his distinction 
 between diverse physical pain and the careful analysis of pulse 
 and fevers.'^ Such of these diagnoses as portray the varia- 
 tions of pain, traced to its origin or seat, have escaped the 
 dissipating effect of intermediate ages, and with slight modifi- 
 cation are adopted as authority in the present day.'^ Not less 
 valuable were the services of this scholastic in the depart- 
 ment of surgery. His descriptions of the solution of the 
 members and limbs of the human frame are portrayed by the 
 hand of a skilled master. 
 
 As a sanitary precaution against poisoned wounds, he ap- 
 plied the simplest specifics, and is claimed to have been the 
 first^^ who solved mineral waters into their chemical analyses, 
 such for instance as soda, alum, sulphur, iron, copper, etc.'* A 
 pustular malady, in its general characteristics exhibiting a 
 close identity with the variole, was sketched out so early as 
 the beginning of the second century by Herodotus, a disciple 
 of Agathinus. From this description his writings have often- 
 
 ®^ Galeni De Composit. Medic, Lib. II., c. i. 
 
 ™ Hieronym. Mercurialis, De Arte Gymnast, Lib. VII., c. 8. 
 
 ^' Galen, De Composit. Medic, Lib. II., c i. 
 
 '^"Und ist mit einigen modificationen in die heutige zeichenlehre ubergangen," 
 Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. 1.,-ip. 94. 
 
 '■* Lessing, op. cit., Th. I., p. 95. 
 
 '* Galeni Medicamenta ad .Sugillationes, Tom. XII., p. 808. Ibid. Tom. 
 XIII., p. 167.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. jj 
 
 times furnished possible argumentation to those advocating 
 the high antiquity of the dread disease alluded to.'^ 
 
 Of all the medical writers and practitioners of the first cen- 
 tury, Aretaeus of Cappadocia was pre-eminently supreme in 
 the remarkable exemption from that dwarfed spirit and nar- 
 rowed intellectual culture which preferred the binding author- 
 ity of theorists or zealous sectarians to the substantial advan- 
 tages of extended experience guided by the salutary prompt- 
 ings of a healthy and robust reason. His eight books on the 
 examination and treatment of chronic diseases'*" are indeed an 
 example, marked for its rarity, especially in those remote 
 times, of freedom from the servile guidance of schools, and 
 above all noticeable for their tenacious fidelity to the system- 
 atic procedure urged by Hippocrates. Areta^us may claim 
 the appellation of eclectic in its most elevated conception. 
 As an anatomist, from whatever authorities he procured his 
 knowledge of this science, he was unequivocally far in ad- 
 vance of the medical men of his day. 
 
 It would seem" that such information as he possessed 
 touching the mysterious construction of the human body was 
 obtained by personal dissection, whether of animals by com- 
 parative anatomy or otherwise, does not appear.'^ At all 
 events, as a rare concession of illustrious worth, Aretaeus has 
 received the distinction to be declared equal to Hippocrates 
 in the fidelity of describing maladies, and to his successor, 
 Galen, in the exquisite discrimination of his judgment of dis- 
 eases.'^ 
 
 ''^ Lessing, op. cit. , p. 95. • 
 
 '^ The work of Aretffius, De Re Pharmaceutica, is lost, Kuhn Vita Aretaei, p. 
 XIII., ^ 4. The exact age of this celebrated writer has been made the subject of 
 dispute over a period of time not earlier than Julius Caesar, nor later than Galen. 
 He evidently belonged to a country open to Roman traffic, as he recommends for 
 maladies Findanum, Falernum, and Signium wines, ib. p. 8. 
 
 '^ Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 97. 
 
 ^® Anatomy of human cadavera in Celsus' day strongly probable, De Medicina. 
 Proem., p. 19. 
 
 " Friedlander, Geschichte der Heilkunde, p. 147. 
 
 2
 
 1 8 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Towards the middle of the second century, lasistrohist 
 Cassius, proceeding in the line of disciples of the renowned 
 Agathinus, prepared a treatise which he denominated, " Eighty- 
 four questions : Natural and Medicinal,"^" in which the Aris- 
 totelian problems are closely imitated, but furnished a singular 
 paucity of original notions germane to medicine. This work 
 conveys a most disadvantageous idea of the condition of the 
 curative art in his time. For instance, to the query, as one of 
 a series for popular use, why a person sneezes twice consecu- 
 tively, he responds: "For the reason that there are two 
 nostrils."**^ 
 
 Up to the time of Galen trifling alterations had occurred in 
 the ethics of the medical profession which increased popular 
 esteem, or rendered physicians objects of general favor. 
 Even the illustrious Galen himself distinctly charged®^ that in 
 the favoring obscurity of a great metropolis it was easy for a 
 citizen, and particularly a stranger, to conceal his name, his for- 
 tune, and his conduct ; that a man was only judged by the 
 splendor of his private life and the glitter of public display. 
 If arrogant, he was assured of becoming the centre of zealous 
 favor, and in case the debased deportment or the vileness of his 
 origin were discovered, he could with perfect safety change his 
 habitation to another quarter of the imperial city and renew 
 his extravagances until misfortune again compelled him to 
 migrate. 
 
 Such portraiture of the facilities with which impudent ad- 
 venturers found access to favor corresponds with the scathing 
 rebuke administered to the citizens of Rome by Ammianus 
 Marcellinus,**^ for their eagerness to welcome strangers of re- 
 cent arrival, make them the object of personal interest some- 
 
 ^ De Animalibus Medicine Questiones et Problemata, quje hactenus non vi- 
 dere, 84 Questiones. 
 
 *^ " Sternutatio raro simul causa in promptu est ; nunquam bina sint narium for- 
 amina," lasistr. Cass. De Animalib, Quest, qu. 37, p. 28. 
 
 ''^ Galeni De Libris Propriis, cc. I and 2. 
 
 "■> Gesta Roman. Lib. XIV., c. 6.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. ig 
 
 what ostentatiously for a period, and then abandon them 
 to the perplexities of an adventurous career. In the midst of 
 troops of adventurers who displayed their nefarious skill in 
 the metropolis of the empire, when, as Galen judiciously ob- 
 serves,®* it would be impossible to deceive in a provincial town, 
 naturally enough the sanitary condition of the Roman capi- 
 tol suffered by being abandoned to the first medical charlatan, 
 who volunteered to cure impossible maladies, or sought to 
 prolong these ills in order to extort pecuniary compensation. 
 For a prolonged period it was impracticable to distinguish be- 
 tween the knavish empiric who prostituted the slight knowl- 
 edge of surgery and medicine obtained in the bathing estab- 
 lishments or barber shops, to trafficking in the credulity of the 
 sick and infirm, from the earnest and dignified professor who 
 identified his practice with the system of ^Esculapius or Hip- 
 pocrates, or enlarged upon the experience of yEsclepiades. 
 
 No examinations, no legal proofs that the practitioner was 
 possessed of suitable qualifications in the art of healing; in a 
 word, absolute insecurity for the valetudinarian under the dis- 
 organized state of medical practice, maintained its supremacy 
 until the time of Antoninus Pius.®^ Notwithstanding the ap- 
 parent necessity for such legislative interference, almost a cen- 
 tury and a half from the age of Julius Caesar elapsed before 
 the sick and infirm were protected by imperial edicts. As 
 hitherto stated, in the earlier days of the Roman Empire, the 
 judicious sagacity of Augustus, by direct intervention, ad- 
 vanced the science of medicine and its professors from the 
 low degradation to which they had descended to a dazzling 
 and abrupt transition of royal favorites.^^ 
 
 Especially was this difference publicly marked between the 
 comparative abject servility of earlier surgeons, and the titled 
 
 ^Galeni, op. cit., cc. I and 2. 
 
 ®*On the mendacity and avaricious charges of the Roman medicists in Hadrian's 
 age, vide Dio Cassius, Histor., Lib. LXIX., cap. 22. 
 
 ^ Gaupp, De Professorib. et Medicis in Jure Romano, pp. 38, 76. Slight illus- 
 tiation of early medical winters, Cuvier, Hist, des Sciences Naturelles, Tom. I., 
 p. 366 seq.
 
 20 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 honor bestowed upon Andromachus of the Archiatria Pala- 
 tina.**' This dignity, with which the imperial surgeons were 
 honored — Archiatri Sacri Palatii^^ — involved the franchises of 
 guildic community whose aggregate number and positions 
 were, as other regal arrangements of the court, liable, under 
 changing emperors, to sensible modifications. 
 
 In the fourth century the title and rank distinction of the 
 Perfectissimi Dignitatis conveyed to these ennobled personages 
 valuable immunities, sometimes of a descendable nature inher- 
 ited by their posterity .*'* Added to this was the illustration of 
 the Comitava or Comitis dignitas, sacri palatii, equivalent to 
 the honorary position of Count, divided irito three classes or 
 grades, of which the Comitava Primi Ordinis, usually ad- 
 dressed as praesul spectabilis, was the personal medical adviser 
 of the emperors, although the whole were indifferently styled 
 comites archiatrorum, or archiatri sacri palatii.^" 
 
 It is doubtless beyond controversy''^ that this honorable dis- 
 tinction accorded Andromachus as physician to Nero was not 
 borne by Galen under the philosophic emperor Marcus Au- 
 relius, although conferred by Pagan rulers. To the epoch of 
 Christian emperors must be assigned the first serious attempt 
 at medical organization. Accompanying this dignity were in- 
 valuable prerogatives and profitable immunities, exemptions 
 from public assessments and burthensome duties, such for ex- 
 ample as acceptance of guardianship."^ At a later date the 
 comes archiatrorum was placed on equal footing with the Vicar 
 and Dukes of the Empire. The rapid increase of surgeons ul- 
 timately necessitated their subjection to a supreme head whose 
 
 ^'Gaupp, op. cit., p. 41 seq. 
 
 **Gothofred, Cod. Theodos., Tom. V., pp. 27-48, and Ibid, Tom. II., p. 106, 
 seq. 
 
 ssQaupp, De Professor, et Medic, p. 76, \ 7. 
 
 ^^ Gothofred, op. cit., Tom. V., p. 52 seqq. Dujardin et Peyiille, Hist, de la 
 Cliiriirgie, Tom. II., p. 715. 
 
 '^Reynouard, Ilist. de la Medicine, Tom. I., p. 403. 
 
 '^This exemption of tutelage was caused by Hadrian, Gaupp, op. cit., p. 79; 
 XIII. Codex Theodos. Tit. HI., Lex i.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 21 
 
 dignity was designated as Archiatrus popularis, whose official 
 duty was identical with that of physician salaried by the state. 
 
 These medical professors were invariably selected by favor 
 or influence of a provincial governor for candidature to such 
 citizens and landed proprietors as exercised electoral rights.'-''' 
 In addition to this, a confirmation by the college of older 
 archiatri populares was imperative, of whom according to a 
 rescript of the emperor, Valentinian, in the year 364, and of 
 Valens, in the year 370 respectively, at least seven affirmative 
 votes were necessary to ratify such choice."^ 
 
 However, in order that such immunities might not excite 
 the disaffection of other civilians of the empire, entire freedom 
 from assessments was not conceded to the whole body of 
 surgeons, but restricted alone to the Archiatria.'^ For the pur- 
 pose of establishing the lawful privileges of this profession on 
 a basis of correlative duties and substantial enfranchisement, 
 the Emperor, Antoninus Pius, about the middle of the second 
 century, issued an edict in the nature of a medicinal ordi- 
 nance,^® which prescribed that cities of the smallest number of 
 inhabitants should be entitled to have and maintain five phys- 
 icians absolutely freed of all and every kind of public service — 
 intermediate towns and villages were privileged to possess 
 seven,^' while the largest metropolitan cities obtained an en- 
 largement of privileged surgeons to the number of ten,^* 
 within the municipal limits of the great capital of the empire, 
 each of the fourteen regiones or departments was allowed a 
 
 *^ Codex Justinian. Tit. 52, Lex 9. 
 
 9* XIII. Cod. Theodos., Tit. 3, Lex 9. 
 
 *^ " Archiatri omnes et ex-Archiatri, ab universis muneribus," Cod. Theodos. 
 cit. Lex 2. Gaupp, De Prof, et Medic, p. 50, for additional information on this 
 subject. 
 
 9^X Codex Justinianus, Tit. 52. 
 
 *' Under Alexander Severus there were seven of these highly privileged per- 
 sonages, Lampred, Vit. Alex. Severi, c. 42. This number was reaffirmed by the 
 Valentinian rescript of the year 370, Cod. Theod., cit. Lex 9. 
 
 ^^ Codex Justin, cit. Tit. 52.
 
 2 2 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 medical attendant whose salary was fixed by law."' The Ves- 
 tals and Gymnasia also were permitted a surgeon regularly 
 employed at public expense/'^ 
 
 Compensation for professional skill under these venerable 
 edicts consisted chiefly in kind — annonaria commoda/" or 
 natural productions, sometimes in money, or its current equiv- 
 alent, usually styled salara, as distinguished from the honor- 
 arium or fees, which more accurately applied to the law than 
 to medicine/"'' Upon the principle of receiving state or gov- 
 ernment patronage, the members of the medical profession 
 thus salaried, were likewise obliged to perform certain func- 
 tions partaking eminently of a public service. Consequently 
 it was their official duty to render attendance to the impover- 
 ished without compensation,"^ — a system of absolute necessity 
 arising from the disinclination of the affluent and aristocratic 
 Roman to subject himself to the hazard of infection, which 
 was carefully avoided on the return of the messenger to sick 
 friends, by compelling the servant to bathe himself before pre- 
 senting the result of his inquiry."* 
 
 In the case of wealthy sufferers the departmental physi- 
 cian was allowed to demand his honoraria or fees. To these 
 emoluments arising from their official position, municipal sur- 
 geons added the substantial benefits of the dignified Arch- 
 iatria, by an exemption from such imposts as military obliga- 
 tions, quartering, forced loans, etc."'' In matters requiring ju- 
 
 ^XIII. Codex Theodos., Tit. 3, Lex S. Lampridius, Vita Alex. Severi, c. 42, 
 mentions a salaried physician of that emperor's reign. Vide Gaupp, De Profess^ 
 et Medic, p. 52. On public salaries, Codex Theodos., cit. Tit. IV., Lex i. 
 
 1°° Codex Theodos., cit.. Lex 8. 
 
 '91 Ibid. 
 
 '9^ The facility with which the young lawyers secured the confidence of their 
 clients to advise them into expensive litigation, where the client became poor and 
 the lawyer rich, is noted by Am. Marcellinus, Gesta Rom., Lib. XXX., c. 4. 
 
 '"^ Codex Theodos., cit. Lex 8. 
 
 ""Ammian. Marcellinus, op. cit., Lib. XIV., c. 6. 
 
 105 "Eosdem ad militiam minime comprehendi placeat : sed nee hospites militares 
 recipiant." Ibid., Lex 10.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 23 
 
 dicial inquiry, these privileged officials were favored with a 
 speedier disposition of their causes before the tribunals where 
 they were called, — a prerogative of the highest value under 
 the complicated and tedious proceedings which the Roman 
 barristers were skilled in prolonging in exact proportion as the 
 gilded honoraria of the clientiele failed to stimulate his judi- 
 cious hesitancy .^°*^ Antoninus Pius enacted that these public 
 surgeons should be exempt from summary process, and inter- 
 dicted the issuance of a warrant against them to bring their 
 body before the courts. 
 
 This rescript was reaffirmed by Constantine in the year 321, 
 under a most exemplary fine and the penalty of being flayed 
 alive."^ The deduction from the Antonine ordinances and 
 their succeeding reproduction, that the archiatri in some way 
 were associated with a perfunctionary duty of inquiring into 
 the qualifications of medical students prior to their admission 
 to the profession, seems to come within the intention of these 
 several edicts. 
 
 Upon what plan such examinatioji was conducted, or tuition 
 in the art given, if at all, is in the highest degree uncertain, 
 and involved in great obscurity.^"* It is indeed improbable that 
 these disciples, the future devotees of a vacillating science, pos- 
 sessed the appliances of regularly organized institutions ot 
 learning, but rather followed the instruction of a selected 
 teacher, and aggregated themselves to hear the accumulated 
 wisdom of personal experience, joined perhaps to the frail and 
 timid outlines of a scientific system. From the careful legis- 
 lation promulgated during several centuries, having direct 
 reference to the ability of medical professors, it is equally clear 
 that no surgeon or physician was permitted to teach the prin- 
 
 i*Ammianus Marcellinus, Gesta Rom., Lib. XXX., c. 4. 
 
 107 XIII. Codex Theodos., Tit. III., Lex i. 
 
 108 This much may be gathered from the rescript of 364, Codex cit., Lex V., 
 which decrees : " Quisque docere vult, non repente nee temere prosiUat ad hoc 
 munus," etc.
 
 24 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 ciples of his art without consent of the surgical commune,"^ 
 and to a certain extent the ranks of the avocation were re- 
 cruited only from such as passed triumphantly a prescribed 
 examination."" 
 
 Violation of this regulation caused a forfeiture of two 
 thousand drachms. In this arrangement making it mandatory 
 for the collegiate members to impart medicinal knowledge to 
 students, nothing further can be gleaned from the law which 
 directs it, than a puzzled inquirer applying to a public official 
 for mental assistance which strict legislation compelled him to 
 give. The scholars in the law schools of the empire were far 
 more carefully tutored."' 
 
 Government subsidy was freely employed in maintaining 
 these institutions and filling professorial positions with the 
 most cultured talent which the vast extension of imperial 
 authority could procure."^ By the policy of the Antonine en- 
 actment, midwives, wound-dressers, and dentists were also 
 placed under the vigilant scrutiny of the college of surgeons."^ 
 Notwithstanding this medical constitution, infrequent frag- 
 ments reward research into the civil law, which would warrant 
 the assumption that a regular governmental organization 
 existed for the propagation of this science. Towards the 
 commencement of the third century an edict was promulgated 
 which rendered medical practitioners responsible for the 
 pathological treatment of their patients,"* and forbid for such 
 
 lofti. ye(j judicio ordinis probatus decretum curialium mereatur, optimorum con- 
 spirante consensu." XIII. Cod. Theodos. Tit. III., Lex 5. 
 
 ""Cod. Justinian. Tit. 52. 
 
 '"Law .students were required to give tiieir first years to the study of Greek 
 letters, Ilcineccius, Juris Civilis Romani, Tom. I., cap. 154. 
 
 "'^ Berytus was the most distinguished law school of the empire, Eunapius, 
 Vit. Sophistor. v. Proehaersius, p. 490, and was exempted from the edict closing 
 the.se schools, Ileineccius, op. cit., Tom. I., cap. 387. 
 
 "•''Cod. Just, cit., Lib. 52. 
 
 "'A similar cu.stom of more ancient date, Goujet, Origin des Arts et Metiers, 
 Tom. II., p. 229. Physicians punished if their patients were not cured according 
 to Egyptian rules. Gothofred, Com. in Cod. Theod., Tom. V., p. 35.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 25 
 
 purpose the application of magic."^ Permission, however, 
 restoring certain remedies of a magical nature was subse- 
 quently decreed by Constantine the Great, in the year 32.1."® 
 In order to hold in subjection a tendency so rapidly increasing 
 at this epoch, to apply supernatural curatives, a law was 
 passed adjudging the delinquent to the death penalty."' 
 
 At a comparatively early period of the Roman government, 
 legislative ordinances compelled the presence of selected mid- 
 wives in all cases demanding a judicial investigation."* To 
 these statutes other laws were added for the preservation of 
 human life against the prevailing crime of infanticide and 
 exposure of new-born children."' Idiots, or such as were 
 mentally unsound according to the economy of the Twelve 
 Tables,^^" passed to the custody of relatives, who subsequently 
 were required to secure for them their privileges, possessions 
 and official dignities. 
 
 A wife's insanity or imbecility of three years, or a five year's 
 idiocy of a husband entitled the aggrieved party to a sepa- 
 ration in case no inculpation by way of recrimination was 
 made.^" One of the most singular and, in its moral influences 
 on the Roman society, destructive customs, traceable to the 
 deteriorating presence of Greek refugees in the imperial 
 metropolis, was the universal extension of the emasculation of 
 
 "^Am. Marcellinus, Gesta Romanor. Lib. XVI., c. 4. 
 
 "SIX. Codex Theodos., Tit. XVI., De Maleficiis, Lex 3. 
 
 ^^'' Spartianus, Vita Caracallre, sub. fin. 
 
 "^Consult Gothofred, ut sup., p. 35, col. 5, for the status under the law of the 
 earlier and later Roman midwives. 
 
 "9 V. Codex Theodos., Tit. VII., De Expositis, Lex 2; and IX. Cod. Theod., 
 Tit. XIV., De Sicariis, Lex i. On the prevalence of this crime Juvenal, Satira 
 VI., says: " Quae steriles facit atque homines in ventre necandos." Also, Ter- 
 tullian, ad Nationes, Lib. I., c. 15. 
 
 120 Leg. XII. Tabul., Lex 5. 
 
 121 Another cause of divorce, added by Constantine in the year 331, was the 
 accusation and proof of a wife being Medicamentariae, evidently a medical 
 sorceress, III. Cod. Theod., Tit. XVI., Lex i.
 
 26 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 infants to qualify them for a terrible servitude.^^'^ The mor- 
 tality of this deformity may be conjectured when it is stated 
 that only one of thirty survived the mutilation. Severe laws 
 were promulgated by the emperors in order to totally extin- 
 guish this inhuman practice. 
 
 Impartial justice should record as a commendation of Domi- 
 tian that one of his earliest imperial acts was a decree interdict- 
 ing this crime.'^^ The penalties inflicted for violating these 
 ordinances were emasculation by way of retaliation, banish- 
 ment, and confiscation of the offender's personal possessions. 
 In the time of Justinian extraordinary efforts were made to 
 crush out beneath the ponderous influences of statutory edicts 
 the widely indulged criminality of Paiderastia."* None of the 
 habits surviving the wreck of Grecian nationality seem to have 
 been more promptly imported into Rome, with the increasing 
 afflux of adventuresome spirits, than this social immorality. 
 
 It can not be presumed that the earlier Roman emperors 
 struggled to successfully impede its progress and check the 
 frightful demoralization following in its advance. Christian 
 rulers doubtless vindicated personal dignity in erecting a legal 
 barrier against it, and sought to make such interdict vital by 
 subjecting the guilty to castration. Under the Roman law, 
 poisoning was regarded as more heinous crime than forcible 
 homicide, and notwithstanding the frequent occasions which 
 compelled judicial investigation into the unlawful use of poisons, 
 the means of testing their presence was totally divested of ac- 
 curate detection.^^^ In general, toxicology was divided into 
 
 ^""^ As late as the year 949 merchants from France sought the Grecian empire, 
 and bought eunuchs of youthful age and sold them in Spain at lucrative prices. 
 Liutprand, Antapodos. Lib. VI., c. 6. 
 
 123 « Vetent in ejus contumeliam, ne quis in postremum intra fines Romani im- 
 perii castraretur." Xiphil. in Domitian, p. 255. Philostratus Vita Apol. Tyan., 
 Lib. VL, c. 42. 
 
 ^'* Lecky, History of European Morals to Charlemagne, Vol. II., p. 311, may 
 be advantageously consulted. 
 
 '^^ The example of Mithridates certainly influenced many of the citizens of de- 
 clining Rome to inquire into this science. Fabricius, Biblioth. Grsca, Tom. 
 XIII., p. 344.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 27 
 
 two branches by legislation, the bonum vencnum, et malum, 
 noxious, and the innocuous or beneficial poison.^''^ It may be 
 added here, as connected with the subject, that toward the con- 
 clusion of the third century the first indications present them- 
 selves of the existence of a class of citizens to whose vigilant 
 care was confided the preparation of medicaments ordered by 
 attendant physicians.^" Prior to this epoch, for several cen- 
 turies it had been the most usual method for medical practi- 
 tioners to compound their own medications and administer 
 them to their suffering patients/'^^ 
 
 Regular pharmacists were entirely unknown, excepting per- 
 haps the Herbarii, who disposed of their commodities at trifl- 
 ing prices in the public markets or along the highways. 
 There was indeed a class of medicinal compounders whose 
 operations were mainly limited to the preparation of such 
 remedies as experience or current rumor suggested to be most 
 suitable for popular merchandise, and offered their wares upon 
 benches or stalls, in booths denominated apotheca;, directly for 
 public sale.^'^^ 
 
 For this reason they were classified as medici sellurlarii, but 
 the market vendors of medicaments by outcry were known as 
 medici circumforanei, or circulatores. Physicians themselves, 
 in preparing proper remedies for their sick, usually purchased 
 pharmaceutical supplies from these medicinal merchants. At 
 the period under notice, the functions of the apothecary began 
 to assimilate with the duties of a modern druggist, although 
 comparison between the obscure predecessors of the present 
 pharmacists would be manifestly unjust. Prior to this epoch, 
 medical men were accustomed to the assistance of their dis- 
 ciples, or servants, in suitably compounding prescribed re- 
 
 I'^^In this sense it is used by Lucan, Pharsalia, Lib. VIII., v. 690 seq., sic: 
 
 " Putris ab alto 
 Humor, et infuso facies solidata veneno est." 
 
 ^^^ Oribasius, in tres Euporiston Libros, ad Eunapium Prsefatio. 
 
 1^^ Dujardin et Peyrille, Histoire de la Chirurgie, Tom. II., p. 61 ; and Galen, 
 
 De Compos. Medicam., Lib. VI., c. i. 
 
 129 Dujard. et Peyrille, op. cit., p. 60 seq.
 
 28 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 ceipts/^" or perhaps in the emergencies continually arising in 
 the career of practitioners, such remedies doubtless were con- 
 stantly ready for physicians, surgeons, and others.^^^ Medica- 
 ments thus compounded for the immediate necessities as sim- 
 ple curatives, and sold publicly in the booths skirting the 
 streets of Rome or Athens, were not, in the technical signifi- 
 cation, chemical compositions, although a knowledge of this 
 science was extant at this period."'' 
 
 i30«L'etat ni les fonctions de I'apothicaire n'existoient point alors; chaque 
 medecin preparait lui-meme, ou faisoit preparer par ses disciples et ses serviteurs," 
 Dujardin et Peyrille, Histoire de la Chirurgie, Tom. II., p. 60 seq. 
 
 131 Ibid, p. 60. 
 
 13- Goujet, Origin des Arts et Metiers, Tom. III., p. 104.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Galen : His Beneficial Influence on Medicine — Its Deplorable State Prior 
 to his Time — Arrests a Complete Downfall — Degeneration of the 
 Empire at this Epoch — Galen, a Native of Pergamos, in the second 
 Century — First Studies Philosophy — Is Directed by a Dream to Devote 
 Himself to Medicine — Goes to Alexandria for Anatomical Instruction ■ 
 — Is Domiciled at Rome — Excites Envy of the Professors There — 
 Leaves this City on Account of their Indignities — No Complete Method 
 before his day — Galen Conversant with Mosaic Doctrines — Revered 
 with Honors almost Divine. 
 
 IMMEDIATELY preceding the era of Galen, medical science 
 had succumbed to the deplorable influences of contentions 
 and zealous sects. While empiricism and speculation sought 
 to mutually crush each other in order that the dogmatic and 
 triumphant rival might pass onward upon an unimpeded plane of 
 success, the more correct principles of the curative art gradually 
 decline before its own expounders. Galen's advent arrested 
 the complete downfall of medicine as a scientific method of 
 cure, and maintained through his authoritative exposition, the 
 outlines at least of treating maladies for centuries upon the 
 basis of a reasoning philosophy. At this epoch the Roman 
 empire had extended its domination by invincible armies from 
 the outlets of the Rhine to the deserts of Africa, from the pillars 
 of Hercules, the ancient Ultima Thule, to the Caspian Sea and 
 the Persian Gulf. All the glittering splendor of this mighty 
 exterior was impotent to arrest the disintegrating effects of 
 internal decay, and the quickening principles of dissolution 
 which had so insidiously crept in behind the burnished chariot 
 wheels of Julius Caesar. 
 
 Barbarism permanently domiciled by the side of a corrupt- 
 ing Grecian civilization, mournfully predicted and justly fore- 
 cast by the inflexible Censor of Republican Rome,^ mutually 
 
 iLivii Histor. Naturalis, Lib. XXIX., cap. 7. 
 
 (29)
 
 30 HISTOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 strained the social fabric by their perverted humanity,^ which 
 dissipated the martial essence of the colossal government. 
 The reigns of Trojan and the Antoninii, indeed, stand out in 
 marked distinction to the remorseless tyranny of their prede- 
 cessors, but succeeding rulers wasted the beneficent influences 
 by imperial excesses. 
 
 Rude and insolent pomp, inordinate vanity of an unhealthy 
 social existence, swelled the immorality of the affluent Roman 
 into unnatural indulgences and abandoned the popular im- 
 pulses to the vilest criminalities. Within the narrowed limits 
 of royal authority no barrier was elevated to resist the cease- 
 less shocks which weakened the moralistic cohesion of society 
 — everywhere apathetic indifference to the restrictive forces of 
 religious principle and a palpable inertness against elevating 
 the mind to the inspiration of sublime virtue. Naturally 
 enough, the social debasement of the great metropolis radiated 
 through the smaller cities, and finally corrupted the villages 
 and hamlets of the empire, where vigilant praetors gathered up 
 budgets of gossip and news of suspected citizens for the 
 imperial ear.'' The immediate result of this deplorable degra- 
 dation manifested itself in dwarfed art* and a lamentable 
 decay of medical science. 
 
 Although the ponderous weight of unnatural vices and 
 startling immoralities weakened the nervous energies of the 
 citizens of declining Rome, there were bold and brilliant men 
 of great culture who scourged the terrible excesses of their 
 
 ''The Historise Augustae Scriptores Sex., and the fragmentary writings of Am- 
 mianus Marcellinus. draw a pictiu-e of the awful depravity of the third and fourth 
 centuries, only equalled by the brutal ferocity of the Roman soldiery. The fol- 
 lowing military chant attests this inhumanity : " Mille, niille, mille, mille, mille, 
 mille decollavimus; Unus homo mille, mille, mille, mille, mille, decoUavimus ; 
 Mille, mille, mille, vivat, qui mille, mille' occidit ; Tantum vini habet nemo, 
 quantum fudit sanguinis." Vopisci, Vita Div. Aureliani, cap. 6. 
 
 * Plinii Epistola: ad Trajan. Lib. X., Epp. 30, 40-42. 
 
 * The superstitious ferocity of Tiberius in summarily executing a skilled arti- 
 ficer, is sagely commented on by Pancirolus, Rerum Memoraliil. sive Deperdit., 
 Tom. I., p. 126 seq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 31 
 
 degraded contemporaries and cauterized their infamies with 
 bitter satire, or laid bare the moral depravity of the Latin race, 
 in glorifying the virtues of the illustrious heroes of antiquit>^ 
 Such mirrored reflections were reproduced under the burning 
 stylus of Plutarch; painted in the brilliant hues of impressive 
 truth by Suetonius in his " Lives of the Caesars" — while Cor- 
 nelius Tacitus unveiled the sombre and hideous corruption 
 which disintegrated the fast waning vitality of civil life and 
 appealed to the dispassionate severity of the tribunal of the 
 universe. 
 
 Poetry, incapable of original inspiration, found nourishment 
 in the calamitous debasement of the age, and nerved the hand 
 of Juvenal, Petronius, and Lucan, with the unsparing scourge 
 of satire. Philosophy, which under the earlier Romans^ 
 and the later emperors, had nev^er found subjects of indepen- 
 dent and scholastic research, shackled with dilettantism, was 
 associated with trickery and superstitious usages.® While 
 the devotees of Aristippus and Epicurus practiced their sensu- 
 ous teachings in the most ordinary details of life, or sought 
 the abandonment of a bold skepticism, the merited exercises of 
 the Stoa found infrequent but illustrious advocates in Seneca 
 and the emperor Marcus Antoninus, who struggled with una- 
 vailing example to oppose the debasing tendencies of the 
 period.^ 
 
 Other causes were co-operating to modify and perhaps pre- 
 cipitate a dissolution of heathen philosophy, and newer ele- 
 ments were actively engaged in supplanting the Paganistic doc- 
 trines by the subrogation of a youthful and vigorous rival, 
 
 5 Cato, in the exercise of censorial functions, ordered Grecian philosophers 
 domiciled at Rome to return to their own country. Gaupp, De Professor, injure 
 Romano, p. 22 seq. 
 
 8 Rhetoricians appear to have shared the fortunes of their confreres, the phi- 
 losophers, and were ordered into exile, Suetonius, De Claris Rhetoribus, Lib. I., 
 cap. I. 
 
 ' 'Julius Capitolinus, Vita M. Anton. Philosoph., cap. i, awards him the pane- 
 gyric of being the most enlightened ruler, on account of his philosophy and purity 
 of morals : " Sanctitate vitse omnibus piineipibus antecellit."
 
 32 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 whose successful industry rejuvenated society, infused it with 
 purity, but corrupted medical economy. Prior to the consum- 
 mation of those events which crowned Christianity, after the 
 edict of Milan, as the religion of the Roman Empire, for 
 a century a spiritless eclecticism, which deteriorated with the 
 general decline of science, had revealed itself among the pro- 
 fessors of medicine and threatened at length to destroy the 
 unstable vitality of scientific development. 
 
 At this critical epoch in the second century, Claudius 
 Galen temporarily arrested the hastening decay of medical 
 science. Of all the sectarians of curative dogmatism he was 
 the most fertile, the most dexterous and puissant, and in the 
 universality of professional scope the most extensive. Born in 
 the city of Pergamos, in Asia Minor, towards the close of the 
 first portion of the second century, he began his useful exist- 
 ence amid the cultured surroundings of a municipality long 
 celebrated for its temple dedicated to ^sculapius,® the col- 
 ossal dimensions of a carefully selected library and its school 
 of medicine." His father, Nikon, an architect of renown, 
 under the reign of Hadrian, with parental devotion, largely 
 aided by the accomplishment of a polished mind, had been his 
 earliest preceptor. 
 
 Upon attaining to his fifteenth year he was placed under the 
 tutelage of the academician Gajus, and other equally illustri- 
 ous philosophers of Pergamos. Here, where the scholastic 
 exercises of the Peripaticians were carefully taught, Galen was 
 enabled to fully gratify a predilection for Aristotle, Theophras- 
 tus, and Plato,'" and thorough culture in dialectic declama- 
 tion. Within two years, the youthful student under his Per- 
 gamic instructors obtained an extraordinary celebrity, and at 
 a time when abundantly equipped for disputation wnth the pro- 
 foundly learned of his native city in grammar, history, phil- 
 
 sphilostratus, Vita Apollon. Tyan, Lib. IV., c. II, § i. 
 
 ® Matter, Ecole d'Alexaiulrie, Tom. I., p. 214. 
 
 '"Vide Claleni De Hippocrat. et Platon. Placitiis, Lib. V., c. 3, where hispro- 
 found acquaintanceship with the Platonic dogma of the soul-principle reveals 
 itself.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 3^ 
 
 osophy, and mathematical science, through the express inter- 
 \'cntion or advice of pagan divinities," he instantly abandoned 
 the agreeable pastime of polite and instructive arts, and de- 
 voted himself to the study of medicine. 
 
 He recounts with charming complaisance that this divine 
 admonition having been twice given to him by Apollo,'- he was 
 unable longer to resist such impressive manifestation of su- 
 pernal direction. His numerous and sagacious writings doubt- 
 less better justify the medical vocation of Galen than these 
 mystical reminiscences. In his seventeenth year he received 
 the first tuition in anatomical science and therapeutics from 
 Satyrus Stratonickus, and the empiric yEschion.^^ Four 
 years later proceeding to Smyrna for the purpose of attending 
 the instruction of Pelops in dissection, thence to Corinth to 
 listen to the Numescarius, and finally to Alexandria, where he 
 devoted himself exclusively to anatomy, and, as it appears, to 
 vivisection, at the instance of Boethius,'* of such subjects as 
 were procurable, where he sojourned for an extended period to 
 complete his studies. 
 
 On returning to Pergamus in his twenty-eighth year, he was 
 specifically intrusted by the Pagan pontiff with the surgical 
 care of such athletes as were wounded in the gladiatorial com- 
 bats, and in the application of his professional skill readily 
 manifested marvelous knowledge of surgery and its cognate 
 science.'* Three years subsequent to his departure from the 
 Alexandria scholastic institutions, he domiciled himself per- 
 manently in Rome,"' where he became quickly and intimately 
 
 " Galeni, Prsenot. ad Posthum, cap. 2 ; and Ibid, De Methodo Medendi, Lib. 
 IX., cap. 4. 
 
 '-Calem, De rrrenot,ad Posthum, cap. 2, and Ibid, De ISIethod. Medendi, cap. 4. 
 
 1' Inflexibility to principle seems to have characterized the empirics. One re- 
 fused to attend a sectio operation as against reason, Richter, De ^'eter. Enipiricor. 
 ingenitate, p. 8. 
 
 '* Galeni, De Anatomicis Administrationibus, Lib. I., cap. i. 
 
 '^ Ibid., De Composit. Medicam., Lib. III., c. 2. 
 
 ^*Ibid., De Libriis Propriis, cc. i and 2. 
 
 3
 
 34 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 associated with the most erudite scholars of the empire, and 
 advanced to close companionship with the metropolitan sur- 
 geons.^' 
 
 At this epoch of Galen's life, it is evident that the dialectic 
 culture of his earliest youth exercised a ponderous influence 
 in deciding the nature of that devotion to the details of medi- 
 cine which afterward rendered him famous. Soon after arriv- 
 ing in the imperial capital, Galen seems to have assumed an 
 undisputed superiority over the most distinguished medical 
 professors there, and to whom he apparently abandoned the 
 practical drudgery of the avocation, and illustrated his own 
 scientific acquisitions by the fascinating method of public read- 
 ings.^* But his rapid success and the widely extending fame 
 of his professional dexterity in anatomy and ophthalmy,^" his 
 unseasonable tumid boasting, his undisguised and contemp- 
 tuous indifference for his professional confreres, which he 
 wholly declined to conceal, his natural irascibilit}', provoked 
 exasperating enmities and made his sojourn at Rome so 
 extremely hazardous that he left the city and returned to 
 Pergamus.^" 
 
 His route homeward to the distant city of Asia Minor was 
 diversified by erratic voyages on foot in the interest of medical 
 science, through Thrace and Macedonia, in search of such medi- 
 camental herbs as grew in these localities.^^ Notwithstanding 
 the undisputed irritability of Galen's temperament, a turgid 
 haughtiness, frequently inseparable from recognized ability, 
 which, in the great Pergamic scientist's career, were evidently 
 the direct outgrowth of unstinted adulation to a distinguished 
 personage of thirty-three years, the portraiture which he has 
 
 !■ Ibid. 
 
 i» Ibid. 
 
 '" Professional consuhations were forwarded to him from Iberia, Celtica, Thrace, 
 and Asia. Galeni, Lib. IV., c. 2, Kuhn,Tom. VII., p. 454; and Hieron. Mer- 
 curial. DeArte Gymnas., Lib. VI., c. 10., p. 374. 
 
 ^''Galeni, PrDcnotat. ad Epigenem, Kiihn, Tom. VIII. 
 
 '■'> Ibid., De Simplic. Medic, Lil'. IX., c. i.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 3- 
 
 traced of the medical gentlemen of the Roman capital would 
 seem to be a life-like resemblance, reproduced in the vivid col- 
 oring of veracity. 
 
 With imbittered hatred, he lays them under the sweeping 
 charge of ignoble jealousy, accuses them of stupid ignorance, 
 inculpates them as thieves^'^ and poisoners, and finishes his 
 burning censoriousness by declaring that, having finally un- 
 masked such villains, he will thenceforth place himself beyond 
 the reach of their vindictive snares and accursed malevolence, 
 by abandoning the great and populous metropolis, where no 
 one is considered as respectable only in proportion to osten- 
 tatious splendor, and where shameless charlatanism usurped 
 the confidence of a frivolous and perverse people; and would 
 thenceforth inhabit a humble village, where each citizen is 
 intimately known to the other, whose birth, education, fortune, 
 and morals, are matters upon which public judgment is rarely 
 at fault.'^'* After an absence from Rome of about a year, Galen 
 was ordered to return by the enlightened emperor, Marcus 
 Aurelius, and was appointed surgeon to Commodus,^* during 
 the time that Aurelius was actively engaged in his campaign 
 against the Germans. He also enjoyed the confidence of the 
 succeeding emperor, Septimus Severus. 
 
 In the year 169, Galen left the imperial city, as is stated, on 
 account of the pestilence raging there, and returned to Per- 
 gamus.^"" The time of his death is uncertain, but it is presumed 
 that he died about the age of seventy, or in the opening year 
 
 '■^'^ Legislation as early as Antoninus Pius, and reaffirmed by later emperors, was 
 compelled to add the force of rescripts to restrict physicians to liberal compensa- 
 tion under their oath, Juramentum Hippocrates, which the law of the fourth 
 century repealed, Gothofred, Com. in Cod. Theodos., Tom. V., p. 37. 
 
 ^^ Galen. De Libriis Propriis, c. 2 ; and Ibid., Pmcnot. ad Epigenem, Kiihn, 
 Tom. VIII. 
 
 ''■' Ibid., De Libriis Propriis, c. 2. Kiihn, Vita Galeni, p. 29, states that in 
 this emperor's day the Temple of Peace was destroyed by fire, in which confla- 
 gration many manuscript copies of Galen's writings perished. Galeni, De Anti- 
 dotis, Lib. I., c. 13. 
 
 '^^ Galeni, De Libriis Propriis, cc. i and 2.
 
 36 
 
 HIS TOR Y OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 of the third century, while revisiting his native city. From 
 the voluminous aggregation of his treatises saved from loss, it 
 would seem that a large part of the later years of his life was 
 devoted to the preparation of medical compositions, and given 
 to the public or professors as readings or lectures. A dream, 
 sent by yEsculapius prevented Galen from accompanying 
 ]\Iarcus Aurelius in his expedition against the Teutonic races. 
 An enthusiastic monk has confidently asserted that this illus- 
 trious surgeon finished his life while on a pilgrimage to the 
 Holy Land.^"' 
 
 Among the manifold writings of Galen on the subject of 
 medicine and its associate branches, the influence of the liberal 
 education of early youth appears to have survived the less 
 attractive investigation into a deteriorated science, inasmuch 
 as nearly a hundred and twenty-five treatises have perished, 
 elaborating philosophical, grammatical, geometrical, and 
 juristic subjects.^' 
 
 In the scientific treatment of his medical essays, he most 
 unequivocally asserts that he is totally disconnected with and 
 unattached to any of the numerous sects which divided the 
 profession of his day. On the contrary, he boldly charged • 
 almost abject servitude upon those who arrogated to them- 
 selves the title of Hippocratians, Praxaguereans, or Herophi- 
 lians. Full adhesion to this inculpation would be perhaps 
 unjust, especially when he claimed to hold the exact equilibri- 
 um between diverse doctrines, and should be accepted as the 
 pardonable autocracy of a- voluminous writer, or the trivial 
 artifice of a rhetorician who uses a figurative phrase in order 
 to surprise an auditor into admitting his claim to independence 
 and impartiality. His predilection for Hippocrates is so visi- 
 ble that he comments and explains the venerable father of 
 
 '■'fi Reynouard, Histoire de la Medecine, Tom. I., p. 322. The utter absurdity of 
 this partisan claim may he seen by comparing Galen's own notions touching 
 Christianity ; De Differentia Pulsuum, Lib. II., cc. 3 and 4. 
 
 ^'Some of these on Galen's own testimony, Fabncius, Bibliotheca Grwca, 
 Tom. II., p. 435- Excellent resume of Galen's life in l-abricius, op. cit., Tom. 
 
 v., pp. 37^-390.
 
 DURn\'G THE MIDDLE AGES. -j^ 
 
 medicine, and while amplifying these different propositions he 
 refutes the objections made against the Hippocratian method, 
 in order to render its triumph easy and complete. 
 
 In the exegetical treatises by Galen, he holds up Thessalus 
 to merited scorn on account of his malediction of Hippocrates.''*'' 
 He distinctly states, however, with the satisfactory conscious- 
 ness of his great authority, that before him no one had furn- 
 ished a complete method for the treatment of maladies. While 
 avowing that his ancient predecessor had indicated the plan 
 by which the adaptation of medicine as a scientific cure of dis- 
 orders might be rendered systematic and rational, he main- 
 tained that Hippocrates had failed to pursue the course de- 
 scribed; that a vicious order in the treatment of infirmities 
 was adopted by the illustrious physician of Cos, which com- 
 pelled him to omit certain important indications, while his 
 obscurity, the usual style of the ancients, arose from a desire 
 for excessive precision. In a word, Hippocrates had barely 
 sketched the outlines, and formally opened the way to scien- 
 tific cure of disease; the enlargement of this system to practi- 
 cal use, and the establishment of medicine as a science/* Galen 
 attributed to himself 
 
 Without doubt anatomical knowledge of that epoch was 
 largely increased by the Pergamic scientist, who followed this 
 valuable branch of medicine with assiduity — a study much 
 neglected by the dominant schools, and suffered to decline into 
 desuetude. Utilizing the studious results of his predecessors, 
 he obtained such practical information from dissecting cadav- 
 era, animals, and especially apes, or by vivisection,'^" as the 
 circumscribed permission to anatomize the human body of the 
 period would permit.^^ Marinus, in the first century, and the 
 
 2^Galeni,De Methodo Medendi, Lib. I., cap. 2. 
 
 ^^Galeni, De Methodo Medendi, Lib. IX., cap. 8. 
 
 '"Celsus, De Medicina, Lib. L, Prcem., p. 19. 
 
 •''^It is possible that anatomy may have developed from the Egyptian embalm- 
 ing, the professors of which, after preparing the cadaver, were usually driven 
 away by survivors with .stones and curses, Goujet. Origin des Arts et Metiers, 
 Tom. L, p. 222. Alexandria derived especial permission from the Ptolemies to 
 dissect human cadavera, Plinii Histor. Naturalis, Lib. XIX., c. 26.
 
 38 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Ephesian Rufus under Trajan, appear to have obtained dis- 
 tinction in anatomy through their writings prior to the time of 
 Galen.'' 
 
 The Galenic system of medicine, thus established by the 
 practical skill of its founder upon the most accessible materials 
 which intelligent zeal could use, was so servilely followed 
 throughout the Middle Ages in a deteriorated adaptation, and 
 conjoined with the assumed potency of external but divinized 
 influences, that a fleeting outline of the same is indispensable. 
 According to this methodical treatment of medicine, there were 
 in man three principles or actuating impulses: spirit, humors, 
 and solids.^' Inasmuch as he accepted the dynamical forces of 
 the soul, or pneuma, with Hippocrates, he also admitted the 
 four primordial qualities of heat, cold, dryness, and humidity, 
 which, in their individual or united action, sufficiently influ- 
 enced the transformation of the human system.'^ 
 
 In close harmony with the theories of the Peripatician es- 
 sences, he avows three original powers; natural force located 
 in the liver, vital force in the brain, and sensual force in the 
 heart,'^^ which were vitalized in their respective habitations by 
 a concealed pneuma or soul.'^'* These natural essences, which 
 directly supervise the action of production, nutrition, and 
 growth, in their turn are controlled by four, the attractive, 
 differential, preservative, and exclusive powers, and collectively 
 act under the domination of a circulating spirit, which moves 
 through the arteries, and have their central organism in the 
 liver, where the veins originate, blood is prepared, and nutri- 
 ment distributed to the entire body. In the pathological 
 method of Galen's treatment, the aggregation of entities, either 
 
 ^^ Friedlander, Geschichte der Heilkunde, p. 151. 
 
 ^^Kiihn, Vita Galeni, p. 56, seq. 
 
 •'* Galeni, De Hippocrat. et Platonis Placitiis, Lib. I., cap. i. 
 
 '^Ibid., Lib. V., cap. 3. Pliilo. Judaeus, Leg., Lib. IL, c. no; Tom. L, p. 57 
 seq., accords the liver as the seat of cupidity. 
 
 ** Galeni, De Hip. et Plato. Placit., Lib. V., cc. i, 2 and 3.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 3g 
 
 imaginary or in the abstract, may be found — to which are at- 
 tributed acts and powers incident to realistic beings.^' 
 
 From the character of Galen's distribution of the sanguinary 
 fluids throughout the veins, it is a rational conclusion to as- 
 sume his practical acquaintanceship with the circulation of the 
 blood, to whose knowledge the utility of venal valves was 
 alone essential to complete the universality of his anatomical 
 learning.^* In the psychological or pneumatic essence of Galen, 
 is to be found the earliest serious effort of a cultivated and 
 scholastic mind to delineate with tolerable accuracy the exact 
 correlation so palpably existing between the secret impulses 
 of the soul and their demonstrable effect on the physical sys- 
 tem of man. So far indeed as -this explanation of a close but 
 independent unity is visible in Galen's demonstration, it was 
 evidently the development of his profound knowledge of Pla- 
 tonic philosophy; but unfortunately the preponderating influ- 
 ence of a sensuous and paganistic materialism precluded further 
 understanding of the soul than a conceded abject and depend- 
 ent portion of the human body. For this reason he repre- 
 sented its gross, corporeal operation merely as an empirical 
 adjunct, and accepted this vitalizing essence, degraded of its 
 spirituality, as a physical composition. 
 
 As hitherto stated, Galen admitted with Plato and Aristotle 
 the triplicate faculty of the human soul, each of which was 
 endowed with specific functions in propelling the sanitary 
 operations of the body,'^" and upon the queried immortality 
 of this principle refused to accept the Platonic ratiocination, 
 and maintained an attitude of vacillating opinion. 
 
 Touching the efforts of the great medical scholar of Perga- 
 mus, to subordinate the movements of the soul to a subservient 
 dependence on the human senses, it may be confidently asserted 
 that the almost omnipotent authority of Galen, at a subsequent 
 period conjoined with other causes arising from the Alexandrine 
 
 ^' Reynouard, Histoire de la Medecine, Tom. I., p. 329. 
 
 ^'^ Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 102. 
 
 ^^Galeni, De Hippocratis et Platonis Placitiis, Lib. V., cc. 1,2 and 3.
 
 40 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 schools, largely promoted the transition to the Neoplatonic 
 system, and opened an enlarging perspective to the application 
 of remedies of assumed efficiency, whose entire system was an 
 outgrowth of this medical psychology, and rested mainly upon 
 the credulity of the sick. 
 
 In addition to pagan philosophy, Galen was well versed in 
 the doctrines of Moses*" and in the religion of Christ; but the 
 partial obscurity of his superstitious deism induced him to 
 sneer at their teachings and revile their neophytes." So far as 
 the historical value of this encyclopediacal writer is concerned, 
 it may be confidently asserted that he has rendered as great 
 service to this department of arts, as to the medical schools, 
 especially when it is considered that he preserved the opinions 
 of unnumbered writers on medicine from total loss, the treatises 
 of whom have long since vanished before the progress of ages. 
 Through this happy preservation, an excellent insight is given 
 of the valiant struggles of the Dogmatists, Methodicals, and 
 Empirics of the early centuries. 
 
 To what extent the treatises of Galen may be of practical 
 service in modern times, they must be awarded the high com- 
 mendation of securing subsequent medicinal art from total 
 wreck during the turbulency of the Middle Ages, and as we 
 shall hereafter observe, assisted at its revival into an embel- 
 lished science through the mediaeval Universities. From the 
 time of Galen*'' to the close of the Sixteenth century,*'' the 
 works of the Pergamic sage fully satisfied the demands of the 
 practitioners of medicine, who depended on his surgical and 
 anatomical writings, without questioning their authority. Ac- 
 cording to the concurrent attestation of writers of the Patristic 
 
 ^'Galeni, De Usu Pulsuum Corpor. Human., Lib. XI., cap. 3, queries whether 
 Moses excelled Epicurus in tlie acuteness and utility of his reasoning. 
 
 *^ In the De Different. Pulsuum, Lib. III., cap. 3, Galen distinctly inculpates 
 the followers of Moses and Christ as so rigidly sectarian as to be unworthy the 
 name of ])hysician and philosopher, and seizes another occasion to ridicule the 
 slender intellect stock of these sects, lb., Lib. II., cap. 4. 
 
 ^^ Matter, Ecole d'Alexandne, Tom. II., ]i. 37. 
 
 *■'' I'riedlandcr, Gcschichte der Ileilkundc, p. 156. 
 
 I
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 41 
 
 era, he was an object of adoration almost cli\'inc*' — a culture of 
 worship barely shaken or modified down to the close of the 
 Middle Ages/^ through the introduction to Europe of Arabic 
 medical science, which was based upon the Galenic system. 
 
 **Athenseus, Deipnosophi, Lib. I., cap. 2, asserts that the skill of Daphnus in 
 medicine obtained the distinction of a "sacred art" — lepbc rf/v.Tkxvr/u — whicli 
 tJalen equalled by the practice and the superiority of his treatises. 
 
 ^5 Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, The. II., p. 100.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Alexandrine Schools, and How They Affected the Curative Art — 
 Early Organized — Literary Aggregation of Alexandria — The Writings 
 of Medical Sages Preserved in the Great Library — Collections for this 
 Pursuit Made by the Ptolemies — Study of Natural History at Alexan- 
 dria — Zoological Garden — Erudite Professor of Medical Science at 
 Alexandria — Loss to this Art by the Conflagration of the Library there 
 — Cleopatra's Skill in Medicine — Botanical Studies — Decline of the 
 Alexandrine Schools, and Its Cause — Rival Sects of Christianity — Dis- 
 astrous Effects Produced by These upon Medical Art. 
 
 WHATEVER may have been the immediate causes operat- 
 ing upon the successors of Alexander the Great, the insti- 
 tution of the several scholastic establishments in the Egyptian 
 metropolis was an idea so unreservedly royal that it must ever 
 receive in the interests of letters the most unstinted eulogy. 
 It may have entered extensively into the governmental policy 
 of the Ptolemies, to subjugate the people of Egypt by counter 
 balancing the sacerdotal influences of Memphis, which as the 
 phantom of an ancient power provoked unceasing inquietude 
 to the Greek conquerors. 
 
 The population of Alexandria above all demanded special 
 attention, in order to hold in proper subserviency the curi- 
 ously amalgamated races, who either originally resident of 
 the country as Egyptians naturally composed the larger ele- 
 ment, corrupted by Plellenistic contact, but hopeful of with- 
 drawing from foreign dominion, or other indigenous people 
 still maintaining the characteristics of separate nationalities 
 forced into companionship by the resistless power of a vic- 
 torious army.^ To these was joined a multitude of Jews 
 whom Alexander or the Ptolemies introduced from Judea in 
 pursuing a carefully defined plan of conquest. So numerous 
 indeed was the Jewish populace in the time of Philo that he 
 
 1 Matter, fecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. L, p. 71. 
 
 (42)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 43 
 
 estimated them at the round figure of a milHon actually resid- 
 ing in the city of Alexandria.^ In order to fuse the ideas, 
 manners, usages and institutions of the principal nationalities 
 thus forcibly united in the Egyptian metropolis, the Lagides 
 sought to commingle the sciences and arts of the two nations, 
 of whom the one gloried in inventing, and the other boasted 
 in perfecting these inventions. 
 
 By the fusion thus pro\'oked through the enlightened judg- 
 ment of the Ptolemaic dynasty, Egypt preserved the illusions 
 of their national religion, conjoined originally with a prepond- 
 erating influence in the laws and usages, but liable to the 
 seductive temptation of a brilliant and dominant race.^ For 
 this reason the first Ptolemies sanctioned the perpetuation of 
 the sacerdotal colleges of Thebes, Memphis, and Hierophile, 
 but as the sure fruition of an illuminated policy arose the 
 Alexandrian Gymnasium. 
 
 Under all aspects the creation of the IMuseum by the suc- 
 cessors of Alexander transcends all, in its important conse- 
 quences upon art and science, including that of medicine, by 
 the aggregation of v^ast numbers of works of priceless value; 
 the writings of Egyptian sages, Jewish codes, the laws of So- 
 lon, the poesies of Homer and Orpheus, Platonic and Aristo- 
 telian treatises, and the careful preservation of the essays of 
 Hippocrates, Galen, Oribasius,* etc. The origin of this library 
 ascends to Ptolemy Soter, according to Irena^us,'^ and so largely 
 were these collections made by Demetrius under the Lagides 
 that they aggregated the enormous number of two hundred 
 thousand manuscript volumes," upon the accession of the libra- 
 rian Zenodotus.^ 
 
 2 Aversus Flaccum, Lib. II., p. 523. At nearly the same epoch the Liberen- 
 tinii Jews inhabited that portion of the trans-Tiberem in Rome, whose extensive 
 area indicates great numbers. Ibid, De Virtitutibus, Lib. II., p. 568. 
 
 ^ Matter, op. cit., Tom. I., p. 74. 
 
 * Eunapius, Vitce Sophistor., p. 498. 
 
 °Aversus Hseres., Lib. III., cap. 21, \ 2. 
 
 ^Josephus, Antiq., Lib. XII., cap. I. 
 
 ' Suidas, Lexicon, sub nom. Zenodotus.
 
 44 HISTOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Identified with and perhaps a portion of it/ was the Museum, 
 unqualifiedly the most lasting in its influences on the develop- 
 ment of science, and on the spirit of the period during this and 
 succeeding ages. If the assertion of Philostratus' be accepted 
 that this establishment was organized in the nature of a col- 
 lege or association of the learned, to which the erudite and 
 illustrious men of the world were invited as resident members, 
 it is evident the ancient Egytian sacerdoty must have contrib- 
 uted a certain element of hierarchial influences.'" 
 
 Indeed this synod of the wise and scientific was presided 
 over by a priest, which gave the organization a religious char- 
 acter.^' To what extent this especial feature was uniform and 
 so accepted by the denizens of the regal institutions, is confes- 
 sedly obscure. But as Matter" justly concludes, in noting 
 at the court of the Lagides a priesthood of three different reli- 
 gions which had in the time of Herodotus begun to assimi- 
 late, that at an early date the fusion of creeds and ceremonies, 
 the astute policy of the new dynasty, was substantially pro- 
 ceeding, — an event which was repeated towards the decline of 
 polytheism, and impressed the curative art with this irrational 
 amalgamation for many centuries. On account of the valued 
 privileges attached to membership in the Alexandrian schools, 
 from a remote period this city became the object of general 
 attraction to both scientific and art scholars. 
 
 Among these, the earliest to claim such royal franchises by 
 prompt presence at the Egyptian capital were professors of 
 medical science and mathematics — Herophilus, Eristatus," and 
 
 * AtheriDcus, Deipnosophi, Lib. IV., cap. 83. 
 
 ® " Est autem museum mensa ^^gyptica, quae ex omni terrarum orbe honora- 
 tissimos viros convocat." Vita; Sophistor., Lib. L, cap. 22, \ 5. The paragraph 
 cited, ])erhaps hyperliolical, indicates that in the time of Hadrian the Museum 
 .still maintained its ancient reputation. Apollonius of Tyana, the hero of Phil- 
 ostratus, occupied the .seat of Helicon in the Museum. Vit. Ap., Lib. IV., c. 24, ^ i . 
 
 'o.Strabo, Geograph., Lib. XVII., c. i. 
 
 " .Scholars maintained there at public expense. Philoslratus, Vit. Sophist., Lib. 
 I., c. 22, I 5. 
 
 '"ficole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 97. 
 
 '■'' Lessing, Geschichte der Mede/.in, Th. I., p. 53.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 45 
 
 Euclid, the former of whom preluded most gloriously to the 
 innovations in medicine." In the collections of diversified 
 manuscripts which added to the celebrity of Alexandria, eager 
 zeal was displayed for faithful transcripts where the originals 
 were not procurable. These transcribers, noted for calligraphic 
 art, were maintained at public expense, and at a later date, 
 under Domitian, called to Rome to exercise their pcrfunction- 
 ary duties for its libraries.'^ 
 
 Galen states,^" that when the enthusiastic Ptolemies first 
 sought to increase their aggregation of medical and other rare 
 works, they were oftentimes imposed upon by worthless copies, 
 but subsequently distinguished with the utmost care between 
 valuable and useless transcripts. In many cases, of the books 
 loaned accurate copies w^ere made, and instead of returning the 
 originals to their owners, these were retained, and the trans- 
 cripts sent to the possessors. The original treatises were then 
 deposited in the library with a memorandum, signifying an in- 
 tention to have them critically examined by competent author- 
 ities. To such critics was entrusted the care of assorting all 
 books not properly classified, and after being subjected to 
 close inspection, they were suitably" tabulated and permanently 
 placed on the shelves of the library.'' • 
 
 Erudition has sought to maintain the hypothesis"^ that one 
 of the earliest official acts of the successors of Alexander called 
 into existence zoological gardens, where rare specimens of 
 natural history were displayed for the advanced cultivation of 
 the Alexandrine scholars,^'' and at the same time opened botan- 
 ical parks to the eager research of medical professors and 
 
 '■'Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 127. 
 
 '^ Suetonius in A'^ita Domitiani, cap. 20. 
 
 '••Comment. II., in Epidem. Hippocrat., Lib. III., p. 606 seq., Kiilin. 
 
 '' Galeni, De Dyspncea, Lib. II., Ibid, Comment. IL, in Epidem. Hippocrates, 
 Lib. III., c. —p. 606. 
 
 '^Schlosser, Univers. Histor. Uebersiclit der Geschichte der Alten Well., Th. 
 IL, p. 196 seqq. 
 
 " Athenreus, Deipnosophi, Lib. XIV., c. 77.
 
 46 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 students. The Ptolemies, down to the very termination of their 
 dominion over Egypt, appear to have encouraged the curative 
 art, and for the purpose of restoring decHning health, sur- 
 rounded themselves with the most illustrious physicians of the 
 age.-" Under the son of Ptolemy II., who politely declined the 
 offer of magnanimous Rome to aid him in the Seleucide con- 
 flict,'^^ the explorations begun by his distinguished ancestor, to 
 accumulate materials illustrating natural history, were vigor- 
 ously maintained, and larger numbers of manuscripts added to 
 the great library.'^'" 
 
 The science of medicine of the period was fully represented 
 at the Museum by distinguished professors, who according to 
 Athenjeus,^^ restored the knowledge of this art to the towns 
 and islands of the Grecian Archipelago. Later events inci- 
 dent to the reign of Ptolemy VII., who revenged himself for 
 the almost universal abhorrence of his infamy, made Alexan- 
 dria nearly a desert,'* assassinated the youth of the city assem- 
 bled in the Gymnasium,^'' which caused the dispersion of many 
 illustrious scholars from the metropolis, and among these the 
 erudite scientists, disciples of Herophile;'^" but the scattered 
 schools of the curative art, consequent on this tyrannical act, 
 remained inferior to those of Alexandria.^^ 
 
 Towards the close of the second century before the Chris- 
 tian era, arose the embittered emulation between Pergamus and 
 Alexandria, whose varied details were possessed of such fas- 
 cinating interest to the people of antiquity. This literary war- 
 
 20 Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 52, and Matter, Ecole d' Alexan- 
 dria, Tom. I., p. 160. 
 
 21 Eutropius, Breviar. Histor. Rom., Lib. III., c. i. 
 
 ^■^ Galeni Com. II., in Epid. Hippocrat., Lib. III., p. 606 seq. 
 ^■' Deipnosophi, Lib. VI , c. 83. 
 "Justin, Lib. XXXVIIL, c. 8. 
 
 2^ Valerius Maximus, MemoralMl. Lib. IX., cap. 2, De Crudelitate Exter., \ 5. 
 ^''Toucliing the dominant influences of Ilerophile over tlie mecHcal schools of 
 I'liny's time, vide Ilistor. Natur., Lib. XXIX., c. 5. 
 "Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 215.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 47 
 
 fare gav^e rise to the invention of parchment, thus named on 
 account of its manufacture at Pergamus in consequence of her 
 rival Alexandria refusing to allow the export of papyrus or 
 paper, upon which the scholastics of the oriental city wrote 
 their literary' themes.-® The most serious result of this quar- 
 rel was the falsification of ancient writers, by the erudite of 
 both cities. Through the salutary aid of an Indian prince, 
 prisoner at the Ptolemaic court, familiar with the Greek 
 tongue, an expedition was organized, which ended in the pro- 
 curing of numerous spices from India.^' 
 
 About the period of the absorption of the Egyptian king- 
 dom into the expanding dominion of the Romans, the schools 
 of Alexandria still continued to be the centre of medical 
 studies ; and notwithstanding the apparent dissidence between 
 the demands of a strict science and public affairs, its professors 
 exhibited, equally with their brother philosophers, a taste for 
 diplomacy. Dioscorides^" and Serapion, two physicians of 
 Alexandria, were the envoys of the elder Ptolemy to Rome, 
 and at a later date were bearers of dispatches from Caesar to 
 one of his officers in Egypt. 
 
 It is indeed noteworthy that such secular concerns received 
 the attention of medical scholars at a time when the study of 
 this science was pursued with ardor in the metropolis. Zo- 
 phyrus, a wise and skilled professor, had there a school of 
 medicine under his direct supervision, of which Apollonius of 
 Cittium was so enthusiastic a pupil, that on returning to his 
 adopted city he drew up a careful treatise on anatomy, and, as 
 an indication of personal esteem for Ptolemy XL, dedicated the 
 work to his royal patron.^^ In absence of historical proofs to 
 the contrary, it may be assumed that the bitter and prolonged 
 
 ^* Ibid, Tom. I., p. 214. 
 
 2'Strabo, Geograph., Lib. II., c. 3. 
 
 '" Not the disciple of Apollonius of Tyana, of whom Philostratus describes the 
 attempt to withdraw from the vengeful ferocity of Nero. He was also a phy- 
 sician, Vit. Apoll. Tyan., Lib. IV., c. 11, and Lib. V., c. 43. . 
 
 ^' Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 28 '.
 
 48 HISTOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 struggles for supremacy between the Roman consuls, which 
 by Csesar's policy were transferred to Alexandria, necessarily 
 retarded the progress of medical science in the scholastic in- 
 stitutions of the literary metropolis. 
 
 One of the severest, perhaps temporary hindrances to its un- 
 interrupted development, was the direct catastrophe which it 
 certainly sustained in the conflagration, by the forces of Caesar, 
 of the great library, among whose number, variously esti- 
 mated,'^ aggregated in diverse sorts almost a million volumes, 
 doubtless many valuable treatises on anatomy and medicine 
 were included and totally lost.'^ Such portions at least as 
 were preserved from entire destruction, consisted of collections 
 made by Cleopatra in her palace, while it would seem that the 
 books in general use by the scholars at the Museum were left 
 untouched.^* It is certain that some of the treatises orignally 
 retained at the great library were extant in after ages, a con- 
 vincing proof that this colossal institution was not totally 
 burned.^^ Julius Caesar evidently intended, when time and con- 
 venience should admit, to repair these disasters, touching 
 which he maintains entire silence.^" 
 
 When the young Egyptian queen united her fortunes with 
 Marc Antony, and in the gracious confidence of a woman, 
 stirred by the heroic valor of a conquering hero, surrounded 
 him with the joyous charms of lavish expenditure and per- 
 sonal beauty, she displayed such passionate taste for fine arts 
 and medical science," that the new governor of Egypt, in defer- 
 ence to a zeal cultivated into elegant scholarship by a pro- 
 found and practical knowledge of the languages of her king- 
 dom, hastened to give to her the priceless collection of books, 
 
 3^^ Aulius Gellius, Noctes Atticse, Lib. V.,c. 7. 
 
 ^^Amrnianus Marcellinus, Gesta Roman. Histor., Lib. XXIL, c. i6. 
 
 ^* Matter, op. cit., Tom. L, p. 243. 
 
 ^^Abulfagus, Histor. Moslem., p. 114. 
 
 ^8 Caesar, Bell. Civil., Lib. IlL, cap. 3. 
 
 •■"Galeni, Liber de drnatii ad Achoras, Lib. L, cap. 7.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. ^g 
 
 which the kings of Pergamus had previously bequeathed to 
 the Roman Senate.** 
 
 The Roman emperors, upon the conquest of diversified na- 
 tionahties, appear to have closely imitated Grecian scholastic 
 institutions in such as were created by them at different points 
 on the African coast, in which the Latin language was chiefly 
 used, although it was the superb pride of the imperial dynasties 
 to protect the scientific schools of Alexandria by public patron- 
 age and administrative encouragement.'''' Notwithstanding the 
 concession by Nero that the Egyptian capital should have its 
 own magistrates, natives of the country," and the professed- de- 
 termination of Augustus to foster its institutions, who actually 
 constructed an edifice whose appointments should attract the 
 erudite scientist, the spirit of civil liberty had vanished, and 
 with it ancient splendor, leaving the elements of gradual decay 
 behind. Whatever may have been the character of Tiberius 
 in the annals of the empire, Suetonius," his biographer, une- 
 quivocally affirms his affection for Augustus, and a zealous 
 admiration for the famed science of Alexandria — philology. 
 He was moreover in close relations with the chief librarian of 
 the literary capital, Cheremos, whom he summoned to Rome 
 in order to superintend the education of young Nero.^" 
 
 Claudius manifested the patronizing spirit of his predeces- 
 sors by the construction of an entirely new Museum, the object 
 of whose creation is abundantly set forth by the annalist of 
 his reign. Each member of the Claudian establishment was 
 required annually, at a fixed epoch, to read aloud before an 
 audience, throughout their entire length, the twenty books of 
 Etrurian history and the ten books of the history of Carthage, 
 
 ^® Plutarch, Vita Anton., cap 58. 
 
 ■''^Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom I., p. 248. 
 • *" Tacitus, Historiar. Lib. I., c. 2. 
 
 ^^Vita Tiberii, cap. 70. 
 
 ''■^ Suidas, Lexicon, sub nom. Dionysius and Alexand. .'Kge. Ilis estimate of 
 the brutal character of the royal pupil is delineated in this verbal sketch wliich he 
 made of him : " Nero lutum sanguine maceratum," lb. 
 
 4
 
 ^o HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 v/hich the Emperor had himself composed*^ — a species of pub- 
 lic oratory current long before the age of Claudius, and form- 
 erly in vogue in ancient Rome/^ 
 
 The object of this apparently bizarre function, seems to have 
 been an attempt to establish a historical connection between 
 the modern descendants of ancient Carthage and the origin of 
 Roman laws and institutions, which should mould the minds 
 of the Alexandrians into subjection on the basis of common 
 ancestry.*^ During the emergencies of Vespasian in his con- 
 flict with Vitellius, his rival, the Emperor was so busily engaged 
 in questioning the oracles of Egypt, and in aggregating suffi- 
 cient funds for war, that the schools of Alexandria were not 
 patronized by him. He was affable, but too eagerly occupied 
 in coining money**^ to be affected by the sarcasms of the citi- 
 zens, who at first believed him deeply pious on his consulting 
 the temple of Serapis," and afterwards found him using the 
 sanctuaries for forging coin. 
 
 Indeed, so little attention was bestowed by Vespasian on 
 scholars that he expelled the whole body from Rome except- 
 ing Musonius.*** Domitian, who it is true exiled the philoso- 
 phers during his sojourn in Egypt, appeared to be highly ex- 
 alted over the religious affairs of its sacerdoty, instituted poet- 
 ical and oratorical contests, with prizes for Greek and Latin 
 prose,*" and caused duplicates of the volumes then existing in 
 the Egyptian metropolis to be made to replace those lost in 
 the frightful conflagration at Rome."" The Alexandrine schools, 
 
 43 « Veteri Alexandrise Museo alterum additum ex ipsius nomine; institutumque 
 ut quotannis Tvppr/vlxiJv liber," etc. Suetonius, Vita Claudii, cap. 42. 
 "Valerius Maximus, Memorabil, Lib. III., c. 7, ^ 16. 
 ^^ Horatii, Satira, Lib. IIL, v. 74. 
 
 ^^ Vespasian was a firm believer in magic art. Dio Cassius, Histor., Lib. 
 LXXVL, cap. 8. 
 ■ ^'Suetonius, Vita Vespas., cap. 7. 
 
 ^* Dio Cassius, op. cit., Lib. LXVL, cap. 13. 
 
 ^'••Sueton., Vita Domitiani, cap. 4. Xiphilin, Vita Domitiani, p. 254. 
 
 ''"" Bibliothecas incendio altsunitas impensissime reparare curasset, exemplaribus
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 51 
 
 whether of medicine, or arts and general philosoph\-, main- 
 tained, through the reigns of Nerv^a and Trajan, a fluctuating 
 vitaHty, without, so far as historical records extend, imperial 
 patronage, materially assisting to alter the vicissitudes which 
 quickly prepared the way, towards the close of the ensuing 
 century, for a rapid decline and total decay of usefulness. Polc- 
 mon,"*' and other erudite professors in the literary and scien- 
 tific contests at Alexandria under Hadrian,^^ were created 
 Knights of the Roman Quirites.^^ 
 
 The immediate cause of the decline of these great schools 
 of science, was the endowment at Rome of an Athenaeum, and 
 at Athens of a library.^* The direct result of these foreign in- 
 stitutions was a tendency of the cultured scholars of Alexan- 
 dria to congregate at the imperial metropolis, although royal 
 favor still prevented the utter denuding of the scholastic organ- 
 izations of Alexandria. 
 
 In their general situation the same categories of authors 
 perpetually reappear: grammarians uniting the study of rhet- 
 oric with philology and criticism; historians also renowned as 
 geographers; mathematicians professing the entire range of 
 astronomy, mechanics, and arithmetic; and medical scientists, 
 who joined to a knowledge of this art that of natural history and 
 botany.^^ Naturally enough these varied schools of medicine, 
 botany, and the philosophical studies in Alexandria, were on 
 a much more enlarged dimension in members and numerical 
 proportions, during the first two centuries, inasmuch as the 
 amalgamation of foreign governments with the Roman Em- 
 pire, necessitated that culture for which these scholastic insti- 
 
 undique petitis missis Alexandriam, qui describerent emendarentque." Sueton., 
 op. cit., c. 20. 
 
 *i Philostratus, Vita? .Sophist., Lib. II., c. 10, \ 7. 
 
 ^^ Touching his eloquence, envied by Gregory of Nazian, vide Suidas, Lexicon, 
 sub n. Gregor. Naz. 
 
 *^ JuL Capitol., Vita Marc. Antonini, cap. 4. 
 
 ^* The great culture of Athens at this period was recognized by Marcus .\ntoni- 
 nus, Philostratus, Vit. Sophist., Lib. II., c. 10. 
 
 ** Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 271.
 
 52 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 tutions offered superior attractions, and which was demanded 
 for pohtical advancement.^" 
 
 Learned professors proceeded directly to Egypt to acquire 
 medical and other sciences, which they were to gloriously dis- 
 play in the Latin metropolis, particularly as at this epoch it 
 was the custom, carefully followed, to struggle for celebrity in 
 Alexandria, and if successful to proceed to Rome, where such 
 distinction was readily conceded and largely compensated by 
 wealthy citizens. Towards the termination of tlie reign of 
 Hadrian a singular aggregation of philosophers had been 
 formed in the literary metropolis of the world. In the first ages 
 of our era, in exact proportion as the Christian doctrines ad- 
 vanced, the number of Cyrenecians, Epicurians, and frivo- 
 lous Sophists, who usually assembled at the Museum, receded 
 before Stoicians, Peripateticians, or Platonists, seeking in all 
 earnestness teachings more sober and less trivial than those of 
 ther predecessors." 
 
 While Augustus withdrew his friend Arius, the Stoic, from 
 the Museum, another of this sect was selected to fill the vacant 
 membership : Theon, profoundly skilled in rhetoric and the 
 science of physiology .^^ Sotion,^' of Alexandria, master of Sen- 
 eca, professed the principles of the Stoics in conjunction with 
 those of Pythagoras. Peripatetic philosophy found its repre- 
 sentatives in Boethius,™ tutor of Strabo. In the person of Am- 
 mianus, whom Nero exiled from Alexandria to establish in 
 
 '•"The Latin idiom was peremptorily essential to office under the Roman gov- 
 ernment as early as the Republic. Valer. Maxim. Memorabil., Lib. IL, cap. 2, 
 No. 2. At a later date Claudius disfranchised a Grecian governor who was ig- 
 norant of the official language of the empire. Suetonius, Vita Claudii, cap. i6. 
 
 ^■^ Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. L, p. 276. 
 
 58Eunapius, Vitce Sophistor., sub. n. lonicus, p. 499. The Theon referred to by 
 Europius was of Gallic nativity, and thought worthy to rank with the skillful Ori- 
 basius. 
 
 ^^ Eunapius, op. cit., Prefat. 2-5, p. 454, admits he had freely used the ma- 
 terial collected by Sotion for his lives. 
 
 ""On Boethius' Book of Anatomy, vide Galen, De Anatomicis Administrationi- 
 bus, Lib. L, c. 2.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 53 
 
 Athens, Peripatetism was united with the doctrines of Plato.*" 
 Pkitarch, the disciple of Ammianus, may be taken as an illus- 
 trious example of the profoundly moral and religious tenden- 
 cies of his preceptor and of the age. 
 
 During the uninterrupted continuance of these grav^e sub- 
 jects of philosophic meditation, and while the zealous minds 
 of their several professors were earnestly exercised over the 
 possible solution of such sober problems, one of the most bril- 
 liant and mystic spirits of the time, Philo, surnamed the Jew, 
 boldly unrolled before the erudite of Alexandria the Mosaic 
 doctrines, slighth' concealed beneath a gloss of Platonism, a 
 method identical with that of Aristobulus,"' who had* hitherto 
 disguised them under a Peripatetic exterior. In order that 
 the city itself might become the chief center of a powerful 
 movement in philosophy, and so disintegrate the older systems 
 as to adm.it new ones, which should alter the prevailing ten- 
 dencies of the human spirit, and open it to the acceptance and 
 credulity of dogmas whose direct effect upon the teachers and 
 disciples of the schools prepared the transition to Gnosticism, 
 and inaugurated the calamitous decline of medical science, the 
 presence and skill of a highly endowed dialectician were es- 
 sential. Such personage was found in Enesedinus, who at- 
 tacked the principles of Pyrrhonism, and directly leveled his 
 argumentative doubts against the doctrines of the sensible ele- 
 ments and the medical studies resting upon these."' 
 
 This onslaught startled the whole school of Alexandria, and 
 the more, indeed, since at this period a movement began to 
 evince itself towards more exact sciences, such as reforming 
 the calendar, or better knowledge of cosmography.®* It is 
 doubtless true that natural sciences, especially that of medi- 
 cine and its associate branches, were no longer cultivated with 
 that patient erudition of the time of Herophile and Erostatus, 
 
 ^' Philostratus, Vitse Sophistor., Lib. II., c. 27, \ 6. 
 62Bruckerii, Histor. Philosoph., Lib. II., c. 2, \ },i. 
 *■' Eusebius, Pra^paratio ad Evangel., Lib. XIV., cc. 7 and i*^. 
 ** Bailly, Histoire de 1' Astronomic, Tom. I., pp. 170 and 76-122.
 
 54 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 although the medical school of Alexandria yet maintained 
 its ranking pre-eminence — so much so, indeed, that down to 
 the time of the Christian Emperors, in the fourth century, it 
 was sufficient for an adventuring physi^rian at Rome to an- 
 nounce himself as an Alexandrian student, in order to acquire 
 instant favor."^ Soranus, as we have seen, a disciple of this 
 school, upon an offer by the Archiatria, instantly abandoned 
 his professorship in the Egyptian city to pursue the same 
 duties elsewhere under Trajan and Hadrian."^ Others, how- 
 ever, such as Heraclius, still taught this science there when 
 Galen came to study anatomy and medicine in the illustrious 
 city."^ Upon the complete organization of the Athenian 
 school instituted by Hadrian, the scholastic institutions of 
 Alexandria ceased to be the center of Greek letters, that 
 potent attraction which so strongly induced the Hellenistic 
 youth to study abroad ; and from this epoch the decadence 
 of the Museum began to manifest itself 
 
 Other puissant causes were operating to alter and modify 
 the influence of these schools in the Egyptian city — causes 
 which prepared obstacles to the advance of medical science, 
 and laid the foundation for a retrocession of its economy 
 throughout the entire Middle Ages. At this important crisis 
 two new sects suddenly arose into recognized vigor in Alex- 
 andria, the one Gnostic and the other Christian, and made 
 their appearance equipped with the glittering fascinations of a 
 most singular novelty. 
 
 Notwithstanding Judaism had in a moderate form pio- 
 neered the way for the introduction of Christianity into Alex- 
 andria, the unceasing efforts and voluminous writings of Aris- 
 tobulus and Philo,"^ directed to proselyting converts to their 
 
 65 1( Pro omni tamen experimento sufficiat medico ad commendandam artis auC- 
 toritatem, si Alexandrite se dixierit eruditum: et hcec qiudum hoctenus." Ammi- 
 anus Marcellinus, Lib. XXII., cap. i6. Same suggestion of Vopiscius, Vita 
 Satiirnini, cap. i. 
 
 *" .Suidas, Lexicon, sul) nom. Soranus. 
 
 "'Galeni, Com. II., in Lib. l)e Natur. Humor., p. 22. 
 
 "^Bruckerii, llistor. Piiilosoph., Lib. II., cap. 2, \ ^-i,, and Matter, Histoiredu 
 Gnosticisme, Tom. I., p. 56 seqq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. -- 
 
 \\z\v doctrines, adroitly hidden beneath Platonisni, evidently 
 quickened the sluggish indifference of its scholars, without 
 obtaining numerous followers from the Museum. Philo's 
 treatises, it seems, were consulted by Christian neophytes, in 
 order to acquire free knowledge of paganism or polytheism, 
 without being compelled to study the writings of heathen 
 authors, where everything wounded their faith."'' This use to 
 which the written doctrines of Philo Juda^us and Aristobulus 
 were subjected, the latter of whom united the apostolic acts 
 whose long usage, so closely assimilated throughout as to de- 
 ceive converts, was suddenly transformed into catechetical 
 form, and reappeared as expositor of the new faith in the hands 
 of proselytes.™ While these obtained a few notions of philoso- 
 phy, of dialecticism, of polemics, and, as may be drawn from 
 the controversy of Origen against Celsus,'^ of medicine, by 
 which the doctrines of philosophers and paganistic theories 
 might be combated, the ordinary evangelical minister sought 
 to captivate the populace, and propounded a revelation, to 
 those profoundly meditating, of an approaching social crisis. 
 The most celebrated of their scholastic institutes was di- 
 rectly in face of the Museum, and from its situation was ac- 
 corded a superiority of science and dignity, and was known by 
 the name of Didaskelon."' Originally used for tuition in the 
 Christian faith, and presided over by either a Stoician or 
 Platonist, it ultimately gloried in a more extended course of 
 studies, which included history, philology, in a limited degree 
 mythology, cosmography,'^ and, as it would seem, such knowl- 
 edge of supernal interposition as aided in the cure of maladies, 
 necessitated by the physicians still clinging to paganism, and 
 in order that the neophytes might successfully vindicate the 
 
 ®' Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 287. 
 
 '"Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. 1., p. 287. 
 
 '^Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. VIII., p. 416. 
 
 ''■^ Eusebius, Histor. Eccles., Lib. V., cap. 10. Nicephorus, Histor. Eccles., Lib. 
 IV., c. 32, states that this institute had obtained a venerable reputerf^or its scholas- 
 tic excellence. 
 
 '•^ Nicephorus, op. cit., Lib. IV., c. 32.
 
 56 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 omnipotence of their Deity over Apollo or the divine ^scula- 
 pius, through whose intermediation oftentimes, anciently, the 
 sick were supposed to be restored to health," — by those divin- 
 ities the wrath of whom caused sickness.'^ 
 
 While the Museum itself still pursued the entire range of 
 literature and sciences, including that of medicine, the Didaske- 
 lon was essentially a religious institution for instruction in 
 sacred things, and affected such acquaintanceship with science 
 as was essential for proselyting purposes. The philosophical 
 studies pursued there were the more dangerous to Polytheism 
 on account of its eclecticism, and for a further reason that 
 those who taught it had completely renounced the exclusive 
 principles of paganism which they had abandoned. Clement, 
 of Alexandria, educated in the very best schools of the Church 
 in the second century, and abundantly nurtured in all the 
 sacred and profane sciences of the Egyptian capital, openly 
 proclaimed himself an eclectic.'** 
 
 This system of selection for the moulding of the creed and 
 ceremonials of the rising sect naturally enough recruited innu- 
 merable notions originally the undisputed patrimony of pagan- 
 ism, and adopted to great extent polytheistic doctrines them- 
 selves, especially such as related to the supernatural causation 
 of maladies, but attributed them, as we shall presently discern, 
 to a subordinate gradation of puissant demons that were sub- 
 rogated to the offices of the paganistic divinities. At this 
 epoch the Christians indeed formed a feeble minority, but the 
 chiefs were little distanced by the learning of their antagonists. 
 Of the leaders distinguished among the novel sect for learning 
 should be expressly mentioned Origen, whose treatises aided 
 in shaping their religious faith, and provoked the transition of 
 heathen ideas touching the new role which medicine should 
 
 " Effigy to ^sculapiius typifying the descent of divinity into the human body to 
 intpiire of its ills. Callistratus, Descript. X., \ i. 
 
 '•''" Morbos ad iram Deorum immortalium relatos esse." Cor. Celsus, De Med- 
 icina. Lib. I.,*]). 2. 
 
 '* Clemens Alexandr. Stromata, Lilj. I.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 57 
 
 assume for ages. At the early age of eighteen" he abandoned 
 paganism, and allied himself with the school of Clement of 
 Alexandria. 
 
 Polytheistic authority, and the menaces of the people,'^ com- 
 pelled him to leave the city and retire into Arabia, where his 
 great reputation for erudition had preceded him. Severe meas- 
 ures were useless to totally destroy this rising scholasticism 
 of the Christians, especially as its learned professors resisted 
 such efforts with physical suffering, and gladly taught the pre- 
 scribed lessons of letters and sciences for a few coins daily, and 
 gave instruction in matters of faith, contented to live unshod, 
 fasting much on the grossest diet.™ By the side of this Chris- 
 tian eclecticism, which the writings of Clement of Alexandria 
 and Origen so clearly defined, another sect ascended into 
 notice, offering superior attractions to the polytheists of the 
 Museum, and excited at the instigation of the pontiffs the same 
 rigorous treatment as leveled against the Christian school, and 
 likewise opened itself to a bitter and uncompromising hatred 
 of the sacred and profane authorities at Alexandria, as well as 
 the philosophers, as may be gathered from the fragments of 
 Origen's reply to the sharp and envenomed diatribes of Celsus. 
 
 This new rival, whose audacious asseverations elicited the 
 bitterest denunciation of Tertullian,^" was an amalgamation of 
 elements purely Grecian and Christian, united with the theo- 
 gony of Ancient Egypt and the strange cult of the Orient.^' It 
 seems to be established that these Gnostic schools, although 
 of earlier origin, were first founded in Alexandria by Basilides 
 during the reign of Marcus Aurelius,*^ and vitalized by Valen- 
 tinus some years later, through the junction of the Ophites' 
 
 '^Eusebius, Histor. Ecclesiastica, Lib. VI., cap. 3. 
 '* Nicephorus, Histor. Ecclesias., Lib. IV., cc. 4 and 5. 
 ™Eusebius, Histor. Ecclesias., Lib. VI., c. 3. 
 *" Tertullianus, Adversus Gnosticos, cap. I. 
 
 ^^ Beausobre, Histoire du Maniclieisme, Tom. II., p. 204; and Matter, Histoire 
 du Gnosticisme, Tom. I., cap. i., § i. 
 
 *^Vide Irenseus Adversus HKresos, Lib. II., Prasf. 1-2.
 
 58 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 doctrines. These sects were quickly attacked by the poly- 
 theists, prior to assaihng with violence the Didaskelon. At 
 Alexandria they were confounded with the followers of Christ, 
 and at Rome they passed for Jewish dogmatists. Celsus 
 urged against the Christians so close an identity with the 
 Basilidians as to be distinctly unrecognizable. The striking 
 prominence of the Egyptian element among these sects may 
 be inferred when it is stated that the sagacious Hadrian 
 inculpated them with adoring Serapis. Before examining the 
 evolutions arising from the Gnostic doctrines, so far as the 
 same co-operated to modify the principles upon which the 
 system of medical economy had been solidly based and pro- 
 voked methods of cure of magical similitude, we shall doubt- 
 less observe from the declining efficiency of the Alexandrine 
 schools, that the prostration of this science, begun by polythe- 
 istic proselytes to Christianity, was concluded with its triumph. 
 Had it been possible, an obstacle to this frightful decay of the 
 science of medicine might have emanated from the Museum 
 of Alexandria, whose position was gradually becoming more 
 and more embarassing. 
 
 Evidently, a total indifference to the existence of the rival 
 sects, and uninterrupted continuance of profane studies by this 
 scholastic institution, must necessarily weaken its influence and 
 cause it to be abandoned by the reflecting spirits of the time. 
 On the other hand, an attempt to dispute these new doctrines 
 would cause it to advance upon strange territory, and to leave 
 behind the study of letters and science, for an examination of 
 moral teachings utterly subsersive of its organization and 
 foreign to its creation. It is indeed true, that so far as the 
 actual professorial functions of medical scientists were con- 
 cerned, they, with the grammarians and mathematicians, pur- 
 sued their ancient labors as though no changes had occurred 
 in the Greek and Roman world,**'' while their colleagues of the 
 Museum struggled, in this emergency, to oppose a new dogma 
 to the Christian eclecticism of the one and the Gnostic syn- 
 
 ^ Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 294.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 59 
 
 cretism of the other. Had the great school been able to main- 
 tain an uninterrupted existence, a salutary check would have 
 delayed the entire downfall of medicine as a science; and 
 instead of the curative art being abandoned to the doubtful 
 remedies of supernatural elements as an integral portion of 
 religious culture, or further degraded by impotent charlatans, 
 the principles of the Galenic system must have survived. 
 
 Unfortunately, with the steady advance of sects inimical to 
 polytheism, each day w^eakened this medical school, through 
 the uncompromising hatred of proselytes to the paganistic 
 system of therapeutics and its alleged causation of maladies, 
 while other catastrophes prepared the way to its complete ex- 
 tinction. Marcus Antoninus undoubtedly possessed sincere 
 affection for the culture of letters, and was animated by so 
 unusual an interest in all matters pertaining to Greece that he 
 caused himself to be made an initiate into the ancient myster- 
 ies while sojourning at Athens," to whose schools he devoted 
 his energies and imperial patronage almost exclusively. His 
 biographer briefly states that he was clement to Alexandria in 
 such affairs as brought him in contact with the citizens.^ 
 Commodus, the son of Aurelian, also visited Egypt, but his 
 presence was sterile in benefactions to its schools. 
 
 The entire interest displayed by Septimus Severus in Al- 
 exandria seems to have manifested itself in collecting such 
 documents and records as had escaped the Caesarian confla- 
 grations by storage in the sanctuaries of the city, and safely 
 depositing them in the tomb of Alexander, which, with the 
 Museum, w^as left untouched by the devouring flames.^'" Such 
 action preserving the relics of remote antiquity ought natur- 
 ally to have stirred a zealous interest in these venerable rem- 
 nants of Egyptian archaeology, but the profound insensibility 
 of its scholars should be cited only for reprobation. 
 
 ^ Qi avTOXpo-Tup Mdp;jfor ^ Kdfjvaqe VTrep fivoTTipiuv eoraArf, Philostratus, Vitse So- 
 phistor.. Lib. II., cap. lo, ^. 7. 
 
 85<i puit; Alexandria clementer cum iis agens." Julin. Capitol., Vita Antoniiii 
 Philosoph., c. 26. 
 
 '^''Dio Cassius, Histor., Lib. LXXV., cap. 13.
 
 6o HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Caracalla, affecting profound adoration for his hero, Alexan- 
 der,®' and professing creduHty in an old tradition touching the 
 complicity of Aristotle in the death of the Macedonian con- ■ 
 queror, in order to prosecute his nefarious schemes against the 
 city and its scholars, ordered the deportation of all strangers 
 from Alexandria, deprived it of all its privileges conceded by 
 Hadrian, and suppressed the benefices to its erudite profes- 
 sors.®^ The books of the Peripateticians were burned, and all 
 their immunities instantly revoked.®" Heliogabalus neglected 
 letters to devote himself to mysteries and magic, which, by 
 the force of imperial example, received much inquisitive atten- 
 tion during his reign."" 
 
 The most lasting catastrophe to the scholastic institutions 
 was provoked by the resistance of the city itself to Aurelian, 
 who besieged that portion of it where his imperial rival had 
 taken refuge, and where were located its professorial edifices. 
 As a consequence of forcible conquest, Alexandria was 
 subjected to pillage and incendiarism about the year 272."^ 
 Stripped of those elegant quarters, which so long had been 
 the pride and resort of men of science and eminent scholars, its 
 walls were overthrown"'^ and its structures entirely destroyed."'^ 
 For the future, the scholastic establishments of the great liter- 
 ary emporium were reopened in the suburbs and under the 
 policy of Diocletian, who favored them as a potential adversary 
 of the Christian schools, which he struggled to eradicate, the 
 erudite professors of Alexandria again endeavored to combat 
 the doctrines of their rivals. 
 
 "'' Spaitianus, Vita Caracallre, cap. 2. 
 
 ^ Ibid, cap. 6. 
 
 "^ Ibid, cap. 6. 
 
 '^ Dio Cassius, Ilistor., Lib. LXXIX., cap. ii. In these rites children were 
 immolated in order to render the magic spell more effective : " Mactatis pueris 
 adhibitis magicis artibus," ib. 
 
 *' Vopiscius, Vita Aureliani, cap. 32. 
 
 ®* Ammianus Marcellinus, Ilistor., Lib. XXII. , cap. 16. 
 
 *^Eusebius, Ilistor. Eccles., Lib. VII., cc. 18, 21.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 6i 
 
 The arena dividing the Museum and the Didaskelon had 
 become the theatre daily of the great struggles between the 
 defenders of polytheism and its enemies; and it is evident that 
 this antagonism, which excited so lively an interest in polemi- 
 cal discussions, often ending in bloodshed, was not designed 
 to foster that spirit of scientific investigation which emanates 
 from quietude. Christian and Gnostic sects regularly estab- 
 lished in Alexandria, with the avowed design of overthrowing 
 polytheism to its very principles, were most perilous to the 
 schools of letters and sciences in the city, and this menacing 
 rivalry, so novel, modified almost radically their studies and 
 literary tendencies 
 
 From the sphere within which they had hitherto confined 
 their researches, with especial predilection for philosophical 
 examinations which naturally included the science of medi- 
 cine, they were now compelled to pass to the serious consid- 
 eration, unwillingly, of moral and religious subjects. The 
 direct consequence of this abnormal condition, so foreign to 
 the splendid system established by the Lagides, revealed itself 
 in the diminishing number of mathematicians, historians and 
 medical professors, and attested the profound alteration in scho- 
 lastic affairs, superinduced by the vicinity of their increasing 
 rivals. For the future the entire body of Alexandrian schol- 
 ars was suddenly transformed by imperious necessity into 
 moral philosophers, now occupied with religious questions of 
 the most serious importance, and brought to bear against their 
 antagonists the most bitter opposition as the final refuge of 
 declining paganism.^* 
 
 With the rapid expansion of the Gnostic and Christian 
 sects, the scientific propagation of medicine declined, and in 
 its stead were substituted unnumbered practices foreign to the 
 principles of reason, but eliminated, as the creeds themselves, 
 from diversified and ancient forms of religious ceremonial and 
 belief By this method, the curative art receded as a science, 
 in exact proportion as Christianity or Gnosticism progressed ; 
 
 ** Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 305.
 
 62 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 and when the former triumphed, under the colossal support 
 of secular power, with the new system of religion came reme- 
 dial adaptations, absurd, irrational, and no longer dependent 
 on the fragile imperfections of human reason, but elevated to 
 celestial or divine manipulation. Touching medical studies 
 still pursued in Alexandria toward the close of the third cen- 
 tury, barely mention is made of an eminent scientist, subse- 
 quent to the epoch of Galen, Soranus, and Julian. 
 
 Although this culture was then object of attention in the 
 Egyptian metropolis, its professors have left no trace in science 
 behind them. Such branches of mental embellishment as 
 mathematics, through the efforts of Claudius Ptolemus, Isi- 
 dore,®^ and Diophantes, merit commendation, while the Gram- 
 marians appalled at the forbidding aspect of the new situation 
 arising from the inroads of Christianity, quickly abandoned the 
 city and sought preferment and larger compensation at Rome.'*® 
 From the system or dogma pursued by Ammonius Saccus, 
 which affected reflecting minds and aggregated great numbers 
 of eminent reasoners of the age, such as Plotinus"' and Origen, 
 originated the elements which finally prostituted medicine to 
 the level of charlatanism. Substantially an eclecticism, it was 
 the design of Ammonius to closely unite polytheistic doc- 
 trine, including its cumbersome formulas, to the Christian 
 creed, with its principal features. By this startling plan he 
 formed a syncretism of the substantial portions of Grecian and 
 Oriental faith,"** to which Plotinus, as a profound thinker, 
 exalted polytheist, and partisan of eastern creeds, and Origen, 
 the eminent Christian philosopher and scrupulous athlete for 
 
 95 Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. IV., p. 364; and Bossuet, 
 Histoire des Mathematiques, Tom I., p. 147 seq. 
 
 98 Origen himself seems to have sought Rome on account of the superior oppor- 
 tunities for the display of his erudition, but subsequently returned to Alexandria. 
 Nichephorus, Hist. Eccles., Lib. IV., c. 11. 
 
 *'Ammianus Marcellinus, Lib. XXII., c. 16. 
 
 '*** Bruckerii, Histor. Philosophic, Lib. I., cap. 2, \ 4.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 63 
 
 the dogmas of Christ, each within the limits indicated, severally 
 belonged.^^ 
 
 Amid such bitter polemical controversy, where each leader^ 
 stirred with exalted enthusiasm, sought to successfully vindi- 
 cate the faith of his religious predilection — where each s)^stem 
 of religion, whether old or new, was carefully scrutinized, ^and 
 those elements most proper to captivate wavering minds se- 
 lected with judicious eagerness, on the basis of a lofty eclec- 
 ticism — it should excite little astonishment that the science of 
 medicine fell before this whirlwind of impassioned discussion, 
 and in its place gradually crept to vigorous existence those 
 heterogenous principles of divinized remedies assiduously ap- 
 plied by ardent zealots, and astutely recommended by the 
 sacerdotal authorities of the rising Church. 
 
 To resist this downfall of a progressive science, the Alexan- 
 drine polytheistic schools, borne along by the force of reli- 
 gious debates, were utterly impotent; and indeed it would 
 appear that towards the conclusion of the third century the 
 serious study of the curative art was in a measure abandoned 
 by its professors, in order to confront increasing sectarians 
 upon the identical plane of supernatural efficacy in the treat- 
 ment of maladies."" 
 
 '* Ibid, 2§ 6 and 7, and Eunapius, Vitce Sophistor., Prsefat, and sub nom. Plo- 
 tinus, p. 454 seq. 
 
 looorigen Contra Celsum, Lib. VIII., p. 416; and Bruckerii, HLstor. Philosoph., 
 Lib. II., cap. 7, § 9.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Beli«f in Direct Demoniacal Influences — Adopted by the Christian 
 Church — Debasing Effect on Medicine — The Angehc Heirarchy and 
 Its Special Attributes — Power Over Earth and Its Denizens — Satanic 
 Potency and His Subordinates — Cause Sickness and Pain— Talmud 
 and the Cabbala — Rabbinical Lore and its Effect on Medicine — Poten- 
 tial Forces of Words — Expel Disease — Development of Magic Cures 
 — Incantations by Hebrew Letters. 
 
 IN the year 312, Constantine, surnamed the Great, by a decree 
 issued from the city of Milan, declared the Christian reh- 
 gion to be the faith of the Empire. This edict, which gave 
 immediate ascendency to Christianity, was the ruin of both 
 the Museum and polytheism. One of the earhest transforma- 
 tions of behef consequent on the inroads of the new sect and 
 its gradual advance to secular power, arose from the unalter- 
 able confidence in the potency of unseen spiritual forces, per- 
 sonified as good or evil. This system of extraordinary puis- 
 sance was the amalgamation of several doctrines, doubtless 
 perfected by the Christians and Gnostics of Alexandria and 
 adopted substantially by the Fathers, and continued in active 
 operation throughout the the Middle Ages. 
 
 The Jews from their Oriental captivity accredited the effi- 
 ciency of demoniacal influences, and through the writings of 
 Philo propagated the same to Christian converts ; while the 
 Gnostics, from their rigid .syncretism,^ quickly absorbed the 
 notion of preternatural interposition through the agency of 
 aeons or emanations.^ 
 
 This dogma, accepted in all its potential ramifications by 
 the new Church under the name of angelic beings, totally 
 overthrew the science of medicine, and reduced its economy 
 
 ^ Beausobre, Histoire du Manicheisme, Tom. IL, p. 204. 
 * Matter, Histoire du Gnosticisme, Tom. II., pp. 11 6-341. 
 
 (64)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 65 
 
 to the most abject dependence on divine manifestations. Next 
 to the widespread behef in the second coming of Christ,' 
 whose followers marked their profession by the sharpest con- 
 trast with the pagans/ was the unqualified acceptance, from 
 the first century, of a mighty spiritual world, whose unceasing 
 operations upon the earth and its people stood forth as an 
 article of Christian faith. This notion was common to both 
 Christianity and Judaism, and at the same time Paganism 
 rivalled these sectarians in its exaggeration of preternatural 
 forces. The existence of spiritual beings — angelic hosts — 
 was not only accepted with an unquestioning faith,^ but con- 
 stituted a most fascinating subject of controversy, unsettled by 
 synodal decretals,® to the Patristic writers. In general arrange- 
 ment, the Christian writers recognized among the angels a 
 subordination as strict as existed with the sacerdoty.^ An- 
 gelic nature was admitted to be of finer composition than 
 humanity, on account of its element of immorality, an attribute 
 of Deity, and consequently invisible.^ 
 
 Their corporeal essence, modeled upon that of their divine 
 Head, was a deft structure of light and fire of the most sublime 
 splendor. Of unlimited freedom, they were munificent for good 
 or evil." That view of a spiritual being, which accorded to him 
 divine power," as contrasted with the theory of aeons or em- 
 anations, ultimately gained the ascendency." Touching the 
 activity of these invisible entities, the Fathers were unanimous 
 
 ^Tertullianus, Contra Marcianos, Lib. III., cap. t2i- 
 
 *Teitullian, De Spectaculis, cap. 7 ; and Minutius Felix, c. 8. 
 
 ^Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. VIIL, p. 401. 
 
 *lbid, Principia, Proem., g 10. 
 
 ^Clemens Alexandr., Excerpta, cap. XL, g^ 8 and 9; and Ignatius, Ad Tralli- 
 anos, c. 5. 
 
 ^Fulg. Respuens, De Trinitate, cap; 8; and Justin Martyr, Dialog. cumTryph. 
 c. 57- 
 
 "Irenseus, Ad Haer., Lib. IV., c. 37, |g i and 2. Origen, De Principia, 
 Proem. I., c. 8. 
 
 1" Lactam., Instit., Lib. IV., c. 8. 
 
 '1 Justin Martyr, op. cit., c. 128. 
 
 5
 
 66 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 that God himself exercises upon his creatures, through the 
 mediation of angels, such intentions as pleased the divine will. 
 
 The earlier teachers of the Church maintained that to these 
 was committed the supervision of all things appertaining to 
 the earth and its inhabitants,^'^ an opinion reiterated by subse- 
 quent dogmatists. Some of the Fathers designated the speci- 
 fic attributes and duties of angels. According to Origen, the 
 splendid being Raphael had special care over the sick and 
 infirm,^^ while Gabriel exercised superintendence over war, and 
 Michael attended the devotional prayers of believers. 
 
 In the time of Hermes, an angel of penitents is mentioned, 
 and as late as Tertullian,^* and Origen,'^ the angel of prayer 
 seems to have received a well defined outline as to duty and 
 efficacy. Immovable and lifeless things of earth acknowledged 
 the potential interposition of these mandatories of the divine 
 Regent,'" while the incarnate representative of Deity himself, 
 from earliest infancy, was provided with a protecting spirit, 
 whose dutiful care produced for Him beneficent pleasure, 
 accorded answer to humble petitions, and created irresistible 
 force against seductive temptations. '" 
 
 In striking contrast to the beneficence of the guardian spirit, 
 quickly followed the presence of. a malevolent angel, whom 
 TertuUian asserted to be in constant attendance upon each 
 person.'® Others maintained the doctrine, which gradually 
 grew into an important element of mediaeval faith, and aided in 
 the servile subjection of medicine, that impure demons closely 
 united themselves to man, and while using him as a habitation, 
 made him believe they were good angels.'** In their hidden 
 
 ^'■^ Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. VIII., p. 397 seqq. 
 13 Ibid, De Principia, Lib. I., c. 8. 
 1* Tertullianus, De Oratione, cap. 12. 
 '^Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. VIII. p. 400. 
 i«Ibid., Lib. VIII., p. 398 seqq. 
 "Ibid., De Principia, Lib. III., c. 2. 
 
 18" Nam et suggissimus nullum pitne hominem carere dremonio." Tertullianus. 
 De Anima, Lib. I., c. 57. 
 
 18" Qui quoniam sunt spiritus tenues, et incomprehensibiles, insinuant se cor- 
 poribus hominum." Lactantius, Institut. Divin., Lib. II., c. 15.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 67 
 
 recesses of the human bod}' they vitiated health and provoked 
 disease.^" Satan, himself, amon<^ the early Christian sects, ex- 
 cepting the Gnostics, was regarded as an angelic personage, 
 whose freedom Deity had abused and thereby become evil.'^^ 
 The religious philosophy of .Gnosticism seems to have ren- 
 dered it essential to separate the sublimest idea of Divinity, in 
 order to deduce the unfinished good of the Universe, from an 
 imperfect being — the Demiurgos — opifex mundi, especially 
 since the discussion in a polemical sense of evil was perpetu- 
 ally extant, as an integral portion of the system.^'* In its 
 broadest acceptance, it may be stated that the Satanic notion, 
 at this epoch, was certainly developed by such views as 
 directly antagonized the creed of the dominant Church — the 
 ponderous influences of its rival sect tended to modify these 
 doctrines, and the impress they made was propagated uninter- 
 ruptedly for centuries, and in their practical social application 
 further burdened the curative art and rendered its scientific 
 resurrection quite impossible. In the New Testament it is 
 unequivocally stated that the death of Christ was a victory over 
 the devil ; but according to the Gnostic system, the Demiurgos, 
 or Creator of the world, regarded His operations as a direct 
 invasion of power,^^ and consequently, on the scheme of retali- 
 ation, the heretical divinity arrayed himself in mighty conflict 
 against the Triune God, which resulted in the crucifixion of 
 Jesus." 
 
 To Irenaeus may be attributed the subrogation of Satan to 
 the personality of the Gnostic Demiurgos, and with it the 
 translation of religious controversy upon a ground which ren- 
 dered the argumentation of the Church so powerful, but inten- 
 sified embittered differences, by which for many ensuing cen- 
 turies nearly all manifestations arising from activity of natural 
 
 "* " Valetudinem vitiant, morbos citant." lb. 
 '^^ Tertullianus, Adversus Marcion, Lib. II., cap. 10. 
 ^'■^ TertuUianus, De Persecution. Haeres., cap. 7. 
 *' Irenaeus, Adversus Haeres., Lib. II., cap. 7. 
 ''^ Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Th. I., p. 225.
 
 68 HIS7 DRY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 law, involving weakness of body or of mind, were directly re- 
 ferred to diabolical agencies.'^'^ 
 
 According to the enunciation of Irenaeus, mankind, through 
 trangression of divine command, fell absolutely from the time 
 of Adam into the power of Satan.^" Christ, in freeing man 
 from this encumbrance of servitude, purchased this absolution 
 with blood, but the Marcionites"' and Gnostics urged that the 
 Demiurgos, on account of his creating the human race, pre- 
 served the right of proprietorship, and consequently the Po- 
 lemical Fathers admitted the lawful claim of the devil to man 
 as a result of original sin.'"* That such right was of binding 
 effect upon humanity, obtained ready credence from the Fath- 
 ers during the early portion of the Middle Ages. Augustine 
 acknowledged it as full and incontestible,'" while Leo accorded 
 it as a tyrannical and unjust claim.''" 
 
 The representation of Satanic authority, personified as an 
 independent ruler, with his avowed right, arrayed in opposi- 
 tion to Divine Will, had so far passed into the foreground that 
 the conception of salvation was ultimately significant, in a dog- 
 matic sense, as a means of emancipation from the power of the 
 Devil. Eclesiastical writers of the first centuries generally 
 admitted that all impure manifestations among the Pagans 
 originated from illicit communication with subordinate angels 
 of Satan, and from such admixture emanated pride, envy, and 
 licentiousness.^^ 
 
 Since the good angels were declared to be corporeal, also 
 
 25 " Et occulte in visceribus operati, valetudinem vitiant, morbos citant, som- 
 niis animos terrent, mentes favonbus quatiunt." Lactantius, Divin. Instit., Lib. 
 II., c. 15. 
 
 26 Adversus Haeres., Lib. V., c. i. 
 
 '^ Matter, Histoire du Gnosticisme, Tom. I., cap. 3. 
 
 '^8" Ideo eum habuit in sua potestate." IrenKiis, Advers. Haeres., Lib. V., c. 
 
 21,2 3- 
 
 '^■* " Quibus universus autem mundus subjectus est." August., Lib. Arbitr., Lib. 
 III., c. 32. 
 
 soSermo XXIL, c. 3. 
 
 3) Lactantius, Divin. Institut., Lib. II., c. 15.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 69 
 
 the evil ones were assumed to be of a grosser nature, because 
 Satan himself was endowed, from his fall, with a physical 
 body,^'^ but these angelic forms of Deity were of a far finer 
 essence than that of man.^^ Origen, in his celebrated treatise 
 and polemical discussion with Celsus, asserted the prescience 
 of demoniacal personages, as infinitely superior to human intel- 
 ligence, and that such knowledge was obtained by a correct 
 interpretation of the stars.^* But the most significant attribute 
 conceded to these demoniacal beings was their recognized 
 ability, in common with Satan, to engender sin and largely 
 propagate among humanity the unconditional stipulations of 
 misery and vice, which prerogative incorporated the principle 
 by which the systematic use of medicaments and cures of 
 maladies, during the Middle Ages, were universally adminis- 
 tered.^^ Early Christian writers boldly asserted that all the 
 disorders of the world originated with the Devil and his sinister 
 companions,^'^ because these were stirred with an unholy desire 
 to obtain associates in their miseries." 
 
 Demoniacal aeons or emanations, portraying this diabolical 
 principleof evil, were acknowledged to be the primitive source 
 from which arose the multifarious elements of sorrow and 
 pain, including earthly sufferings, pestilence among men, sick- 
 ness, and other bodily afflictions,^** but inflicted with consent 
 of Divinity, whose messengers they were. The Fathers of the 
 early Church were fully persuaded that these beings took 
 possession of the organism of the human body, and ridiculed 
 
 ^* Origen, Com. in John, Lib. XX., cap. 22. 
 
 ''Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. VIL, p. 334. 
 
 "Ibid., Lib. IV., p. 167. 
 
 '^Irenseus, Adversus Haeresos, Lib. V., c. 24, W 2 and 3. 
 
 '® Athenagoras, Legat. pro Christ., Lib. II., c. 27, avows the supreme control 
 of these beings of the earth's inhabitants : " Vicesque et ordinem omnium — ele- 
 menta, coelos, mundum — moderarent." 
 
 37 Cyprian, De Vanitat. Idol., Lib. III., g 8. 
 
 ^Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. VIII., p. 416, and Lib. V., p. 132. " Itaque 
 corporibus quidem et valetudines infligunt et aliquos casus acerbos." Tertullian, 
 Apologetic, cap. 22.
 
 70 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the solemn asseverations of surgeons that many of these alleged 
 demoniacal infirmities were attributed to material agencies f'"* 
 and Cyprian charged that demons caused luxations and frac- 
 tures of the limbs, undermined the health, and harassed with 
 diseases.*" In the practice of magical art, evil spirits often, 
 it was claimed, provided cures for sickness." 
 
 To these most positive and unequivocal utterances of the 
 Fathers, that infirmities assigned by pagan physicians to scien- 
 tific causes were, on the contrary, produced by malevolent 
 angels, was added the allegation that the devilish hosts were 
 inventors of astrology, necromancy and magic.^'^ 
 
 The most fleeting examination of the writers of the period 
 before us attests the high importance of this doctrine touching 
 the supernatural gifts accorded Satanic beings, which had so 
 profoundly permeated the ecclesiastical fabric that a scientific 
 explanation of natural events was absolutely impossible; and 
 so far as the direct association of this teaching with the cause 
 of physcal ills extended, it will readily permit the conclusion 
 that the unquestioned triumph of the Church, whose adherents 
 marked the appearance of corporeal afflictions as produced by 
 demoniacal influences*' arrayed in combat with the forces of 
 Deity, must of necessity banish medicine, except so far as it 
 abandoned its scientific attitude and assumed the form of ad- 
 ministering medications upon a sacerdotal system. 
 
 New converts to Christianity were seriously informed that 
 contact with a pagan exposed them to the most favorable on- 
 
 ''Origen, Com. in Matthew xvii. 5, and Ibid., De Principia, Lib. II., c. 2, 
 and Lib. III., c. 2. 
 
 *°" Membra distorquent, valetudinem frangunt, moibos lacessunt." Cyprian, 
 De Vanit. Idolat., Lib. III.,^ 8. 
 
 <i" Venefici plane et circa curas valetudinem." Tertul., Apologet., c. 22. Ter- 
 tullian, with characteristic boldness, does not hesitate to say : " /Esculapius med- 
 icinorum demonstrator" — /Esculapius, with demon aid, etc., Ibid., cap. 23. 
 
 ^'^ Tertullianus, Apologetic, cc. 21 and 23. " Eorum inventa sunt astrologia, et 
 aruspicina, et necromantia, et ars magica," Lactantius, De Divin. Institut., Lib. 
 II., cap. 17. 
 
 *^ Tertullian, ut sup., cap. 22.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 71 
 
 slaught of unseen demons, alone subjugated by the name of 
 Jesus," and that in their daily intercourse with the outside, 
 the heathen world, each- paganistic touch was virulent with 
 diabolism, and must entail damnation! How narrowed in 
 morals and dwarfed in mental conception the Christian popu- 
 lace finally became, may be gathered from the indignant asser- 
 tion of Tertullian,*'' that whoever, in the pursuance of his usual 
 handicraft, worked for the construction and embellishment of 
 heathen idols, by this act retrograded to paganism, and stood 
 as a despised and proselyted image-worshiper; but what fright- 
 ful debasement of human reason is attested by his fervid proc- 
 lamation, that the offices of Ludi Magistris and Professores 
 Literarum were incompatible with and repugnant to Christian- 
 ity, for the reason that these functionaries under the empire 
 required a description of pagan deities, an explanation of their 
 mythology ! ^^ 
 
 Development, or even preservation, of medical science was 
 therefore impossible, when it is considered that such system 
 required the exercise of dispassionate ratiocination, whose 
 operations necessarily must trace bodily infirmities to natural 
 causes; but ecclesiastical authority had declared these to be 
 diabolical, against which it was futile to struggle : contact 
 with science, as with the pagan, involved possible damnation ; 
 to believe otherwise was heresy, and the person thus believ- 
 ing was liable to exorcism. 
 
 To this colossal development of an unshaken faith in the 
 existence of unseen potent spirits, presented as the punitive 
 messengers of Deity," operating upon humanity through 
 
 "Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. III., p. 133. 
 
 **" Nulla ars, nulla professio, nulla negotio, quajquid aut instruendo aut in- 
 formandis idolis administrat careie potuit titulo idololatria;." Tertul., De Idolo- 
 latria, cap. 1 1. 
 
 « « Piimum quibus necesse est Deos Nationum prcedicare nomina, genealogia, 
 fabulas, ornamenta, honorifica quaeque eorum enuntiare turn solemnia festaque 
 eoiundem observare." Tertullian, De Idololatria, cap. 10. Converts forbidden 
 to carry gems with idolatrous images on them. Clemens. Alexandr. Paedagog., 
 Lib. IL, c. 12. 
 
 ♦nhid, Reco^niti., Lib. IV.
 
 ^2 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOM\ 
 
 grievous maladies and physical infirmities, the Talmud and 
 Cabbala severally added powerfial influence in extending this 
 doctrine to infinity, and largely aided in selecting remedies so 
 eagerly sought during the Middle Ages. In the more remote 
 times, a well-grounded fear prevented the Jews from making 
 written explanatory comments upon the revered text of the 
 Old Testament, because, as alleged, these would degrade the 
 Sacred Scriptures from their exalted rank. Increasing, in 
 some cases contradictory interpretations, induced the Rabbi 
 Jehuda, a native of Tiberias, in the third century, to undertake 
 the task of codifying these Hebraic scholia. This collection 
 of what was previously the oral transmission of interpreted 
 law received the name of Mishna or Second Law.*^ From this 
 epoch the Mishna was the central point around which all 
 rabbinical studies concentrated, designated Gemara, inasmuch 
 as these claimed to contain the genuine essence of Mosaic 
 teachings. 
 
 Towards the close of the fourth century an unknown schol- 
 iast collected the exegetical elucidations, explanations and in- 
 terpretations produced by the Gemara, and united them to the 
 Mishna, as a commentary out of which arose the Talmud.*' 
 The word Cabbala, whose original signification was used in 
 the sense of " reception," or transmission, obtained at a later 
 period the meaning of secret lore, because the metaphysical 
 and theosophic idealities which had been developed in the 
 Rabbinical schools, were communicated only to a few, and con- 
 sequently remained the undisputed property of a limited and 
 close organization.^" 
 
 Venerable elements of ancient religions emanating from 
 Egypt, Zoroasterian teachings imparted from Babylonish cap- 
 tivity, Greek thought, especially in high repute through the 
 weighty influence of the Alexandrine schools, each in order 
 
 *^ Pfeiffer, Critica Sacra, p. 388 ; and Buddeus, Introd. ad Philos. Ebraeor., p. 
 91 seq. 
 
 *Tfeiffer, op. cit., cap. 15, De Talmuda, p. 386. 
 
 ^" liruckerii, Histor. Philosoph., Lib. II., cap. 3, ^ 2.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 73 
 
 deliberately appropriated by adroit Rabbins, ultimately exer- 
 cised powerful control over both the material itself as well as 
 the method of instruction, imparted by teachers only to their 
 most skilled and able disciples."' From the system of religious 
 culture originated a theosophic scheme, the operation of which 
 was perpetuated for centuries. The plan of these mystical 
 interpretations, oftentimes in direct antagonism to the letter 
 of the record, and finally transferred to the Talmud, was used 
 by Philo himself with eminent power, to whom indeed the 
 Cabbalists attribute the chief features of their curious doc- 
 trines.^^ As an influential precursor of these mystical devo- 
 tees, Philo doubtless may be regarded as a scholastic deeply 
 learned in Platonic-Pythagorean puissance of numbers and 
 their symbolical forces, which he was accustomed to regard as 
 a moralistic prototype ; but when observed according to form 
 and gradation these letters, to uninitiates as lifeless, contained 
 the secret essence of vitality and were emblems of supreme 
 truth.'' 
 
 Philo's enunciation of a hidden and concealed Divinity, as 
 contrasted with a tangible, revealed Deity, whose vital spirit 
 suffused the universe and linked back humanity, through this 
 revelation, from the dark, invisible and primal base of existence, 
 closely resembles the Sephiroth of the Cabbalists, with its om- 
 niponent head and succeeding gradation of divine forces.** 
 According to these idealists, the Deity created all things by 
 the effective operation of the Word, whose subdivisions the 
 Logii, are vitalized acts of God, designated as his angels, repose 
 in their atmospheric abodes beneath the world or in heaven, as 
 servants and executive instruments of the Superior Divinity 
 or mediators and impassible judges of men. 
 
 The Cabbalists assert their system is an exact analogy of this 
 
 ^1 Vide Bruckerii, op. and loc. cit., p. 40S. 
 
 *2 Buddeus, Introduct. ad Histor. Philos. Ebraeor., p. 59. Sometimes inter- 
 preted to signify: Secretum Legis, Ibid., p. 152. 
 ^^ Buddeus, op. cit., \ 18. 
 ** Bruckerii, Histor. Philosoph., Lib. II., cap. 2, \ 9.
 
 74 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 scheme. Many devotees of this lore pretend to trace the 
 origin of their mysteries back to the time of Adam ; but the 
 frequent association with the people and customs of Egypt, 
 the land of mysticism and contemplative life, where many 
 Israelites had been forcibly conveyed after the conquest of 
 Palestine, furnishes a more satisfactory derivation of the sys- 
 tem.^^ Uninterrupted intercourse between the Egyptian and 
 Palestine Jews, propagated to the latter such secret learn- 
 ing possessed by the former, which ultimately grew into 
 a regular cult of erudite and mysterious teachings.''" It was 
 boldly asserted that the mere expression of the words of Holy 
 Scripture was verbal only, and that beneath these reposed a 
 genuine signification, which was forever concealed from the 
 profane and divulged to initiates alone. This asseveration 
 was insisted upon as a uniform, unequivocal principle of the 
 system." 
 
 The Cabbala was potent to explain each secret meaning with 
 which Deity had endowed the letters and points of the Sinaitic 
 code. This mystic deciphering was performed by means of 
 Gematria, which consisted of letters, lines, figures and numbers, 
 etc.,^^ the latter of which, in the Cabbala, were particularly 
 powerful; or by means of Notarikon, which was a system oi 
 important words composed of initial and terminal letters. 
 
 Themorah taught the suitable collocation of an indefinite 
 alphabetical arrangement.^^ These letters, punctuations, and 
 other visible signs, which collectively made up the Holy 
 Writings, stood in closest correlation with the divine and 
 celestial emanations of Deity himself, whose operations they 
 with absolute certainty elucidated; and by the mere utterance 
 
 '^ Bruckerii, op. cit., \ 4. 
 
 *'Buddeus, Introduct. ad Philos. Ebraeor., \ 11, p. 28 seq. 
 
 " Ibid, p. 59. 
 
 *® Bruckerii, op. cit., Lib. II., cap. 3, p. 411. "Gematria est arithmetica e.x- 
 plicatio vocis e numeris, quo.s juxta valorem literarum suarum Aritlimeticum 
 continet." Pfeiffer, Critica Sacra, p. 209. 
 
 ^'Ibid. p. 213.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 75 
 
 of a visible sign within which was a concealed force, the spirit 
 beings, over whom the uttered symbol had especial power, 
 were at once started into activity — a movement largely intensi- 
 fied, if the Cabbalist were able to fix the mystic type upon his 
 mind.®" In these arts remedies were found to be of sovereign 
 puissance to expel diseases.''^ As a direct result of such po- 
 tential influence on spiritual hosts, each wish of the human 
 heart could be satisfied. These pious practices, exercised in 
 strict accord with the Sacred Scriptures themselves, affected 
 not merely the material world, but in their mighty and search- 
 ing manifestations influenced the higher gradation of invisible 
 spirits, and were thus endowed with the property of harmon- 
 izing the heterogenous things of earth upon a system which 
 involved the propagation of the Universe. Man himself as the 
 exact prototype of the world in minature, with his corporeal 
 and spiritual endowments in the lower sphere, stands in a fixed 
 and determined relationship to the upper sphere, even to the 
 Divine Head, to whom all things are subjected.*"^ 
 
 In close union with Sephiroth, which consisted often subtle 
 forces, were brought the properties of Divinity, ten omnipotent 
 names, ten orders of angels, three heavens with seven planets, 
 and ten principal members of the human body.*'' This system, 
 adapted to use during mediaeval times on an enlarged scale 
 for the treatment of diseases and bodily ailments, combined 
 with the equally superstitious practices fostered by ecclesiasti- 
 cal authority for the cure of maladies, aided in debasing medi- 
 cine from its scientific dignity, and reducing it to the level of 
 a magic art.*** 
 
 One of the most serious results of the extending application 
 
 *" Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Th. I., p. 248. 
 
 «' " Censent enim Judaei, per artes Kabbalisticas e Scriptura petendas averti 
 mala, pelli morbas," etc. Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 209. 
 
 ^2 Buddeus, Introduct. ad Histor. Philosoph. Ebraeor., p. 345. 
 
 ^^ Ibid., p. 277. 
 
 ^*"Duplicam esse, continentem nomina Angelorum ac Spiritum variorum, ac 
 docentem quomodo morbi curandi," etc. Buddeus, op. cit., p. 352.
 
 76 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 of the Cabbala, and which cooperated with the saintly idolatry 
 of the Church and demoniacal influences to banish medical 
 science, was the logical transformation to which the Cabbala 
 itself was subjected. Instead of maintaining the exercise of 
 sound reason in the development of their doctrines, the Cabba- 
 lists gradually receded from the philosophical character of 
 their investigations, and personified the whole of Nature, the 
 causes of physical phenomena, the psychic manifestations; and 
 identical with the demonology of the Romish Church, intro- 
 duced an unlimited number of good and evil demons, whom 
 they conceived as permeating the most remote regions of 
 earth, heaven or man, and believed themselves necessitated to 
 the exactest surveillance of action in order to attract the favor- 
 able interference of the good and avoid the malevolence of bad 
 spirits. By what methods these results were accomplished, 
 the Cabbalistic theurgist instructed his disciples. 
 
 The conjuration of these rival beings was performed by the 
 vocalizing of certain verses or single words taken from the 
 mystic Script which expressed the diversified names of Deity 
 and his angelic hosts,"^ or were composed of different colloca- 
 tions of the Hebraistic alphabet, and by means of amulets on 
 which rhymes, certain phrases or words arranged upon the 
 canonitical scheme of divine or angelic nomenclature, and 
 illustrated with various figures. To these names the Cabbal- 
 ists attributed irresistible potency to provoke disease of any 
 character, and to cure maladies the most dangerous and 
 mortal.*^ 
 
 More recent devotees to the Cabbala fully recognized the 
 resistless force of these incantations for the cure of diseases, 
 
 *" " Qui spiritus corporeos esse, rebusque corporeis delectari credunt, quive lit- 
 terarum characteribus occultam qiiandam reconditam vim." Buddeus, Iiitroduct. 
 ad Histor. Philosoph. Ebraeor., p. 352. 
 
 *® " Nomina Angelorum ac Spiritum variorum, ac docentem quomodo morbi pro- 
 creandi iidem iterum curandi, civitates evertandae, terra; motos excitandi." Bud- 
 deus, op. cit., p. 352. According to Maimonides, More Nevochim, Pars. I., caps 
 61, p. 108, there were forty names used for such purposes: " Amuletasive chartas 
 experimentales conscribentibus."
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 77 
 
 provoking ills, etc., and warned against their use; others, 
 equally persuaded of their efficacy for good or evil, absolutely 
 interdicted them, particularly as the most trivial error in ar- 
 rangement, form or utterance, would not only cause the most 
 frightful convulsion in the upper regions where these invisible 
 beings reside, but render the enchanter himself liable to griev- 
 ous injury, of which the Talmud furnishes notable examples.*' 
 The immensity of space, similar to Gnosticism and Christian- 
 ity, was peopled by the Cabbala with beneficent or malicious 
 angels, graded in rigid subordination to leaders on whom spe- 
 cific duties devolved, such, for instance, as collecting the pray- 
 ers of men and weaving them into a crown for Omnipotence.*" 
 
 Of the number of malevolent spirits, constantly provoking 
 diseases and infirmities upon man, it was impossible to fix a 
 limit; they were alleged to surround mankind so densely that 
 each person had a thousand to his right and ten thousand to 
 the left of him. Endowed with the subtlest activity, they were 
 able to reach the remotest points of earth in the twinkling of 
 an eye, and by their great prescience, were eagerly sought 
 after on account of their cognizance of future events.*' As a 
 potential means of preservation and duration through the 
 Middle Ages, the secrecy of instruction imparted to initiates 
 was of especial importance, and resembled the methods adopted 
 by the Gnostics.'" 
 
 Although the origin of cabbalistic lore lies concealed in the 
 darkness of distant ages, its effective existence was recognized 
 by the sacred and profane society of the first centuries, and 
 doubtless such recognition developed from the writings of 
 Philo and the mysticism of the Essenes.'^ A thirst for secret 
 sciences was a mighty propelling force towards cabbalistic 
 sources, whose fascinating forms were greatly embellished and 
 
 *'Buddeus, Introduct. ad Histor. Philosoph. Ebraeor., p. 275. 
 
 ^^Ibid, p. 347. 
 
 **Delrio, Disquisition. Magicar, Lib. I., cap. 4, Quest. 4, p. 28 seq. 
 
 '"Matter, Histoiie du Gnosticisme, Tom. II., p. 491 seq. 
 
 '' Bruckerii, Histor. Philosoph., Lib. II., cap. 3, \ 4.
 
 yS HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 enlarged, when the more ancient Aristotehan philosophy had 
 survived its usefulness, and the Alexandrine schools were 
 waging bitter warfare against multiplying sects and the Chris- 
 tian Church, particularly since the elements of the Cabbala 
 closely assimilated to the amalgamation of Oriental doc 
 trines with the Platonic-Pythagoreanism." The mania for 
 mystic erudition which swept so strongly through the Roman 
 Empire in the early ages of the Christian Church, aided in 
 degrading the science of medicine in the second century, to 
 such extent that its most eminent professor complained of 
 this debasement arising from enthusiasm for these rites and 
 ceremonies. 
 
 The embittered denunciations of the Fathers against the use 
 of magic attested the fervid zeal manifested by the leading 
 minds of the period to become initiated into the mysterious 
 secrets claimed to be imparted within closed sanctuaries." 
 During the time of Hadrian and the Antoninii, a public proffer 
 was made by the Jews and Pagans at Rome of initiation into 
 these occult sciences, formerly the exclusive property of the 
 Egyptian priesthood, whose possession it was asserted gave 
 an undisputed control over the world of demons and by the 
 potential efficacy of amulets, talismans, and uttered spells, 
 procured for the possessor a mastery over nature. 
 
 From the opening of the Christian era, adoration was un- 
 qualifiedly given to magical forces whose assumed potency was 
 hidden from vulgar inquiry by the restrictive power of obliga- 
 tions and impressive rites.^* Under the charm of serious 
 investigation, and influenced by religious principle, this science 
 was yet admired by many philosophers. Cabbalistic mysteries 
 at Alexandria'" doubtless in their most comprehensive signifi- 
 cance aided in moulding the thoughts of inquiring scholars 
 
 " Bruckerii, Histor. Philosoph., Lib. II., cap. 3, \ 4. 
 
 " Clemens. Alexandr. Cohortatio ad Gentes, cc. I and 2 ; and Tertullianus, 
 Apologetic. Adversus Gentes, cap. 23. 
 '*Salverte. Sciences Occultcs, p. 87. 
 '* Beausobre, Histoire du Manicheisme, Tom. II., p. 203. 
 
 I
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 79 
 
 and religious enthusiasts, to an examination of the power of 
 rites whose knowledge was only to be obtained under the 
 attractive form of secrecy. The distinguished Judaico-Platonic 
 writer of the second century, in according his unstinted admi- 
 ration of this singular art, boldly announced it to be a science 
 which discloses the veiled forces of nature, and leads to a 
 direct contemplation of celestial power."'* Although in his 
 day the notion of magus seems to have received currency to 
 express the highest form of reliance upon Divinity, prop- 
 erly approached by certain secret methods, a century and a 
 half later the biographer of Apollonius of Tyana hastens to 
 disclose that his hero was not a magician, and in disclaiming 
 such nomenclature for his hero, compares him to Plato, who 
 likewise was instructed in Egyptian arcana without incurring 
 this reproachful epithet."' 
 
 '^ Philo Judseus, De Specib. Legibus. 
 
 '^ Philostratus, Vita Apollonii Tyan., Lib. I., c. i, §^ i and 2.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Christian Philosophers Influenced by the Cabbala — The Chaldaic System 
 and Magic Art Avowed by the Fathers — Treatise on Magic by Noah's 
 Son — Used to Avert Pestilence — Schools for Such Instruction in Alex- 
 andria — The Curative Power of Apollonius the Magician — Spirits In- 
 voked by Occult Rites — Cure Bodily Ills — Care Prescribed in these 
 Operations — Theurgic Arts — Chaldaic Soothsayers Accorded Profound 
 Insight into Metals, Plants, etc. — Resemble Mediaeval Alchemists — 
 Egyptian Incantations of Special Force Against Sickness — High 
 Charges of these Practitioners — Such Curatives the Basis of Subse- 
 quent Saintly Remedies — Power of Names — Of Angels — Translated 
 Chaldaic Names Lose their Force — Jao or Jehovah— ^Pagans Use it to 
 Cure. 
 
 IT is little surprising that the most profound and erudite phi- 
 losophers of the early ages of Christianity sought the pre- 
 tended disclosures which were professedly in the custody of 
 the ancient mysteries, as^a possible solution of the grave and 
 serious matters which so deeply exercised their minds. These 
 secret associations, especially the Bacchic, Egyptian and Gre- 
 cian mysteries, originally of close identity if not absolute 
 unity,' maintained a fluctuating existence down to the time of 
 their utter extinction by imperial Christianity," and to some 
 extent may have aided in moulding the monastic organizations 
 of a subequent period — traces of which influence it is claimed 
 are discernible.'' 
 
 According to Ammianus Marcellinus, Zoroaster, the great 
 conservator of magic through his devotees, only added large 
 portions of this occult art to the Chaldaic system.* One of the 
 early Fathers of the Church, in admitting as did all thoughtful 
 
 ' Gail, sur le Culte de Bacchus, p. 82 seq. 
 ^XVI. Codex Theodos., Tit. X., Lex 14. 
 ' Fosbroke, British Monachism, p. 35. 
 *Rerum'Gesta, Lib. XX VI., c. 6. 
 
 (80)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 8i 
 
 scholars of that period the undisputed existence of magic and 
 its malevolent or beneficial influences,* asserted that in the 
 more remote combats which Zoroaster, King of the Bactrians, 
 sustained against Ninus, each of the mortal contestants used 
 the secrets of this science with the same utility as their wea- 
 pons of war.* The holy and sainted Epiphany narrates that 
 Nimrod, in establishing the foundations of his realm, intro- 
 duced the magic arts of which the invention was afterwards 
 attributed to Zoroaster.' 
 
 In the fifth century it was publicly announced that a treatise 
 of this science, written by Chem, the son of Noah, was in cur- 
 rent use,^ and cc/mposed by such illustrious authority, obtained 
 no doubt the honors of obedient admiration, as well as abject 
 iiiiitation. When it is considered that Arnobius himself, in 
 faithfully delineating the peculiar belief of his age, maintained 
 that the enchantments and potential efficacy of this art as- 
 cended to the time of Seth, a son of Adam, it may be regarded 
 as a logical conclusion that the possibilities of magic were well 
 understood and agreed to with unquestioning faith. 
 
 Justin admits that the Israelitish youth, Joseph, carried as a 
 slave into Egypt, obtained there so profound a knowledge of 
 magical arts as to satisfactorily explain the prodigies presaging 
 famine and pestilence to the people, who, without his succor thus 
 procured, must have perished." Disbelieving pagans or skep- 
 tical Jews, in acknowledging the puissance of Christ by which 
 he manifested his divine mission, deliberately charged that in 
 transcending the miracles performed by native magicians. He 
 had perfected himself in clandestine arts stolen by him from 
 the sanctuaries of Egypt,'" and used illicitly the names and 
 
 ' Salverte, Sciences Occultes, p. 89. 
 
 •Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, Lib. I., cap. 5. 
 
 ^Adversus Haeres., Lib. I., cap. i. 
 
 ^Salverte, Sciences Occultes, p. 88. 
 
 »Lib. XXXVL, cap. 2. 
 
 '^ " Magus fuit, clandestiniis artibus omnia ilia perfecit ; ^gyptiorum ex aditis 
 angelorum potentium nomina, et remotas furatus est disciplinas." Arnobius. op. 
 cit., Lib. L, cap. 43. 
 6
 
 82 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 secret rites of potential angels." Apollonius, in defending him- 
 self from the appellation of enchanter, denounced the practi- 
 tioners of these occult arts and sciences as artisatts of miracles, 
 who, upon failing to produce the result or cure of maladies 
 which they had confidently predicted, loudly insisted upon the 
 accidental omission of certain substances.''^ 
 
 In the Egyptian metropolis it was no unusual event, subse- 
 quent to the proclamation of Christianity as the religion of the 
 Roman Empire, to find venerable sacerdotal institutions com- 
 pletely transformed into a school for the instruction of magic, '^ 
 which was the object of eager research. Such practices were 
 by no means restricted in their extension to those professing 
 an admiration for declining polytheism, or devoting themselves 
 as enthusiastic Israelites to the culture of the Cabbala and 
 Talmud — for independent of the practical admission of the 
 use of an elevated magic by the Christian Fathers, nearly 
 all the philosophical schools of the epoch were addicted to 
 magical arts." 
 
 The bitter incrimination of Apollonius against the blunder- 
 ing enchanters of his day was graciously less severe when he 
 announced himself as professor of a science which Divinity 
 had bestowed upon him as a recompense for austere virtues ; 
 and further, to perform successively these miraculous cures 
 where the ignorant charlatan exposed his mechanical appliances 
 and failed, he required no elaborate preparations or sacrifices, 
 but with sublime confidence in his temperance and piety, such 
 startling manifestations of superior power were of easy pro- 
 curation.''^ Cheremon, thoroughly persuaded of the practi- 
 bility, taught the art of invoking divinities, and even in defiance 
 to their resistance compelling them to operate the prodigy de- 
 manded. 
 
 " Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, Lib. I., cap. 43. 
 ''^ Pliilostratus, Vita Apollon. Tyan., Lib. L, c. 2. 
 '•'Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. L, p. 319. 
 ^* Matter, Histoire du Gnosticisnie, Tom. 11., p. 170. 
 ^'•' I'hilostratus, op. cit., Lib. L, c. 2.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 83 
 
 In undertaking to dispute the assumed logical position of 
 this great Egyptian sage, Porphyry affirmed that the gods 
 themselves had established such formulas and methods of in- 
 vocation, by which their omnipotent interposition might be 
 secured.'** Touching the essence of this controversy, doubt- 
 less the distinction is merely designed to signify that an alter- 
 cation is here revealed between the scholiasts of rival systems 
 of occult arts." Expressing the means by which man has the 
 empire over these spiritual beings whose unlimited resources 
 were invoked in the cure of bodily ailments, lamblichus dis- 
 tinguishes them into two classes, one of which is the Divine 
 type, from whom nothing can be obtained except by the hu- 
 mility of prayer and the practice of ennobling virtues. 
 
 The other 'class of invisible emanations, corresponding to 
 the obedient remedial deities of Cheremon, were defined by the 
 Theurgist as spirits entirely divested of reason, discernment 
 and intelligence, and endowed with a puissance of action trans- 
 cending that possessed by man, each gifted with a virtue or 
 force destined to accomplish resistlessly its certain and specific 
 object, forced to exercise this especial function when com- 
 manded by man, inasmuch as reasoning and discernment ele- 
 vate him above these invisible entities, and render them sub- 
 ject to his superior power, the result of higher intellectuality."* 
 Much of this presumed exercise of extraordinary puissance 
 may have originated in the chemical knowledge of these 
 skilled magicians or Thaumaturgists.^' The divinized beings 
 thus described possessed a unique property which they exer- 
 cised without consciousness or comprehension. Acting unin- 
 telligibly, they readily became the blind instruments for the 
 production of miraculous events and cures in the hands of 
 
 ^^ Eusebius, Proeparatio ad Evangel., Lib. V., cc. 8 and ii. 
 
 ^' Salverte, Sciences Occultes, p. 106. 
 
 ^^ The operation to secure tiiis subjection proceeded through the gradation of 
 spirits : " Semper enim in sacrarum operationum ordine per superiora numina 
 inferiora vocantur." lambHch., De Myster. ^'Egypt., p. 170. 
 
 ^'Salverte, op. cit., p. 107.
 
 84 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 men whose intelligence and science acquired the methods of 
 mastering them, and of judiciously applying their energies. 
 
 lamblichius also clearly states that any one experimenting 
 to obtain control of these puissant beings, if ignorant of the 
 process necessary to be followed, must infallibly terminate his 
 labors in useless efforts if he should fail to employ a single 
 substance in conformity to the prescription of sacred rites.^" 
 Of these divinities, thus subordinated to magical power, some 
 must be invoked in the Egyptian language, and others in the 
 Persian tongue,^^ but such names lose their efficacy if changed 
 to another dialect.^^ 
 
 If the miracles, especially the astounding cures of maladies, 
 alleged to have been performed by Apollonius of Tyana, are 
 admitted unreservedly by a Christian Father as genuine,''^ it 
 may be accepted as correct the inculpation of Celsus that the 
 Presbyters in the new Church used magic books containing 
 the names of powerful demons for purposes of incantation." 
 According to Maimonides, the magical knowledge of Chaldaic 
 soothsayers included a thorough insight into the secret pro- 
 perties of metals, plants, and animals, in this essential point 
 resembling the mediaeval alchemist, which was subordinated to 
 the manifestation of skill touching the science of the seasons, 
 atmosphere, and temperature.'^^ The age which received un- 
 questioned the possibilities of resurrecting the dead by evok- 
 ing their spirits,^'' or admitted, as Lactantius, that there were 
 enchanters ever ready to confound the incredulous by the sub- 
 tile exhibition of such supernatural powers," was, it may be 
 concluded, fully prepared to witness the complete prostration 
 
 '■^"lamblich., De Myster. ^^igypt., Dist. II., p. lo. 
 
 ^'Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. I., p. 30. lamblich., op. cit., p. 97 seq. 
 
 ^^Origen, op. cit., Lib. V., p. 261. 
 
 '■'•^Justin Martyr, Questiones, Qu. XXIV. 
 
 ^*Origen, op. cit.. Lib. VI., p. 302. 
 
 2^ More Nevochim, Lib. III., c. 37. 
 
 ^"Justin, Apologia, Lib. II. 
 
 " Divin. Institut., Lili. VIL, cap. 13.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. g^ 
 
 of medical science, and to devote inquisitive enthusiasm to the 
 potential efficacy of magic, disdaining the contact of reason 
 in deducing the cause of diseases from the operation of natural 
 laws.'* 
 
 Profoundly impressed with a belief which was of universal 
 extension, that human sickness originated through the direct 
 influence of evil demons, as hitherto explained, theurgic art, in 
 the time of Origen, divided the body into thirty-six diverse 
 parts, the care of each being placed under the supervision of a 
 like number of divinized beings of immortal types and resist- 
 less force; over whom the sacerdoty exercised domination, and 
 through invocations in proper form procured effectual remedy 
 for the diseased member from its particular Gnome or Divinity .^^ 
 
 Galen bitterly complained that notwithstanding the admitted 
 fact of the derivation of prescription formularies in his da)- 
 from Egyptian sources, these characters, which taught the 
 usage of simple medicaments in infirmities, were regarded as 
 containing within themselves the property of magical cures, 
 and that these medical enchanters, in collecting their herbal 
 medicines, murmured upon them Egyptian incantations to ren- 
 der them more potent,^" and whether successful in their treat- 
 ment or otherwise, these practitioners charged enormous prices, 
 which Clement, of Alexandria, severely denounced.^^ 
 
 In its earliest phases the contest between the fervent sec- 
 tarian disputants, either in Alexandria or other great cities of 
 
 ** Philostorgius, Histor. Ecclesiast., Lib. VIII., c. lo. 
 
 '*"Ex ^^igyptiis, dicentibus humanum corpus in trigenta sex partes distribu- 
 turn, et suam cujusque potestatem habere, sive daemonem, sive deum quendani 
 aethereum. Quidam autem plures dicunt, eosque dsemones propria lingua nonii- 
 nant, etc., et invocati sanant morbos quisque suarum partium." Origenes, Contra 
 Celsum, Lib. VIII., p. 146. 
 
 30.1 Prjestigas quasdam deliras .Egypticas, junctis nonnullisincantationibus.quas 
 quum herbas coUigant admurmurant. Pleraque vera ista herbarum nomina aut 
 .(^gyptica aut Babylonia, quaeque nunnulli aut privatim, aut notne gratia illis im- 
 posuerunt." De Simplicium Medicam. Temperament, Lib. VI., Prcem., p. 792 
 seq. 
 
 *' Clemens Alexandrin., Cohortat. ad Gentes, cap. i and 2.
 
 86 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the Roman Empire, and prior to the substitution of Christianity 
 in the place of Polytheism, seems to have largely reposed 
 upon the asserted superior omnipotence of either the Pagan 
 gods or the Divine Heads of the Christian religion, and par- 
 ticularly the power of each to cure disease. Out of this evi- 
 dently developed the alteration of both social and religious 
 fabrics of the times, which accorded the most unlimited potency 
 to antagonizing Divinities, but mutually relegated these forces 
 for provoking bodily ills to the inspiration of impure spirits, 
 whose influences might be conjured by magical rites. In the 
 second century, the emperor Hadrian attributed his cures of 
 aqueous congestion, which for a prolonged period had affected 
 him, to the succor of enchantment.'^ 
 
 If, therefore, such remedies were accepted as practical by 
 so enlightened a ruler as Hadrian, it serves as a valuable ex- 
 ample from which to conclude their universality among the 
 people in Rome. One of the defenders of Christianity, towards 
 this epoch, questioned not the genuineness of miraculous cures 
 performed by paganistic hierarchy or polytheistic divinities. 
 He explained them upon the general charge of invocation of 
 malevolent demons, so often resorted to by the mutual adher- 
 ents of rival sects. ' 
 
 The interpretation given these wonderful restorations to 
 robust health, by the author'^^ alluded to, substantially estab- 
 lishes the entire system on which the Romish church through- 
 out the Middle Ages founded the practical introduction of the 
 use of saintly remedies for aggravated infirmities. Tatian in 
 commenting on these astounding cures, urged that the divini- 
 ties, veritable demons, first carried the disorder into the body 
 of a healthy man, and, having notified the suffering person that 
 they would cure him provided he implored their aid, obtained 
 
 "^" Interim Adrianus aquam intercutam curavit magicis artibus." Xiphilin., 
 Vita Hadriani, p. 295. A peacock's tongue was regarded by Heliogabalus as a 
 remedy against epilepsy : " Lingua pavonum — ab epilepsia tutus diceretur." Lam- 
 prid., Vita Heliogabali, cap. 19. 
 
 •''^Tatian. Assyr., Oratio ad Gentes, p. 157.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 87 
 
 the glory of working a miracle by causing an infirmity to cease 
 which they themselves had provoked. A few months previous 
 to his death, Hadrian, then ill of the serious malady which 
 finally terminated a most valuable existence, was confronted 
 with a medical enchantress, who professed undoubted ability 
 to effectually cure his disease. In urging t^ie purity of her 
 divine mission she alleged that a dream warned her of the 
 suffering Emperor, and directed her to assure him of a speedy 
 convalescence, but resisting the solemn mandate, she was 
 afflicted with loss of sight. Upon being again ordered by the 
 celestial vision to appear in the imperial presence with the 
 soothing tidings of future health to the illustrious sufferer, she 
 came to fulfill the mission, and it was claimed, received an in- 
 stant restoration of unimpaired vision f* but the prodigous 
 remedy prophesied failed, and the august patient died soon 
 after the charlatan's visit, exclaiming: " Many ph}'sicians de- 
 stroyed the king! "^^ The imperial city seems to have quickly 
 become the centre of operations of practitioners of super- 
 natural cures, and indeed was a favorite resort for Chaldaic 
 soothsayers,^*^ who combined the prophetic voice with the 
 practical pecuniary benefits of medicine; and Sully himself did 
 not hesitate to consult such magicians touching the significance 
 of f:ertain physical malformations, which appeared on the sur- 
 face of his body.^' 
 
 Diocletian, in the year 296, when the Egyptians were organ- 
 izing their discontented factions for a revolt against the imper- 
 ial authority at Alexandria, not only caused a frightful slaugh- 
 ter of many eminent scholars and illustrious men of the city, 
 but ordered by mandate such books collected and burned as 
 treated on the artificial composition of gold,^" a secret still 
 
 ** Spartian, Vita Hadriani, cap. 23. 
 
 ^° " Multi medici Regem sustuleiunt." Xipliilin., Vita Hadriani, p. 296. 
 
 ^* Chaldaic haruspices and medical charlatans infested the Roman metropolis 
 in the time of Cato : " Haruspicem Chaldteum ne quern consuluisse velit." De 
 Re Rustica, cap. 5. 
 
 ^"Vellius Paterculus, Histor. Rom., Lib. II., cap. 24. 
 ^^Suidas, Lexicon, sub v. X ^///m.
 
 88 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 remaining in custody of the Eg}^ptian sanctuaries. This order 
 was promulgated for the purpose of depriving the Egyptians 
 of a means of procuring money with which in future to wiige 
 war against the Romans.^' 
 
 In addition to Chaldaic magicians professing the accom- 
 phshment of wonders and miraculous cures at Rome, as late 
 as the time of Alaric, king of the victorious Huns, when the 
 armies of this nation menaced the metropolis with a siege, 
 Etruscan enchanters offered to repulse them by directing 
 against that army and its chief a thunderbolt ; and as a suffi- 
 cient attestation of their prowess publicly vaunted the per- 
 formance of this prodigy at the city of Norma when similarly 
 besieged, which ended in the enemy's discomfiture.*" 
 
 The Episcopal authorities of Rome were disposed to essay 
 the possibilities of executing the promises of the Etruscans, 
 but, according to Zozimus, the populace of the city displayed 
 such repugnance against the proposed miracle that they were 
 politely dismissed, and the metropolis capitulated." From 
 the preceding statements it will perhaps clearly appear that 
 throughout the diversified gradations of social and religious 
 life during the early ages of the Christian Church a belief in 
 the existence of unseen, invisible beings, endowed with attri- 
 butes of power for the causation or cure of maladies, was so 
 firmly interwoven with the faith of sectarians, whose converts 
 were proselytes from the Jews or Polytheism, as to render the 
 administration of medicine upon a basis of science quite im- 
 possible. 
 
 The progress of this debasement of the curative art from the 
 time of Galen was rapid and uninterrupted. Methods of curing 
 disease by the practiced survey of scientific inquiry, quickly 
 passed from the domain of an exact science, where events were 
 explained within a logical circle, and entered upon the sombre 
 pathway of direct demoniacal production, whose remedial 
 
 ^^ Delrio, Magicar. Disquisit., Tom. I., p. 30. 
 ^''Sozomen, Hist. Eccles., Lib. IX., cap. 6. 
 *' I list. Rom., Lib. V., cap. 42.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 89 
 
 patliolog}', it was unanimously agreed, transcended the skill of 
 the physicians, and consequently became the undisputed pre- 
 rogative of divine or magical interference. As urged, the 
 Cabbalists maintained that through the collocation of certain 
 letters in multiplied figures the invincible power over angelic 
 hosts was assured. 
 
 In theurgic operations, names having some fancied associa- 
 tion with the unseen forces constituted a most important ele- 
 ment. Thus, for instance, in Lucan's day Grecian or Roman 
 magicians threatened these invisible demons with the invoca- 
 tion of some redoubtable name, in order to quicken their lag- 
 ging movements.*^ In the celebrated treatise of Origen, em- 
 bodying his curious controversy with the Epicurean," Celsus, 
 enemy of the Christian faith, the polemical writer frankly ad- 
 mitted there were names naturally endowed with great and 
 vital virtues, such as the Egyptian sages and more enlightened 
 Persian Magi used.''* While Origen accorded the existence of 
 magic as not entirely chimerical or impotent, and as a .system 
 regulated by strict rules and known to few, he boldly declared 
 the names of Sabaoth and Adonai, when arranged in suit- 
 able form, to be irresistible.*" 
 
 One asseveration of this writer is of high importance in its 
 immediate relationship to these causes, so actively at work at 
 this epoch to mould into shape elements which constituted for 
 centuries the exclusive system by which bodily diseases were 
 treated through the assumed efficiency of the sainted emissa- 
 ries of Deity. He states that persons sufficiently skilled in 
 these matters would find other mysteries in the names of such 
 pure angels as Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, etc., and that to this 
 philosophy of nomenclature is to be referred the name of Jesus,** 
 
 « Lucan, Pharsalia, Lib. VI., v. 748. 
 
 *3" Celsus Epicurius," Origen Contra Celsum, Lib. IL, p. 97. 
 ""Nominum efficacium quorum aliquot utuntur -^gyptiorum sapientes, aut 
 Persarum magi doctores." Origen, op. cit., Lib. I., p. 19. 
 *^ Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. L, p. 17. 
 *^ Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. L, p. 18 seq.
 
 9° 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 which SO often had manifested its divine puissance in expelhng 
 demons.''^ 
 
 Chaldaic names when translated lost totally their magic 
 force.'"* From whatever source these names were derived, 
 there seems to have been a unanimity touching their unlimited 
 subtle and remedial powers. Names of Cabbalistic deities, to 
 a great degree drawn from the older Persian system, were en- 
 dowed with extraordinary potency.^' To Jah was attributed 
 wisdom ; to Jehovah, prudence ; and to Adonai, unbounded em- 
 pire.^" Their possession does not appear to have been re- 
 stricted to particular sects of the early Church ; but was 
 eagerly sought after by all, and when found to exhibit a magic 
 or curative force through material representatives, these divin- 
 ities were used by sectarians indifferently. Of the names an- 
 ciently admitted to be charged with divine power, that of the 
 Jewish God, Jehovah, was the most adjured, both by the Cab- 
 balists and other religious bodies, whose systems assimilated 
 with the Hebrew faith. Consequently, in the doctrines of the 
 Cabbala, this name representing the Divine Essence was of 
 exalted type, and figured as a means of obtaining a fulfillment 
 of human wishes, as well as a powerful auxiliary in curing 
 maladies. Other religions, for example Polytheism, recog- 
 nized the inherent merits of correctly pronouncing the word 
 Jehovah. In the Valentinian system, one of the revolted ele- 
 ments, Sophia, or wisdom, as a deified emanation, was forced 
 to recede into her proper limitations, by virtue of the mysteri- 
 ous name Joa." 
 
 To what extent the adoration of the mystical Hebraistic Di- 
 vinity's name was carried on account of its presupposed puis- 
 
 *^ " Qui autem potuerit de nominium secreta ratione philosophari, multa facile 
 inveniet et de appellationibus Angelorum Dei quorum alius Michael, alius Gabriel 
 alius Raphael." Origen, op. cit., Lib. I. p. 20. 
 
 *8 Ibid. 
 
 *' Beausobre, Hist, du Manicheisme, Tom. II., p. 800 seq. 
 
 *" Matter, Histor. du Gnosticisme, Tom. I., p. 100. 
 
 *i Matter, op. cit., Tom. I., p. loi ; and Tom. II., p. 198 seq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 91 
 
 sance to vanquish disease, may be inferred from the following cu- 
 rious facts: Theosebius, a Pagan philosopher, espoused a wo- 
 man who appeared ultimately to be possessed of a demoniacal 
 spirit — a species of nervous disorder, universally admitted to 
 be the production of an evil being. In order to obtain this 
 demon's departure from its feminine habitation, he employed, 
 to begin with, the most pious adjurations and gentlest exhor- 
 tations; but the obstinate and malevolent angel gibed and 
 scored at him. At length, with exhausted patience, Theose- 
 bius conjured him in the name of the Hebrew god — Jao, under 
 the attested invocation of the rays of the sun. The demon 
 thereupon instantly departed, protesting that although he re- 
 vered all the gods, he was especially reverential towards that 
 one whom the Israelites adored.^" 
 
 This word, when properly arranged, was irresistible in its 
 operations, and had at its command the powers of earth and 
 heaven ;^^ when, however, its exact pronunciation" and colloca- 
 tion had perished, the enthusiasm to recover the same was in- 
 creased in proportion to the marvellous properties attributed 
 to its material form.^^ In the second century, the Synhedrin 
 directed a repronunciation of this word, as a necessary innova- 
 tion, in order to counteract the expanding deification of Jesus 
 among Israelitish converts to Christianity, and to have a distinc- 
 tive sign by which the Jewish nation might be disintegrated 
 from the Christianized Hebrews."'' 
 
 The Christians having adopted the Adonaite substitute for 
 Christ, the Synhedrin enacted that the quadrilateral name 
 should be again uttered as in more ancient times, and that 
 
 *- Beausobre, Histoire du Manicheisme, Tom. II., p. 67. The original author- 
 ity may be found in Photius Cod., 242, col. 1037, sub nom. Damascus. 
 *3 Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. I., p. 157. 
 5* Ibid., Tom. I., p. 107. 
 
 ^ Buddeus, Introduct. ad Histor. Philosoph. Ebraeor., p. 43 seq. 
 ^ Graetz, Hist, of the Jews, p. 1 14.
 
 92 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 each should salute the other by it.^'' As a talisman of medici- 
 nal property, it was carried about the person in tubes, or more 
 generally on parchment.^^ 
 
 " Ibid., p. 115. 
 
 ^" Amuleta sive chartas experimentales conscribentibus." Maimonides, More 
 Nevochim, Pars. I., c. 61, p. 108. Maimonides asserts that evil and designing 
 men sought to collocate the letters of the word for sinister purposes. Ductor 
 Dubitant, Lib. I., cap. 60, folio 24.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Apollonius Claimed as Inventor of Magic Cures — His Marvellous Suc- 
 cess — Amulets Introduced as Preventatives Against Disease — En- 
 graven with Figures as Remedies — Gnosticism Developed this System — 
 The Abraxas Gems — Potency Increased by Ephesian Letters — Raphael 
 as an Angel of Cure — Medical Property of Abracadabra — Metrical 
 Treatise on its Puissance — Remedial Power of Certain Minerals — How 
 Used and When Worn as Charms — Decline of Classical Letters Pro- 
 voked a Deterioration of Arts and Sciences. 
 
 APOLLONIUS of Tyana was claimed as the inventor of 
 these powerful adjuncts of the curative art, and practised 
 his system of medicine upon the theory that no cures could 
 be made successful without a patholgy for the soul.' From 
 the empirical sagacity of paganistic docrines touching talis- 
 manic remedies, to the incorporation of an identical faith into 
 Christian theology, the advance was rapid and the transition 
 unimpeded. Apollonius, the polytheistic philosopher and med- 
 icist, had professed unexampled cures by the agencies of talis- 
 manic influence;' and a Christian Father readily followed the 
 route thus opened, to like vindication of the puissance of his 
 Deity. 
 
 Synesius, one of the most erudite philosophers among the 
 early Christians, was persuaded that the art of making 
 amulets and talismans, the invocation of spirits and the use of 
 their prowess, was neither vain nor criminal. On the contrary, 
 he never suspected other than the most natural event in these 
 operations, a belief shared uniformly by the most enlightened 
 followers of Christ in that distant age. He says that as there 
 is a certain sympathy and affinity between bruised and afflicted 
 
 1 Philostratus, Vita Apollon. Tyan., Lib. III., cap. 44, § i, claims for his hero, 
 in this system, a species of divination : " Ejus donum esse medicam." 
 * Philostratus, op. cit., Lib. TIL, cap. 45. 
 
 (93)
 
 94 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 parts of the animal frame, although not contiguous, which in 
 the most remote distances one member feels the pangs of 
 pain when its fellow member is suffering, likewise an identical 
 affinity exists between parts of our terrestrial world and unseen 
 beings of exalted excellence for good or evil, who reside within 
 the unbounded limits of the celestial and sublunary sphere. By 
 the selection of suitable plants, metals or minerals, to which spe- 
 cific figures and words are to be added, these superior beings 
 are quickly influenced by that sympathy which they have for 
 such material types.'' 
 
 He also avows that the celestial creatures dwelling above the 
 terrestrial world, having an incorporeal nature and exempt 
 from affections, are beyond the reach of enchantments or 
 talismanic influences, and cannot be evoked by any means ; but 
 the spirits resident in the atmospheric regions, created from 
 corporeal substances, possess sympathetic senses, through 
 which they are moved by human infirmities and affinities.* 
 The Basilideans and other sects developed from the Gnostic 
 systems accorded the mightiest power to stone talismans^ pre- 
 pared for initiates into these mysterious sanctuaries as a ready 
 means of recognition.*' These gems, endowed with omnipo- 
 tent curative and talismanic power, quickly acquired a celeb- 
 rity undiminished for ages, and whose possible interpretation 
 even yet attracts erudite attention, and were generally known 
 under the denomination of Abraxas. 
 
 • Basilides, the fouhder of the sect from which these ema- 
 nated, so far as scholastic research can establish his identity, 
 lived under Trajan and his immediate successor, from about 
 the middle of the first to the beginning of the second century. 
 He was of Syrian" nationality, and taught in the literary 
 metropolis of the world,^ where, as a neophyte in the Christian 
 
 ^ Beausobre, Histoire du Manicheisme, Tom. II., p. 49. 
 
 * Ibid. 
 
 * King, Gnostics and their Remains, p. 93. 
 
 *Bellermann, Drei Programmen ueber die Abraxas Gemmen, Th. III., p. 12. 
 ■^ Matter, Histoire du Gnosticisme, Tom. II., p. 57 seq. 
 ^King, The (Gnostics and tlieir Remains, p. 78. 
 
 \
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 95 
 
 religion, he declared himself to be a disciple of Matthew, and 
 gloried in having for his preceptor a scholar of the apostle 
 Peter.' As the propagator of the system of Simon the magi- 
 cian, whose thaumaturgic skill was widely known in the days 
 of the first evangelists, he seems to have been attracted by 
 the oriental doctrines of the Gnostics, and struggled to com- 
 bine pure Christianity with the cosmologic and aeon theories of 
 Gnosticism. 
 
 In order to render his teachings of readier comprehension 
 to . converts, he selected tangible representatives and images 
 from numerous systems in Alexandria, where it is probable 
 that he finished a remarkable career in peaceful quietude.'" 
 In the annunciation of his mystic principles touching Divinity 
 and divine properties, works and creations, their influence on 
 spirits and worlds, the demiurgos or opifex mundi, and the 
 manifold forces of nature, he appears to have followed the 
 scheme of the Syrian Saturninus, a contemporary. The con- 
 struction of this dogma was an amalgamation of Christian, 
 Judaistic, and Polytheistic religions, and especially of oriental 
 Gnosticism. Influenced largely by the theurgic practices of 
 his predecessor, Simon the magician, he boldly taught the 
 irresitible puissance inherent in the" Abraxas images when 
 properly understood. Such knowledge was communicated to 
 converts similar to Gnostic mysticism, under the solemnity of 
 secret instruction. 
 
 Whether these gems were originally designed as a means 
 of recognition for the Basilidean catechumens, or, from the first, 
 used as a remedy already possessed of resistless force to cure 
 maladies, or prevent ills of diversified types," is not clear per- 
 haps for each. Irenseus charged upon the Basilideans the use 
 of images, invocation of deities, and incantations, as an import- 
 ant feature of their religious creed,''^ and that the forces of a 
 
 'Matter, op. cit., Tom. I., p. i86. 
 1" Matter, op. cit., Tom. II., p. 58, No. 3 
 
 " Bellermann, Drei Programmer! ueber die Abraxas Gemmen, Th. I., p. 29. 
 ^2 " Exorcismis et incantationibus utuntur." Adversus Haeresos, Lib. I., cap. 
 23. I 4-
 
 96 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 plurality of worlds were appropriately named under the denom- 
 ination of angels. The gems or stones used by these religious 
 enthusiasts, were composed of various materials — glass, paste, 
 and other minerals, and sometimes of metal.^^ Through the 
 irresistible might of Abrax, their supreme divinity, the Basili- 
 deans were protected amid persecutions, and evaded the 
 searching inquiry of imperial investigations.^* 
 
 On account of the potential and resistless power of this word, 
 it was compared to the magical and curative puissance of 
 Ephesian letters and formulas, largely applied in the early ages 
 of Christianity for such purposes/'' As talismans and amulets 
 for the cure of diseases, these stones were of extensive use. 
 For the purpose of giving these additional energy, short twigs 
 and pellets were thrown upon a designated place, and, accord- 
 ing to the form assumed in their fall, a sage or augur inter- 
 preted the significance, and engraved upon the Abraxas stone 
 as of especial potency.^" 
 
 Thus prepared, these curious gems were admitted to possess 
 an efficacy for hygienic practices, and extensively used by the 
 Gnostics, and perhaps other sects. The illustrious Alexan- 
 drine scholar, Clement, stricly interdicted the use of gems for 
 personal ornamentation, with evident allusion to the Abraxas 
 stones." The oft-recurring figure of a serpent on these talis- 
 mans was specially designed to. be used among the faithful as 
 a curative of or preventative against diseases,^'^ and in this es- 
 sential point exactly harmonized with the Divine principle 
 underlying the serpent system of yEsculapius, by which sick- 
 
 ^•' Bellermann, op. cit., Th. I., p. 29. 
 
 i^Irenssus, op. cit., Lib. I., cap. 24, \ 7. 
 
 '^ Suidas, Lexicon, sub v. Ephes. Grammat. 
 
 ^^ Bellermann, op. cit., Th. L, p. 39. 
 
 " Psedagog., Lib. IL, cap. 12. He also makes the sweeping inculpation that 
 much evil had invaded the world through woman's greed of pearls : " Maximi 
 autem precii margarita mundum muliebrem per summam lasciviam mirandum 
 modum invasit." Ibid. 
 
 ** Bellermann, Drei I'rogrammen ueber die Abraxas Gemmen, Th. L, p. 60.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. ^^y 
 
 ness was anciently cured — a method of extensive adaptation." 
 In its alternative significance the serpent effigy accords with 
 the Egyptian notion of an all-pervading spirit, thus faithfully 
 reproducing the Abrax, and oftentimes engraven together. 
 Some of them were worn as a safeguard against both vice 
 promotive of bodily infirmities, and error productive of spir- 
 itual disorders. The figure 5 cut with greater or less skill on 
 the surface of the amulets appears to have especially related to 
 the forces of the unseen and natural worlds. 
 
 On the principle admitted by modern scientists, .that the bo- 
 tanical system is a development of this number, it may be as- 
 sumed to represent a higher appreciation by this sect of that 
 science which is closely conjoined with the curative art. The 
 name of Raphael, the beloved patron angel of early Christians 
 for the cure of disease, was appropriated by the Gnostics with 
 all his fancied energies. This word, lettered in the Hellenistic 
 dialect, among other names of well-known or unusual angelic 
 beings, is frequently met on the Abraxas gems, and in this 
 form was anciently used as a medicinal remedy and preventa- 
 tive of physical suffering."" One of these is engraven with Ar- 
 menian letters, and contains a standing invocation for fruitful 
 delivery, and in its medicinal property was evidently a cure for 
 sterility.^^ Under what specific circumstances these amulets 
 were obtained by the filiates into these closely-organized reli- 
 gious bodies, it is perhaps impossible to state. 
 
 It would appear, however, to be a logical deduction to as- 
 sume that they were quickly passed to neophytes, impressively 
 charged to avoid the slightest indiscretion which would attract 
 the profane authorities and aid them in discovering the local i- 
 
 ^'■Plinii, Histor. Natur., Lib. XXIX., cap. 24, \ 8. Arnobius, Adversus Gen- 
 tes, Lib. VL, cap. 25, says of him: " vEsculapius cum baculi," or serpent-twined 
 staff. /Esculapius is declared to have obtained his knowledge of medicaments 
 through dreams sent him in Apollo's Temple. Philostratus, Vita Apollon., Lib. 
 IIL, cap. 44. 
 
 ^^ Bellermann, op. cit., Th. II., p. 30. 
 
 -' Bellermann, Die Drei Programmen ueber die Abraxas Gemmen, Tli. II., p. 
 37 seq. 
 
 7
 
 98 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 ties where the Gnostics met in secret conclave. Oftentimes 
 these amulets were evidently conferred upon younger mem- 
 bers, by the more aged Basilideans, an action doubtless sanc- 
 tioned by the governing hierarchy. This formal transmission 
 was usually accompanied by a holy invocation to the substitute 
 name, to be particularly gracious to the adolescent devotee.'^^ 
 
 The Abracadabra, derived from abrax, when repeated several 
 times and written in pyramidal shape on parchment, as early as 
 the Third Century was solemnly recommended by a pagan 
 versifier as a sovereign remedy in cases of intermittent fevers.^' 
 This sagacious writer was Quintus Serenus Samonicus, who 
 appears to have attained high rank and illustration, but favor- 
 ing the unsuccessful partisans of Caracalla's brother, was with 
 others assassinated while enjoying the hilarity of a Roman 
 banquet.^* He composed a metrical treatise on the salubrious 
 precepts of medicine, and thus chants the magical and health- 
 giving properties of Abracadabra: 
 
 "Inscribas chartae quod dicitur abracadabra 
 Saepius et subter repetis, sed detrahe summam, etc. 
 Et magis atque magis desint elementa figuris," etc.^^ 
 
 He also asserted that sleep might be superinduced in the most 
 desperate cases of insomnia by the incineration of lettered 
 parchment and, mixed with tepid water, drank as a potion.'^* 
 The science of Galen was not independent of urging the use 
 of amulets as medicinal cures, and advised a trial of them for 
 headache^' and inebriety ,'^^ and pronounced them sovereign 
 against fevers.^" 
 
 22 Ibid., Th. III., p. 12. 
 
 ^^Beausobre, Histoire du Manicheisme, Tom. II., p. 55 seq. 
 2* Capitolinus, Vita Caracal!., cap. 4. 
 
 2^ De Medicinse Prsecepta, entitled Hemitritreo Depellando, p. 96 seq. 
 28" Charta igitur variis quam pinxit littera verbis, Uritur inde calido potatur in 
 amni." Seren. Samon., De Medecinje Prsecepta, p. 98. 
 '■"Galen, De Compos. Medecam., Lib. II., c. 2. 
 28 Ibid., De Remed. Parabil., Lib. I., cap. i. 
 2* De Morborum Causis, Lib. I., c. 2.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. c^y 
 
 Jasper, hematite and hieratite stones were strongly recom- 
 mended for unusual sanitative virtues,'*' but the srpphirc ex- 
 celled as a remedy for scorpion bites.^' These incautious 
 counsels were rigidly adhered to and enlarged upon through- 
 out the Middle Ages. Notwithstanding the efforts of the 
 leaders of the Christian Church during the first three centur- 
 ies to subject their followers to a discipline which should 
 promptly distinguish them from the Judaizing-Oriental sects 
 surrounding them, as well as from other polytheistic adversar- 
 ies, it is evident that absolute prevention of the use of these 
 curious talismanic figures by the Christians was quite impos- 
 sible. 
 
 From the statement by enlightened scholars of the Church 
 that there was an efficacy in certain literal collocations whose 
 proper adjustment was able to set in motion one or more of 
 the invisible demoniacal' forces, it may be readily concluded 
 that actual efforts of believers to control these beings were 
 early essayed. Towards the close of the second century 
 Clement Alexandrinus, in his treatise on matters of immediate 
 interest to converts, directed that the faithful should avoid 
 carr)nng stones on which idolatrous figures were engraved.*'' 
 It was also forbidden the neophyte to gaze on such effigies.'* 
 Other sects more or less closely identified with the Basilideans, 
 or perhaps further removed from the unadulterated doctrines 
 of Christ, adopted images to represent their religious system, 
 and to w^hich excessive potency was ascribed. The Carpocra- 
 tians** and Ophites used such figures, including a rampant ser- 
 pent, as an emblem of their secret faith.*^ 
 
 It is beyond dispute, as may be judged from the serious 
 caution and censures of Clement of Alexandria, that the 
 
 3" Ibid., De Composit. Medic, Lib. IX., cap 2, \ 19. 
 
 " Ibid., \ 29. 
 
 '^Paedagogi, Lib. II., cap. 12; and Lib. III., c. 11. 
 
 "Bellermann, Drei Programmen ueber die Abraxas Gemmen, Th. II., p. 17. 
 
 ^*Iren3sus, Adversus Haeresos, Lib. I., cap. 24. 
 
 '^Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. IV., p. 202.
 
 loo HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Christians themselves were largely addicted to these super- 
 stitious usages in the cure of diseases, or for potential protec- 
 tion against the machinations of demons by whom the believer 
 was compactly surrounded, according to the admission of the 
 Fathers. Inasmuch as the earlier converts and their suc- 
 cessors accepted the new faith with all its diverging oddities, 
 and professed an unqualified credulity touching the doctrine 
 of the emanation of physical infirmities from demoniacal 
 sources, sanctioned by the ecclesiastical guides, oftentimes 
 direful necessity compelled the faithful to resort to tangible 
 remedies for grave maladies, where frequent invocations were 
 ineffectual. 
 
 The Clementine diatribe attests unequivocally a numerous 
 portion of the followers of Christ in hot pursuit after Gnostic 
 talismans and amulet cures. Doubtless the faith of Galen in 
 such methods may have rallied large'numbers of both Chris- 
 tians and Polytheists to their adaptation ; but the extinction 
 of medicine as a system regulated in harmony with an exact 
 science, and its degradation to the administration of simple 
 medicaments^" directed by talismans, endowed with a divinized 
 efficiency, impelled sectarians to remedies which the hierarchy 
 was powerless to prevent — remedies which were the material 
 types of that subtle force, whose evolution rendered celestial 
 or demoniacal beings docile to the will of the conjurator. 
 From the Milanese edict, in the year 312, Christianity obtained 
 not merely the recognition of legal sanction to an uninterrupted 
 existence, but an illustrious victory over Polytheism, by being 
 subrogated in the venerable place of its embittered rival. 
 
 Notwithstanding the signal triumph of the new faith, the 
 downfall of paganism was yet retarded, and its principles un- 
 extinguished. It is indeed true the first Christian emperor, 
 influenced by the alteration of public affairs, solemnly pro- 
 claimed the death penalty against all persons proffering sacri- 
 fices to heathen gods," which shortly before had received the 
 
 ^"Lessing, Geschichte dcr Medezin, Th. I., p. 118. 
 ^'' Codex Theodosianus, XVI., Tit. X., Lex. 2, an. 34.1.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. loi 
 
 divided honors of an Empire on the one hand quivering with 
 anxious soHcitude for their material representatives, while on 
 the other compliance with hated laws against proselytes 
 yielded most unwilling obedience. 
 
 This rescript forced the summary conclusion of heathen 
 rites and ceremonies in the temples of the Empire. Although 
 thus highly favored by imperial legislation, and protected in 
 the undisturbed celebration of their faith, the professors of 
 Christianity were at first unable to vanquish the numerous ad- 
 herents of polytheism. Many of these indeed preserved their 
 paganistic worship of images in secret, while the heathen 
 proselyte recruited into the ranks of the church militant in 
 numerous instances, through a necessary policy of the pon- 
 tifical authorities, brought with him fragmentary forms and 
 ceremonies which in their ancient application added to the 
 pompous service of Jupiter Maximus or Venus Dea, were now 
 suffered to vindicate the majesty of the religion of Christ, and 
 increased the splendor of its expanding ritual.^ To this in- 
 variable tendency of Christianity prior*" and subsequent to its 
 imperial establishment, may be fairly attributed the perpet- 
 uation of numerous mystical properties claimed for heathen 
 deities, and sanctioned under the adjustment of new names or 
 altered relations. 
 
 Other serious and important circumstances contributed to 
 the lasting debasement of medicine as an exact science, fol- 
 lowing the era of Constantine the Great. When it is consid- 
 ered that the fundamental principles upon which rested the 
 fabric of medicinal art for many ages, involved the highest 
 credulity of the human mind, and a species of mythological 
 gradation of puissance hitherto sanctioned by the Fathers, and 
 now admitted under the garb of saintly worship or a practical 
 adoption of the demoniacal doctrine as a conceded antagonism 
 to the rapidly increasing idolatry of martyrs and blessed rel- 
 
 ^* Beausobre, Histoire du Manicheisme, Tom. II., p. 41 ; and Origen, Contra 
 Celsum, Lib., I., p. 32; and Lib. VI., p. 301. 
 ^'Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. VI.
 
 I02 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ics, it will excite little surprise that the Manicheian theories 
 of the fourth and fifth centuries powerfully assisted in main- 
 taining more enlightened minds among the Christian sacerdoty 
 fo so firm and unshaken a belief in the dualistic teaching of 
 Manes, typical of eternal rivalry between supremest divinity 
 and the no less potential Satan, with its unremitting warfare 
 and angelic powers against the diabolical retainers of the 
 arch enemy. Amidst these restless circumstances the Teu- 
 tonic invasion provoked an inextricable confusion in scfcial and 
 ecclesiastical affairs. 
 
 The most deplorable result of these frightful disorders, which 
 swept through the fairest portions of the Roman Empire like 
 a relentless storm of death and desolation, was the utter pros- 
 tration*" of scientific culture, driven with fanatical contempt 
 from the Church." The sudden withdrawal from profane and 
 sacred society of those influences which strengthen the reason 
 and fortify it against the encroachments of superstitious exal- 
 tation during the fifth century, quickly attested the debase- 
 ment into which the Christian leaders had descended. 
 
 For example, Saint Basil, under the stinging reproach of a 
 conscience hastened into ripe luxuriance through the somno- 
 lent mortification of dreary solitude, feelingly lamented the 
 days of his youth — not as may be supposed from recollections 
 of frailties incident to adolescence, but for the reason that 
 while young the Christian hero had nourished his mind with 
 an abundance of classical literature now the object of profound 
 contempt.*'^ The placid life of monasticism, with its complete 
 ignorance of all things not contained within the mythical Sep- 
 tuagint, lives of the Martyrs, or homilies of holy predecessors, 
 was the subject of Basil's most exalted commendation.*^ 
 
 *° Cassiodorus should be gratefully distinguished fiom the degradation of his 
 age under examination, as one urging the importance of physical tests in medicinal 
 treatment, Edicta Reg. Ostrogoth., No. XIX. 
 
 ^' Roskoft', Geschichte des Teufels, Th. I., p. 259. 
 
 *^ Basil, Epistolic, Ep. 223. 
 
 " Ibid.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 103 
 
 Even the illustrious Jerome had so far become inoculated with 
 the poisonous miasma, slowly perverting pontiffs and priest- 
 hood, that he openly proclaimed an unfading belief in a dream 
 which solemnly warned him against the terrible crime of perus- 
 ing the writings of antiquity, and threatened him with a pun- 
 ishment reserved for unbelievers. This "awful alternative the 
 saint evaded by promising never to read pagan books again." 
 Even Gregory the Great, to whose vigilant efforts the Anglo- 
 Saxon dynasties of England owed their conversion to the doc- 
 trines of Christ a century later, boldly announced a stultified 
 pride in his ignorance, and declared a knowledge of grammar 
 even for a layman to be indelicate, while for a bishop such 
 familiarity was disgusting.*^ For several centuries succeeding 
 the triumph of Christianity, so long as the Pontiffs and Epis- 
 copacy glorified in their ignorance as stated, the vulgar mind 
 divested of solid ratiocination, accepted tradition as an author- 
 ity equivalent to the Scriptures, which rapidly advanced the 
 clearly defined antagonism of Good and Evil, arrayed in 
 unceasing struggle between unlimited, invisible hosts, and 
 finally developed the systematic origin of diseases by demoniac 
 production, and their cure by angelic or saintly remedies. 
 
 The doctrines of Manes, strenuously contested with polem- 
 ical zeal in the fifth century by Augustin, materially added to 
 the propulsion towards peopling earth, air and heaven with in- 
 visible spirits, engaged in a struggle for the humble and 
 superb, the affluent and indigent Christian. Gnostic and Ba- 
 silidean teachings united with the Cabbala, had so far influ- 
 enced popular belief prior to the full development of Mane- 
 cheism, as to accept without hesitation the possibility of physi- 
 cal ills and infirmities originating, under divine permission, 
 from demon causes. 
 
 To these, doctrines universally accredited by ecclesiastical 
 teachers, and servilely submitted to by the less enlightened 
 flock, the more accurately defined dogma of Manes touching 
 
 *^ Hieronymus, Epistolse, Ep. 31, ad Eustach. 
 *^ Gregor. Maxim., EpistoL, Lib. IX., Ep. 48.
 
 I04 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Persian dualism, should be added as finally establishing the 
 mediaeval faith in the fluctuating success or discomfiture of the 
 benevolent or malevolent principle, distinctly embodied as 
 angel, saint or demon, which relegated the practice of medi- 
 cine to the sanctuaries as an article of creed, or abandoned it 
 to the charlatan and empiric, whose principal skill consisted in 
 magic or cabbalistic conjurations. Manes, in harmony with the 
 dualism of ancient Persia, constructed his religious system on 
 the theory of an eternal antagonism between the powers of 
 light and darkness.*^ From these sharply contrasted elements 
 developed an elaborate faith which assigned to Omnipotent 
 Deity attributes of beneficence, brilliancy and happiness, 
 while, per contra, to his rival was conceded almost equal 
 puissance, with the sombre features of gloom and misery." 
 To the prince of despair was given humanized form, with the 
 factors of increase.*'* 
 
 Manicheism, from the first regarded as the arch enemy of 
 Christianity, immediately, subsequent to its triumph over poly- 
 theism, was subjected to a most sanguinary persecution by the 
 more successful rival. Laxity of discipline and morals among 
 the followers of the ecstatic Manes may have contributed to 
 this crushing animadversion. Nothwithstanding the general ' 
 acceptance of the dogma of good and evil as irreconcilable 
 antagonists enunciated by Lactantius*® and the Christian 
 Fathers, with its curious ramifications of spiritualized emana- 
 tions and unlimited power to provoke and cure diseases, the 
 initial point was the great arena of controversy against the 
 Manicheans. 
 
 In their ultimate effect upon medical culture, these ecclesias- 
 tical polemics, in solidifying the doctrine of maladies and other 
 
 ^^Augustin., Contra Faustum, Lib. XL, c. i. On the Fetichism of Manes vide 
 Beausobre, Ilistoire du Manicheisme, Tom. II., p. 369; and at so late a date as 
 the ninth century, VoUaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. I. p. 502 seq. 
 
 "•" Aiigustin, Contra Faustum, Lib. XXL, cap. i. 
 
 <8Ibid., Lib. XX., c. 14. 
 
 ^^Instit. Divin., Lib. II., c. 12.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 105 
 
 physical disorders, evils in the world, as a direct penalty, or as 
 invaluable aids, to saintly adv^ancement, cannot be overesti- 
 mated.^" Gregory Nazien himself chants the pains of body as 
 provoked by demons.^^ and intimates the uselessness of medi- 
 caments to cure such diseas'es.^'^ He asserts the frequent cure 
 of sickness thus created, by an imposition of hands;''" 
 
 ^''Gregor. Nazien. Oratio, Lib. XIV., c. 31. 
 
 51 Ibid., Carmina, LXXXIII : 
 
 " Et multos morbis ac dBemonum vinculis 
 Laboravit." — V. 27. 
 
 5'^ Ibid., " Morbus compressus medicamentis non opportunis." V. 17. 
 
 M Ibid., L.: 
 
 " Capitibus earum, qui mihi sese inclinant, 
 Et morborum suorum me curatorem vocant." — V. 104.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Antagonism of Angels of Light and of Darkness — All Diseases Spring 
 from the Evil Principle — Magic Avowed as a Science by the Church — 
 Potency to Cure of Cross Sign — Metrical Panegyric of this Curative — 
 Early Use of Reliques for Remedies Against Maladies — Puissance of a 
 Wax Pellet — Amulets Written on Parchment by Saints — Formula of 
 Exorcising the Principle of Disease — Amulets Against Bodily Infirmi- 
 ties Transplanted from Paganism — Good and Evil as Attributes of An- 
 gels Applied to in the Sortes or Hazards — Rescripts Forbid Chaldaic 
 Art, etc., in the Cure of Maladies — Imperial Ordinance Affords Security 
 to Practitioners of Magic Medicine — Laws of the Wisigoths Recognize 
 the Force of Magic to Cause Disease. 
 
 OUT of these enthusiastic utterances grew the grave theory 
 that as all disorders and aggravated maladies were sent 
 upon the body or mind by the hosts of darkness, under Divine 
 sanction, they should be accepted as a means of final salvation, 
 as inducing patience in terrible suffering. In the opinion of 
 theologians, sickness was preferable to insolent pride/ and lep- 
 rosy was asserted to be a sacred disease.^ 
 
 During the controversial conflict between the church and 
 Manicheism, a belief in the corporeal substance of demons 
 gradually assumed a tangible shape, and when these were des- 
 ignated as invisible it was alleged to be on account of their 
 possessing a finer body than mankind,^ and that prior to the 
 fall they were clothed with a bodily texture of more delicate 
 composition.* Before an imperial rescript had established the 
 Christian church, sacrificial offerings to idolatrous images were 
 
 ' Gregor. Nazien., Epistolpe, Ep. XXVI.; Augustin., Civitat. Dei, Lib. I., cc. 
 8-IO; and De Morib. Eccles., cc. 8, ii, substantially agrees with this view of 
 the origin and spiritual effect of human suffering. 
 
 ''Gregor. Nazien., Oraiio, Lib. XIV., cap. 6. 
 
 * Cyril Hieros. Catac, XVI., c. 251. 
 
 * Augustin., De Genes., ad Lib. III., c. 10. 
 
 (106)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 107 
 
 merely denominated heathenish, but subsequently were apos- 
 trophised as demoniacal offerings. Consequently, by legiti- 
 mate progression, impure spirits came to be regarded as the 
 founders of Paganistic culture, aptly compared to a worship of 
 the devil, who had instituted false oracles and deceptive mira- 
 cles.'' 
 
 Magic, frankly avowed as a possible science, was the especial 
 property of demoniac spirits, and showed the fate of polythe- 
 ism as a manifestation of diabolical puissance. Successive 
 synods of the church, one in Spain, prior to the edict of Milan, 
 as early as the year 305, and another held in Laodicea, A. D. 
 343, enacted that the exercise of magical arts should be evi- 
 dence of intercourse with demons.® At the same time, the use 
 of magic was interdicted as a cure for diseases,^ and especially 
 declared to be a lure of the devil.* A decretal of the fourth 
 century, issued by pontifical authorithy, commanded the 
 bishops to labor with assiduous zeal to exterminate utterly 
 from their Dioceses damnable magic and soothsaying usages 
 invented by Satan ; and wherever a man or woman should be 
 found exercising these dangerous gifts, to promptly expel them 
 from episcopal territory.' 
 
 To the undisputed swiftness of demons to traverse remotest 
 distances,^" was conjoined omnipotent power, an opinion sanc- 
 tioned by no less a personage than the Pontiff Gregory Maxi- 
 mus himself." Arnobius unequivocally asserts that the most 
 irregular passions of the human heart are caused by dia- 
 
 *Eusebius, Prseparat. ad Evangel., Lib. III., c. 16; and August., De Civit. 
 Dei, Lib. IL, c. 24. 
 
 ^ Burchard, Decreta, Lib. VL, c. 26. 
 
 ' " Incantationibus quibus libet infimiitatibus hominum nihil posse remedii con- 
 fere," etc. Ibid., Lib. X., c. 40. 
 
 *" Insidias antiqui hostis." Burchard, Decret., Lib. X., c. 40. 
 
 9 " Episcopi, ut perniciosam a diabolo inventam sortilegam et magicam artem 
 ex parochiis suis penitus eradicent." Gratian, Decret., Pars. II.; Causa XXVI.; 
 Ques. v., c. 12. 
 
 10 Hilar. Tict., Tract, in Psalm 67. 
 
 "Gregor., Max. Moral., Lib. XXIV., cc. 19, 20; and Lib. XXXII., cc. 12, 15.
 
 lo8 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 bolical powers.'^ Thus arrayed against the mighty army of 
 the Satanic realm, the Christian, when beset by bodily or spir- 
 itual disorders, without question accepted as the creations of 
 impure angels, possessed a remedy of Cabbalistic similitude, 
 but of infinite curative force. The sign of the cross and invo- 
 cation of the name of Christ,^^ relentlessly and with magic 
 power caused the demoniacal hosts to recede." In a Latin 
 poem of the fifth century the puissant forces of this symbol 
 are fully set forth in tolerable metre, describing a colloquy in 
 which a certain Tityrus is asked to divulge the cause that ex- 
 empts his herds from those virulent disorders to which neigh- 
 boring animals are subject: 
 
 Die age Tityre, 
 Quis te subripuit cladibus his Deus ? 
 Ut pestis pecudum, quae populata sit 
 
 Vecinos, tibi nulla sit.^^ 
 
 To this inquiry the following answer is made, which sets 
 forth the marvelous properties of the cruciform sign : 
 
 " Signum quod perhibent esse crucis Dei, 
 Magnus qui colitur solus in urbibus 
 Christus, perpetui gloria numinis 
 Cujus filius unicus. 
 
 Hoc signum mediis frontibus additum 
 Cunctorum pecudum certa salus fuit. 
 Sic vero Deus hoc nomini preepotens 
 Salvator vocitatus est. 
 Fugit continus saeva lues gregis, 
 Morbis nil liciut. Si tamen hunc Deum 
 Exorare velis, credere sufficit : 
 Votum sola fides juvat. 
 Signum prosit idem perpete saeculo, 
 Quo vis morbida vincitur?"^® 
 
 i^Advers.Gent., Lib. IV., c. 7. 
 ^^Orig., Contra Celsum, Lib. IIL, p. 133. 
 
 " Athanas., Contra Gentes, cap. i ; and De Incarn. Verbi, cap. 47. 
 '^Scverus Sanctus, Carmen De Mortibus Bourn, v. 104. Diseases cured by 
 the sound of Christ's voice. Arnobius, op. cit.. Lib. L, cap. 48. 
 ^^ Severinus Sanctus, Carmen. De Mortibus Boum, p. 27 seq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 109 
 
 In addition to this potential remedy, maladies of the body 
 or of mind thus provoked through Satanic agencies, baptismal 
 water, the Holy Ghost, extreme vigilance, were soberly recom- 
 mended as of an infallible efficacy when all others failed/' At 
 this epoch curative methods were introduced, w^hich affected 
 uninterruptedly medical economy, with occasional variation, 
 to the close of the Middle Ages. 
 
 As early indeed as the time of Gregory of Tours, bishop and 
 historian of the Prankish kings in the sixth century, applica- 
 tion was made of sainted reliquaries as a remedy against the 
 devil, his demons and their recognised force. The Turonese 
 pontiff narrates the miraculous efficiency of a small pellet of 
 wax, taken from the tomb of Saint Martin, in extinguishing an 
 incendiary fire, started by his Satanic majesty, instigated by 
 malicious envy, that this omniptotent talisman was in the cus- 
 tody of an ecclesiastic!'^ 
 
 In the sixth century the usual method of exorcising the 
 king of darkness was performed by a written formula. When- 
 ever, a person appeared to be stricken with a grievous malady 
 wdiich failed to yield under ordinary invocation and true 
 magic of the Church, accompanied perhaps w'ith simple medi- 
 caments, the sacerdotal authorities instantly proclaimed the 
 sufferer possessed of the Devil. As in the* case previously 
 cited of Theobasius' wife, whose infirmity obstinately refused 
 to recognize the conjuring power of paganistic deities, the re- 
 sistless exorcism of Holy Eugendus was oftentimes resorted 
 to, when lesser saints were confessedly impotent, and invaria- 
 bly ejected the Arch Fiend from the Christian believer. 
 
 Such amulets were frequently written on parchment or 
 
 "Gregor. Nazien.,Oratio. XL, cap. 3. " Desperatis omnibus remediis." Ibid., 
 op. cit., Lib. XXIV., cap. 10. 
 
 " Gregor. Turones., Miraculse Martini, Lib. II., cap. 26. Holy dust was at 
 this period used in quenching flames. Beda, Ilistoria Ecclesiastica, Lib. III., c. 
 10. Meinwerck, in the eleventh century, forbid the foolish practice of throwing the 
 corporale Dominicum into fire in order to stay their progress: " Ad extinguendum 
 incendium temeraria praesumptione in ignem projiciant." Vita Meinwercki, cap. 
 76, I 5.
 
 no HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 other substances, and hung about the neck. The formula of 
 Saint Eugendus may be taken as a prototype of those in gen- 
 eral use at this or earher periods of the Church, and reads as 
 follows: "Eugendus servus Christi, in nomine Dei nostri Jesu 
 Christi patris et Spiritus Sanctus, praecipio per scripturam is- 
 tam spiritus gulae et irae et fornicationis et amoris et Lunatice et 
 Dianitice et merjdane et diurne, et nocturne et omnis spiritus 
 immunde, exi ab homine, qui istam scripturam secum habet. 
 Per ipsum te adjuro verum filium Dei vivi, exi velociter, et 
 cave ne amplius intrceas eam. Amen. Alleluia.'"^ The exist- 
 ence in this conjuration of Dianitice and Lunatice, evidently 
 warrants the conclusion that this formula followed those of a 
 more ancient period. Notwithstanding the pleasing theory 
 adopted by the earlier Christian writers, that the powers of 
 darkness were unable to harm the faithful without permission 
 of divinity,^" to whom demoniacal spirits were ultimately sub- 
 ject,^^ unlimited puissance was conceded to those beings who 
 existed under divine sanction, and according to the celestial 
 scheme by which virtue should behold its highest reward as a 
 contrast to the debasement of vice,^'' — consequently satanic 
 omnipotence was permitted to exist as a standing menace 
 against the commission of overt sin.^"* 
 
 The use of amulets for the cure of disease, or talismans to 
 preserve the wearer from bodily ills, was taken directly from 
 paganism, and adopted by the new converts after their profes- 
 sion of Christianity. Other equally superstitious usages cur- 
 rent among polytheists survived to the new Church. Among 
 these was a custom of opening the Bible, and, according to 
 the first lines seen, chanted or spoken on entering a chapel, 
 the issue of any future enterprise was oracularly prophesied. 
 
 '* Acta Sanclorum, Tom. I., Jan. I., p. 52 ; Vita Eugendi, cap. 7. 
 ^^ Clemens. Alexandr. Stroniata, Lib. VI., c. 3; Origan, De Principiis, Lib. 
 IIL, c. 27. 
 
 ''■^ Chrysosth., Epistolae, IL, ad Timoth., cap. IIL, Homil. 8. 
 '^Lactantius, Instit. Divin., Lib. IL, cap. 9; Lib. V., c. 7. 
 "Cyril, Hierosal. Catech.,VIII. 
 
 Il
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. m 
 
 When Chlodwig the Wisigothic ruler had determined on 
 waging war against the Gauls, in order to forecast the result 
 of the martial campaign, he petitioned Deity to make manifest 
 a sign by which the happy conclusion of the conflict should 
 be known, on entering the edifice dedicated to Saint Martin, 
 the tutelary and patron of the converted Franks. Passing 
 into the sanctuary, certain words of a psalm being sung were 
 interpreted to be the prophetic signal of his subsequent vic- 
 tory." Numerous edicts of synods and ecclesiastical councils 
 endeavored to crush out by the terrors of sacerdotal and sec- 
 ular punishment these and unnumbered practices which had 
 become engrafted into the social fabric of converted pagans, 
 rigidly retained and openly avowed. The graves of the saints 
 or martyred dead, from a date so early as the epoch before us, 
 were favorite places for the exhibition of rites similar to that 
 of the Gothic king. Here indeed the sacred Scriptures were 
 opened, and, amid pious prayers and fastings, the credulous 
 neophyte sought out the letter or word of particular relevancy 
 to his actual wants of body or future condition, through which 
 material type the saint invoked designated an answer of a cure 
 or promise of prolonged life to the humble petition of the 
 devotee. 
 
 As sortes sanctorum, this species of sortilege took a lasting 
 hold upon the minds of proselytes, to such extent that repeated 
 enactments of synods and councils were powerless to extir- 
 pate it.'''' Touching this survival of paganistic customs to 
 Christian converts these statements are of importance, but so 
 far as their influence extended to introduce the system of invok- 
 ing dead saints to whose relics magical or divine power was 
 attributed, such facts constitute valuable attestation to deter- 
 mine the possible era when the irreconcilable conflict between 
 the great antagonists of good and evil, approached the usage 
 of that idolatrous adoration which maintained its existence 
 
 ** Gregor. Turon., Histor. Francor. Regum, Lib. II., c. 37. 
 '^Capitulare Tertium, Anno 789, Can. IV., apud Baluz., Cartular. Carlovingiani, 
 Tom. I., col. 243.
 
 112 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 throughout the middle ages, and provided the most salutary 
 elements of curing the sick and iniirm, by debasing medical 
 science and elevating the resistless potency of relics ! 
 
 Other circumstances of especial weight confirmed the vul- 
 gar mind in an unshaken faith that these invisible forces, in 
 mortal opposition to the hosts of Satan and his agencies, were 
 vastly superior to medical or surgical skill in the treatment of 
 human disorders. Ecclesiastical decretals and secular rescripts 
 provoked jDopular credulity, and unequivocally vindicated the 
 faith in the appliance of supernatural arts, although directed 
 against them as magical and paganistic. By order of Con- 
 stantine the Great, in the year 319, the earliest legislative in- 
 terdict, apparently under the pressure of the Christian hierar- 
 chy, such practices were totally forbidden.^® Violation of this 
 statute was threatened with severest punishment." 
 
 The only exception from the sweeping penalties of the de- 
 cree, permitted the use of magic .to prevent destruction by 
 tempestuous hail storms, denuding rains, and in its relation to 
 medical economy of greater significance, to cure diseases."® 
 Supernatural or occult sciences for the purposes indicated, 
 were doubtless tolerated as a just system of remedies gradu- 
 ally unfolded from assenting doctrines of the Christian Fathers, 
 and from the rapid increase of idolatrous reverence by the 
 people, of saintly relics,"" or may have been suffered to exist 
 as an indulgence which canon and secular law were alike 
 powerless to repress. 
 
 In the year 357, the highest penalty of imperial legislation 
 was invoked to prevent the usage of Chaldaic or magic art, 
 auguries, soothsayings and astrology, to determine future 
 
 '■'* IX. Codex Theodosian., XVI., Lex. 3. 
 
 2'" Concremando illo Haruspice." Ibid., Lex i. 
 
 28 .< Niiiiis criminationibus implicanda sunt Remedia humanisqusesita corporis." 
 Ibid., Lex. 3. Remedies by incantation, Alex., Trallian, Lib. XII.; and Ani- 
 mian. Marcellinus, Rer. Rom., Lib. XVI., cap. — ; and Lib. XXIX., cc. I and 2. 
 Vide Origen, Contra Celsum, Lib. VI., p. 301 ; and Lib. VIII., p. 417. 
 
 ^*Beausobre, Ilist. du Manicheisme, Tom. II., p. 65S seq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 113 
 
 eventualities;^" Thirty-five years later Theodosius was obliged 
 to enlarge the scope of the preceding laws, so as to more 
 closely determine the extent to which magic art should be 
 deemed malevolent, especially since in the year 389 Valentin- 
 ian and Orcadius had interdicted the fi-eedom of soothsaying. 
 The Emperor decreed that any person endeavoring to elevate 
 himself above the laws of Nature, inquiring into forbidden 
 things, seeking to explain the occult or hidden, searching for 
 the illicit, evoking damage upon another, should be appre- 
 hended and treated as the most ordinary criminaP^ — thus 
 leaving the original law of medicinal or curative enchantment 
 untouched. 
 
 From the preceding summary of the Theodosian rescripts, 
 it is palpable that the practice of the rites indicated, when es- 
 sayed upon matters forbidden by the policy of ecclesiastical 
 government, was assumed to be a direct recognition and invo- 
 cation of demoniacal spirits, and consequently so far polythe- 
 istic as to necessitate the repressive force of secular authority. 
 The demand for this edict accurately reproduces the wide- 
 spread influence of such usages, and the extension of them 
 among the people of the empire. Of far greater value, how- 
 ever, in its connection with those causes precipitating the 
 downfall of the curative science, is the admitted distinction be- 
 tween diverse practices of magic, carefully set forth by the re- 
 script of Constantine in the year 327. 
 
 It is there distinctly affirmed the person accused of en- 
 chantment shall be tried according to the intention with which 
 he exercised this art ; and in case of benevolent design, there 
 was no infraction of law, but where a contrary purpose was 
 established, the accused should be punished.^' Therefore, the 
 practice of magic under legal sanction, within certain prescrip- 
 tions, was a lawful avocation, especially when applied to the 
 
 ^^ Codex Theodos., cit., Lex. 4. Touching the Chaldean soothsayers, vide 
 Claudiani, De IV. Cons., Honor., v. 147; and Montalenibert, Les Moines d'Occi- 
 dent, Tom. II., p. 170. 
 
 '^ XVI. Codex Theodosianus, Tit. X., De Paganiis Sacrific, Lex. I2. 
 
 '^IX. Codex Theodosian., Tit. XVI., Lex 3.
 
 114 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 cure of bodily suffering; but when incantation was used for the 
 determination of those secrets regarded as the exclusive pro- 
 vince of Divinity, it was deemed unlawful and punished as a 
 crime. In the beginning of the fifth century all magicians of 
 the empire classified as mathematici^-' were interdicted the pur- 
 suit of their craft by Honorius, who ordered them expelled 
 from all cities, and their manuscript books committed to fire.^* 
 In the same age treasure hunting, with sacrificial accompani- 
 ments and magic practices, was forbidden, under severe pen- 
 alties. Ecclesiastical policy, after the Christianization of Teu- 
 tonic Pagans, was naturally directed to assimilating the 
 doctrines of the church with the customs of their new con- 
 verts. In dealing with the universal belief in the efficacy of 
 incantations and sortilege among the Germans, the sacerdoty 
 proscribed the use of criminal spells, which emanated from 
 Satan, and were heathenish, and consequently laid under syn- 
 odal ban, but encouraged the sort of magic or adjuration of 
 saintly relics, which idolatry was sanctioned by Divinity. 
 
 A law of the Spanish Wisigoths threatened the malefici, or 
 operators of evil arts against any one, or his cattle, vintage, or 
 other personal possessions, whether performed by ligation or 
 script, with unstinted cudgelling, shaving of the hair, and dis- 
 graceful perambulatory exposure ; and like penalty was 
 inflicted upon those who by blood tests provoked destructive 
 hail storms, or by the invocation of base demons blinded the 
 senses of men, and made nocturnal sacrifices to these spirits, 
 or conjured them by magic.^^ At the same epoch the legisla- 
 tive authority of this nation was compelled to enact a decree 
 against rifling sepulchres of their skeleton contents, which 
 were to be used as remedies against diseases.'*^ 
 
 ^'* Ibid., Lex. 8. Touching their presence in Rome, vide Montalembert, Les 
 Moines d'Occident, Tom. II., p. 170. 
 
 '* IX. Code.x Theodos., Tit. XVI., Lex 12. 
 
 :'5 Lex. Wi.sigoth., Lib. V., Tit. II., Lex 4. 
 
 ^^ " Si cjuis mortui sarcofagum abstulerit, dum sibi vult habere remedium." 
 Ibid., Lib. XL, cap. 2; apud Canciani., Leg. Barbar., Tom. IV., p. 181. Hein- 
 ecceius, Elem. Juris. German., Lib. II., art. 341 ; where the reason of this rifling 
 of tomljs for curative remedies is sketched out with his usual learning.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 115 
 
 Theodorick the Gothic king pubHshed an edict which ad- 
 judged the death penalty against such aS operated in black 
 arts, interpreted signs, or prophesied by shadows.^' A notable 
 exception to the universal belief of these times touching the 
 omnipotence of demoniacal powers may be found among the 
 Langobardic laws, which expressly deny the possibility of the 
 human body being destroyed by gradual decay or wasting dis- 
 eases superinduced through magical means, and peremptorily 
 interdicts the death of young women charged with the serious 
 crime of witchcraft.^® 
 
 ^^Edicta Theodorici, cap. 108; ap. Pertzii, ISIonu. Germ., Tom. V., p. 164. 
 '^ Leges Langobard, Lib. L, Tit. 2, Lex 9.
 
 ' CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Schools of Medicine in Alexandria After Galen — Professors of this Art 
 Engage in Imperial Politics — Are Befriended by the Emperors of Rome 
 — Altered Condition of Alexandrine Art and Scientific Institutions — 
 Medical Culture Pursued there to the Mohammedan Conquest — This Art 
 Maintained to a High Degree — Scientists in the IVth Century Vivi- 
 sect Criminals — Treatises of Professors in Constantine's Time — Phar- 
 maceutical Knowledge of the Illustrious lonicus — His Surgery — The 
 Eclecticism of the Great Oribasius — Poisons — Strange Malady or 
 Mania Described by Oribasius — Opium Used as a Narcotic by Polythe- 
 istic Physicians — Cabbalistic Conjurations Favored by Professors of 
 Medicine — Formal Division of Magic into Medical or Curative Branches 
 — Curative Properties of Gems, etc. 
 
 THE edict of Milan, by which Christianity obtained imperial 
 recognition, was nowhere throughout the extensive do- 
 mains of the colossal empire more keenly realized than in the 
 city of Alexandria, the chief seat of literature and science,^ 
 inasmuch as the controversy between the old and new religions 
 was here most bitterly agitated and maintained with great eru- 
 dition.^ ■ Increasing scholastic institutions of enlarging import- 
 ance elsewhere, particularly those of Constantinople and 
 Athens, objects of royal favor, gradually undermined the lit- 
 etary celebrity of the Egyptian metropolis. Scientific culture 
 necessarily declined in the leading polytheistic capital, where 
 the adherents of paganism were compelled to apply their eru- 
 dite energies to the defence of venerable mythology. 
 
 One of the first imperial acts of Julian upon acceding to the 
 government was an endeavor to resuscitate ancient institutions 
 in Alexandria. The attempt was apparently successful, and 
 the mission entrusted to the careful judgment of a physician 
 
 ' Lactant., De Mort. Persec, c. 48 ; and Eusebius, Histor. Eccles., Lib. IV., 
 c- 5- 
 
 ^ Matter, tcole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 314. 
 
 (116)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 117 
 
 of Cyprus, named Zeno,^ who arrived on the territory ah-eady 
 prepared to accept imperial overtures in consequence of a re- 
 volt against the Christian pontiffs, and at a time when Polythe- 
 ism had been revived amid the splendid pomp of its ancient 
 ceremonies. Zeno, having been deprived of his puissant pat- 
 ron, was sufficiently fortunate to obtain an oblivious inatten- 
 tion in this city, where a majority of its inhabitants, in defiance 
 of imperative decrees, had declared themselves Christians, and 
 as an illustrious professor of medical science was enabled to 
 surround himself with numerous disciples, amo'ng whom may 
 be distinctively mentioned Jonicus, Magnus, and Oribasius.* 
 
 The Serapeum, one of the leading schools of Alexandria, 
 preserved a fluctuating vitality down to the time of Theodosius 
 in the ensuing century, on account of a superstitious reverence 
 which repressed the violent exhibitions of religious hatred 
 among Christian proselytes.^ In order to enforce the enact- 
 ment of the Emperor, directing polytheistic temples to be 
 closed," it became essential for the Alexandrine Christians to 
 make especial demand upon the zeal of the illustrious Theo- 
 dosius, who granted the Episcopal authorities of the city 
 some of these scholastic edifices, which were remodeled into 
 churches." The Serapeum was demolished by direction 01 
 Theophile in the year 391, when the Nilometre, which an- 
 ciently was kept there, became the ornament of a Christian 
 church."* 
 
 A limited number of paganistic schools were permitted by 
 ecclesiastical policy to maintain in Alexandria a devitalized 
 existence, such for example as offered no absolute antagonism 
 with the dominant faith, and appear to have maintained so 
 great sagacity and prudence in their demeanor that the decree 
 
 * Eunapii, Vitse Sophistor., s. nom. Zeno. 
 
 *Eunapius, Vitse Sophistor., p. 497 seqq. 
 
 ^Zozimus, Hist. Rom., Lib. III., c. 11. 
 
 *XVI. Codex Theodos., Titul. X., De Pagan. Sacrif., Lex 4. 
 
 ' Sozomen, Hist. Eccles., Lib. VH., c. 15. 
 
 ^Rufinus, Lib. XH., c. 22.
 
 r 1 8 HIS TOR Y OF MEDIC A L E CONOM V 
 
 of the year 529, closing the Athenian establishments, excepted 
 those of the Egyptian capital from its operation." Down to 
 the incendiary fires of Moslem fanaticism in the seventh cen- 
 tury, the appearance of scientific culture in mathematics and 
 medicine was still pursued, so far as the altered state of reli- 
 gious and secular changes permitted. It should be added in 
 justice to the declining studies of these sciences, that nowhere 
 were they more seriously investigated under the light of Hip- 
 pocrates and Galen, or the writings of these sages commented 
 with greater zeal, down to the destruction of the city by the 
 Arabs.^" 
 
 Galen's influence, entirely confined to polytheistic ele- 
 ments, with varying efficiency continued to excite an interest 
 in the study and practice of medicine among the disciples of 
 this art, and claimed such attention for many centuries. As 
 the metropolis of literary and scientific excellence and original 
 seat of anatomy, Alexandria, where Galen warmly urged the 
 science to be studied," necessarily possessed irresistible attrac- 
 tions for those desiring instruction in curative and surgical art 
 down to the expiration of its cultured usefulness in the year 
 643. Whether the inculpation of Tertullian be correct, or re- 
 garded as the accusation of an enraged zealot, that medical 
 scientists of his day resorted to vivisection in the interest of 
 anatomy, and so charges Herophilus,'^ it is evident that so 
 long as the practice of the science by such as maintained a 
 devotion to polytheism, was not placed under the prohibition 
 of canonical interdict, this branch of medicine was certainly 
 pursued for ages subsequent to the time of the Pergamic sage. 
 Eastern Jews of this age appear to have given some attention 
 to acquiring such knowledge of comparative anatomy as to 
 
 ^Matter, ICcole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 331. 
 
 '"Ammianus, Marcellinus, Rer. Rom., Lib. XXII., c. l6. 
 
 "Galen, De Anatomicis Administrationibus, Lib. I., c. 2. 
 
 12 « Herophilus ille medicus aut lanius, qui sexclntas exsecint ut naturam scru- 
 taretur, qui hominem edit ut nosset," etc. Tertullian, Liber de Anima, c. 10.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 119 
 
 aid in the cure of diseases of animals/^ a system, however, of 
 ancient apphcation." 
 
 Among the medical practitioners and professors at Alexan- 
 dria subsequent to Galen, about the middle of the fourth cen- 
 tury, deserving of distinctive illustration, Zenon, as the emis- 
 sary of the Emperor Julian, is the most eminent.'* Of the 
 treatises of this scholastic, whose principal labors were cir- 
 cumscribed by the reign of Constantine the Great, nothing 
 has survived to modern times. His biographer describes him 
 lauded as the most famous teacher and practitioner of the 
 curative art in his day,'^ although he frankly avows that the 
 principal cause of the pei:petuation of Zenon's celebrity arose 
 from the eminence of his disciples," of whom mention has 
 been made. Of these lonicus of Sardianus, according to the 
 unstinted eulogy of Eunapius, who asserts that he died just 
 before his panegyric was completed, was descended from a 
 parent himself an illustrious physician, and that the son was 
 equally skilled in the science and practice. Through personal 
 experiments he acquired remarkable distinction for anatomical 
 knowledge. 
 
 So great was the profundity of lonicus in pharmacy, it was 
 asserted, that this valuable art had no secrets to withhold from 
 him. He appears to have signalized his dexterity in surgery 
 by inventing ligatures and appliances valuable to this portion 
 of medicine.'* Magnus, of Antioch, iatrosophista, or teacher of 
 healing art, renowned for the singular accuracy of his medi- 
 cinal qualifications, and as famous for a contentious spirit, 
 which provoked a doubt in his mind whether physicians were 
 of undisputed service in curing maladies, was possessed of the 
 
 Aristotelian attributes to so great extent that in argumentation 
 
 , t 
 
 *^ Grsetz, History of the Jews, p. 231. 
 
 1* Galen, op. cit., Lib. I., c. i. 
 
 ^^ Eunapius, Vitae Sophistor.,sub nom. Zenon. 
 
 '® Eunapius, op. cit., sub nom. Zenon. 
 
 iHbid. 
 
 '^ Ibid., sub nom. lonicus, p. 499.
 
 I 2 o HIS TORY OF MEDIC A L E CONOM Y 
 
 he sealed the Hps of other medical professors with unbroken 
 silence.^^ 
 
 The pungent satires of Magnus captivated the admiration of 
 his disciples, but appear to have been equally distasteful to 
 professional rivals. At this epoch, Theon,'° who appears to 
 have sojourned for a prolonged period in Alexandria and ac- 
 quired a reputation for laborious study and industrious exam- 
 ination into the principles of this science, abandoned the 
 city and returned to Gaul. A portion of his medical treatises 
 are said to have been extant as late as the ninth century, but 
 the authority for this declares their loss of slight importance.^^ 
 
 Of the polytheist philosophers whose research was mainly 
 directed to medicine in the Alexandrine schools toward the 
 end of the fourth century, none obtained the exalted distinc- 
 tion of Oribasius of Pergamos.^^ This scientist, who performed 
 a part so important in the history of neoplatonism and poly- 
 theism during the apostasy of Julian, although a disciple ot 
 Zenon and personal surgeon of the Emperor, who discovered 
 the future sage in his adolescent prominence,^^ was a close imi- 
 tator of Galen.'^^ So great indeed was his fame, that divine 
 honors were actually paid him by foreign princes whose lives 
 he had saved by medicinal skill at the very entrance to the 
 tomb.^"* At the instigation of the Emperor, Oribasius pre- 
 pared an abridgment (now lost) of the writings of Galen, in 
 four books, for practical use by perplexed practitioners, and 
 wrote a treatise of seventy-two parts, dedicated to his royal 
 friend/*^ Among other compendious volumes by this cele- 
 
 ''" Doctores cogebat medicos tenere silentium." Ibid., sub nom. Magnus. 
 
 20 u 'fheon non admodus ingeniosus fuit nee acutus, sed studiosus ac labonosus, 
 si cjuis alius. Callebat ideo poetas et oratores." Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 368. ' 
 
 ^1 Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 368 seq. 
 
 ^^ Eunapius, Vitsc Sophistor., sub nom. Oribasius, p. 498. 
 
 ^•'"(^uum vero illustiis ejus esset ab adolescentia fama," etc. Ibid. 
 
 '* Oribasius, Libr. ad Kuporist., p. 284. 
 
 ^5" Barbaris ut numen (juoddam eum colentibus," etc. Ibid., p. 499. This 
 seems like fulsome adulation, but the biographer wrote it in Oribasius' lifetime. 
 
 '■"^ Suidas, Lexicon, sub n. Oribas.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. I2i 
 
 brated professor, he addressed a medical work of nine books 
 to his son, Eustathius, and was the author of an essay entitled 
 " De Regno et Affectibus."^' Having completed the treatise 
 to Julian, on the "principles of medical science, which was 
 purely a compilation, and realizing it to be too comprehensive 
 for useful purposes, he drew up what unqualifiedly must have 
 been a valuable addition to historical knowledge of the science, 
 and doubtless equalled the history of Soranus on the same 
 subject.''* In his pathological system, music or incantation and 
 rhetorical declamation were seriously accredited, and as rig- 
 idly enforced.^^ 
 
 Among other excellent services rendered to contemporary 
 physicians was an elaborate compilation of prescriptions or 
 receipts for the practical compounding of unguents, etc., which 
 he had gleaned from venerable sources and. found by experi- 
 ment be of value."" As an eclectic in its most enlightened and 
 logical signification, Oribasius selected with judicious care, the 
 remedies of Erasistratus, Galen,^' Dioskorides, etc., his prede- 
 cessors, and arranged them in alphabetical order to make the 
 same a practical cyclopaedia of medicaments. In the exercise 
 of professional judgment, this author in describing poisons 
 proceeded with the utmost caution, so that criminal informa- 
 tion might not be gathered from his compilations and used for 
 illicit purposes characterizing the last days of declining Rome; 
 but in the treatment of these by counter-toxicants or anti- 
 dotes, Oribasius entered into the most minute details, with 
 great skill and erudition. 
 
 Specific directions are given in the diversified works of the 
 Pergamic scholar for the sanitative use of sand, oil, and sea- 
 
 " Ibid. 
 
 ^^ Fabric, Biblioth. Groec, Tom. XL, p, 714. 
 
 2' The practical use of music or incantation for cures is attested by the law of 
 Constantine, IX. Cod. Theodos., XVI., Le.K 3. Modulation of the Voice as Sani- 
 tative. Oribas., Tres. Lib., ad Euporist., p. 285. 
 
 '"Oribas., In Tres Libr., ad Euporist., p. 243. 
 
 SI Ibid., p. 284.
 
 122 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 water baths, ^^ and careful suggestions touching unguents com- 
 posed of chalk and arsenic, largely applied as a hair restora- 
 tive. A curious frenzy appears to have attracted considerable 
 attention in his day, which preserved an existence until to- 
 wards the conclusion of the middle ages. This grievous 
 malady usually appeared in midwinter, when it assumed the 
 most aggravated form and swelled to the proportions of an 
 epidemic. Laboring under the agony of a nervous exaspera- 
 tion, those afflicted with this awful disease persuaded them- 
 selves that they were transformed into dogs or wolves.^^ 
 Abandoning their habitations, an unaccountable mania precipi- 
 tated them into the most secluded solitudes, and for this rea- 
 son tombs of the dead were most persistently sought, and 
 from these sepulchral domiciles the suffering invalids struggled 
 to express their .anguish by the sounds of those animals into 
 which they seemed to be metamorphosed. 
 
 Under the treatment of polytheistic science, opium seems 
 to have been used to alleviate, as a usual remedy,^* but when 
 the progress of that abnormal exaltation, consequent upon 
 the religious fervor which crept through the empire during 
 the three first centuries, had abandoned the deduction of 
 natural ratiocination as an unsafe guide, such maladies were 
 expressly denominated as diabolical visitations, to cure which 
 by sagely compounded medicaments was regarded as pro- 
 fanity, and an invasion of the sacred prerogatives of Deity. 
 While the efforts of the compiler, in his close servility to 
 Galen, may merit the commendation of the historian as illus- 
 trating the condition of medicine at that period, impartial 
 justice demands the severe condemnation of Oribasius for 
 
 '* Ibid., p. 246. 
 
 •'"" Qui morbo lupino sive canino appelate corripiuntur in febrioris mense noctu 
 exeunt, per omnia imitantes lupos aut canos." Aetius, Tetrabili, Lib. II., 
 Serm. 2, cap. n. Vide Petronius, Satyricon, c. 62. 
 
 '* Evident use of narcotics in the empire, as Valentine drank absinthe after his 
 bath. Epist. Vind. ad Valent., ap. Fabric. Biblioth. Grsec, Tom. XIII., p. 448; 
 and Philostratus, Vita Apollon., Lib. II., cap. 36, claimed for his hero the skilled 
 preparation of sleep-producing medicaments — evidently opium.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 123 
 
 accelerating the decay of the science and debasing it to the 
 place of impotent magic and cabbalistic conjurations. This 
 renowned professor, as narrated, was distinguished for his 
 Neoplatonic and mystical philosophy. Having follow^ed with 
 fidelity the fortunes of his imperial friend Julian to the year 
 363, he was made the object of persecution under Valens and 
 Valentinan, after the apostate's death. His intrigues under 
 Jovian caused him to be exiled to a foreign country, where he 
 signalized his expatriation by a display of heroic virtues which 
 acquired him the unstinted admiration of the people.^^ Sub- 
 sequently restored to the favor of Valentinian, he received 
 honorable distinction. According to Eunapius, he was fond of 
 that display and splendor which the possession of vast afflu- 
 ence only provides. It appears that Oribasius, in the pursuit 
 of such social embellishments, hesitated not to increase his 
 wealth by marriage with a lady noted for her birth and im- 
 mense riches.^'' 
 
 It is unknown whether he was privileged to pursue the un- 
 impeded practice of his profession among polytheists, which 
 is indeed probable, inasmuch as he was possessed of that en- 
 thusiastic activity of zealots, who with unequalled devotion to 
 a declining cause shook the sanctuaries and stirred the 
 empire f^ doubtless the concluding eulogy of his biographer 
 would warrant such inference.^^ By the side of the practical 
 polytheistic scientists, a class of paganistic mystics such as 
 Plotinus, the commentator of Plato, sought to vindicate the 
 claim of sacerdotal transmission of the curative art, which it 
 was alleged was alone procurable through the solemn prepa- 
 ration of initiatory rites.'** 
 
 The founder of the Manichean system of religion, similar to 
 
 ^^ Eunapius, Vita Sophistor., sub n. Oribasius, p. 498. 
 
 ^^"Uxorem duxit divitiis et genere claram." Eunapius, Vita Sophistor., sub. 
 n. Oribasius. 
 
 ^'Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. II., p. 38. 
 '^ Eunapius, op. cit., s. n. Oribasius, p. 499. 
 •'" Matter, op. cit., Tom, I., p. 352.
 
 124 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the erudite of his day, exhibited an extended acquaintance- 
 ship with medicine; and from the attestation of credible writers 
 the practice of this art at that epoch was so highly esteemed 
 as to warrant the conclusion of a close union between medi- 
 cine and religious faith, down indeed to the fifth century.*" 
 Plotinus endeavored to check the rapid spread of Christianity 
 through the disciplinary school of high antiquity, and in this 
 attempt assumed it possible to resuscitate the sanctuaries, with 
 their authority over oracles, ancient mysteries, and the art of 
 cures." It was claimed that miraculous restoration to health 
 had been performed from the days of Apollonius of Tyana 
 down to the time of more recent philosophers in the fourth 
 century.*^ 
 
 This art was especially rich in its diversified branches, and 
 was at the period under examination divided into Theocracy, 
 Goetic, Magic, Pharmacy, Theurgy and Theosophy. Several 
 sects in Alexandria, more particularly the Neoplatonists, 
 Gnostics and Maniche.ans,*'' were in consequence largely given 
 to this system of magical cures, and sought to derive their art 
 from the ancient Therapeutae of Egypt and Orpheus respect- 
 ively.** The excessive use of occult science by the followers 
 of Manes opened the sect to the sweeping inculpation of 
 magicians, and full of mysteries and devoted to those arts for- 
 bidden by the civil law. This accusation^ subjected them to 
 the animadversion of an imperial edict, repeated in the Theo- 
 dosian code.*** 
 
 From this singular amalgamation, not wholly confined to 
 the polytheistic or Gnostic sects, arose a most perplexing task 
 
 "Beausobre, Histoire du Manicheisme, Tom. I., pp. 8l and 159; and Tom. 
 II., p. 804. 
 
 " Matter, op. cit., Tom. II., p. 39. 
 
 ^^^ Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, Lib. IV., cap. 45. Cattarhal diseases in Apol- 
 lonius' day, and temples sought for cure. lb., cap. 44. 
 
 "Beausobre, Ilistoire du Manicheisme, Tom. II., p. 799 seq. 
 "Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 353. 
 *^Beausobre, op. cit., Tom. II., p. 799. 
 «IX. Cod. Theodos., De Malificiis, Tit. XVI., Le.\ 3.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 1 25 
 
 for the scholars of the rising Church. As a necessary conse- 
 quence of the elevation of Christianity to the pedestal forcibly 
 vacated by the ancient faith, an effort was made in some de- 
 gree to clothe science and art in a Christianized garb. 
 
 On this principle certain treatises elucidating medicine, con- 
 formable to the precepts of the new religion, with such pagan- 
 istic mythology as shocked proselyte sensibilities eliminated, 
 were drawn up and obtained limited circulation. Increasing 
 idolatry of martyred dead and saintly relics, in conjunction with 
 the expanding belief in the potency of angelic hosts and demon- 
 iacal forces, provided abundant substitutes for the vanishing 
 splendors of Polytheism. Obliged thus to adapt the declining 
 principles of several sciences to new teachings, the same influ- 
 ences forced an outward conformity with the accepted ideas of 
 cosmography and geography, but divested of the most in- 
 significant vestiture of paganism.*' In the prosecution of such 
 indispensable modification, Christian efforts yielded homage 
 to pagan science, and oftentimes invoked the venerable 
 authority of writers of the most remote epochs. 
 
 The period of the rule of the Lagides dynasty was univer- 
 sally accepted as the most elegant, and therefore, possessing 
 superior attractions to the transforming proselyte, was freely 
 used for the selection of authoritative names with which to 
 fortify effeminate compositions. The domain of medicine was 
 not exempt from this species of literary falsification. A med- 
 ical professor converted to Cristianity digested a volume from 
 the aphorisms of Hippocrates, which he boldly announced 
 had been drawn up under Ptolemy Evergetes and by his' 
 order.*® 
 
 This compilation has been attributed to Oribasius. Among 
 other authors whose writings were used for curative purposes, 
 the poems of Homer appear to have obtained great celebrity.*^ 
 
 " Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. II., p. 39 ; and Bossuet, Histoire des 
 
 Mathematiques, Tom. I., p. 160. 
 ** Matter, op. cit., p. 40. 
 ♦*• Ilirschel, Geschichte der Medezin, p. 95.
 
 126 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Oribasius himself was far more deeply skilled in theurgic 
 cures than the practical details of medicinal remedies."" This 
 tendency to the use of thaumaturgic art for the cure of mala- 
 dies developed rapidly among the professors of medicine in 
 Alexandria subsequent to the time of Galen, and was a natu- 
 ral outgrowth of the strange controversies engaging the un- 
 divided attention of renowned savans and scientists in the 
 Egyptian city. As late as the middle of the sixth century 
 Aetius compiled a compendium of medical practice, in the 
 form of selections from his predecessors, enriched indeed with 
 personal observations and fragments of a treatise by Demos- 
 thenes of Marseilles on ophthalmic diseases, but displaying 
 blind credulity in the puissant force of charms, amulets and 
 talismans,^^ to cure grievous maladies when applied in accord- 
 ance with the strict regulations of magical instruction identical 
 with Goetic and Theurgic arts.^^ 
 
 This author attributed great obstetrical properties to the 
 lapis setites, and gagates stone.^^ The sapphire when taken as 
 a potion pulverized in milk, cured internal ulcers and checked 
 excessive perspiration.^* The smargdine was recommended for 
 strabismus, and spider webs, when prepared in a certain 
 method, were declared a panacea for external ulcers.*^* Of the 
 successors to Galen in popular estimation at the Roman 
 capital, Alexander of Tralles may be designated as the most 
 celebrated. In his earlier years this medical scholist enriched 
 a highly-cultivated intellect with the elegance of extensive 
 travel through Europe, the Spanish provinces, Northern Africa 
 and Italy. 
 
 His renown as an expert surgeon caused him to become 
 permanently domiciled at Rome, where he lived to an advanced 
 
 ^^ Matter, op. cit., Tom. II., p. 40. 
 
 " .^tii Tetrabili, I., Sermo. 2, cap. 35. 
 
 ** Matter, Ecole d' Alexandria, Tom. II., p. 40. 
 
 *^yEtii, op. cit., cap. 24. 
 
 "Ibid., cap. 38. 
 
 **Ibid., cc. 39 and 165.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 127 
 
 age, towards the termination of the sixth century.^^ Among 
 the remedies urgently advised by the Hellenistic professor as 
 a curative for diversified fevers, was an amulet prepared from 
 an oil-tree leaf with this lettered incription, Ka-o/a, the magical 
 potency of which was asserted to be irresistible.^' John of 
 Alexandria, Paul of yEgina, and Palladius, the final represen- 
 tatives of that medical school which had hitherto illustrated the 
 city of Egypt, were perhaps less superstitious, but almost en- 
 tirely denuded of inventive power. Of these the first pub- 
 lished,*® was a careful commentary on the Hippocratian 
 epidemics of which, however the original is no longer extant, 
 while the translation survives in the Saracen language,*'* of 
 which a Latin version was preserved and used during the 
 Middle Ages.^" Paul of ^gina wrote a practical abridgment 
 of medicine in all its departments, including surgery, in whose 
 preparation the treatises of his predecessors were liberally 
 used." 
 
 The third of the Alexandrian professors alluded to, was 
 apparently contemporaneous with Alexander of Tralles, and 
 attempted in a work on the phenomena of fevers to assimilate 
 his theories of these infirmities to that of Galen, but is princi- 
 pally famous for the preservation of his oral discourses on 
 certain portions of the writings of Hippocrates, evidently 
 written out after their public delivery."^ It admits of little 
 doubt that the practical discipline so essential to the preser- 
 vation and progress of medicine as a scientific cure of diseases, 
 during several centuries preceding the destruction of the city 
 of Alexandria by the Arabs, maintained an enfeebled vitality 
 
 ^Tirabaschi, Stdria della Litteratura, Tom. III., p. 63. 
 *^ Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 164. 
 5^ Matter, op. cit., Tom. II., p. 41. 
 
 ^^Joannicii Arabis Artiscella, Venet. ed. 1483, fol. apud Matter, Ecoled'Alex- 
 andrie, Tom. II., p. 41. 
 
 ""Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 169. 
 
 ®i Matter, op. cit., Tom. II., p. 41. 
 
 "^ Ibid., and Lessing, op. cit., Th. I., p. 169.
 
 128 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 among both polytheists and Christians, but accompanied by 
 the system of amulets and remedial gems. So far, however, 
 as an exact physiological or anatomical knowledge extended, it 
 necessarily diminished in proportion to the advancement 
 and solidification of Christianity, whose dogmas especially 
 eschewed the dissection of the human body. 
 
 The most serious catastrophe to medicine, exclusive of the 
 tendencies of the age to accept disease as provoked by demons, 
 certainly originated with the limited number who, while affirm- 
 ing an enervated faith in its scientific character, conjoined with 
 the practice the least spirit of inquiry. The division of the 
 empire was more favorable to the Greeks for the- culture of 
 medicine, and aided in preserving for many centuries the out- 
 lines of a science in the practical application to cures. 
 
 Even with the Hellenistic professors, converts to the Chris- 
 tian religion, anatomy and physiology, which it had been the 
 pride and glory of the Egyptian metropolis to create,'^'' in the 
 seventh century passed from the domain of scientific system, 
 to be examined almost entirely as objects of pious admiration 
 touching the wonderful mechanical structure of the human 
 body; and thus abandoned to holy curiosity, it was impossible 
 to arrest the downfall which the progression of Christian faith 
 accelerated — an inquisitiveness indeed only resulting in an im- 
 passioned declamation of the motiv^es inducing the Divine 
 Mind to construct this organism on its existing plan, and why 
 the limbs, vision, etc., were organized and adapted to such 
 diverse parts. Theophilus, a medical officer of the Byzantine 
 Court under Heraclius, seriously elucidated the system of 
 anatomy from a Christian standpoint, in his enthusiastic zeal 
 for the handiwork of its Divine Author.** 
 
 *' Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. II., p. 22. 
 '* Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 170.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Edicts Touching the Practice of Medicine in Rome — Laws of Valentinub 
 of the Fourth Century — Their Influence in the Western Empire — Im- 
 potent to Revive the Science — Treatise of a Gallic Professor — Avows 
 Preternatural Cures — Other Gallic Medicists — Belief in Potency of 
 Words — Disciples of the ^sculapian Art — Prostration of Medical Sci- 
 ence at this Epoch — Curious Attestation of this Downfall — Charlatans 
 Obtain Royal Favor — All Maladies Traced to Supernatural Sources — 
 Babylonian Characters of Great Force — Era of Theodoric the Gothic 
 Ruler — Paucity of Famous Professors at this Time — Gothic Disposition 
 to Favor Medical Organization — Schedule of Charges Allowed — Pen- 
 alty of Death for Stupid Surgery — Ecclesiastical Aledicists — Organi- 
 zation of Hospitals. 
 
 ATOTWITHSTANDING the frequent legislation by Chris- 
 IM tian Emperors in the interest of medical professors and 
 their science, of which, like their polytheistic predecessors on 
 the throne, they were deeply solicitous, the curative art almost 
 ceased its legitimate functions before sacerdotal indifference, 
 and was as a rational system apparently extinguished in the 
 Western Empire by the destructive and subversive Gothic in- 
 vasions. Although the transfer of the empirical metropolis to 
 Byzantium was a severe blow to Rome,^ which subsequently 
 only survived as a pontifical municipality, associated with Con- 
 stantinople by a slender thread of obedience,^ the regulations 
 established by authoritative edicts of paganistic rulers prior 
 to the time of Theodosius, teaching the practice of medicine 
 in this venerable city, were designed to inspire admiration of 
 the enlightened policy which promulgated them. 
 
 The laws of Valentinus in the year 368, regulating the 
 selection of a public surgeon salaried for gratuitous attendance 
 on the poor,^ and in case of his death prescribing the duties of 
 
 ^ Eutropius, Brev. Rom. Hist., Lib. X., c. 4. 
 * Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, Tom. II., p. 115. 
 'XIII. Codex Theodosianus, De Medic, et Profes., Tit. III., Lex 8. 
 9 (129)
 
 130 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 summoning collegiate members in electing a successor/ were 
 subsequently reenacted and ratified under Theodosius and 
 Justinian, who incorporated them in the codification of the 
 civil rescripts. To this edict of the fourth century, Symma- 
 chus, Theodosian proconsul in the Italian provinces, alludes 
 in a letter to his imperial patron, which narrates the circum- 
 stances under which a convocation of the college of surgeons 
 in the municipal districts was agitated by the election of a 
 public physician, and in adjusting the controversy the scho- 
 lastic perfunctionary directed them to remember that the 
 annual stipend conceded them by a generous government for 
 medicinal services among the impoverished sick and infirm, 
 should spur them to more faithful attendance upon the suffer- 
 ing poor, rather than assist the affluent through shameless 
 greed. Finally, that they were only at liberty under legal 
 sanction to accept from the diseased what these, when in good 
 health, might offer, and not what was proffered amid the ag- 
 gravated danger of their maladies.*^ 
 
 Favoring legal enactments," confirming ancient and valuable 
 privileges and immunities, were unable to infuse into the 
 body of medical science, decaying under the pressure of in- 
 creasing fanaticism, sufficient vitality to produce a person 
 eminent by his services in the practice of this art. Rescripts 
 Avere impotent to revive the essential principles of a science 
 entombed beneath the ponderous weight of ignorant zeal 
 which condemned its operations as an intrusion of the sacred 
 mysteries of divinity. 
 
 To this envenomed antagonism must be added the unhappy 
 condition of the Occidental Empire, especially repugnant to 
 the necessary quietude of scientific investigation. Among the 
 Romans of this age no names appear which justly rise to the 
 dignity of professors of medical science;^ and of Latin writers 
 
 *X. Codex Justinianus, Tit. LIL, Leg. 9 and 10. 
 
 ^Q. Aurelins Symmachus, Epistolarum, Lib. X., Ep. 40. The concluding part 
 of this cautionary missive is a direct reproduction of civil law. 
 
 * Codex Theodos., cit., Lex 3; and Cod. Justin., cit., Leg. 6 and 9. 
 " Tirahoschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. II., p. 455.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. i^i 
 
 on such subjects none remained as permanent residents in the 
 ancient capital. 
 
 Before the close of the fourth century, Vindicianus obtained 
 some distinction as the personal physician to Valentinus I.; but, 
 although a native of Africa, he seems to have passed the whole 
 of his professional existence at Rome, according to the lauda- 
 tory narrative of Saint Augustin touching the excellence of 
 this practitioner.* Of like nationality was another surgeon of 
 high distinction, whose medicinal treatises are claimed to be 
 of slight scientific value, and exclusively tend to the boldest 
 empiricism, exhibiting a constant effort at the introduction of 
 simple medicaments in place of a system of medicine. 
 Equally subjugated by the magical and demoniacal tendencies 
 of the epoch, his remedies partake largely of the credulity 
 which followed quickly in the footsteps of an extinct science, 
 and among these he solemnly attests the sovereign potency of 
 the loadstone for a cure of headache.® 
 
 Toward the opening of the fifth century, Marcellus of 
 Bordeaux, surnamed the Empiric, surgeon to the Emperor 
 Theodosius the Great,'" and magister officinum, in writing 
 upon medicine, evinced the most abject superstition.'^ In a 
 work entitled De Medicamentiis Physiciis, Empiriciis ac 
 Rationalibus, this empirical physician was so completely under 
 the baleful influences of his age, that- he boldly avowed the 
 remedial properties of preternatural or magic formulas. His 
 compendium of curatives was largely drawn from the simple 
 prescriptions of rude and illiterate peasants — agrestes et 
 plebeii.'^ 
 
 ^Augustini, Confession., Lib. IV., cap. 3; and Lib. VIL, c. 6. 
 
 ' Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. L, p. 120. 
 
 i^Tiraboschi, op. cit., Tom. IL, p. 455. 
 
 " Lessing, op. cit., Th. L, p. 120. 
 
 '^ In this he seems to have had the example of Oribasius before liim, who une- 
 quivocally asserts that the most potent medicaments have thus been secured : 
 " Virtutes medicamentum quae facile invenientur in regris per varia loca, ubi docti 
 minima inveniuntur medicii, qui curam impendere possint." Oribas., In Libros 
 ad Kuporist, etc., p. 243.
 
 132 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Frequent application is recommended of Oriental theorems 
 for exorcising diabolical principles of maladies, and especially 
 the use of redoubtable Christian formulas — a systematic adap- 
 tation of remedies which attests most unequivocally the pro- 
 found degradation to which, under the dominant faith, medical 
 science had descended. Few names of practitioners of this 
 art arose above the social inundation of the fifth and sixth 
 centuries''^ sufficiently distinctive to merit illustration; be- 
 neath the frightful wreck of art provoked by the destructive 
 impulse of Teutonic invasions, medicine as a rational system, 
 throughout the west of Europe, was submerged, and only 
 revived under the scrutinizing curiosity of monastic inquirers 
 after the lapse of ages. Saint Jerome mentions a physician of 
 his day, by the name of Flavins, who had written voluminous 
 medical books in Latin metre, but gives no clew to his 
 nativity or permanent domicil.'* 
 
 Occasional notices appear in the writings of proconsul 
 Symmachus, of Roman practitioners, and of these he accords 
 the most unstinted panegyric to Disarius, asserting that with 
 impartial justice this professor, among all physicians in his 
 day, was awarded the highest place.'^ Born in Aquitania 
 according to his own statement, Disarius, after having attained 
 to great eminence by following the avocation of medicine 
 in the Latin metropolis, decided to return to his native 
 province, much to the regret and lamentation of his pro- 
 consular friend and numerous patrons.^'' Saintly aid appears 
 to have entered extensively into the practice of Disarius, who, 
 before applying curatives to suffering patients, demanded 
 celestial assistance.^' 
 
 ''' Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latinit., Lib. IV., c. 12. 
 
 '* In this connection he adds on the portentous force of words: "Qua; hxc 
 portenta verborum, etc., Hippocratis vinculis allegandum," Hieronym., Contra 
 Jovian., Lib. I., cap. 2. 
 
 1" Q. Aur. Symmachus, Ej^istolar., Lib. III., Ep. 39. 
 
 '*" Disarius medicina: professor patrem tuum spe commodi uberioris in (Jal- 
 liam secutus fuit." Symmachus, Epistolar., Lil). IX., Ep. 44. 
 
 '"" Et ante medicus manus opem sanctos coeli clementioris expectat." Ibid., 
 Lib. III., c. 39.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 133 
 
 Additional and trustworthy attestation touching the repute 
 in which this Gallic professor was held by Roman citizens, is 
 vouchsafed in the flattering eulogy of RIacrobius, who intro- 
 duces him among the interlocutors of his dialogues. Im- 
 moderately praised, in harmony with the epoch, almost to 
 adulation, Disarius is proclaimed to possess all the secrets of 
 creative nature possible for human intellect to comprehend.'^ 
 Eusebius, a physician of this age, is rescued by Symmachus 
 from oblivion, perhaps a just reward for medical mediocrity, 
 although the scholastic panegyrist declares him equal to the 
 most dexterous of his confreres.'" To another, named Dio- 
 nysius, a resident of Rome, the imperial representative urgently 
 recommends a certain youth whom he qualifies as a future 
 disciple of the /Esculapian art.^° 
 
 In the letter addressed by Symmachus to his friend Theo- 
 dosius, the names of John and Epectitus are especially men- 
 tioned, without such information as would lead to the pre- 
 sumption of their having written treatises on medicine 
 meriting commendation. At this period Italy and its great 
 metropolis failed to produce a professor of this science, 
 leaving behind him a monument worthy of honor . by pos- 
 terity.'' 
 
 A retrospective survey of the curative art from the era of 
 Galen to the downfall of the Western Empire, and its complete 
 prostration before the resistless forces of the Gothic armies, 
 will vindicate the allegation of the terrible debasement of a 
 science essentially progressive, and which under the enlight- 
 ened investigation of the Pergamic scholar had advanced to 
 great excellence. Since the third century, from the operation 
 of causes hitherto specifically detailed, theurgic arts were 
 dominant in all departments of this science ; and by a curious 
 
 '*• Macrobius, Saturnalia, Lib. VII., c. 4. 
 
 '^ " Certe Eusebius medicorum peritissimus." Symmachus, op. cit., Lib. II., 
 Ep. 18. 
 -oiijid., Lib. IX., Ep. 4. 
 ^' Tiraboschi, Stoiia della Litteratuia, Tom. IT., p. 456.
 
 134 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 misfortune these occult forces were stoutly maintained to be 
 a branch of learning, and as such, obtained the patronage of 
 both polytheistic and Christian emperors. 
 
 Frequent and unquestioned facts attested the baneful in- 
 quiries of the Roman rulers into these mystical sciences, and 
 by their illustrious example, powerfully aided in undermining 
 the solid structures of scientific systems, which finally receded 
 almost unrivalled into the custody of charlatans and vendors 
 of magical formulas, whose puissant mandates vanquished the 
 principles through which the causes of maladies were previ- 
 ously traced. We have stated the universal acknowledgment 
 of extraordinary power claimed by Apollonius of Tyana. 
 
 A statue of this magical medicist and philosopher studded 
 the walls of the Larario of the Emperor Alexander Severus, 
 who rendered homage in like manner to Abraham, Christ, and 
 Orpheus.^^ By the amalgamated influences of the Alexan- 
 drine sophists and the Neoplatonist schools of Ammonius 
 Saccas, magical medication absorbed the more ancient philos- 
 ophy, and confounded this with Oriental and Christian dog- 
 mas. All the operations of nature, especially its visible mani- 
 festations under the form of sickness and disease, were at- 
 tributed to supernatural .or demoniac sources,^^ which existed 
 in the closest sympathetic relationship to each other, over 
 which the truly wise, through a preparation by ascetic medi- 
 tation, was able to render himself undisputed master. For 
 this reason the Pythagoreans were confessedly so dexterous 
 as to banish or eject spirits.^* Basilideans, as skilled thauma- 
 turgists, united their mystical rites with Christianity, and 
 claimed to exercise the most unlimited power over unseen 
 forc'es:^^ To Plotinus, the companionship of an invisible 
 demon or diabolical spirit was accredited, through whose 
 mediation he was not only able to use the prophetic vision. 
 
 "^ .^lius Lamprid., Vita Alex. Severi, cap. 28. 
 
 '•'^ I'or[)hyr., I)e Alistineiitia ab Esu, Lib. II., p. 210. 
 
 ^* Lucian, Satyra, 347. 
 
 ^"Salverte, Sciences Occultes, p. 513.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 13- 
 
 but readily cured the most distressing maladies,^^ which pre- 
 ternatural puissance Avas obtained through unimpeded ab- 
 sorption of his soul into the contemplation of Deity, by which 
 means absolute dominion was procured over the world of 
 unseen beings." 
 
 By this unnatural potency he resurrected a cadaver, and 
 conferred with him privately touching celestial matters.'** 
 Magic itself was divided into specific branches, to each of 
 which individual properties were attributed; the ordinary, or 
 Goetic, controlled the operations of evil demons, consequently 
 under the expanding system of ecclesiastical preventative and 
 cure of bodily ills, was eagerly sought; Pharmacy, which 
 through properly prepared medicaments subjected these de- 
 moniacal causes exciting sickness, while the secret or Mystic 
 magic possessed irresistible rule over the most elevated spirit- 
 ual hosts.^' 
 
 Others separated this system, by which miraculous cures 
 were wrought, into Theosophism, or the magic to w^hich Divin- 
 ity himself had accorded omnipotence ; Theurgy, by which 
 angels were manipulated; and Goetism, which commanded the 
 malevolent action of impure spirits.^" It was of the use of 
 Babylonish and Egyptian names for this purpose that Galen 
 complained, and charged such practice to the medical theur- 
 gists of his day.^^ 
 
 Symbolic effigies, when combined with certain words pro- 
 perly collocated, exercised the greatest power on demoniacal 
 diseases, and when written in the Chaldaic or Hebrew lan- 
 
 ^^ Porphyr., Vita Plotini, cap. 10. His Egyptian birth, Eunapius, Vitae Sophis- 
 tor., p. 456. 
 
 2' Porphyr., op. cit., cap. 23. 
 • ''^Eunapius, op. cit., sub nom. Porphyr., p. 456. 
 
 ^' Matter, Histoire du Gnosticisme, Tom. I., PP- 1^6 and 214; and Matter, 
 Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 353. 
 
 '"Porphyr., De Abstinentia ab Esu, Lib. II., p. 210; and Eusebius, Prceparat. 
 ad Evangel., Lib. IV., c. 10. 
 
 '1 Ovduara ravra Alyr-nliaxa Xal 'Bajivluvla. Galen, De Simplic. Medicamentor, 
 Temper, ac Facultat., Lib. VI., Proemium, Tom. XL, p. 793.
 
 136 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 guage, this puissance was intensified,^^ — a system of typical im- 
 ages, as we shall hereafter discover of extensive application for 
 cures among the early Teutonic converts. With such precur- 
 sors it will be readily understood how^ conjoined with the de- 
 plorable effect of Germanic invasions upon art and science, the 
 belief in supernatural wonders quickly increased, and medical 
 culture passed from the hands of the skilled and erudite into 
 the reliquaries of martyrs and the sainted dead. Incredulity 
 exhibited touching ,the alleged curative properties of these 
 sacred remains, was equivalent to obnoxious heresy, under the 
 ban of both canonical and civil law. 
 
 Thus, for example, Gregory of Tours avov/s being afflicted 
 with severe pains in the head, and sought relief for his suffer- 
 ing by means of blood-letting or cupping. Feariog, however,, 
 that the malady might be too promptly cured by this remedy, 
 he touched the disordered spot with the sombre pall of Saint 
 Martin's sepulchre, and petitioned forgiveness of the holy mar- 
 tyr for applying profane medication.^^ The same writer states 
 that an archdeacon, Leonastes, through the efficacy of fasting 
 and prayers at the tomb of the Turonese saint, succeeded in 
 restoring light to his blinded eyes ; but having submitted him- 
 self to the surgical treatment of an Israelitish physician, who 
 applied herbs and medicaments to the injured organs, the in- 
 firmity returned, which caused him to seek the skill of ambu- 
 latory physicians.^* From the preceding fact the Pontiff of 
 Tours deduced the following conclusion: that he who rendered 
 himself worthy of celestial medicine needed nothing of earthly 
 physicians.'*'' From the sixth century the exercise of medical 
 art was almost exclusively appropriated by cloisters and monas- 
 teries, whose occupants boldly vended the miraculous remedial 
 
 •'^ lamblichus, De Myst. .^Egypt, p. 97 seq.; lb., p. 170, on invocation of suit- 
 able demon, and superiority of diabolical rank to that of man. lb., Dist. II., p. 10. 
 
 ^'Gregor. Turones., Miracula S. Martini, Lib. II., cap. 60. This pall cured 
 obstinate pustular diseases. lb.. Lib. L, cap. 3. 
 
 •■'* " Qui ambulans per multos medicos." lb., Ilistor. Francor., Lib. V., cap. 6. 
 
 '^Gregor. Turonesis, Miracula S. Martini, Lib. II., cap. 32.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 137 
 
 properties of relics, chrism, baptismal fluids, holy oil,^'' rosy 
 crosses, etc., as of unquestioned virtue. 
 
 At this era, in the civilized portions of Western Europe, and 
 especially in Italy, the deplorable degradation of social life 
 permitted slight hopes of an early resuscitation of medical 
 science. That faint vestiges of an organized system of the 
 practitioners of this art still maintained a feeble existence 
 during the fifth and sixth centuries in the Italian metropolis, 
 admits of historical proof; but the statutory regulation of the 
 Gothic rulers, to which we shall presently return, must \-indi- 
 cate the inculpation of frightful debasement of lay medicists, 
 and the near absorption of the science into the complete con- 
 trol of charlatans and monkish physicians. 
 
 Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, by his earlier residence 
 at the court of Theodosius, had acquired a taste for liberal 
 arts, which, when the changed circumstances elevated him to 
 the perfunctionary duties of monarch of Italy, manifested itself 
 in preserving the remains of fallen Rome. One of the first 
 official acts of this ruler was the creation of a magistrate espe- 
 cially empowered to safeguard such relics of classical antiquity 
 as had escaped the Teutonic destroyers, designated centurio 
 nitentium rerum.^' Other laws preserving public and private 
 property,"* were re-enacted by the Gothic ruler. Through the 
 increasing activity of Cassiodorus, secretary to Theodoric, 
 these efforts were largely rewarded in preserving from total 
 destruction the relics of a glorious past. This scholastic, with 
 the style of exuberant rhetoric inaugurated by Boethius and 
 himself, exhibited an ardent zeal for the preservation of medi- 
 cine in an imperial order, where he indulges his fondness for 
 hyperbole, and urges that the skilled Archiater should be able 
 to judge the sufferings of nature by the throbbing pulse and 
 urinary scrutiny.^' 
 
 ^* Ammian. Marcellinus, Gesta, Lib. XVI., cap. 6. 
 s'Ibid., Lib. XXIL, cap. 4. 
 
 ■'^XVL Codex Theodos., De Pagan. Sacrific. et Templis, Tit. X., Le.\. 15. 
 . ^* " Offerentur occulis urinoe, ut facilius sit vocem clamantis non advertere,
 
 1 3 8 HIS TOR Y OF MEDIC A L E CONOM Y 
 
 So far as the substantial evidence of Theodoric's desire is 
 concerned, to place the practitioners of this art resident within 
 the city of Rome, and in other municipalities, through the soli- 
 citation of his confidential adviser, this was abundantly attested. 
 The Gothic monarch re-established the dignity of Comes 
 Archiater, or president-general of the surgical guilds: inas- 
 much as this distinctive title is mentioned by the monkish 
 patron of polite letters among other formal investitures/" In 
 alluding to the immunities of this ancient office and its fran- 
 chises, he affirms a prerogative of official primacy among 
 physicians of rank, the undisputed right of deciding litigated 
 questions arising within their luiions, and the uninterrupted 
 access to the royal court." 
 
 No names, however, of medical professors of high illustra- 
 tion, are referred to in the eulogistic allusions of Cassiodorus. 
 Petrus was personal surgeon, or Archiater, to the Gothic 
 monarch,*^ although another, and perhaps more justly cele- 
 brated physician of this king, was Elpidius, styled Rusticus, 
 who does not appear to have surrendered himself up entirely 
 to medicine, but wrote a dogmatic poem.^^ It appears that 
 Theodoric, himself, manifested a praiseworthy interest in med- 
 ical matters, and enjoined their study.^^ In the year 554, after 
 his campaign against the Franks, the emperor Justinian 
 issued a rescript, by which the state of Italy, as established 
 under the Gothic king, should be preserved, especially such 
 laws as were enacted to continue perquisites and compensation 
 of professors of medicine, in order, as the statute concludes, 
 that students might have maintained for them suitable meth- 
 ods of instruction."^ 
 
 quam hujusmodi minime signa sentire." Formulse etc. Edicta Regum Ostrogothor., 
 No. XIX., ap. Canciani, Tom. I., p. 31. 
 
 *° Cassiodor., Formula, etc., No. XIX. 
 
 " Cassiodor., op. cit., No. XTX. 
 
 *' Du Gang. Glossar., sub v. Archiater; and Iiaronius, Annales, sub an. 444. 
 
 ^■'" Elpidius, Medicus Theodorici Regis," etc., Labigne, Bibl. Max. Patr., Tom. 
 v., p. 462. 
 
 *■* Baronius, op. cit., sub an. 441, J 47. 
 
 ■'•'" Ut annona minstretur medicis et tlivcrsis. Annonam etiam quam et Theo-
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. i^q 
 
 In the first decade of the sixth century, the decrees of the 
 Wisigoths indicate a disposition to favor an organization as 
 yet propagating an uninterrupted existence in the provinces 
 subjugated by them, although the singularity of these ordinan- 
 ces betrays the lamented decay of professional dignity among 
 the devotees of the curative art. These regulations of the 
 year 504 substantially survived to the eleventh century, as leg- 
 islative guides in establishing the practice of medicine in the 
 kingdom of Jerusalem, so valiantly won by the Crusaders. It 
 was ordered that no physician should, presume to cup or 
 bleed any nobly-born woman without the presence of her 
 father, mother, brother, etc., and in their absence, the attend- 
 ance of a relative or neighbor of similar standing was peremp- 
 tory, unless the emergency demanded instant attention, when 
 the menials must attend.^" The cause alleged for this stringent 
 law," is a positive attestation of the debased condition of the 
 medical men of the period, who apparently preferred to wander 
 from the footsteps of Hippocrates and Galen. 
 
 It may be questioned with candor whether this edict was 
 originally designed for the professors or practitioners legislated 
 for by Theodoric and Justinian, or for the Teutonic ambula- 
 tory medicastres, who indeed aspired no higher than charla- 
 tans; but a clause of this ordinance most unequivocally con- 
 templates a high grade of surgical skill, transcending the dex- 
 terity of the peripatetic herbal venders. 
 
 For removing an ypocismata (a cataract?) from the eye, 
 and restoring sight, the surgeon by law was allowed a large 
 payment."*® It was further decreed "that any medical professor 
 
 doricus dare solitus est, et nos sicut etiam Romanis indulgissimus," etc., " quatenus 
 juvenes liberalibus studiis erudili per nostram rempublicam floreant." Pragmati- 
 ca Sanctio, Lib. I., cap. 22, ap. Pertizii, V. 174. 
 
 ^^"Nullus medicus sine prcesentia patris, matris, fratris, filii, aut avunculi, vel 
 cujuscunque propinque, mulierem ingenuam flebotomare pra'sumat." Lex Wisi- 
 gothorum, Lib. XL, Tit. L, Lex i. 
 
 *^ " Quia difficilimum non est, ut sub tali occasione ludibrium iiiterdum ad- 
 haerescat." Ibid. 
 
 ^ •' Si quis ypocisma de occulis abstulerit, et ad pristinam sanitatem perduxerit
 
 I40 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 called in to cure a malady should first furnish satisfactory 
 guarantee for the undertaking, and agree by contract upon the 
 price for which restoration to health was to be compensated, 
 and in case the disease terminated fatally, the agreement was 
 vacated.*^ If the physician blundered in blood-letting or phle- 
 botomy, where the patient was of noble birth, by cupping so 
 freely as to debilitate him, he should pay a fine of heavy dam- 
 ages ; but when a mortal ending followed the operation, the 
 surgeon was to be immediately delivered over to the nearest 
 relatives of deceased, jvho, according to the usual provisions of 
 Germanic law, were thereafter the absolute custodians of his 
 life or death .^^ 
 
 When the blundering or impotent medicist killed a serf, he 
 was merely compelled to make restitution in kind^^ — a regula- 
 tion enforced by the ordinances drawn up and published by 
 the Crusaders at Jerusalem in the year 1090.^^ The humility 
 with which this class of personages was invested may be in- 
 ferred from the fact that they often assumed monkish vest- 
 ments, as the appropriate raiment of the profession, as early as 
 the epoch before us, and in this garb had unimpeded access to 
 the presence of royalty .'^'^ The statutes of the Wisigoths ac- 
 corded inviolability to physicians so far as arrest was involved, 
 excepting in case of the homicide noted; in matters of debt, 
 
 infirmum v. solidos pro suo beneficio consequatur." Lex Wisig., Lib. -XL, Tit. 
 L, Lex 5. 
 
 *^ Ibid., Leg. 4 and 7. 
 
 *"" Si per flebotomiim ingemuis_ vel .servus mortem iiiciirrat, si quis medicus 
 dum flebotomum exercet, ingenuum debilitaverit, c. solidos coactus exsolvet, si 
 vero mortuus fiierit, continuo propinquis tradendus est, ut quod de eo, facere vol- 
 uerint, habeant potestatem." Ibid., Lex 6. 
 
 ^' " Si vero servum debilitaverit aut occiderit, hujusmodi servum restituerat." 
 Ibid., Lex 6. No physician was permitted to enter a prison without official accom- 
 paniment, in order that a prisoner should have no opportunity through fear of his 
 crime — "per metum culpa; suae" — to seek death at the hands of complaisant or 
 corruptible practitioners. Ibid., Lex 2. 
 
 •''•^ Assisse et Bone Usanze del Reame de Hyerusalem, cap. 218. 
 
 ^■'' " Ilaliitum monachi suscipiens * * * et se medicum fingeris." Rog.de 
 Wend., Flor. Ilistoriar., an. 497, Tom. I., p. 51.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 141 
 
 when by the Roman code the debtor was h'able to be hold on 
 a civil process, the follower of this avocation obtained his free- 
 dom upon furnishing security.^* 
 
 FoHowing the example of the civil law, these rescripts made 
 abundant provision for gratuitous medical service among such 
 as were in custody.'^' After the withdrawal of Cassiodorus 
 from secular aftairs in the year 528, consequent on his pro- 
 fession of monastic life/' his attention was directed without 
 variance to such studies as comported with clerical vows. In 
 the close vicinity of the Ravenna Archate, he constructed a 
 monastery at private expense, where as a hermit he domiciled 
 himself for the reception of anchorites."^ 
 
 Cassiodorus was unquestionably the earliest Christian monk 
 who realized the necessity of preserving the writings of pro- 
 fane authors, and in order to render such desire of practical 
 utility, vigilant research was instituted in diverse localities for 
 manuscripts, which were faithfully transcribed into numerous 
 exemplars.^'' To exhortation this erudite cenobite added the 
 force of personal example in such labors, by diligently com- 
 paring and collating several manuscripts of the Scriptures, to 
 obtain a perfect copy.^^ With rare judgment for the period, 
 Cassiodorus urged familiarity with polytheistic works in order 
 the more exactly to comprehend the significance of prophetic 
 and evangelical utterances.*^" From his devotion to conventual 
 seclusion he manifested an ardent desire that the clerical 
 brethren should acquire a skillful knowledge of medicine, so 
 that efficient services might be given their infirm and disabled 
 confreres. In this connection the celebrated scholastic speci- 
 
 ^* " Nullus medicus nauditum, excepto homicidii causa, in custodiam retiudat. 
 Pro debito tamen sub fidejussore debit consisteie." I.ex Wisigothor., Lib. XI., 
 Tit. I., Lex 8. 
 
 5^ Ibid., Lex 2. 
 
 *^ Muiatori, Annali d'ltalia, Tom. V., p. 492. 
 
 " Monlaleinbert, Les Moines d'Occident, Tom. II., p. 77. 
 
 5* Cassiodorus, De Institut. Divin. Litter., cc. S, 30. 
 
 ^''Ibid., Praefat. ad Institut. Divin. Litter. 
 
 ^"Cassiodorus, De Institut. Divin. Litter., cap. 28.
 
 142 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOM'i 
 
 fically designated various medical treatises which he had 
 judiciously aggregated for the abbey library. 
 
 He fondly refers to the Herbarium of Dioskorides, "who 
 had with the most scrupulous exactness described and por- 
 trayed the diversified qualities of rural herbs." In addition to 
 this, he recommends as integral elements of medicinal instruc- 
 tion and discipline, that the recluses of his hermitage should 
 vigilantly and studiously peruse the works of Hippocrates and 
 Galen, of ready access, on account of Latin versions.^^ The 
 therapeutics of the Pergamic scientist were especially com- 
 mended to the notice of the monks, which contained the suit- 
 able details of the curative art proper to be known to monas- 
 teries. Another but unknown compendist was also honorably 
 distinguished as havino- digested numerous treatises into a 
 compact form 
 
 Added to these he alludes. to the works of Cornelius Celsus**^ 
 and a Hippocratian treatise on herbal curatives, together with 
 other medical books, collected for the monastic library, through 
 divine assistance.^^ It may be inferred from the urgent com- 
 mendation of the writings of earlier professors of this art, that 
 down to the middle of the sixth century, there still existed a 
 feeble recognition of a possible system adapted to the cure of 
 maladies, so far, perhaps, as the practice was restricted to 
 municipalities. Rapid advancement of saintly remedies, as 
 previously used with their assemblage of baptismal waters, con- 
 secrated oils and other puissant articles of ecclesiastical appli- 
 ance, enabled numerous deacons of the Church to exercise the 
 ^sculapian art. An early priestly physician has survived 
 to fame, by the name of Elpideus, oftentimes confused with 
 Elpidius Rusticus,"* previously alluded to. He was both a 
 deacon of the Church and skilled surgeon, as may be gathered 
 
 *'"Legete Hippocratem, atque Galenum, Latine lingua conversos," 56o-f-8, 
 Muratori, Scriptor. Rer. Ital., Tom. III., p. 930. 
 ®^ Cassiodorus, op. cit., cap. 31. 
 •3 Ibid. 
 *' Labigne, Bibl. Maxim. Patr., Tom. V., 9, p. 462 seq.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 M3 
 
 from an epistolary correspondence principally written by St. 
 Ennodius, who expressly mentioned him as a personage of 
 fine culture, in that erudition embellishing the mind.^^ 
 
 Touching his medical skill, it would seem he was sufficiently 
 dexterous to heal the Gothic ruler, Theodoric, of a grievous 
 illness.^" He seems to have been upon such intimate terms 
 with the king as to receive his confidence touching the causes 
 inducing him to execute Symmachus and Boethius.^' There 
 are excellent reasons to assign Milan as the place of his nativ- 
 ity."* So far as the medical acquirements of Elpideus are at 
 issue, it is impossible to conjecture their excellence, inasmuch 
 as no monument of especial worth in this respect has escaped 
 to modern times. 
 
 Another physician and contemporar)^ incumbent of the 
 diaconate, Dionysius, is better known, who it has been alleged 
 resided in the Italian capital during its siege by the Goths. 
 An epitaph reproduced by Baronius,*'^ fully commends the 
 clerical practitioner for honesty, but fails to specify the partic- 
 ular eminence originating from his knowledge of medicine: 
 
 " Hie Levita jacit Dionysius artis honestse 
 Functus et officio, quod medicina dedit." 
 
 Other ecclesiastics, during the period under notice, appear to 
 have reached certain distinction, not for erudition in sacred 
 and profane letters, but by reason of medical dexterity and 
 successful treatment of maladies seemingly beyond recovery. 
 Some of these, by their professional eminence, combined with 
 substantial learning, attained the Episcopate. 
 
 The organization of that system, by which the pressing 
 necessities of impoverished sick and incurably diseased were 
 
 «5 Ennodius, Epistolar., Lib. VIII., Ep. 8; Lib. VII., Ep. 7, and Lib. IX. 
 Ep. 14. 
 
 *^ Procopius writes him: " Elpidio deinde medico." De Bello Gothico, 
 Lib. I. 
 
 enbid. 
 
 ** Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. III., p. 64. 
 
 "^ Baron., Annales, ap. an. 410; and Symmachus, Epistol., IX., Ep. 4.
 
 144 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 attended through the benevolent aggregation and pubnc dis- 
 ciplinary care, would seem to be due to Christian emperors 
 who established such hospitals; although not necessarily a 
 development of Christianity. These humane institutions were 
 a well defined element in the Aztec civilization,™ whose religion 
 was celebrated amid priestly effusion of human blood.'^ It is, 
 however, a matter susceptible of historical proof, that pagan 
 emperors of imperial Rome had called into existence what 
 evidently was the nucleus for hospital systems of a later period. 
 
 At the close of the first century, a Valetudinarium" for in- 
 firm soldiers, and a Veterinarium''' for disabled horses were 
 attached to the legionary camps as an indispensible feature 
 when actually at war. Before this period, a sick or wounded 
 warrior was subject to surgical attendance in his tent, or, the 
 army changing its quarters, he was cared for in the neighbor- 
 ing houses.'* 
 
 Previous to the incumbency of the imperial throne, Tiberi- 
 us, and while yet heir apparent, exhibited the utmost interest 
 in the welfare of his soldiers.'" For the transportation of suf- 
 fering sick, ambulances with the appliances of easy cushions, 
 etc., were provided, and when the forces were regularly en- 
 camped, the construction of baths was ordered.'® As late as 
 the time of Germanicus, Trajan and Hadrian, these enlightened 
 generals sought out their disabled soldiers in the tents or 
 other quarters." 
 
 In the second century, the first systematic aggregation of 
 
 '"Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, Vol. I., p. 48. 
 
 ^' Solis, Conquista de la Mexico, cap. 30. 
 
 ^2 Hecker, Geschichte der Heilkunde, Th. II., p. 270. 
 
 T? Ibid. 
 
 '* Sueton., in Vit. Tiber., cap. 1 1, records an order by which public edifices were 
 placed in condition to receive the sick : "Jussique sunt omnes eegri in publicum 
 porticuni deferri, ac per valetudinum genera disponi." 
 
 75 "■ Quidquid tcgrorum in civitate essit, visitare se velle : id a proximis .dilerex- 
 ceptum." Sueton., Vita Tiberii, cap. 11. 
 
 ™Vellius Paterculus, Hist. Rom., Lib., II., c. 114. 
 
 ^^.Spartian, Vita Hadriani, cap. 10.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 145 
 
 the wounded and infirm appears in the Valetudinarium,"'' 
 where, however, only such as were seriously afflicted by 
 wounds or diseases received surgical attention, while those of 
 a less aggravated type were treated in the usual ^gri contu- 
 bernales.'* The troubled condition of the times certainly hin- 
 dered the full utility of those imperfect hospitals for the scien- 
 tific treatment of diseases, established by Justinian in the mid- 
 dle of the sixth century.^" Whether this institution as a strictly 
 organized system of pathology be traceable to the terminal 
 years of the fourth century, may remain an unsettled question, 
 but that this establishment throughout the Roman empire, in 
 its more humane and public character, was primarily due to 
 other forms developed from the Christian church, admits ol 
 no controversy. 
 
 '* Hecker, Geschichte der Heilkunde, Th. II., p. 284. 
 "Vegetius, De Re Milit., Lib. III., cap. 2. 
 *" Procopius, De .(^dificiis, Lib. I., cap. 2. 
 10
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Monastic Institutions — Beneficial Effects in Preserving Art, etc. — Rapid 
 Degradation of Society in the Fifth Century — Monasteries Estabhshed 
 under Protection of Civil Law — Various Convents Constructed in Gaul 
 — Cultivate Medical Studies— Benedictine Monks — Conventual Infirm- 
 ary — Saintly Cures Fostered by the Cloisters — Exorcism of Diseases 
 by Saints — Miracles — Legends of Power of Martyrs. 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING civil and religious society of the 
 fourth century presented the external appearances of be- 
 ing christianized, and although sovereigns and people with 
 great preponderance of numbers had embraced the new faith, 
 they still remained paganized by force of custom, so far, in- 
 deed, that the laws, institutions and manners remained unal- 
 tered.' 
 
 Theodosius, one of the most pious monarchs of the empire, 
 openly assumed the sacred and divine character of his imperial 
 office. Valentinian, in essaying to excite decaying patriotic 
 enthusiasm among the Romans against the Vandals, concluded 
 the proclamation by declaring that it was signed by his divine 
 hand." Popular morals, under the pressure of direful govern- 
 mental necessity, were so abhorrent and debased that fathers of 
 families, according to Zozimus,^ sold their daughters in pros- 
 titution at the Lupanaria in order to obtain money to liquidate 
 taxes. The same author charged the Christians with the care- 
 fully-adhered-to policy of proselyting polytheists of his day, 
 by promising them an entire remission of all crimes of what- 
 ever type, upon uniting with the dominant church.* At this 
 epoch, according to the pithy utterance of Bossuet, everything 
 
 ' Guizot, Histoire de la Civilization en France, Lcq. 3. 
 ^" Et manu divina propria." Novelise, Tit. XX. 
 'Histor. Rom., Lib. II., cap. 38. 
 * Ibid., Lib. II., cap. 29. 
 
 (146J
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 147 
 
 was decaying in the East, and all things abandoned in the 
 western empire.^ 
 
 Contemporaneous writers draw a most deplorable picture of 
 Rome. This great metropolis seemed in a moribund condi- 
 tion, deserted by its rulers and sacked by the Goths." Cer- 
 tainly the marvellous development of the Latin monasteries 
 was nurtured into hasty growth, by the propulsion of the 
 frightful calamities threatening social dissolution, and in some 
 localities, utterly destructi\'e of human existence. These reli- 
 gious associations, to which, among other qualities, modern 
 times owe the perpetuation of medical science, through mon- 
 astic professors, and its re\^ival at the close of the Middle 
 Ages, appear to have originated in the Orient, where the more 
 sensitive proselyted Christians were quickly driven to solitude 
 for profound meditation upon divine things. 
 
 Provincial, isolated districts attracted in an unorganized 
 form the increasing number of anchorites and recluses, who 
 confidently believed uninterrupted and mental adoration to 
 offer the surest progress towards Divinity. The sentiment 
 among the Fathers was by no means unanimous, touching the 
 utility of these organizations. In the year 390, by a rescript' 
 of Valentinian II., these associated hermits were subjected to 
 persecution. This law, evidently provoked by the opponents 
 of Monachism, and perhaps the result of sound political econ- 
 omy, directed that all monks or professed anchorites, whereso- 
 ever domiciled upon the vast domains of the Roman empire, 
 should forthwith depart the towns and cities, where they ap- 
 pear to have congregated in vast numbers from the time of 
 Saint Basil, and the municipal authorities were required to 
 enforce the decree which ordered them to seek deserted local- 
 ities and waste solitutes as their habitations.* 
 
 * Histoire Universelle, lere P., Ep. XI. 
 
 *Sidonarius Apollonar., Carmen VII. 
 
 '" Quicunque sub professione monachi repperiuntur, deserta loca et vastos soli- 
 tudines sequi, atque habitare jubeantur." XVI. Codex Theodosianus, Tit. III., 
 De Monachis, Lex i. 
 
 «XVI. Cod. Theod., Tit. III., Lex i.
 
 148 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Theodosius, a few years later, abrogated this oppressive 
 legislation.^ In the year 340 Athenasius, fleeing the persecu- 
 tion of his orthodoxy by Arian enemies, arrived in Rome to 
 implore the protection of the papal pontiff, Julius. While there, 
 and during the prolonged session of an ecclesiastical council, 
 which reaffirmed the boldly-asserted doctrines of the refugee, 
 Athenasius industriously mingled with the religious element 
 of the venerable metropolis, recounting the exploits so won- 
 derful of Anthony and the Thebiade anchorites. These im- 
 pressive statements appear to have produced almost the effect 
 of a revolution. 
 
 Both sexes were incited to essay the establishment of 
 cloisters.'" Although the word monk was synonomous with 
 ignominious infamy in vulgar prejudice, it quickly became a 
 title of honor and sacred distinction." After the death of the 
 notorious Thebiade cenobite, Saint Athenasius wrote a bio- 
 graphy of the deceased recluse, which was extensively circu- 
 lated in Western Europe, and quickly attained the popularity 
 of a legend and confession of faith. This simple narrative, 
 after the lapse of time, was accepted as the foundation of 
 occidental monastic superstitions, and out of it grew the rigid 
 vitality of its laws, which endured for centuries.'^ 
 
 When the social debasement is considered, which prevailed 
 among the Romans, it is by no means surprising that the sub- 
 urbs of the city should be rapidly occupied by monasteries, 
 filled with personages equally distinguished for illustrious 
 birth, eminent science, and immense affluence, who preferred 
 the surroundings of charity, sanctity and liberty ,^^ to the com- 
 panionship of degraded civilians of the Italian capital. During 
 the latter part of the fourth century a tide of spiritual and pen- 
 
 •Ibid., Lex 2. 
 
 '"On the signification of this word, vide IX. Cod. Theodos., Tit. III., De Cus- 
 todia Reorum, Lex 3. 
 
 " Hieronymi, Vita S. Macari, cap. 4. 
 ^^Gregor. Nazien, Oratio 27. 
 "Hieronym. Epistolar., 66 ad Pammach.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 M9 
 
 itential life rose throughout the provinces, and swept before it 
 the rehcs of ancient and glorious patrician famiHes, which fled 
 to these sanctuaries as a final refuge against the awful corrup- 
 tion of the age. 
 
 With characteristic boldness, Saint Jerome questioned alike 
 the integrity of the Emperor Julian," and denounced false 
 monks and debased women who had procured access to the 
 nunneries under the deceptive costume of widows or virgins, 
 and secured a permanent abode, where with shameless hy- 
 pocrisy they enjoyed the subsistence of these organized com- 
 munities.^^ It is evident from the burning indignation of Je- 
 rome that already these beneficent institutions were thronged 
 with disingenuous cenobites, who sought to combine the 
 pompous splendor of the profane world with the humility of 
 religion, or with mendacious presumption^* captivated the con- 
 fidence of affluent and exemplary noblemen, and as quickly 
 abused it.'' 
 
 To Saint Ambrose, whose pen has described the resistless 
 march of isolated contemplation of divinity in a panegyric of 
 unrivalled eloquence,'* may be directly attributed, after Saint 
 Augustine, much of that vitality which perpetuated monaste- 
 ries throughout the middle ages, and with them the germs of 
 science and the undying elements of art. The celebrated 
 Regulse, drafted by Augustine in the year 423, and originally 
 intended to calm dissensions among the recluses of an African 
 nunnery, were revived under Charlemagne, and furnished fund- 
 amental principles of mediaeval monachism. 
 
 The institution of Saint Germain d'Auxerre has been traced 
 to that period of the fifth century when the Teutons still de- 
 rided the Christian faith in its most sacred recesses, and used 
 the vestibules of its cloisters for stabling their horses, and pas- 
 
 ^^Ibid.j ad Julian, Ep. VI., but partially excuses him for the reasons given. 
 i^Ibid., ad Rustic, 225; and Ibid., ad Demetr.. 140. 
 ^« Ibid., ad Rustic, Ep. 3. 
 "Ibid., ad Eustach., Ep. 18. 
 i^Ambros., Hexameron., Lib. III., c. 5.
 
 15° 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 tured their migratory herds upon the herbage growing by the 
 side of overthrown altars." From these abbeys developed 
 towns and villages, to which the effeminate Christian of the 
 sixth century sought refuge from invading Gauls.^° 
 
 From the vestments of dressed skins and common sandals 
 or clogs, with which the earlier Gallic monk was attired in the 
 penury of utter impoverishment, to more tolerable privations, 
 the transition was accomplished by the modifying influences 
 of years, although at an early age these provinces were re- 
 marked for their colonizing fecundity, and justly apostrophized 
 as swarming bees abandoning their old for newhives.^^ Along 
 the line of the Jura Alps, according to Sidonius Apollinarus, 
 this form of religious development seems to have been carried 
 on with great rapidity, and highly commended by him as a 
 cherished aggrandizement." The monastery of Saint Claude, 
 so exposed to the incursions of the barbarous Alemanni that its 
 prior was compelled to procure his supplies of salt across the 
 Alps, signalized its superiority through Eugendius, abbot about 
 the year 540, by an earnest and patient endeavor to inaugurate 
 a taste for polite letters among his monkish subordinates. 
 Greek and Latin were taught both clerics and laymen in this 
 cloister, which attained high illustration in Gaul. The study 
 of ancient authors'"' seems to have fascinated these monastic 
 students, who also contributed to the preservation of such 
 remnants of classical splendor in their custody by the trans- 
 cription of manuscripts." 
 
 However successful may have been the earliest expansion 
 of an organization whose marvellous solidity was of incon- 
 testiblc and vital importance to medical economy during 
 
 ''•• Sidonarius Apollonaris, Epistolar., Lib. VII., c. 6. 
 
 •^"Ibid., Lib. VII., c. 17. 
 
 '■''Vila St. Romani, caj) 2, apud Acta .S. S. Bol., Feb. 28. 
 
 ^^ Epistolar., Lib. IV., c. 25. 
 
 *^ Too eager zeal for jirofanc writers was expressly interdicted by Ambrose, 
 especially if such fervor led to a neglect of sacred scriptures. De Officiis, Lib. 
 I., c. 10. 
 
 ^^ Vita -S. Eugendi, cc. 2 and 3.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 151 
 
 the Middle Ages, to the epoch when the treatment of the 
 curative art was systematically pursued in the Universities of 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the services of Saint 
 Benedict, exclusive of the extension of convents through the 
 acceptance of his Regulae, in founding the monastery of Monte 
 Cassino, in the fifth century, of such signal benefit to medicine 
 subsequently, must entitle him to unstinted admiration. Ap- 
 parently influenced by the spontaneous impulse, hitherto men- 
 tioned, among eminent Romans, a youthful patrician seeking 
 to flee the dispiriting influences of the age erected a refuge in 
 solitude near Subjacio, whose locality, by the thunderbolt 
 striking the shattered wine-cup from Nero's lip,'^ was thence- 
 forth forever rendered safe from the footsteps of man. 
 
 This lad of fourteen years, of the highest susceptibilit}-, in 
 an age when the nervous organism of Christian devotees was 
 abnormally quick, determined in the year 494 to renounce the 
 attractions of science and mundane honors, in order to abide in 
 that ecstatic grandeur, the outgrowth of profound medita- 
 tive absorption, and abandoning the repressive presence of 
 an old nurse, he sought the quietude essential to this exist- 
 ence amid the almost inaccessible routes of a locality^^ immor- 
 talized by Dante as the scene of the hermit life of Saint Fran- 
 ciscus." On account of an infamous attempt by an associate 
 priest to poison him,*^ the great precursor of modern monach- 
 ism fled the companionship of such base machinations, and 
 retired to IMonte Cassino hi the year 528. 
 
 Here, after the lapse of two centuries from the proclamation 
 of Constantine the Great, still stood a venerable temple dedi- 
 cated to Apollo and used for sacrificial rites by the pagan peas- 
 antry,'" perhaps for the restoration to health. Persuading 
 these polytheists to accept the new faith, Benedict constructed 
 
 ^^ Tacitus, Annales, Lib. XIV., cap. 22. 
 ^''Gregor. Max., Dialog., Lib. IL, cc. i and 8. 
 '■^' Divina Commedia, Paiidis. Can. XL 
 2SGreg. Max., op. cit., Lib. IL, c. 8. 
 ^"Ibid. and Dante, op. cit.. Can. XL
 
 152 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 two monasteries, of which one was placed under the patron- 
 age of Saint John, and the other dedicated to Saint Martin, 
 whose medicinal potency had been essayed by Gregory, Bishop 
 of Tours. After forty years of patient industry for the devel- 
 opment of this powerful and munificent convent, to which the 
 revival of medicine centuries afterwards may be accorded, its 
 founder, the great legislator of the Benedictine monachism, 
 died in the year 543, with the satisfaction of witnessing the 
 rapid growth of that fabric which his religious meditations 
 had doubtless suggested. 
 
 Up to this time the Latin Church followed with religious 
 confidence the rules of monastic existence communicated 
 through such eminent pontiffs as Augustine and Ambrose in 
 the De Officiis. Benedict, in attempting successfully to reform 
 the abuses of the Order whose doctrines he had embraced, by 
 means of an economical and liturgical arrangement which col- 
 lectively constituted the rule of conventual creed, also gave to 
 the institution in western Europe a definitive and universal 
 polity, from which developed the economy of medicine during 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 In his inflexible programme for daily action and labor, 
 obedience was an essential principle. To banish indolence, 
 which he declared to be a corroding element in the soul,^" he 
 regulated with exactitude the diurnal occupations of each 
 monk, including divine service, and distinctively forbade sing- 
 ing amatory or libidinous songs when employed with secular 
 artificers.'" Under the Benedictine regulations, a monastery 
 was regarded as a citadel unceasingly menaced by besieging 
 foes, presumed to be demoniacal hosts arrayed in mortal com- 
 bat against the church militant, of which the cloisters were an 
 integral and important factor. It was, therefore, imperative in 
 the internal organization of such establishments, to be pos- 
 sessed of a mill, bakery, various workshops, and a garden of 
 greater or less extent, in order that none of the exigencies of 
 
 ""Codex Regular., Pars. II., cap. 6, De Opere Monachorum, p. 560. 
 •■» Ibid.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 153 
 
 existence should compel the external presence of their monk- 
 ish garrison.^^ 
 
 A suitable cenobite was selected from the most eligible, and 
 delegated under the name of cellarer;''^ or advocatus " to super- 
 vise monastic goods and possessions, and especially to attend 
 to such details as were required by the conventual infirmary.'" 
 This institution for proper treatment of maladies, in its essen- 
 tial features, the precursor of mediaeval hospitals, was the 
 enlargement of charity, as the dominant doctrine of abbeys 
 and cloisters. We shall hereafter note the extensive use of 
 the monastic infirmary, and scrutinize more closely its influ- 
 ence upon the enconomy of medicine. Through the practical 
 application of the Benedictine regulations to the monasteries, 
 the Western Empire was preserved from a profounder degra- 
 dation of civilization and morals; while such fragments of 
 ancient art and letters as escaped the destructive energy of the 
 Teutonic races, were safely guarded by them. After the death 
 of Benedict, the monastery of Monte Cassino was subjected to 
 a temporary check in rapid progress, by the Longobards, who 
 pillaged the edifices appurtenant, in the year 580.'* 
 
 Notwithstanding these infelicitous events, this cloister main- 
 tained its advance towards that just celebrity ultimately ob- 
 tained in contributing to the revival of medical science. In 
 the year 718 Petroneas, a Brescian nobleman, at the instiga- 
 tion of Gregory II., reconstructed the monastery which after- 
 ward became so illustrious.^^ Towards the close of the sixth 
 century Gregory himself assumed the direction of the convent 
 of Saint Andrew at Rome. During his pontifical administra- 
 
 '' " Hortos olerum vel apparatus ciborum propriis sibi manibus fratres exer- 
 ceant." Ibid., p. 562. 
 
 ^^ Du Cange, Gloss., sub v. Cellerar. 
 
 '* Ibid., sub V. Advocatus. 
 
 '^Ibid., sub V. Infirmarius; and Codex cit., cap. 48, col. 639.; vide Mabillon 
 Ord. St. B. An., Tom. I., p. 56. 
 
 '* Petrus Diaconus, Chronicon Casinense, sub an. 580. 
 
 "Mabillon, Ord. S. Bened. Annales, Tom. II., c. 32, p. 54.
 
 154 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 tion of this abbey, an event occurred having direct reference 
 to the history of medicine of the time. 
 
 One of the monks signahzed himself as a dexterous phy- 
 sician ; but, contrary to the stringent rules of the Benedictines, 
 it appears he received three pieces of gold as compensation 
 for skillful medical treatment of such diseased and infirm as 
 sought the remedies at the Cloister Infirmary.'* From this it 
 is evident that as early as the period designated, this charitable 
 apartment was frequented by those afflicted with bodily ills, 
 in quest of medical curatives or the attendance of monastic 
 surgeons, whose duty required gratuitous service. When the 
 coins were discovered upon the body of the deceased ceno- 
 bite, Saint Gregory peremptorily ordered them cast on the 
 rigid cadaver, in presence of the brethren, who were directed 
 to recite the terrible anathema: "Thy money be with thee in 
 perdition!" but the complaisant humanity of the great Evan- 
 gelist softened before this awful malediction.'"*^ 
 
 The extension of the Monastic order opened in the west of 
 Europe scholastic institutions which propagated the orthodox 
 creed and cultivated literature. In the city of Seville, a school 
 was presided over by Leander, who directed the studies of his 
 disciples by the supervision of sagacious masters.*" Subse- 
 quent to the death of its abbot, this conventual organization 
 was honored with the illustrious and erudite scholar, Isidore, 
 who provided the people of the Western Church with the 
 writings of Aristotle prior to the advent of the Saracens. In 
 his Etymologaria many classical fragments are preserved, 
 which, without this record, would have utterly perished. ' His 
 compilation of the sciences of a more remote age and of a 
 contemporaneous period, A. D. 636, equals in many respects 
 
 ^*Gregor. Maxim., Dialog., Lib. IV., c. 55. 
 
 "^"^ Unstinted admiration must be awarded tliis pope for his service to music, 
 which he introduced on a scale of grandeur commensurate with the increasing 
 pomp of the Romish ritualism. An amusing account of the attempted introduc- 
 tion of the pompous swell of tlie Gregorian chant to the harsh, guttural voices 
 of the Franks, is given by the author of Vita Karoli Magni, p. 52. 
 
 ^o Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, Tom. II., p. 218.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 1-5 
 
 the encyclopaedical writings of the Alexandrine scholars, and 
 entitles him to the profound esteem of modern scholarship. 
 Among these are elaborate treatises on liberal arts and 
 sciences," law and philosophy, constituting an imperishable 
 monument of curious erudition. 
 
 Isidore prepared an epitome of medicinal art and natural 
 history, which, together with the works of Cassiodorus, were 
 extensively used by the mediaeval schools. In the Gallic pro- 
 vinces the Monastic system was permanently established as 
 early as the time of Gregory of Tours, historian of the Frank- 
 ish kings. The marvellous curative property of the Saints' 
 relics, as attested by the personal test of the Turonese pontiff, 
 have been alluded to ; these remedies were rivalled by the liv- 
 ing presence of St. Julian, a holy anchorite, the independence 
 of whose solitude was soon interrupted by the indigent, and 
 resonant with the despairing clamor of the sick, to whom he 
 gav^e both alms and health.^^ How far the pontifical historian 
 succumbed to the appearance of miraculous cures, it is impos- 
 sible to determine ; but the degradation of medicine may be 
 presumed when he asserts that the diseases of the sick and in- 
 firm were banished upon the contact of a few drops of water 
 drawn from a spring dug by Saint Martin's own hands." 
 
 An additional event mentioned by this distinguished annal- 
 ist will confirm the profound impression already made upon 
 the popular mind, by remedial power attributed to personages 
 of monastic habit and of extraordinary sanctity at the close 
 of the sixth century. One day Aredius traversing Paris found 
 Chilperic prostrate with a grievous fever. The royal sufferer 
 besought the saint's prayers as an irresistible curative. Among 
 the obnoxious measures charged against the Prankish King 
 was a sweeping impost "upon Gallic towns and municipalities. 
 
 ■•i Isidore doubtless closely imitated the Opus of Martiani Capella, which divided 
 art and science into Philologia, Grammatica, Uialectica, Rhetorica, Geometri, 
 Arithmetica, Astronomica, and Musica. 
 
 *^Gregor. Turoniens, De Miraculis S. Juliani, Lib. II., cc. 23-26. 
 
 ^^Gregor. Turon., De Miraculis S. Martini, Lib. II., cap. 24.
 
 156 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 It should be mentioned as an honorable exception to the gen- 
 eral drift of such legends, that although the saint had often- 
 times interposed the immense puissance accorded him, it was 
 not restricted to protecting religious houses and their conse- 
 crated sacerdoty, but freely exercised in favor of oppressed 
 people. Disregarding the importunities of the diseased mon- 
 arch, Aredius first demanded the absolute extinction of the 
 assessment rolls, which were ultimately tendered him. 
 
 The abbot thereupon, surrounded by a great throng of per- 
 sons, publicly fired the contribution registers, but before the 
 fire had consumed them, announced the future health of the 
 King.''* Perhaps the most thorough attestation of the con- 
 tempt into which physicians had fallen compared with saintly 
 medicists, is the uncontroverted fact that such cures were in- 
 variably made after earthly medicine had been exhausted.*^ 
 The establishment of such monasteries as Saint Gall, Luxeuil, 
 and Fontanelle, should occupy the attention of the historian 
 of medical economy of the early ages, inasmuch as these 
 sacred organizations were the first to become solidly instituted 
 through unequivocal marks of imperial favor from the Carlo- 
 vingians, and as providing instructive information touching the 
 venerable usages involved in curing the sick whose maladies 
 were professedly demoniacal. After the departure of Saint 
 Columban.the Irish evangelist, summoned to the Papal court, 
 his authorized successor remained to consummate the eccle- 
 siastical labors so auspiciously begun in the Gallic provinces. 
 
 Saint Gall, in whose honor the monastery was named, had 
 occasion to vindicate the supernatural power of his master 
 delegated to him, when the daughter of a Teutonic nobleman 
 was brought before him seriously ill with an incurable dis- 
 order, presenting the livid appearance of an animated cadaver.** 
 As an indication to what extent the doctrine of diabolical 
 
 "Ibid., Vita S. Aridii abbatis, c. 25. 
 
 45i< Yero tradidit medicis." Gregor. Turonen., De Miraculis S. Martini, Lib. 
 II., c. 24. 
 
 "Walafrid Strabo, Vita S. Galli., Lib. I., cap. iS.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 157 
 
 causation of maladies had spread and entered into the faith as 
 an integral portion at so remote a day as the period before us, 
 the method applied for a remedy restoring health to the 
 moribund princess is of great significance. Saint Gall ap- 
 proached the unconscious invalid as she reclined upon her 
 mother's knees. Assuming the bended attitute of invocation 
 by her side, the evangelist made a fervent prayer, and con- 
 cluded by using the formal conjuration, evoking the demon 
 producing the sickness to instantly depart.*' 
 
 This species of exorcism, of more extended application at a 
 later period of the Middle Ages, was oftentimes accompanied 
 by an irresistible exorcism, by virtue of the unutterable 
 name. 
 
 The diabolical spirit quickly responded to the invocation of 
 Saint Gall, that it was indeed he whom the exorcist had com- 
 manded to leave the virgin's body, and questioned not the 
 resistless power of the abbot to cure the maiden's infirmity.*' 
 In the year 640, when this saint died, nearly the entire territory 
 of Germany was Christianized, and around his cell were 
 grouped the rudiments of a monastery, which became a cele- 
 brated school for the propagation of Christianity, a principal 
 centre of intellectual brilliancy, from which radiated the men- 
 tal culture of Mediaeval Europe, and at an early period in the 
 ninth century, drafted the plan of a perfect cloister, whose 
 internal adjustments are of value to the subject of medicine at 
 that distant epoch. 
 
 Of equal importance to the development of a system which 
 exercised unlimited influence to retard the revival of medical 
 science, although sharing with others its benefits for preserving 
 
 *' " Domine Jesu Christe, etc., jube nunc immundissimum spiritum de puella hac 
 pro tui gloria nominis exire. Impero tibi in nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi, 
 spiritus immunde, ut exeas et recedas ab hoc plasmate Dei." When the spirit 
 conjured retreated, he passed across her lips in shape of a horrible black bird — 
 "Avis nigerima et horrores terribills." Ibid. 
 
 *8<< Per enarribile Nomen, per beloi hadonai," etc. Baluzius, Capitularia, Tom. 
 II., col. 662, No. 10. 
 
 *nValafrid Strabo, Vita S. Galli., Lib. II., cap. 7.
 
 1^8 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 art, was the erection of the monastic edifice at Luxeuil, in 
 Western Gaul, and frequented in great numbers on account of 
 the eminence of its schools.^" Saint Vardrille, the founder of 
 Fontanelle*, in the year 648, exercised his remedial potency in 
 healing the palsied arm of a forester, whose indiscreet zeal had 
 induced him to transfix the sainted abbot with a lance.""^ Some 
 of the monasteries engaged in the preparation of oil from 
 whales, of which many appear to have entered the river Seine, 
 and with this the gloom of their long winter evenings was 
 brightened.^^ 
 
 A legend narrated by the chronicler of Saint Aichade's life, 
 will attest the profound belief at this epoch, of that supernatural 
 puissance which, it was devoutly accorded, manifested itself 
 under specific circumstances, the development of which belief 
 contributed to the prostration of medicine -as a science, and 
 established a practice of curing maladies, on the basis of an 
 art, under the direction of angelic or divine forces. 
 
 This pious abbot, towards the conclusion of a long and 
 eventful career, apprehending that his death might expose the 
 Monastic brethren to the pitfalls of sin, earnestly invoked the 
 Saviour to adjust the perplexing trouble. The following night 
 he saw an angel gliding through the conventual dormitory. As 
 the emissary of Deity, he touched one-half of the slumbering 
 recluses, whose aggregate numbers reached nine hundred, 
 with a staff, and at the same time promised the anxious prior, 
 that when in a few days these four hundred and fifty monks 
 ascended to heaven, they should advance to convoy him to the 
 celestial sphere after his decease. Upon receiving notification 
 of their approaching departure, the abbe prepared them for 
 this grand journey with sacramental rites. Joining each other 
 in the mystic celebration of the viaticum, they entered the 
 chapel of the Monastery accompanied by the untouched re- 
 cluses. Flanked by two confreres, the elect sounded with them 
 
 soMabillon, Annales Ord. S. BenecL, Tom. II., p. 603. 
 
 5' Vita S. Ansberti, cap. I ; apud Mabillon, op. cit., Tom. IT., p. 16. 
 
 *2 Vita S. Philiberti, cc. i, 5, 6 and 32.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 159 
 
 triumphal chants, and while the musical jubilee arose and 
 swelled in harmonious echoes, the figures of those marked for 
 ecstatic glory began to glow with unmistakable indications of 
 coming transformation. Totally divested of suffering or pain, 
 they passed away from their monastic associates, the first troop 
 at the hour of terce,^^ the second at sextus,^* the third at 
 nones,^^ the fourth at vespers, and the last at completus.'** For 
 eight days their obsequies were celebrated by those whose pas- 
 sionate regrets broke forth into lamentations that they them- 
 selves were unworthy to thus ascend the resplendent path- 
 way of divine bliss.''' 
 
 Such traditions, while more firmly rooting the monastic sys- 
 tem, and augmenting the numbers of those seeking the sur- 
 roundings of a religious existence, developed without defiance 
 in the popular mind, an unshaken belief touching the ocular 
 exhibition of angelic power within the narrowed and secluded 
 walls of cloisters, and accepted thus early in the sixth century 
 the more ancient doctrines of ecclesiastical writers, who, as we 
 have seen, asserted the interposition of Omnipotence in phys- 
 ical affairs, and adapted this faith to the curative art which 
 preserved an existence throughout the Middle Ages. 
 
 The Irish, closely following the retreating footsteps of their 
 Erse predecessors at this period, flocked to Rome in vast 
 crowds, where they rendered the homage of an ardent devo- 
 tion, and once, while progressing in their journey towards the 
 Papal See, they thronged the xenodochium of a monastery 
 in Gaul so densely as to cause a leper to lament outside the 
 cloister gate, suffering from this horrible disease (which, as 
 we shall hereafter discover, was perpetuated to modern times 
 uninterruptedly), and recumbent on the ground, asking to be 
 
 ^^ Du Cange, Glossarium, sub v. Tertia. 
 ** Du Cange, sub v. Sexta. , 
 ^^ Ibid., sub V. Nona. 
 ^^Ibid., sub v. Completus. 
 
 "Acta Sanctor., Bolland., Sep. I., Tom. V., p. loi ; and Mabillon, Annalcs 
 Old. 3. Bened., Saecul. 2, Tom. II., p. 930.
 
 i6o • HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 received within. The main entrance to the abbey was quickly 
 swung open, and the diseased wanderer carried in upon the 
 robust shoulders of the abbot himself, where he was provided 
 a suitable place near the ruddy glow of the blazing fire. The 
 prior then hastened to procure pure water with which to 
 cleanse the leper, and linen to wipe his hands. 
 
 On his return the leprous stranger had disappeared, and 
 as a convincing proof of his angelic presence, behind him 
 was left an aroma so delightful that it penetrated the whole 
 edifice, and could be compared alone to the perfumes of the 
 Orient or the delicate distillations of springtime flowers.^* 
 Abbe Eustasius returning from Rome, whither a mission of 
 Clothair 11. had called him, was urgently summoned by the 
 sorrowing parent of a Burgundian maiden, in the last agonies 
 of a frightful malady, to appear and cure the moribund 
 daughter. It appearing that his child had in her youth been 
 consecrated by the vows of chastity, and shrunk from a mar- 
 riage sanctioned by her parents, Eustasius reproached the 
 father for his efforts to violate the solemn engagements of the 
 virgin, and upon obtaining a formal renunciation of further 
 attempts to coerce her into matrimony, the saint by personal 
 intercession obtained a complete cure.^" 
 
 From the preceding and rapid narration touching the organ- 
 ization and extension of the monastic system in Europe, from 
 the time of Benedict to the eighth century, it is evident with 
 their growth the doctrine that these cenobites, as persons of 
 distinguished piety and exemplary lives, were endowed 
 through superior sanctity with puissant forces, was accepted 
 universally, uncontroverted and with absolute faith, and that 
 these divine powers were oftentimes applied to cure such dis- 
 eases as required miraculous treatment. 
 
 In unnumbered instances these convents were propagated 
 by anchorites, whose adoring devotees frequently, upon exi- 
 gent occasions, witnessed the actual operation of this resistless 
 
 5* Vita S. Agilii, cc. 17 and 20; 4 ap., A. S. S. Boll., Tom. I., p. 14. 
 
 *' Vita S. Eustasii, cc. 12 and 14; ap. Acta S. S. Bolland, Tom. II., p. 420.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. i6i 
 
 potency, and when the monasteries attained to unqualified suc- 
 cess and constituted an integral portion of the ecclesiastical 
 and civil society, the reputation of unnatural cures, or the 
 boldly-announced possession of wonder-working reliques, en- 
 larged the number of monks and materially benefited the con- 
 ventual finances.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Age of Charlemagne — His Enlightened Policy- — Introduces Discipline in 
 the Monasteries — Liberal Arts and Sciences Regulated by the Chartu- 
 laries — The Emperor Adverse to Medical Attendance — His Israelitish 
 Surgeon — Saracen Gift of Medicaments to the Gallic Ruler — Found- 
 ing of the Celebrated Monte Cassino — Its Great Services to Medicine 
 — Noted Medical Scholiasts of this Cloister — Nucleus of a Library of 
 Medicine There — This Art Pursued in Italian Monasteries under the 
 Carlovingians — Teutonic Lavis on Surgical Evidence — Social Status of 
 Surgeons Recognized by Edicts of Gothic Kings — Medicinal Art to be 
 Taught in Monastic Schools — Phlebotomy or Conventual Blood-letting. 
 
 NEXT in importance to the progres.s of civilization in West- 
 ern Europe, the reign of Charlemagne should be added to 
 the establishment in France of the Monastic orders; and no 
 ruler prior to the age of Frederick II. endeavored by the force 
 of legislation more assiduously to provoke an interest in the 
 study of medical art. The earlier years of this illustrious 
 monarch having been almost exclusively occupied in strength- 
 ening his power among his own people and in subjugating 
 the warlike Saxons after a conflict of thirty-three years/ in 
 sixty mighty battles, with their unnumbered victims,^ it was 
 only towards the conclusion of prolonged and fruitful rule 
 that he began to establish the practical details of uniform gov- 
 ernment, and to earnestly patronize intellectual culture. 
 
 After the successful termination of the colossal wars against 
 the well-governed Saxons,' the most considerable illustration 
 of his martial prowess was the complete overthrow of the 
 Avares on the Danube, whose uncivilized forces at one period 
 
 ' " Per continuos trigenta tres annos." Eiginhard, Vita Caroli Magiii., cap. 7. 
 ' Annales De Gestis Caroli Magni, Lib. II., Indie. 4, v. 95. 
 •'Adam Hrcm., (lesta Ham. Pontific, Lib. I., c. 6. 
 
 (162)
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 163 
 
 threatened Constantinople,* and ventured to approach the 
 dehmitations of Prankish territory in the time of Charlemap^ne, 
 and even at a more remote period.^ In these unequalled con- 
 flicts, he fairly disrupted their military power, seized their 
 treasures," and utterly precluded their domination in Europe.' 
 As the undaunted and martial evangelist of the Christian 
 Church, this great monarch forced an unqualified acceptance 
 of this new faith by the Saxons, of whom great numbers, yet 
 devoted to the sanguinary rites and idolatrous worship of Thor, 
 Odin and Frey, were baptized in one day.* 
 
 In the active pursuance of an enlightened policy, and in- 
 cited by the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the empire, one of the 
 first steps towards lasting dominion over the restless minds of 
 his new converts was the subdivision of the conquered prov- 
 inces into eight bishoprics, of which Mentz and Cologne were 
 erected into the metropolitan see.** The utter extinction of 
 Longobardic rule in Italy, under Desiderius, towards the end 
 of the eighth century, established papal supremacy, and se- 
 cured for Charlemagne the honors of imperial coronation.'" 
 From this era the whole weight of the Western Empire uni- 
 formly supported the pontifical dogmas, and with material 
 and legislative force cooperated to their extension and main- 
 tenance. 
 
 To the expanding power of the monasteries throughout 
 Gaul or France, as an integral element of the empire, the 
 Frankish emperor added the active fruition of law, and sanc- 
 tioned this increase by the influence of personal favor. Within 
 a few years after the assumption of the imperial title, the vast 
 
 * Gibbon, Hist, of the Decline and Fall of Rome, Vol. IV., cc. 43 and 46. 
 *Aimonius, De Gestis Francor., Lib. III., c. 84; and Gregor. Turones., His- 
 tor. Francor., Lib. IV. 
 
 •Anom., Vita Caroli Magni, Tom. I., p. 55. 
 
 ' Eiginhard., op. cit., cap. 13. 
 
 ^Anom., Vita, cit., p. 52. 
 
 •Ad. Bremen, Gesta Ham. Pontif., Lib. I., cc. 12 and 13. 
 
 "*Annal. De Gestis Caroli Magni, Lib. IV., Indie. 8.
 
 1 64 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 district of domain extending from the Sicilian gulf to the 
 extreme limits of Frisia, and from the Spanish peninsula to 
 the Black sea," began to exhibit architectural vitality, both 
 sacred and profane,^^ while down to the date of his death, he 
 appears to have contemplated the construction of a flotilla as 
 a defence against the invasions of Norsemen.''^ 
 
 In addition to the dialects of his native country, the imperial 
 Charles zealously aided in cultivating among his subjects a 
 knowledge of both the Greek and Latin languages, with which 
 he was familiar. The fundamental principles of art and science, 
 such at least as survived the disasters of Gothic destruction, 
 preserved by the Church at this period, and known according 
 to the captious division of Martianus Capella" as the seven 
 liberal arts and sciences, were most assiduously cultivated by 
 the Frankish emperor, to that extent, indeed, which entitled 
 him to the honorable distinction of Didasculus,^^ equivalent to 
 master of learning. To the professors of the Trivium and 
 Quadrium, which at a later date included medical art, marked 
 honors were attributed, and valuable compensations awarded. 
 During the active and bitter campaign in Italy, which termi- 
 nated in the overthrow of the Longobardic dominion, Charle- 
 magne was brought in contact with an erudite grammarian, 
 in the city of Pavia,^" whom Eiginhard designates as Peter 
 Pisanum,^' who obtained illustration on account of instructing 
 the western ruler in the arts alluded to. Alcuin, a deacon of 
 extended scholastic learning, was the tutor of this monarch in 
 rhetoric, dialectics, and astronomy. As a fair attestation of 
 astronomical knowledge, Charlemagne described the stellar 
 movements in a metrical poem. 
 
 *i Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. III., p. 152. 
 
 '2 Eiginhard., Vita Caroli Magni, cap. 18. 
 
 13 Ibid., cap. 17. 
 
 i*Vide Supra, p. 155. 
 
 i=Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Didasculus. 
 
 '" Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. III., p. 155. 
 
 "Eiginhard, Vita Caroli Magni, cap. 25.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 165 
 
 Before reverting to the private customs of the Emperor, 
 which will justify a conclusion touching the status of medical 
 practitioners and of this avocation at that period, the services 
 rendered in aggregating the edicts of predecessors on the 
 throne should be noted, especially as these collections were 
 the laws by which the Monastic system was guided, and by 
 which practical instruction in medicine was ordered to be 
 given in conventual schools throughout the empire. What- 
 ever may have been his intentions regarding the diversified 
 laws among the different people subject to the government, he 
 appears to have considered the necessity of adding to these 
 such parts as were wanting, and of striking out portions, al- 
 though of high antiquity, w^hich demanded alteration in ac- 
 cordance with the changed order of religious affairs/® This 
 design was thwarted, perhaps, by his death, as may be gath- 
 ered from Eiginhard, who affirms that nothing was done in 
 this direction, excepting the addition of a few capitularies, and 
 those imperfect, to existing statutes.^^ 
 
 Nevertheless, the unwritten law of all his subjects was, by 
 his order, reduced to writing. So far as those habits of dress 
 and person are concerned, which tend to elucidate the condi- 
 tion of the curative art and sanitary notions in the Carlovin- 
 gian age, it may be stated that this monarch, contrary to his 
 descendant, Otho, wore the national costume, consisting of a 
 linen camisa,^" or underwear, next to the body, supplemented 
 with short hose of similar stuff'" — the disuse of which, in after 
 ages, largely contributed to the propagation of epidemics and 
 pestilential disorders. 
 
 Finely-dressed skins, more anciently adopted by the Ro- 
 mans," and still used by the Huns,^'* completed the emperor's 
 
 '* This expurgation was not so rigid as to exclude paganistic allusions. Lex 
 Frision. Addit. Sap., Tit. XL, p. 37. 
 
 ^'Eiginhard, op. cit., cap. 29. 
 
 '"Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Casmia ; and Isidor., Etymologiar., Lib. XIX., 
 cap. 22. 
 
 ^^ Eiginhard, Vita Caroli Magni, cap. 22. 
 
 -^Ammian. Marcellin., Gesta Roman., Lib. XXXL, cap. 2. 
 
 " Horatii, Satira, Lib. L, — 5.
 
 1 66 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 external raiment. Although foreign vestments of most ele- 
 gant texture were freely worn at the imperial court, Char- 
 lemagne invariably refused to invest himself with it, except- 
 ing at Rome, where in deference to the expressed wish of 
 Hadrian, the Supreme Pontiff, and of Leo, his successor, he 
 donned the Latin tunic, venerable chlamydis and sandals. In 
 all his acts he powerfully aided in provoking a taste for the 
 writings of the Christian Fathers, of which he preferred the 
 treatise De Civitate" of Saint Augustin, otherwise surnamed 
 the Pastoral."^ 
 
 If it be possible to conclude upon the basis of sanitary 
 economy, touching the advanced age reached by Charlemagne, 
 perhaps such deduction may fail to vindicate a high estimation 
 of the medical profession, but dignify the excellence of a tem- 
 perate and frugal life, especially in the use of wine and food. 
 With systematic regularity, after his nightly slumbers, all 
 litigants were introduced before him, and their legal perplexi- 
 ties promptly adjudicated.'^^ According to the reliable attesta- 
 tion of his biogropher and son-in-law,"' Imperial Chancellor, 
 the Emperor preserved a robust vigor and firm step until to- 
 wards the end of his career. For an interval of four years 
 prior to his death he was troubled with frequent fevers, and 
 lameness in one foot. In order to combat the encroachments 
 of disease, which grievously afflicted him, he resorted to such 
 medicaments as suit an arbitrary judgment, rather than follow 
 the prescriptions and direction of physicians, for whom he 
 professed great abhorrence.'^** 
 
 Notwithstanding the legislation and rescripts in the diverse 
 codes sanctioned by the Gallic ruler, recognized the legality 
 
 ^* Eiginhard, op. cit., cap. 24. 
 
 '^Thegani, De Gestis Ludovici, cap. 20. 
 
 ** Eiginhard, op. cit., cap. 24. 
 
 ^' Vide Chronicon Laureshamensis, where the escapade of the emperor's 
 daughter is detailed and conchided by marriage with Eiginhard. 
 
 ^*" Et tunc quidem plura arbitratu sue, quam medicorum consilio faciebat, quos 
 pene exosos habebat." Eiginhard, Vita Caroli Magni, cap. 22.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 167 
 
 and functions of medical men in a limited signification, it is 
 evident that throughout the colossal domains of the Frankish 
 empire, such as pursued this art were of low attainments, though 
 avowedly trained in the practice of medicine and surgery, or, 
 exclusive of an Israelitish surgeon^^ and perhaps the distin- 
 guished Wintarius, who it is claimed was physician to the 
 emperor,''" in their use of remedies resembled the ambulatory 
 professors of the pagan, Teutons, and when exposed to the 
 criticism of an unprofessional scrutiny become objects of sus- 
 picion and distrust. In the year 801, a Jewish ambassador 
 to the Saracen court'" at Bagdad, brought back with him as 
 presents from the Caliph, among other gifts, a valuable selec- 
 tion of unguents, prized for their medicinal properties.^^ 
 
 One of the obnoxious regulations of his medical advisers, 
 which seems to have provoked most unfavorably the great 
 monarch, was a professional interdict laid upon the roasted 
 flesh usually placed upon the royal table, and a somewhat 
 compulsory persuasion to accommodate himself, instead, to 
 broths or stewed meats.^^ As an additional preventative to 
 declining health, the august patient gave himself to frequent 
 equitation, in which he, with other Franks, was unrivalled. 
 Recourse appears to have been had, in his day, to the medi- 
 cinal benefits of bathing in the spray or steam of water 
 naturally warm. For the purpose of diurnal natatory exercise 
 in the tepid stream in the near vicinity of a royal domicil, 
 he constructed a palace, where he resided at the time of his 
 death.^* In this sanitative habit, which he adopted at the 
 instigation of his physicians, he was often accompanied by the 
 
 ^^Depping, Geschichte der Juden in Mittelalter, Th. I., p. 50. 
 
 ^"Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 241. 
 
 '^ Anonom., Vita Caroli Magni, p. 58. 
 
 ^^Annalista Saxo., Histor. Francor., sub an. cit., p. 169. 
 
 '3 " Quod ei in cibis affa, quibus assuetus erat, dimittere, et eli.xis assuescere 
 suadebant." Eiginhard, op. cit., cap. 22. 
 
 ^* " Delectabatur etiam vaporibus aqiiarum naturaliter caicntium, frequenti na- 
 tatu corpus exercens," etc. Eiginhard, Vita Caroli Magni, cap. 22.
 
 1 68 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 princes and nobility, whose numbers sometimes aggregated 
 more than a hundred. 
 
 Before proceeding to examine the condition of the heahng 
 art under the Carlovingian rulers, through their laws and the 
 specific circumstances, either aiding to modify its scientific 
 elements or retard its advancement and reduce it to the level of 
 an empirical method, mingled with those supernatural auxil- 
 iaries provoked by demoniacal causes of maladies, which 
 absorbed remedies into the hands of devotee monks, a sketch 
 of the medical culture propagated by the monastery of Monte 
 Cassino, will attest the vague and shadowy remnants of this 
 science in its decadence, with sufficient vitality to prolong the 
 fragile thread through two centuries, when it suddenly re- 
 vived."^ 
 
 If, at this epoch, amid so many revolutions to which society 
 was subjected, the application of a higher type of medicine did 
 not entirely succumb to the frightful catastrophes by which 
 the most enlightened portions of Europe were clouded in the 
 gloom of sanguinary violence, it was indebted, in conjunction 
 with other arts, to the efforts of a few monasteries which pre- 
 served them from irretrievable destruction. The curative art, 
 indeed, had receded from the higher altitudes of Galenic skill, 
 and within the cloisters themselves was in perpetual conflict 
 with the rapidly-expanding faith in the Satanic origin of sick- 
 ness and diseases, making it quite impossible to trace these 
 ills to natural causes, a difficulty aggravated as directly 
 rivaling accepted dogmas of the Church; while among the 
 people, Teutonic charlatans and impostors sadly supplemented 
 the debasement of a science, provoked by ecclesiastical sanction 
 at an early period of the Middle Ages. 
 
 To the monastery of Monte Cassino, in the ninth century, 
 the impartial commendation should be made that in its incip- 
 ient advance towards a more exact examination of ancient 
 medical writers, a decided tendency manifested itself It would 
 no doubt be more in harmony with the facts relating to medical 
 
 ^^ Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. III., p. 263.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 169 
 
 economy in this abbey, to record that the excellence of Saint 
 Bertrarius in this art is rather individual than the culture of an 
 entire monastery. Although thoroughly imbued with scholas- 
 ticism, the writings of this monk reveal an unusual erudition 
 for the age. 
 
 Of these, the most noted are his flattering biography of the 
 founder of Western monachism, Saint Benedictus, and an- 
 other treatise, in which he endeavored to harmonize conflicting 
 passages of sacred Scripture, and bring them into chrono- 
 logical and historical concordance, an effort, for that period, 
 worthy of the highest praise.'^^ 
 
 Among such works, ho\yever, having direct reference to the 
 matter under examination prepared by Bertrarius, the monastic 
 chronicler relates the presentation, among other books, by 
 him, to the conventual library, of two manuscript volumes." 
 In these, the erudite cleric had aggregrated great numbers 
 of prescriptions and remedies for the cure of maladies, selected 
 by personal labor from illustrious professors of the science in 
 the past.^^ It would, doubtless, be elevating the medical ser- 
 vices of Bertrarius to an unwarrantable height, if it were 
 assumed that this industry partook of a scientific nature, when 
 it is evident he was without more active incentive than the 
 compilation of practical receipts. 
 
 The Carlovingian regulations stirred a zealous attention, 
 among the monks of the empire, to the culture of medicine, 
 denominated an art, and appear to have animated the con- 
 vents of Italy and Gaul, during the progress of the ninth 
 century; because, among other studies in which the monastic 
 brethren were exercised, some attention was devoted to this as 
 a branch of the liberal arts,'^^ prescribed as fundamental in the 
 monasteries, opened alike to ecclesiastical and lay students, 
 
 *® Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. III., p. 212 seq. 
 ^' " Duo codices medicinales, ejus utirjue industiia de innumeiis remediorum 
 utilitatibus hinc inde collecti." Leo Ostiens, Chronicon Casinense, Lib. L, cap. t,t,. 
 ^® Leo Ostiens, Chronicon Casinense, Lib. L, cap. 33. 
 *^Baluzius, Capitularia, Tom. L, col. 421.
 
 I70 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 and an extended aquaintanceship with these arts was made 
 mandatory and a necessary prerequisite for the acceptance and 
 conservation of postulants for church orders.""* 
 
 In the venerable annals chronicling the events of the Torfa 
 cloister for this period, it is stated the study of medicine was 
 pursued at the convent, under the skilled direction of the 
 abbot, Reoffred." A disciple, studying cures and remedies for 
 diseases under the personal tutelage of this prior, was a youth 
 destined to monastic obligations, by the name of Campon. 
 The progress of this stripling seems to have been rapid, and 
 his tendency to vice and crime equally accelerated by an 
 unholy ambition/^ Having evidently acquired profound in- 
 sight into the deleterious effects of certain poisons, this candi- 
 date for sacerdotal honors, instead of responding to the 
 urbanity and paternal affection of his religious and medical 
 preceptor, insiduously administered to him a mortal beverage, 
 which quickly terminated the earthly career of the benevolent 
 abbot/^ As an attestation of the frightful depravity of the 
 age succeeding Charlemagne, it may be stated here, that the 
 monkish assassin intruded himself forcibly into the govern- 
 ment of the Torfa cloister, and apparently before summary 
 justice could prevent, he had dissipated the whole of its most 
 valuable goods." 
 
 That there were personages among the ancient Teutonic 
 tribes who abandoned themselves to the practice of medicine 
 in its varied and cognate branches, would seem to admit of no 
 doubt. So far as the older Saxon races are concerned, who 
 had attained a high civilization at the epoch of their utter sub- 
 jection by Charlemagne, it has been asserted they possessed 
 
 ^Capitular., Aquisgran, cap. 70, An. 789; apud Baluz., op. cit., Tom. I., p. 
 237- 
 
 *i Muratori, Scriptores Rcr. Italico, Tom. II., pars. 2, p. 257. 
 
 *^" Quorum imus Campo, ejus ab infantia alumnus et in arte medicinee erudi- 
 tus." Mabillon., Annales Ord. S. Benedict., Tom. III., p. 431. 
 
 *^ " Hausto letali poculo." Mabillon, Annales Ord. S. Benedict, Tom. III., 
 P- 431- 
 
 ** Ibid.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 171 
 
 neither physicians nor surgeons.^^ If it be conceded that this 
 people excluded practitioners of this art from their social 
 organization, other less cultured nations appear to have de- 
 parted from their example. For several centuries prior to the 
 codification of laws governing the vanquished tribes of Gaul 
 and Germany, subjected by the resistless forces of Charle- 
 magne, the edicts and enactments of his predecessors, inspired 
 with a desire to imitate the imperishible monuments of civil 
 law,** distinctly affirm the existence among the Teutonic races 
 of a professor of this avocation, alluded to and classified es- 
 pecially with the same formal phraseology as designated the 
 learned physicians and surgeons of the Roman empire, viz: 
 Medicus. , 
 
 In all these statutory regulations this element is a well 
 recognized one in the society of the German people, and ap- 
 pears to be as carefully defined and important as the judicial 
 system, where this personage was required oftentimes to 
 appear. One of the earliest records, so far as we know, which 
 definely denominates among the Teutons practitioners of 
 medicine, and distinctly recognizes them as personages of 
 eminent social consideration and entitled to recognition for 
 their profession, may be found in the laws of Dagobert, king 
 of the Alemanni, which were drawn up and promulgated 
 about the year 632.''" In the Prcem or prefatory addition to 
 the code, it is stated to have been agreed upon by the king, 
 in the presence of princes and nobility, Christian pontiffs and 
 populace, actually signifying their consent.** 
 
 The personal attendance of bishops when these enactments 
 were decided upon might seem to warrant the inference that 
 the medicus or medical man alluded to in these written laws, 
 belonged to monasteries located in Gaul, subjected to pontifi- 
 
 *^ Heineccii, Antiquitates German., Tom. I., p. 606. 
 
 *®Lex Alemannorum, cap. 98, sub fin. De Legibus; apud Goldast., Tom. II., 
 p. 24. 
 
 *" Goldastius, Antiquita. Aleman., Tom. II., p. I. 
 **Ibid., Tom. II., p. 11.
 
 I 72 
 
 HISTOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 cal control. We shall perhaps presently discover at this 
 period and earlier, persons among the Germanic people who 
 claimed to be endowed with a power to operate cures of mala- 
 dies as marvellous as those performed by their scientific pre- 
 decessors of the Roman Empire. Among other beneficial 
 rescripts published by Dagobert for the better government of 
 his subjects and the preservation of peace, it was solemnly 
 declared/' if any person struck another on the head in anger 
 so that a bony fragment should fall or fly from the wound, of 
 size and density sufficient to be heard twenty-four feet when 
 sounded upon a shield in the highway, such murderous assault 
 should be compensated with a heavy fine. In case however 
 the medicus or, surgeon, to whose custody these evidences of 
 an aggravated crime were entrusted, failed to produce them 
 before the tribunal, he was privileged to swear that a bone 
 had been removed from the head of the wounded person, and 
 was lost. 
 
 If the wound opened a hole to the brain so that it appeared, 
 or exuded, or permitted the medicus or surgeon to touch the 
 same with an instrument in the nature of a probe, or with a 
 napkin,^" or in case the surgeon replaced it with medicaments 
 or bandage, the convict should pay forty solidi." 
 
 From the preceding statements it is clearly attested that so 
 remote as the first half of the seventh century, the avocation 
 of surgeon or medicus was recognized by the supreme code 
 of the Alemanni and Langobards, which entitled him to be 
 present in the courts in a professional character. Curiously 
 enough, in an edict^'^ ofRothar, monarch of the Italian Lango- 
 
 *"" Si autem de capita os fractum tulerit de plaga, ita ut super publica via," 
 etc. "Si autem ipsum medicus perdet," etc. "Si autem testa iranscapulata 
 fuerit, ita ut cervella appareant ut medicus cum pinna aut cum favone cervella 
 tetigit," etc. Lex Alemannorum, cap. 58. For the character of the instruments 
 mentioned in this citation, vide Du Cange, Glossarium Med. et Infim., Latinitas, 
 sub. vv. Favone and Pinna. 
 
 ^^ Lex Alemannorum, cap. 58. 
 
 ^' Leges Langoljard., cap. 59; and Lex Alemannor., cap. 58. 
 
 *^A. D. 643, Merkel, Geschichte der Langobardenrecht, p. 16.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 173 
 
 bards, it was decreed that the loss of the fifth finger by violence 
 should be assessed at two solidi, exclusive of the surgical 
 charges for attendance.^^ It was also provided by the Lango- 
 bardic jurisprudence, that whenever one person assaulted 
 another with sufficient force to seriously wound him, he should 
 at once seek the medicus or surgeon, and lay before him the 
 condition of the wounded, in order that by the solemn sanc- 
 tion of the law medical service might be promptly at hand, to 
 guard as far as possible the life and limb of the Lombards. 
 
 In case the party striking the blow failed to immediately 
 notify a surgeon, then the aggrieved and injured person or his 
 master was required to seek out and find a physician to whom 
 the wounds were to be submitted for professional treatment.^* 
 
 There is every reason to warrant the conclusion that the 
 system of compensation for loss of a serf by death or debili- 
 tation through blundering medical practice, was adopted by 
 other Teutonic tribes than the Wisigoths,'"' although this law 
 of retaliation does not appear in the Roman codification, suf- 
 fered to regulate civil and criminal procedure among the Ger- 
 mans vanquished by Charlemagne. The person striking the 
 injurious blow was required by law to make good such loss as 
 the wound entailed to servant or master, whether of the head 
 or the body and its members, exclusive of charges for medical 
 or surgical attendance, which compensation should be fixed 
 by the judicious assessment of disinterested arbitrators.^" 
 
 Professional skill thus provided, notwithstanding the long 
 dominion of the Langobards in Italy, where the opportunities 
 would appear to have aided in securing the services of a 
 higher grade of physicians, must have emanated from those 
 practitioners of the curative art whose status was carefully 
 
 *^ " Si quintum digitum de manu excusserit componat solidos II.: excepto 
 operas et mercedis medici." Edictum Rotharis Regis., cap. 118. 
 
 ^* Edictum, Rotharis Regis., cap. 118. 
 
 ^Lex Wisigothorum, Lib. XL, Titulus I., Lex. 4; apud Canciani, Leg. Bar- 
 bar., Tom. IV., p. 180. 
 
 ^''" Qui plagas fecerit ipse querat medici," etc. " Et ille qui caput rumpit, et 
 operas reddat et mercedis medici persolvat." Edictum, Roth., cit., cap. 128.
 
 174 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 determined by the Teutonic statutes of a more remote epoch. 
 Wherever indeed among the earlier German races reference is 
 made by contemporaneous history to the enforcement of the 
 penalties against an ignorant physician or unskillful surgeon, 
 for the indemnification of a nobleman's life or a slave's los5 
 through his blundering, or by edicts this class is prominently 
 alluded to, such personages without doubt were ambulatory 
 medical advisers, who followed these nations in their migratory 
 movements whither the desire of conquest or lust of gain led 
 them. As the immediate predecessors of the Carlovingians, 
 to whom European civilization is largely indebted, the Salic 
 legislation is of equal interest as a historical thread by which 
 the condition or existence of practical medicine, in the custody 
 of persons exclusively devoted to this avocation, can be traced 
 anterior to the imperial rescripts of Charlemagne which pre- 
 scribed its study in the monastic schools of the Empire. 
 
 About a quarter of a century subsequent to the formal pro- 
 mulgation of the Rotharic edicts, recognizing the social status 
 and certain privileges of the medicus or surgeon, in a convo- 
 cation of the Salic nation, it was enacted when a blow or stab 
 within the ribs or abdomen should expose the viscera, and be- 
 come an incurable wound, the convict should pay a heavy fine 
 as a punishment, exclusive of the medicaments or such charges 
 as were demanded by the surgeon into whose care the disa- 
 bled person was delivered."'' Upon the accession of Charle- 
 magne to the imperial dignity, a steady and unswerving zeal 
 seems to have characterized all the efforts of this illustrious 
 monarch to so solidly establish the varied interests of his vast 
 empire, under the sanction of civil and canonical authority, as 
 would admit of a perpetual existence. 
 
 With enlightened judgment, imitating the munificence of the 
 great Theodosius and Justinian, his predecessors in the Latin 
 empire, the Teutonic ruler attempted through the mediation of 
 legislation to inspire into the partially civilized minds of his 
 subjects an enthusiasm for polite arts, and to preserve them 
 
 " Pactus, Legis Salic, Titulus XX., cap. 6.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 175 
 
 from the iconoclastic movement of the age, by the protective 
 influence of ecclesiastical canons.^* In the year 804, by a 
 decree granting valuable forest lands, with immunities and 
 perquisites, to the bishopric of Osnaberg, it was expressly 
 stipulated to be for the maintenance of a school in which the 
 Greek and Latin languages should be taught in perpetuity, 
 according to the tenor of the grant, in order that such persons 
 intending to assume clerical orders might not be deficient in a 
 knowledge of these, or, at least, might have the opportunity 
 of acquiring them.^^ 
 
 The schools of the empire, by a law of Ludowig the Pious, 
 issued in the year 823, were made to partake more of the 
 character of a public institution, accessible to such as desired 
 educational facilities, and especially was it directed that these 
 scholastic establishments should be conveniently located in 
 suitable places.®" By the sanction of the Church authorities 
 the pupils were to be instructed in liberal arts, which were 
 particularly specified as psalmody, notation, chanting, compu- 
 tation,®' grammar or reading, and transcribing Catholic books.®'^ 
 It was doubtless an unequivocal advance, and of the highest 
 importance for the future of medical culture in the monaste- 
 ries, whither this art had fled and preserved a fragile vitality, 
 oppressed by the gloom of increasing superstition, when Char- 
 lemagne in the year 805, by a chartulary entitled De Causis 
 Ecclesiasticis, enacted that in addition to the science of cal- 
 culation, the medicinal art must thenceforth be taught the 
 pupils of the monastic schools of the empire as a portion of 
 the prescribed studies, receiving the active sanction of the sac- 
 erdotal authorities.®'' 
 
 ^^Baluzius, Capitular^a, Tom. I., p. 645. 
 
 ^^ Baluzius, Cartularia, Tom. I., p. 419. 
 
 «» Ibid., pp. 634, 737. 
 
 ^' " Psalmos, notas, cantas, computum, grammaticam per singula monasteria vel 
 episcopia discant." Carulor, anno 789, cap. 70; ap. Baluz., op. cit., Tom. I., 
 P- 237- 
 
 62 Ibid. 
 
 ^ " De compote ut veraciter discant omnes. De medicinali arte ut infantes
 
 iy6 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Previous to this year, instruction in the curative art was ap- 
 parently abandoned to the discretion of abbots, who doubtless 
 heeded the urgent admonition of Cassiodorus touching the 
 necessity of a careful study of the writings of medical sages, 
 but these priors as chief of the cloister schools, evidently 
 through personal ignorance, neglected the counsels of the 
 Benedictine anchorite, or inculcated such notions of remedies 
 as were an absolute necessity for emergencies, without the 
 spirit of scientific investigation which vitalized the theme. 
 
 Too high commendation cannot be awarded the illustrious 
 Carlovingian for this rescript, which thenceforth made a study 
 of medicine an element in all the imperial monastic schools, 
 for by the virtue of this law forcible attention was devoted to 
 the writings of Galen, Hippocrates, Celsus, and Dioscorides, 
 which not only tended to their preservation, but, it may be 
 confidently asserted, prepared the way for the revival of this 
 science during the Middle Ages. The Frankish emperor, fol- 
 lowing the custom of the period, in regulating the compensa- 
 tion for wounds, declared that just charges for medicaments 
 were to be allowed, independent of the penalty for violating 
 the law.'* 
 
 A further regulation of the Church as a sanitary measure, 
 may be' mentioned here, sanctioned by the Church under 
 Lewis the Pious, who left the use of the bath among the con- 
 ventual brethren entirely to the prior's arbitration. From the 
 same edict it can be gathered that certain monks subjected 
 themselves at stated intervals to cupping or phlebotomy, so 
 that they might procure in the infirmary a more delicate diet 
 than was usually allowed robust cenobites, and as a preventa- 
 tive the canon established the rule that no blood-letting should 
 be performed at fixed periods — only according to necessity.'^ 
 
 hanc discere mittantur." Capitular., Teotan., cap. 5; Baluz., op. cit., Tom. I., 
 col. 421 ; and Lex Salica., Tit. I., cap. 5, Ed. Eccardi, p. 178. 
 
 ^* Lex Salica, Tit. XIX., cap. 6; and Baluzius, Caitular, Tom. I., col. 294. 
 
 ^^"Utceitum phlebotomia^ tempus non observent, sed uiiicuique secundum 
 necessitus expostulat concedatur." CajDitular., Aquisgranense, anno 817, cap. 11.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 ^n 
 
 Notwithstanding the manifest debasement of medicine to 
 the level of the charlatan and empiric among the Teutonic 
 nations, and the fanatical practitioners within the monasteries 
 of this age, occasional allusions indicate an experimental 
 spirit with the use of remedies in curing diseases, under the 
 expansive rule, "different ills demand different treatment,'"'" 
 that " where the wound is closed medicaments must be intro- 
 duced within to insure a cure."*^ Minute and specific direc- 
 tions were given in an ordinance by Charlemagne in the year 
 800, touching the planting and raising of herbs and vegetables 
 in all the gardens appurtenant to the royal domain. The con- 
 cluding paragraph of this statute is of the highest utility in 
 tracing the progress of horticulture."^ 
 
 *® Baluzius, Cartularia, Tom. I., p. 1191. 
 
 ^^ " Ubi autem vulnus infixum est, medicina adhibenda est." Capitular., Aquis- 
 gran., an. 803, cap. 4; ap. Baluz., op. cit., Tom. I., 380; and Tom. II., p. 158. 
 fi'^ Capitulare, De Villis, cap. 70; apud Baluz., op. cit., Tom. I., p. 342. 
 12
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Nature of Medical Culture among Ancient Germans — Controlled by 
 Sacerdoty — Healing Virtues Attributed to the Mandragora — Used with 
 Runic Characters — Publicly Sold at Fairs — Magic Power of these Effi- 
 gies — Magic Ligations, Potions, etc., for Herds and Men — Teutonic 
 Women Skilled in Medicine — Curative Virtue of the Runes — Toxi- 
 cology — Storm-Evokers or Tempestarii — Profession of Curative Art 
 Recognized at an Early Age — Pagan Word for Surgeon — Ambulatory 
 Physicians — Archaism of Germanic Medical Derivatives — Formulas 
 for Cure, of Ancient Magicians — Virgins Specially Adapted to the Heal- 
 ing Art — Cure of Luxations. 
 
 MEDICAL knowledge among the ancient Germans prior to 
 the Carlovingian dynasty was no doubt confined to prac- 
 tical use of simple medicaments, and such skill in surgery as 
 the emergencies of individual accidents admitted. The Teu- 
 tonic surgeon, whose status was clearly defined by the several 
 edicts of a martial and sanguinary race, was of either sex in- 
 differently, and, without the union being susceptible of demon- 
 stration, identical with its more remote usage in the temples 
 of Apollo, medicine remained in the custody of a sacerdoty 
 who performed ritualistic ceremonies before Norse divinities. 
 So far as a similarity may be instituted between the system of 
 cures accepted by these hardy warriors for themselves and 
 families, and that pursued as a science to its decline amid the 
 general crash of arts, it would seem that the Germanic medi- 
 cus or physician also assumed the endowment of magical 
 properties whose skilled operation perfected cures. How far 
 indeed the secrets of medicine may have been transmitted to 
 these races or their priesthood, by the Greeks and Latins,^ at 
 a period beyond exact research, there is no doubt that the 
 people of Gaul, through the convenient centre of civilization at 
 Marseilles, procured varied methods for palliating serious dis- 
 
 ' Rothii, Disquisitio de Vocabulo Artzt., cap. i, | 19, p. 38. 
 
 (178)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 179 
 
 eases, especially when it is considered that the Gallic nobles 
 frequently attended studies in the lyceum of this city, among 
 which was taught the science of medicine." 
 
 One of the principal herbal medicines to which magical 
 potency was universally ascribed, and which survived the 
 downfall of northern temple-worship through the introduction 
 of Christianity, was the mandragora, or alraun plant.^ To this 
 unusual power was attributed, and in diversified forms it ap- 
 pears to have been used for the provocation and irresistible cure 
 of maladies.* It was eagerly sought for by sterile women, 
 and for obstetrical labors.^ 
 
 In its most ancient adaptation, this alraun, or its cognate, 
 the Runes either carved or shaped like an image, was re- 
 garded as arcane, or possessed of secret inherent forces, which 
 were transmitted under the profoundest mystery ."^ This root, 
 after having been gathered amid impressive and solemn cere- 
 monies,' was carved into the rude effigy of a Norse deity, three 
 of whom, represented by gilded images, still stood in a heathen 
 temple in the time of Columban in Germany.® Thus prepared, 
 these mandragora figures were sold or traded to Teutonic 
 purchasers, as endowed with magic curative forces. From 
 their attributes of peculiar efficiency to prevent evils to herds, 
 and other mishaps against life and property, similar to the 
 Latin tutelary divinities, they were oftentimes carried around 
 enclosures in solemn procession.^ To this custom without 
 
 ^Strabo, De Situ Orbis., Lib. IV.; and Ctesar, De Bello Gallico, Lib. VL, 
 cap. 14. Apollo of the Gauls, patron of the sick. lb., Lib. VL, cap. 17. 
 ■'Grimm, Ueber die Deutsche Runen., p. 68. 
 
 * According to Arjetaeos, De Causis et Signis, Lib. L, c. 6, p. 78. This herb, 
 when mingled with food, produced insanity. 
 
 ^ " Opem enim, quse credulorum persuasio est, mulieribus, sterilitas vitio et par- 
 tus onere laborantibus, ferunt." Rothii, De Imagunculis Germanor., Alraunicis, 
 p. 10. 
 
 •^ Grimm, op. cit., pp. 71, 207. 
 
 " Rothii, op. cit., § 3, p. 6 seq. 
 
 *Walafrid Strabo, Vita S. Galli., Lib. I., cap. 4, p. 144. 
 
 * Rothii, De Imagunc, p. 19.
 
 i8o HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 doubt, so deeply rooted as a part of these paganistic rites 
 against which Christian pontiffs combated by canons and civil 
 law, should be attributed the cause of an interdict by Charle- 
 mange at Lepinta, setting forth that such siuiulacra or figures 
 were borne with heathen celebration through fields and groves 
 as a propitiatory scheme under the invocation of Norse gods, 
 and peremptorily forbidding such practices under the heaviest 
 penalties/" 
 
 These images endowed with curative powers survived to 
 Christianity as an element of saintly remedies. In nearly all the 
 diversified nationalities of the Germanic race, similar proper- 
 ties were attributed to the effigies of their divinities, prior and 
 subsequent to the adoption of a new faith. Among the Norse- 
 men, in the regions of Scandinavia, where the worship of Thor 
 was preeminent, carved types of this battle-god were assumed to 
 possess unlimited puissance as a horoscope and talisman — the 
 basis for which was almost invariably the alraun or mandra- 
 gora. Thus, for instance, when it is stated such images were 
 borne about by Halfred, a poet, and Helogren in a bag, al- 
 though sculptured from a whale's tooth, and charged with the 
 subtle essence of vaticination, it is to be understood they as- 
 similated with the Runic Lares of the ancient Germans." 
 Scandinavians carried metal effigies carved out of gold or 
 silver, or incised upon tiles, perpetually as amulets and safe- 
 guards against diseases and physical infirmities. 
 
 An early Christian Synod convoked in the year 690, in Bur- 
 gundy, a century subsequent to the formal introduction of this 
 religion by Clothair's edict,^" interdicted communicants and 
 proselytes offering oblations in their own abodes, pervigils in 
 the festivities of saints, or on the highways, to sacred trees, 
 and forbade them pledging vows to fountains ; but decreed 
 when a convert had a vow to consecrate it should be performed 
 
 ^"Indiculus Superstit. et Paganiar., cap. i, 26, 27; apud Balazius, Cailular., 
 Tom. I., col. 150; and Sulpicius Sever., Vita S. Martini, cap. 9. 
 " Rothii, De Imagune, Germ. Alrunis., p. 24. 
 ^^Baluzius, op. cit., Tom. I., p. 6 seq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. l8i 
 
 by vigils in a church, and the compensation involved in this 
 act should be tendered the matricula; or poor." This provin- 
 cial council concluded its ordinance by forbidding proselytes 
 manufacturing carved or sculptured effigies with a foot, or 
 linen male figures." 
 
 The sculptilia pede facta'^ placed under ecclesiastical ban, 
 were images of human feet, which the humbler Teutons 
 erected at cross-roads, in order to secure restoration to health 
 and a cure for maladies.^'' An early evangelical pontiff, whose 
 Episcopate extended over the converted Germans, ordered 
 a great number of these curious remedies for sickness and 
 disease to be burned, some of which were composed of wood, 
 linen, and other materials. 
 
 Touching efifigies fabricated of linen texture, whose use was 
 equally sanitary, and of greater magical efficiency than the 
 carved foot, these appear to be identical with the simulacra de 
 pannis facta, or cloth images, specified in the Indiculus above 
 quoted, and were disposed of to paganistic and proselyte pur- 
 chasers, as sanitative amulets, by perambulatory physicians, 
 who trafficked extensively upon the credulity of the suffering 
 sick and infirm. The remedial potency of these Norse cures 
 was assumed to be intensified, when the mandragora, mys- 
 tically prepared, was steeped in liquids. Thus, for instance, 
 after soaking this potential effigy in water, wine or beer, it 
 communicated a curative energy to the fluid, claimed to be an 
 infallible and prompt remedy for the most aggravated dis- 
 orders. In Charlemagne's age, headache was frequently cured 
 by saintly recommendation to shape a figure of the head and 
 place it on a cross. ^' 
 
 The water in which these images were steeped, was often- 
 times given to domesticated herds, as a certain remedy for the 
 
 "Labbe, Collec. Concil., Canon. III., Tom. V., p. 958. 
 
 '^ Du Cange, Glossarium, sub v. Compensum. 
 
 '* Rothii, De Imagunculis Germ. Alraunic, p. 25. 
 
 ^*Du Cange, op. cit., sub v. Sculptel. 
 
 ''Vita Idse Duchessre, cap. 19; apud Leibnitz, Tom. I., p. 176.
 
 1 82 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 disorders of cattle and horses. As a preventative this fluid 
 was copiously sprinkled in the sheds where the animals 
 herded/^ Added to these sanitary forces, this renowned plant 
 was accorded talismanic powers which repelled noxious ele- 
 ments; ills of whatever nature, whether superinduced by in- 
 cantations or magic arts, upon man or animals. In their 
 domestic application these Runic effigies were wide-spread and 
 as piously adored as the lares of fleeing Priam,^® constituting 
 an effective palladium against the encroachments of sickness, 
 aiding a restoration to health, expelling anxious inquietude, 
 and were especially relied on to prevent sorrowful misfortunes 
 from breaking the integrity of the home circle. Nor was this 
 vast efficacy limited, to such desirable results, but it de- 
 scended to preserving the exhilarating wine and beer against 
 loss of its intoxicating property, rendered successful com- 
 mercial negotiations, and infallibly promoted rapid and enor- 
 mous affluence. 
 
 Other virtues of a surprising character were awarded the 
 omnipotent mandragora. It conciliated affection and main- 
 tained friendship, preserved congugal fealty and developed be- 
 nevolence."^" The immensity of worth inherent in this mystical 
 medicament, its vital essence, was by no means confined to 
 sustaining health and providing certain remedies for infirm- 
 ities ; its power manipulated tribunals''' and secured judicial 
 favor at court; and when this resistless amulet was held under 
 the arm by a suitor at law, however unjust his cause, the vege- 
 table Rune controlled the forum and obtained the verdict. 
 
 Evidently this puissant plant was before the mind of the 
 Langobardic monarch, who enacted that in the doubtful strug- 
 gle of a juridical duel neither of the combatants should carry 
 
 ^^Rothii, De Imag. Ger. Alraun., p. lo. 
 
 '« Virgil, /I<:neid, IJb. V. 
 
 ^"Rothii, op. cit., p. il. 
 
 ^' " In foro patroni dissertissimi vicem obit imagunculo alrunica. Favoreni 
 enim judicis, litiganti certissimum comparat, at(jue sub brachio amuleti instar, 
 recondita, efficit." Rothii, op. cit., cap. i, \ 6.
 
 DCA'/XG THE MIDDLE AGES. 183 
 
 a talisman which should render the conflict unequal.""' To the 
 usage among the ancient Teutonic races, of women devoting 
 their time to the practice of medicine and surgery, may be 
 traced the perpetuation of this custom at a later period of the 
 Middle Ages, by their female successors. As early indeed as 
 the age of Tacitus, the wives and mothers of German families 
 were celebrated for the skillful use of medicaments and the dex- 
 terous manipulation of wounds received by their husbands or 
 sons in sanguinary battle.'^''' It is a matter susceptible of his- 
 torical proof that the feminine Vates of the Druids and con- 
 sorts of Northern princes had at a remote epoch obtained 
 a just renown for medical skill. At a short distance from 
 the mainland, in the Senna Isles or Heiligland, scene of the 
 mystical cult of Norse deities,"^* the priestesses were reputed 
 to possess such medicinal knowledge as permitted them to 
 speedily cure those diseases universally regarded elsewhere 
 as utterly incurable.'^ 
 
 This unequivocal acknowledgment of the ability of Teutonic 
 women in the practice of medicine, has especial adaptation to 
 the Scandinavian females, whose prowess in this valuable art 
 seems to have become so celebrated during their earthly career 
 that monumental honors were erected after death to such 
 notables as Eyra, Tyrfa, and Groa Volva.'*' To the sepul- 
 chures which concealed the decaying remains of these famous 
 women, pilgrimages were made from distant provinces and re- 
 mote cities by the incurably diseased, in the earnest hope that 
 the essential virtue of that puissance so notably manifested in 
 
 22 « Nullus camphio praesumat, quando ad pugnando contra alio vadit, herbas 
 quod ad malificias pertinet super se habere," etc. Edictum Rotharis Regis, cap. 
 368; and Concilium Bavaricum, A. D. 772, cap. 3. 
 
 ^^ " Ad matres, ad conjuges vulnera ferunt; nee ilia; numerare aut exigere pla- 
 gas pavent," etc. Germania, cap. 7. 
 
 ^*Cluverius, Antiquitat. Germanic, Lib. III., cc. 23-34. 
 
 ^^"Sanare, quae apud alios insanabilia sunt scire," etc. Pomponii Melae., 
 De Situ Orbis., Lib. IIL, cap. 6. 
 
 ^^ Rothii, De Imagunc. German. Alraun., pp. 20, 35.
 
 1 84 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 life might still surround the sombre portals of the tomb, and 
 perform a miraculous cure.^' 
 
 In the presence of these memorial obelisks, flowers, herbs, 
 and fruits, rudely reproduced on stone tablets, were delineated 
 as symbols of the materials from which the remedial restorers 
 had been extracted. Germanic matrons were long distin- 
 guished in those arts appertaining to obstetrical gestation, or 
 the cure of sterility. In such physical infirmities recourse was 
 had to simple medications and the forcible energies of magical 
 curatives.''^® These excellent endowments were applied to 
 remedy the disorders of herds with the same alacrity as the 
 ills of humanity, and the potency of magic, as well as chemical 
 forces of vegetable productions, were applied indifferently to 
 heal wounds and luxations.^' At a period considerably remote 
 from the Carlovingian age, veterinary surgery seems to have 
 been practiced with success by women, by the potential means 
 of a mirror placed in a window, especially the cure of fractured 
 bones.^" • 
 
 More anciently, the care of herds and flocks naturally de- 
 volved upon this sex in the absence of their warlike husbands."^ 
 The earliest and most practical legislation touching paganistic 
 rites and customs of the converted Germans, and conjointly 
 promulgated by pontifical and imperial authority, attests the 
 vigorous existence of a power accorded Teutonic matrons to 
 render men blind, enervated, or insane, through magical medi- 
 cines. Acts superinducing imbecility^' were particularly the 
 
 ^^ " Vata pro salute et corporis incolummitate a popularibus seque ac pereginis 
 facta sint et soluta." Ibid., p. 36. 
 
 '^* Eccardi, Comment. Rer. Orient. Franc, Tom. I., p. 840. 
 
 Mi< ut noverint magicas artes incantationesque quibuslibet infirmitatibus homin- 
 ium nihil posse remedii conferre." Baluz., Cartular., Addit. Tert., cap. 93, p. 
 1 174. 
 
 ^*'" Mulier qucedam est hie in vicino, quce per incantationes et demonum invo- 
 cationes, homines et animalia, prrecipue equos, defectum in membris habentes, 
 curare consuevit." Buschius, De Reformat. Monaster., cap. 51. 
 
 ^' Tacitus, Germania, cc. 5 and 15. 
 
 '''•'" Qui dicitur portasse strias cocinant," etc. Pactus Legis. Salic, Tit. LXVII., 
 cap. I. Also, Lex Aleman., cap. 22.
 
 DURING^ THE MIDDLE AGES. 185 
 
 object of canonical and civil animadversion, and that rite also by 
 which utter destruction might be invoked upon a hated per- 
 sonage,^^ was interdicted under severest penalties. 
 
 Such ills of body or of mind, to which man or animal was 
 subjected through enmity of dexterous female magicians, were 
 invariably assigned to women physicians for remedies, in which 
 their excellence was unquestioned. Magic and soothsaying 
 entered largely into the curative art, applied by means of 
 formal murmured words, which promptly expelled maladies 
 from the sick and infirm sufferers.''* According to the marvel- 
 lous properties attributed to the Runes, their vast medicinal 
 potency constituted an inherent essence and liberally used by 
 the Norse women, of whom Eir, as the surgical deess of 
 Asgard, appears to have been the patroness.^^ A remedy pro- 
 fessedly of great virtue, has survived to modern times, in the 
 shape of an adage : " The hair of a dog is good for its bite."^* 
 
 Although the narrative of Tacitus seems to conclude the 
 question touching the knowledge among the Germans of his 
 time of the secrets of letters," the subsequent advent of 
 foreigners doubtless persuaded their cultivation for poses, 
 introduced certain immoral customs, which early Wisigothic 
 rescripts severely censured. Archaeologists, with unrestricted 
 avowal, have sought to portray a golden age of innocence 
 among Teutonic families in their paganistic era,^* but the his- 
 torian must with impartial justice proclaim that in the short 
 period of a few centuries, this primeval civilization, utterly 
 unconscious of shame, with its total absence of vice to pro- 
 voke a blush upon the brow of a fair-haired Saxon, had so 
 completely vanished, as to demand the stringent repressive 
 
 ^ Lex Salic, cit.; and Baluz., Cartular., De Partibus Sax., cc. 6 and 9, Tom. 
 I., p. 294 seq. 
 
 ^*Snorro Sturlon., Ileimskringla, Lib. L, cc. 4 and 8. Sigfridrifumal, str. 9 
 and II. 
 
 ^5 Gylfag., str. 35. 
 
 ^* Lordfafmrs., str. 138. 
 
 ^'Tacitus, op. cit., cc. 18 and 19. 
 
 ^*Cluverius, Antiquitat. German., Lib. L, c. 16, p. 115.
 
 1 86 HISTOR V OF MEDICA L . ECONOMY 
 
 power of criminal law and ecclesiastical authority to guard 
 against national debasement. 
 
 Thus, for instance, the Gothic and Salic maidens and their 
 lovers, unrestricted by modesty, invented amatory arts to con- 
 ciliate affection, collected herbs whose medicinal qualities 
 served for convenient poison to translate an indiscreet husband, 
 or when united with alraunic characters, were used as amulets 
 and talismans, disclosing the secrets of incantations and magic 
 letters, and recommended immodest decoctions to pervert 
 nature.''^ 
 
 In toxicology or poisons, Scandinavian females excelled 
 German matrons. Heuta, a Danish lady of high rank, was so 
 erudite in the preparation of such drugs, that she compounded 
 a philter by which the Norweigian ruler Hringwen was fasci- 
 nated, and remained her lover for many years.*" Teutonic 
 maidens, dexterous in this art, appear to have confined the 
 practical application of this science to the strict limits of medi- 
 cal economy, at times, indeed, exercising supernatural power 
 to soften the minds of men to benevolence and mercy, 
 over which they glorified the control." In addition to this 
 knowledge, they were accorded the power of raising storms 
 and tempests, and w^ere generally classified as Tempestarii.^'^ 
 These destructive disturbances, it was claimed, originated in 
 the Runic effigies,*'^ as personifying an evil spirit, controlled by 
 the material type, and in its general signification corroborated 
 popular belief among Christian converts of demoniacal crea- 
 tion of natural phenomena. 
 
 Priestesses consecrated to the gloomy rites of Norse divini- 
 
 ^' Lex Wisigothorum, Lib. IIL, Tit. IV., Lex 3. " Si quis mulieri herbas dederit, 
 lit infantes habere non possit." Lex Salica, Tit. XXL, c. 4; and Lex Boju- 
 varior., Tit. L, cap. 18. 
 
 ■""Rothii, De Imagunc. Germ. Alraun., p. 43. 
 
 ■" " Si aliqiia feniina sit quse per qusedam maleficia et incantationes mentes hom- 
 inum se emmutare posse dicit, id est, ut de lodis in amorem aut de amore in odium 
 convertat." Regino, De Disciplino Ecclesiastic, Lib. II., cap. 5, n. 45. 
 
 ■*^ Uu Cangius, Glossarium, sub v. Tempestiarii. 
 
 ■*•' Rotliii, De Imagunc. Germ. Ah'aun., p. 46.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 187 
 
 ties were assumed to possess the prerogativ^e of provoking 
 violent rain or hail storms, hurricanes and whirlwinds, by the 
 delusive mediation of murmured chants, and when thus sud- 
 denly evoked by these divine servants, the same potency might 
 instantly end them. At least such is the unequivocal attesta- 
 tion of Pomponius Mela, who affirmed the female sacerdoty 
 in Heligoland were able by magic songs to stir up storms by 
 sea and land." Honors similar to those rendered the gods of 
 Asgard, were paid the mandragora images, the chief curativ^e 
 method of the ancient Teutons, with identical ceremonies and 
 equal idolatry. 
 
 When ambulatory physicians sold these effigies to credulous 
 sick, they distinctly declared, to frequent change 'of vestments, 
 ablutions usual in those ages*^ should be added in order that 
 the divinized types might not be infested with insects or at- 
 tacked by moths.*" How profoundly the idolatry of these 
 medical talismans had descended among conv^erted pagans 
 prior to and during the reign of Charlemagne, may be gathered 
 from the dauntless struggle of the people for those customs, al- 
 luding to their extinct temple worship and the uncompromising 
 attitude of canonical and secular power against them. Unsub- 
 dued Saxons, in valiant defiance of imperial rescripts, placed 
 banqueting boards before these divine effigies, and with gay 
 festivities by day and night honored the curative power of 
 their divinities through symbols. A portion of animal food 
 was abandoned reverently to these deities, which was con- 
 sumed by the celebrants of sacrificial rites, in joyous convivi- 
 ality." 
 
 "De Situ Orbis., Lib. III., cap. 6. 
 
 *^ Tacitus, Germania, cc. 17 and 22. 
 
 *" " Cautio, qui propterea illas aqua saepius ablui jubent, ne carie infestentur atque 
 tineisque in esum cedant, aut mucescant divinse ills effiges."' Rothii, op. cit., 
 p. 55. Vagrant medicastres in the fifth century, Rog. Wendor., Flor. Histor., 
 sub an. 497, Tom. I., p. 51. 
 
 ^' Baluz., Cartular. De Partibus Saxon., cap. 21, Tom. I., p. 254; and Gregor. 
 Turones., De Gloria Confessor., cap. 2.
 
 1 8 8 • I^IS TOR Y OF MEDIC A L E CONOM Y 
 
 That nation which devoutly beheved the gods oftentimes 
 assumed a corporeal human form, and directly operated earthly 
 events, nor disdained tempting feasts,^*^ cooperated to perpetu- 
 ate those myths M'hich, in the Middle Ages, to great degree 
 underlay the system of medicine. At the period under ex- 
 amination, vagrant medici or physicians/^ on foot and on horse- 
 back, from Italy, Spain, and the Gallic provinces, seem to have 
 found a ready sale in Germany for their mandragora images, 
 where they arrived in troops among a rude and partially Chris- 
 tianized people, who eagerly sought these wandering medicine 
 vendors, and purchased their curative wares for genuine figures 
 of the Alraun spirit. 
 
 Frequently other materials, such as lustral water, conse- 
 crated wax, and fragments of the cross, of unquestioned medi- 
 cinal potency, helped to dispose of the pharmaceutical stock 
 the more readily. While thus captivating the superstitious 
 fancy of the uncultivated populace, these migratory physi- 
 cians, in addition to harmless medicaments with magical attri- 
 butes, plied a nefarious industry at fairs and public marts in 
 larger towns and municipalities of the newly-vanquished coun- 
 try, where they were aggregated in crowds to sell noxious 
 drugs and poisons, whose terrible efficacy was presumed to be 
 increased by the resonant and elongated names given the ven- 
 dible goods.^" 
 
 In the year 822, when Waldger sought to enter into the 
 presence of Ludwig, Emperor of Germany, he arrayed himself 
 in the foreign costume of a physician, and under this attire the 
 monarch regarded him as a vagrant medicus or surgeon, and 
 ordered him admitted,^' a convincing proof of the roving and 
 doubtless degraded character of the drug- and medicine ven- 
 dors of that age. According to the usual system of living 
 
 ■'*' Tacitus, Germania, cap. 40. 
 
 *' Rothii, De Imagunciilis Germanor. Alraunic, p. 68. 
 
 *° Rothii, De Imagunc. Germ. Alraun., p. 69. 
 
 ^^" Sub habitu peregrino." Herman. Corner. Chronicon, sub an. 822, Eccard. 
 II., col. 448.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 189 
 
 among the earlier Germans, which involved the simplest diet 
 and most vigorous physical exercises, it is evident this uni- 
 formity must in a measure guard against the approach of mal- 
 adies incident to the more luxurious refinement of civilized 
 society. 
 
 Medicinal art, under these surroundings, necessarily foiled 
 in developing great curative properties, and was doubtless 
 restricted to the cultivation of remedies appropriate to wounds, 
 fractures and luxations. The cure of bodily infirmities result- 
 ing from a martial life, necessitated the neophyte in medicine 
 becoming familiar with strange powers of runic herbs to heal 
 serious wounds."^ In order to procure certain remedies, the 
 leaves, flowers, and fruit of fructiferous trees were gathered 
 with scrupulous selection, a duty devolving upon Druidesses. 
 Before the thorough Christianization of their race, the Ger- 
 mans themselves recognized a medical avocation, the practi- 
 tioners of which were in a greater or less constant demand. 
 At the close of the eighth or commencement of the ninth cen- 
 tury, this profession was specifically designated in native ver- 
 nacular as ercetere or medicus,"^ and is to be accepted to 
 signify the medicasters so frequently referred to in the semi- 
 barbarous rescripts of the earlier Teutons from the sixth to 
 the close of the eighth century. 
 
 In a metrical poem of Conrad of Wissenburg, a versifier of 
 the ninth century, this word is written "arzat," almost iden- 
 tical with the modern name, and clearly designates the ancient 
 physician or surgeon."* In the next age arzat and arzater"^ 
 occur, and signify a physician and medicaments, or the prim- 
 ative pigmenteria,''*' or apothecary, and attest a practical sys- 
 
 ^^ " Runas arboreas nosse debes, si egregii medici nomen sustinere velis vulnera- 
 que ex arte curare." Olans IMagni., in Specimen. Lexici Runici, p. 109. 
 
 5^ Sigfridfumal, Str. 11. 
 
 ■''* " Thoh ni was gevvisse er arzat niheiner." Lib. III., c. 14, v. 19; ap. Schil- 
 ter., Tliesaur. Antiq. Teuton., I., p. 184. 
 
 •'>' Pezii, Thesaur. Anecdot., Tom. I., p. 384. 
 
 ^•' Du Cange, Glossarium, sub v. Pigmentarius.
 
 I go HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 tern of medicine, doubtless transmitted from paganism to 
 Christian converts, after the period of Clothair. As a cognate 
 word the Galhc arzan, in its archaic interpretation, had the 
 sense of heahng or curing from sickness or wounds." In this 
 signification is to be understood the formal interdict of the 
 early ages : wine should not be medicated with chalk or the 
 white of an egg.°* Ancient paraphrases of Scripture use the 
 word as a healer or one who cures diseases, fairly interpreted 
 by its Latin vocable medicus.^" A curious confirmation of this 
 allegation may be found in Anglo-Saxon versions of Biblical 
 writings,"" which quaintly affirm : " De Arstedye Kumpt vom 
 derne Allerhogesten ; de Here leth de Arsedye uth der Erden 
 wassen," that is, "The Lord is creator of medicine, and the 
 Master lets medicaments be produced by the earth." Arzt, 
 meaning surgeon, has been traced to these ancient Germanic 
 roots as incorporating the idea of curing and healing diseases, 
 with its possible origin in the medicinal properties of mandra- 
 gora effigies.®^ 
 
 From these statements it appears in a remote antiquity, 
 among these people, there existed a profession pursuing a 
 certain system of medical economy. 
 
 Eccard, however, distinctly asserts the philological deri- 
 vation of this word as coeval with the epoch at which medical 
 art was recognized as an element of scholastic culture, in the 
 monasteries of the Latin Church, and prescribed to be taught 
 as medicinalis arte,'''^ which the erudite commentator claims is 
 the lineal pVecursor of Arzt, or surgeon.®^ Through its trans- 
 
 ^' Wachter, Glossar., Voce Gerzan., p. 22. In the twelfth century pharmaceu- 
 tical Lalin was translated into German vernacular. Macer., De Virtutibus Her- 
 barum, Anzeig. Blatt., No. 39, an. 1827, p. 19 seq. 
 
 58 11 \Yin arzen mit kolk, oder eyer-klar." Schilter, op. cit., v. arzat., p. 65. 
 
 59 Wenke ik bin de Here dyn arste." Exod. XV., cap. 26. 
 
 ^••Rothii, De Vocab. Arzt., p. 15. 
 
 *i Ibid., p. 18 seq. 
 
 ^-Lex Salica, Capitular. De Causis Ecclesiast., cap. 5, p. 178. 
 
 "■' " Sed medicina jam dim ars dicta est, et medicus artista. Use vetus arzat et 
 nostrum ars medicus derivandum." Scholium, ap. Leg. Salic, op. cit., p. 178.
 
 DURIXG THE AflDDLE AGES. 
 
 191 
 
 formations and linguistic changes, the original meaning of the 
 word Arzat, as implying the preparation or growing of herbs 
 for medicinal purposes, reappears with reasonable lucidity."* 
 Under this sweeping classification, the older Germanic medici, 
 of pagan and early Christian times, were distinguished as per- 
 sonages whose lives were passed in rural districts, wanderers 
 of the fields, where they gather herbs for cures of sickness and 
 wounds."'' Their avocation closely identified with meadows, 
 glades and woodland, they traversed these gloomy groves in 
 troops, and with anxious sagacity cut the sanitative vegetation, 
 or eradicated it with magic rites and ceremonies.*"" Frequent 
 reference is made in the historical writings of northern authors, 
 to the dexterous compounding of medicines by both sexes, who 
 were sufficiently fortunate to preserve the inestimable lives of 
 royalty. A youthful monk, by the name of Johannes, native 
 of a contiguous province, whose knowledge of this art had 
 reached the grievously stricken Waldemer, a Scandivavian 
 king, was summoned to the palace, where by an adroit mix- 
 ture of powders with his patron's food, he managed to pro- 
 long the monarch's life for a limited period only.®' The mon- 
 astic attire, as we have seen at an early age, appears to have 
 added force to the professional vagrancy of the mediaeval 
 physician. Another, a rustic, uniting extensive information 
 upon the properties of medicinal herbs with agriculture, was 
 enabled to save the life of Harald, brother of Saint Olave, king 
 of Norway, suffering with a malady provoked by seven 
 wounds."** 
 
 ** Lex Bojar., Tit. XII., c. 8; and the Aranmunmoth of Charlemagne, Eigin- 
 hardi, Vita Caroli Magni, cap. 29. 
 
 ^^ " Germanorum medici, quippe qui, ut herbas, usui sibi in medendo futuras, 
 colHgerent, silvos ac saltus discurrebant," etc., " immo vero superstitiosa diligen- 
 tia varii generis ritus, plures herbas abscisuri ac radices evulsuri per artis suae et 
 religionis prrecepta, observare debeant." Rothii, De Vocabulo Arzt., p. 74. 
 
 68 Plinii, Hist. Nat., Lib. XXV., cap. 9. 
 
 8' " E scania accersitus," Saxo Grammaticus, Historic Danics, Lib. XV., p. 
 581. Touching the skill of Northern people in herbal medicines, vide Olaus 
 Magnus, Hist. Septent., Lib. V., cap. 16, cc. 50-52. 
 
 6* Rothii, De Vocabul. Arzt., p. 76.
 
 192 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Archaic words in use among the Gauls and Germans as 
 early as the eighth century, having a signification exactly cor- 
 responding to the medicus or physician, and pigmentum or 
 medicaments of the imperial codes, further attest the presence 
 of a vocation identical with the medical profession. In Tatian's 
 paraphrase of the Evangelists, drawn up for use in proselyting 
 the worshipers of Norse idols, about the middle of the period 
 before us, the vulgate medicus or physician is translated into 
 the vernacular by Lachs, or in its plural form Lachin.'^" A 
 like vocable among the Franks currently expressed the act of 
 healing or curing maladies. Laec or Lee of the Anglo-Saxon, 
 attested by the Old Testament, signified this: while laecman 
 or laecdom stood for medicine in its abstract sense.™ 
 
 Older versions by Ulphilas in the fifth century, contained 
 words expressing systematic healing of bodily ills, by a per- 
 son practising the craft professionally,'^ and the more recent 
 Eddaic songs, distinctly individualize an avocation of practical 
 medicine as a well-defined element in Norse society. In the 
 Scandinavian province Laekner accurately reproduced the 
 Salic medicus or physician, and by the nomenclature of laek- 
 ning, a system of curing is affirmed.''^ It is doubtful whether 
 the Teutonic professors were more careful in avoidance of un- 
 just exactions for medical services than their predecessors 
 under Theodoric, the Gothic ruler, and his illustrious secre- 
 tary, Cassiodorus, or the Wisigoth kings, whose codifications 
 regulated, as we have stated, their salary and basis of compen- 
 sation.'^ 
 
 From this legislation, and the various codes cited hitherto, 
 it is manifest when the medicus was summoned to attest cer- 
 tain physical mishaps, he was entitled to demand and receive 
 such wages as were fixed by disinterested' parties. In the 
 
 ^* Rothii, Disquisit. Nominum, p. 79. 
 
 ™ Psalm L., Com. III. 
 
 '1 Ulphili, Vevsio Evangel. IX. Matth., c. 12. 
 
 '^Rothii, Disquisit. Nomin., p. 85 ; and Edda Snoiii, Mytholog., 30. 
 
 '''Lex Wisigothorum, Lib. XL, Tit. I., Leg. 1-5.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 193 
 
 Middle Ages wealthy patients obtained double attention and 
 additional drugs from the peripatetic apothecaries, while the 
 impoverished and indigent sick on the contrary received just 
 one-half the attention, and medicines strictly necessary. A 
 celebrated mediaeval practitioner of the curative art urgently 
 instructed his disciples against curing diseases or administer- 
 ing remedies to affluent valetudinarians without first receiv- 
 ing payment.'^ It is doubtful indeed, whether among the 
 earlier Germanic physicians at the period of Christianization a 
 schedule of charges for medical treatment was extant, except- 
 ing perhaps the ambulatory surgeons, who certainly procured 
 heavy compensation for their wares, while the practitioners 
 along fixed routes, doubtless were largely rewarded by grati- 
 tude. 
 
 In the economy of poison cures, the suction principle of the 
 Teutonic Leek was continued to a later epoch of the Middle 
 Ages, when the favorite of a king purged a poisoned wound 
 by this method. Whenever anciently surgical instruments ap- 
 propriate for prompt and thorough cleansing of aggravated 
 wounds were not procurable, or perhaps yet in use, practical 
 purgation was accomplished by lip-suction, after which sanita- 
 tive herbs were applied."' 
 
 According to Kero's Teutonic Glossary, prepared by a monk 
 of Saint Gall, under Pepin, the Carlovingian king, the Latin 
 vocable medicamina or medicine, is translated by Lahchida, 
 which in this word signifies a system of cures;'" and the Lex- 
 icon of Hraban Maur, of the ninth century, interpreted by 
 Vursari,'' by the literal sense of pharmacy, indicating the ex- 
 istence of a class in society occupied in gathering herbal 
 remedies ; meaning the early surgeon or medicus. Groa Volva, 
 celebrated by the Norse in written and sculptured monuments, 
 
 ^* Freind, Ilistoria Medicinre, p. 551. 
 
 '■^ Rothii, Disquisitio Nomin., p. 102. 
 
 "* Goldastius, Aleman. Antiquit., Tom. II., pars, i, p. 81. Vide Du Cange, 
 Glossarium, sub v. Lecator, who demonstrates social debasement of mediieval 
 Europe in the propagation of this name from its surgical origin. 
 
 "Rothii, De Norn. Wursari, p. 119. 
 13
 
 194 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 as presenting curatives drawn from Asgard to Thor,''^ gave the 
 nomenclature to a system of curing by herbal medicaments, 
 and may be taken to attest the close relationship supposed to 
 exist, by the early converts to Christianity, between the prac- 
 titioners of medicine and the Norse divinities. 
 
 The vestments in which the Norsemen arrayed their sani- 
 tary dees were imitated by the professional raiment of physi- 
 cians, composed of a linen mantlet, clinging to the figure, 
 and succinctly girded by a band of like texture.™ This was 
 likewi'se the dress of Druidesses, whose dexterous curative 
 knowledge has been alluded to.®" The corrugated face and 
 silvered hair of this Deity may be assumed to represent the 
 advanced age and inspiring experience of the physician. In 
 the right hand the image grasps an urn filled with health- 
 giving plants and fruits, and doubtless reproduces a more 
 ancient ^sculapian symbol. The left hand, holding a plow 
 wheel, typifies not only care and patronage over rural affairs, 
 but prosperity and health of the devotees of this cult. In 
 many German provinces where pagan customs survived to 
 Christianity under other forms, the people were accustomed 
 amid varied rites and ceremonials to fasten the wheel emblem 
 above their doorways, or over the forum of principal houses, 
 on Saint John's day, fully persuaded such types would protect 
 the inmates during the year from maladies and bodily harm.*^ 
 
 The name common to the Teutonic races, by which the fol- 
 lowers of the curative art appear best known to that portion 
 of the Middle Ages when the doctorates were issued from 
 medical colleges, was the word helari, corresponding to med- 
 ici or physicians of the codes. Metrical versifiers, so early as 
 the eighth and ninth centuries,"'' use it in this sense, and a 
 similar signification is conveyed in the fragmentary romance 
 of Charlemagne's struggle with the Saracens, written in the 
 
 '^Rothii, Eplic. Vocab. Gra;d., p. 123. 
 
 ■"•Ibid., p. 122. 
 
 ''"Pompon., Mela. De Situ. Orbis., Lib. III., cap. 6. 
 
 •*' Rothii, Eplic. Voc. Graed., p. 125. 
 
 ''■^ Olhfried, Liber. Evangelica, Lib. II., c. 14, v. 242; and Lib. III., c. 12, v. 
 
 35-
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 195 
 
 thirteenth century by an anonjmious author/^ This poem 
 aptly compares the Saviour to a healer or medicus, in the 
 same phraseology with which classical Apollo might be thus 
 denominated. Belgic conservatism,** and English pertinacity, 
 in defiance to dialectic corruption through Norman French, 
 maintained the Heelmester of ancient Frisia, and the healer 
 of the Anglo-Saxons, to that period of the Middle Ages when 
 these were substituted by medicus. Doctor physicus of the 
 university vellum. Before concluding this somewhat detailed 
 inquiry into the external condition of medicine among the an- 
 cient Germans, it should be added that in the Beeta of the 
 Runic Chapter, a direct recognition appears of a necessity to 
 combine magic as a potential element in the economy of medi- 
 cine.^ The circumstances under which these pagan nations 
 accepted Christian dogmas, without rudimentary alteration of 
 social habits and usages descended from Norse temple wor- 
 ship, contributed to vitalize the doctrine of sickness and dis- 
 ease as the direct outgrowth and emanation of evil spirits, so 
 thoroughly believed by the evangelists, and actually survived, 
 as a part of their own mythology, to these semi-civilized pros- 
 elytes, and passed with them into the new faith. 
 
 At the period of this transmission, the art of curing, whether 
 practised by men or women in the provinces of Germany, had 
 descended the degrading slope of imposition; and in the uncer- 
 tain amalgamation of Norse polytheism with Christian ritual- 
 ism, that portion of the healing methods classified as Boeter, 
 involving the use of magic, evidently obtained the ascendency; 
 inasmuch as reiterated Carlovingian legislation was impotent 
 to hinder oft-recurring practice of incantations, soothsaying and 
 prognostications, credulously sought as sure means to health, 
 or prevention of infirmities. Each disease and sickness, afflict- 
 
 83 Apollo ther mare, 
 Unde andere Hailari, 
 Apollo the renowned, 
 And other celebrated physicians. 
 
 Apud Schilter, Antiq., Teutonic, Tom. II., p. 45. 
 
 **Rothii, Eplic. Voc. Heilari, p. 128. 
 
 ^ " That kann eg beeta, bratt." Runa Capitale, Str. 9.
 
 ip6 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 ing a suffering invalid, the Germanic soothsaying physician 
 asserted could be quickly cured or expelled by the magical in- 
 sufflation of a murmured word, or by means of enchanted herbs 
 and vitalized stones,**" a system exactly described in the Boeter. 
 The prolonged obstinacy which these people exhibited in 
 preserving faith in the efficacy of curious medicinal modes, 
 provoked the ponderous repressive power of the Carlovingian 
 edicts, which categorically interdicted to the populace supersti- 
 tious usages, and imperatively directed the sacerdoty them- 
 selves to desist from propagating these injurious customs, 
 through imprudent indifference or actual acquiescence.^' Medi- 
 cal formulas of older magicians for centuries survived to their 
 mediaeval successors, the rural medical charlatans, who pro- 
 fessed prompt cures of ophthalmic disorders by the recitation 
 of ritualistic words, accompanied with suitable gestures of the 
 arms and fingers over the diseased eyes, thrice touched amid 
 guttural murmur as a necessary adjunct to the operation. The 
 following scheme sets forth substantially the curative potency 
 of established methods used by three maiden surgeons, and is 
 an evident perpetuation of that singular remedy for maladies 
 designated by the nomenclature Boeter or Invocation: 
 
 " Et gingen ens dre Mage, 
 Up enen greimen Wage : 
 
 De ene waste wat vorn Bley. 
 De aure waste wat vorn starr, 
 De drudde vor de hidd vorwar : 
 Un bodden dat alle enerley. 
 
 Im Namen + Vaders + Sohnes und-f Heiligen Geistes. Amen. "•'^'' 
 
 ^ " Nullus morbus, valetudo nulla nullumque infortunium est, quae non certo 
 oris murmure, attactu, spurcio adflatu, atque fatuis herbarum, ossium, lapidum 
 aliorumque rerum," etc. Rothii, Vocabul. Boeter., p. 139. 
 
 ''^ Baluzius, Cartular. De Partibus Saxonum, cap. 21, Tom. I., col. 254. 
 
 88 " Three maidens once going 
 On a verdant highway ; 
 One could cure blindness, 
 Another cured cataract, 
 Third cured inflammation ; 
 But all cured by one means." 
 
 In llie name of the Fatlier, Son, etc. Rothii, De Vocabulo Boeter, p. 141.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 iy7 
 
 In this venerable conjuration, announcing the prowess of 
 ambulatory female medicists to cure a suffusion and spotted 
 discoloration of the eyes, the essential remedial energy inheres 
 and appears in the bodden, or invocating formula, anciently 
 deduced from a system of incantations accompanied by mut- 
 tered phrases and geometric figures. We have hitherto nar- 
 rated the important element of the alraun or mandragora 
 effigies in medical economy, even so late as the age of Charle- 
 magne. 
 
 With these and the enchantments, by which cures should be 
 obtained, the runics also figured as a conspicuous factor in the 
 problem. Inasmuch as German virgins,*' in more remote 
 times, notably essayed the expulsion of diseases, as attested 
 by the preceding spell, they also sought to vanquish by means 
 of curious letters, the spiritual essence of evil, causing bodily 
 infirmities, and combined them with the resistless force of 
 alraun figures.^" With these images Salic herders distinctly 
 marked their cattle and flocks as an amulet, to paint or brand 
 which upon stolen herds was subject to heavy penalties.^^ The 
 Frisian code, possibly reduced to a written form as early 
 as the time of Charles Martel,'' and certainly sanctioned by 
 Charlemagne, permitted the use of runic marks in the solemn 
 investigation of assassinations, and thus proclaimed their 
 potency to aid in the detection of crime.®^ 
 
 Luxations were cured with speed and certainty when the 
 injured member was brought under the influence of such magic 
 rites. Thus, for instance, beneath the puissant force of Odinic 
 charms, the broken bones of man or beast were readily re- 
 united in perfect health.'* It may be added here, as indicating 
 
 ** Ammianus Marcellinus, Gesta Rom., Lib. XXXI., cap. 2. 
 ^*' Grimm, Ueber die Deutsche Runen, p. 296 seq. 
 ^1 Lex Salica, Titulus X., cap. I. 
 ^^ Introductio ad Leg. Frision., p. 21. 
 ^■^ Lex Frision., Tit. XIV., cap. I. 
 
 ^* Grimm, Ueber drei Entdeckten Gedichte. Soranus cured maniacs by incan- 
 tations. Hieron., Mercurialis, De Arte Gymnastic, Lib. VI., c. 5.
 
 jog HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the progress of such medicinal methods, after the extinction 
 of the sombre celebration of Norse religion, and its survival 
 under new names to Christianity, that magical rhythms of 
 equally potent surgical properties passed from the sagacious 
 Phol and Odin to the sainted evangelists and their divine 
 Masters."^ A knowledge of runic remedies appears to have 
 prevailed wherever the Teutonic races were dispersed. So far 
 as the application of these letters to prognostics and auguries 
 may be traced, it is probable the concurrent usage of mandra- 
 gora cures was equally extensive."" 
 
 From the previous statements touching the veritable condi- 
 tion of medicine among the people of Western Europe down 
 to the Carlovingian period, and including such nomenclature 
 as aptly expressed the vocation, it is evident that so early as 
 the seventh century the Latin distinctive term of the profes- 
 sors of this art had begun to diminish the frequent use of the 
 native word. A gradual change from the medicus of that 
 epoch, and a total exclusion of vernacular terminology during 
 succeeding ages, elevated the vocable physicus**' to signify the 
 person, and physicia the occupation, and incorporated the no- 
 tion of an art practised with thorough cognizance of the recon- 
 dite secrets and mysteries of natural sciences. 
 
 Indeed, from the twelfth century to the close of the Middle 
 Ages the denomination of physicus, or physician, was an 
 equivalent for the vernacular terms above enumerated and ex- 
 plained, as designating a personage abandoned to the curative 
 and medical art, and in no other signification is it used in 
 the mediciival records. In modern times a bold separation of 
 the originally aggregated words, physicus and chirurgicus — 
 physician and surgeon, has divided these to mean prescriptive 
 skill and manual dexterity, although during the Middle Ages 
 they were nearly synonymous.^® The causes provoking an 
 
 ^^ Thorpe, Northern Mytholoijy, Vol. I., p. 23. 
 '^ Reda, Ilistoria Ecclesiastica, Lib. V., c. 11. 
 *' Du Cange, Glossarium, sub voc. Physicus. 
 '•"^ Iljid., sub V. Chirurgicus.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 199 
 
 ultimate division of a profession formerly uniting both branches 
 of the yEsculapian science, may be gathered from a subse- 
 quent portion of this work ; and it will suffice to add here, in the 
 literary monuments towards the end of the fifteenth century 
 the words are invariably conjoined, thus: physici chirurgii.''" 
 
 This disjunction, at an earlier period of the Middle Ages, 
 may have been aided by the potential example of Saracen pro- 
 fessors of medicine, to whom, throughout this era till the four- 
 teenth century, students of Germany, France and England, 
 and indeed other European countries, faithfully subjected 
 themselves as an obedient soldiery. Moslem scientists, in 
 abandoning almost with contempt the practice of surgery-, and 
 confining their erudite investigations to the chemical devel- 
 opment of medical- science, doubtless largely influenced the 
 debasement of a valuable art. 
 
 Other causes forced surgical operations into a most disrepu- 
 table class of medicastres, to which reference will be made 
 hereafter. Toward the conclusion of the period noted, the 
 vocable physicus or physician, in addition to its curative sig- 
 nification, including surgery, came to receive a more enlarged 
 sense. Popular belief, industriously nurtured by professors of 
 medicine, elevated them to the highest point of scientific 
 knowledge of natural phenomena relating to the human body, 
 and involved mirific puissance to heal present diseases, 
 together with a species of augury and divination for future 
 maladies.'"" 
 
 As this word, in its primary meaning, was equivalent among 
 the vulgar and lowly to a penetrating cognizance of natural 
 science, consequently physiculatus, derived from the above, 
 was used from an early period as expressing the skilfullness 
 of a prophet and horuspice.'"' These physici or physicians of 
 
 *'■* Rothii, De Vocabulo Physic, p. 152. 
 '""Ibid., p. 154 seq. 
 
 ioi« Yqjj augurum, et aruspicium." Du Cange, Gloss., sub v. Physiculatus; 
 and " Physiculator, augur, naturas in extis aminantium qucerens." Martianus Ca- 
 pella, De Nuptiis Philolog. et Mercur., Lib. I.
 
 200 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 SO remote an age assimilated to their more ancient precursors, 
 in claiming to be illuminated by the divine afflatus of Apollo, 
 and as a sequence asserted their endowment with miraculous 
 abilities to exactly comprehend present diseases, boasting 
 supernal virtues touching possible vicissitudes of fluctuating 
 health and convalescence, even to the fortuitous death of men.^"^ 
 When such high and mighty attributes, arrogated by the 
 mediaeval physici, are considered, it will excite no surprise 
 when the tendencies of the times accepted a knowledge of 
 corrupt Latinity as a colossal acquisition favored in University, 
 hall and court, that the vernacular classification of the heal- 
 ing art should recede before this transcendent dialect, and 
 from physicus and chirurgicus, even in smaller provincial 
 towns, arose the modern physician and surgeon.^"'' 
 
 '"^Rothii, De Vocab., Physic, p. 154. 
 ^"^^ Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Chirurgius.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Survival of Paganism in Christianity Affects Medical Economy — Abjura- 
 tion Formulas Recognize Supernatural Forces — Norse Deities of Avowed 
 Personality — Index of Pagan Superstitions as Proscribed — Includes a 
 System of Curatives — Effigies for Medicinal Usage— Sortilege to Evoke 
 Pestilence — Such Remedies Characterized by the Ecclesiastics as " Ex- 
 ecrabile" — Sanitary Amulets — Ligatures, or Charmed Remedid Sur- 
 gery — Preternatural Virtue Recognized by the Chartularies of the 
 Eighth Century — Progress of Saintly Cures — Great Faith in Reliquaries 
 — Trade of Venetians in Reliques — Theft of— Source of Wealth to 
 Cloisters — Their Medical Properties. 
 
 THE introduction of Christianity among the Teutonic races 
 offered no hindrance to a perpetuation, under new forms, ot 
 those social observances with which Norse temple idolatry 
 was so intimately associated. Offering to proselytes an unlim- 
 . ited number of demoniacal aeons, similar in individuality and 
 prowess to those peopling the invisible universe, Northern my- 
 thology readily united with the Christian demonology. 
 
 This belief, as accelerating the downfall and maintaining the 
 utter prostration of medical science, preserved its primitive 
 vigor by means of the splendid and imposing ceremonies of 
 baptismal rites. During the celebration involved in this solemn 
 service the satanic hosts, as originators of sin, vice, and mala- 
 dies, were expelled the human body by exorcism,^ insufflation 
 of the officiating cleric, sign of the cross, and invocation of the 
 Triune Deity. Earlier formulas for such expulsion directed a 
 double exhalation of the priest.'^ Close upon abjurations fol- 
 lowed consecration of baptismal fluids, in which the catechu- 
 men was placed entirely nude.^ As early as the fifth century, 
 the formal portion of the abjuration phrases subsequently 
 
 ^ Formulae Exorcismorum ; apud Baluz., Cartular., Tom. II., col. 639 seq. 
 
 ^Gregor. Nazien., Orat. De Sec, Adv. — . 
 
 ^Ambros., De Initial., cap. 11. 
 
 (201)
 
 202 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 adopted by the Latin Church were in vogue, according to the 
 following, reproduced from Salvianus, of Marseilles : "Quid est 
 in baptismo salutori Christianorum prima confessio? Quae 
 scilicet nisi est renunciare se diabolo ac pompiis ejus, atque 
 spectaculis et operibus protestentur ? Abrenuncio enim, inquis, 
 diabolo, pompis, spectaculis et operibus ejus. Et quod pos- 
 tca ? Credo, inquis, in deum patrem omnipotentum, et in 
 Jesum Christum, filium ejus.*" The synod held at Lepinta in 
 Germany, in the year 743, established by the perfunctory force 
 of civil and canonical law, articles of faith which in future 
 should be received as ecclesiastical dogmas by converted pa- 
 gans, and in addition to these, promulgated, apparently, a writ- 
 ten renunciation of Norse worship. 
 
 How far the more venerable abjuration formulas were ad- 
 hered to may admit of doubtful solution, although it as a man- 
 ifest portion of ancient rituals become incorporated with the 
 new, particularly the expulsion clause of insufflation.^ In ac- 
 cordance with an unswerving pontifical and secular policy, the 
 three princip^ divinities of Asgard, whose original seat of wor- 
 ship was in Upsala," at the period before us, had receded from 
 their exalted eminence as patrons of those virtues so dear and 
 so closely interwoven with the texture of social existence and 
 become distinctly classified as forbidding and repulsive demons, 
 whose ancient puissance to charm away sickness vanished, and 
 was now claimed to create it. The necessity of preparing re- 
 nunciatory formulas attests the prolongation of a creed in this 
 diabolical essence, and actually accredited by an erudite sacer- 
 doty. These forms, yet extant, are monuments among the 
 oldest of German letters, and of priceless worth as a memorial 
 of an extinct civilization. 
 
 Catechumens standing before the sacred font as early as 
 
 * Gubernatione Dei, Lib. VI., cap. 6. 
 
 *" Deinde exsufflas in Faciem ejusdem et dices; Exi ab spiritus immunde, et 
 redde honorem," etc. " Et dices tribus vicibus." Massman, Abschwoworungs 
 Eormeln, p. 68, No. 2. 
 
 *^01aus Magnus, Histor. Septcntr., Lib. IIL, cap. 6.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 203 
 
 the first half of the eighth century, preceding a formal baptism 
 and acceptance into the Christian Church, were severally 
 interrogated : 
 
 " Forsachistu diabolne ? 
 
 Et resp. Ec forsacha diabolas, 
 . End allem diabol geldz ? 
 Respon. End ec forsacho allum diabol gelda;. 
 End altu diaboles vvercum ? 
 
 Resp. End ec forsacho allum diaboles vvercum and wordum 
 thunaer ende vvoden ende saxnote ende allem them un- 
 holdum the hira genotas sind.'"' 
 
 It is made imperative, in this confession, to forsake or re- 
 nounce the culj:ure of other subordinate deities, so numerous in 
 Norse mytholygy, and here referred to under the general de- 
 nomination of unholden or proscribed demons and their asso- 
 ciates. 
 
 Another equally important formulary, republished by Mass- 
 mann, under the caption of Interrogatio fidei,^ was propounded 
 to the neophyte before entering into full communion: 
 
 " Forsachistu unholdun "i 
 Ih forsacho, etc., 
 Forsachistu indivvillon ? 
 Ih, etc.. 
 Forsachistu allem dem bluotstrom them heidine man hym Za- 
 
 blustrom in dizageldon habent 1 
 Ih forsacho," etc. 
 
 The triple divinities specified in the first abjuration, had a 
 temple, previously alluded to as standing on the shores of Lake 
 Constance in the year 612, which enclosed three gilded effigies 
 — tres deauratas imagines — and was destroyed by Saint Col- 
 omban.* 
 
 Carlovingian rescripts required the church regulation that 
 these formularies be memorized, to be rigidly enforced," and 
 
 ' Massmann, Abschworungs Formeln, p. 67, No. i. 
 8Il)id., fol. 68, No. 2. 
 
 ^Walafrid Strabo, Vita Sancti Galli., Lib. I., cap. 6. 
 
 i** Massmann, Abschworungs Formeln, p. 6; and Baluz., Cartular., Tom. I., p. 
 579-
 
 204 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 enacted at Lepinta, that whoever should be convicted of heathen 
 practices, and contrary to the Roman law, including magic 
 remedies for diseases, must liquidate the misdemeanor by a 
 fine of fifteen solidi." The latter chartulary, and the second 
 promulgated in Carloman's reign for the better government of 
 the Latin Church, will fully attest the vitality of paganistic 
 customs, in defiance of an evangelical zeal of nearly two cen- 
 turies ; and to crush out these this edict was especially framed. 
 
 The Indiculus Superstitionum et Pagianorum, appended to 
 the rescript, summarizes heathen observances, and categori- 
 cally forbids them. In their general tendency these interdicted 
 customs involved superstitious recognition of invisible forces, 
 open to possible control for nefarious or benevolent purposes, 
 some of which were directly germane to the curative art. Con- 
 sequently we reproduce them here: 
 
 " I. De sacrilegio ad sepulchra mortuorum. II. De sacrile- 
 gio super defunctos, id est, dadsisas. III. De spurcalibus in 
 Februaris. IV. De casulis, id est fanis. V. De sacrilegiis 
 per ecclesias. VI. De sacris silviarum, quae nimidas vocant. 
 VII. De his qu£e faciunt super petras. VIII. De sacriis Mer- 
 curii vel Jovis. IX. De sacrificio quod fit alicui sanctorum. 
 X. De phylacteriis et ligaturiis. XI. De fontibus sacrificior- 
 imi. XII. De incantationibus. XIII. De auguriis, vel avium 
 vel equorum vel bovum stercore, vel sternutatione. XIV. De 
 divinis vel sortilegis. XV. De igne fricato de ligno, id est, 
 nodfyr. Xyi. De cerebro animalium. XVII. De observa- 
 tione pagana in foco vel in inchoatione rei alicujus. XVIII. 
 De incertis locis quae colunt pro sacris. XIX. De petendo 
 quod boni vocant Sancta^ Marise. XX. De feriis quae faciunt 
 Jovi vel Mercurii. XXI. De lun?e defectione, quod dicunt 
 Vinceluna. XXII. De tempestatibus et cornibus et calceis. 
 XXIII. De Dulcis circa villas. XXIV. De pagano cursu, 
 qucm Yrias nominant, scissis pannis vel calceis. XXV. De 
 CO quod sibi sanctos fingunt quoslibet mortuos. XXVI. De 
 simulacro de consparso farina. XXVII. De simulacris de 
 
 ^1 Baluzius, Cartularia, cap. 4, Tom. I., p. 150.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 205 
 
 pannis factis. XXXVIII. De simulacro quod per campos 
 portant. XXIX. De ligneis pedibus vel manibus pagano ritu. 
 XXX. De eo quod credunt quia feminae lunam commendent, 
 quod possint corda hominum tollere juxta paganos."^^ 
 
 This canonical interdict of these usages, closely identified 
 with the polytheistic celebration of Thor and Odin, desig- 
 nated by the names of Roman prototypes, placed under the 
 ban, sacrifices to these divinities, either upon stones — supra 
 petras;*'* or in shady groves;'^ festivities to the dead — super 
 defunctos — celebrating military prowess of those resting for- 
 ever beneath a monumental sepulchre, or awaiting the funeral 
 torch to fire the consuming fagots, around which an impatient 
 multitude awaited a generous distribution of dadsisas" or death 
 food, partaken at the convivium,'" or banquet, following the 
 funeral service. The chapter on the sacrifices performed in 
 churches, indicates the prompt amalgamation of not merely 
 ideas touching the puissance and sanctity of Christian martyrs, 
 an exact reproduction of supernatural attributes of Norse 
 deities, but the rapid subrogation of that external pomp which 
 added imposing splendor to the Northern temple worship, 
 and was boldly adapted to the Romish ritual. 
 
 Included in the forbidden practices was the preparation of 
 inartistic efifigies, carved in imitation of the Upsala deities, sold 
 at trifling cost, and extensively used in sacrificial offerings. The 
 purchase or consumption of these figures was endowed with 
 that marvellous curative and talismanic property which illus- 
 trated the mandragora runes, and consequently, was interdicted 
 to Christian proselytes. As a substitute for the effigy of Thor, 
 in the processional circumambulation around the circuit of 
 
 i^Baluz., Cartular., A. D. 743, Tom. I., p. 150. 
 
 I'^Indiculus Superstit. et Paganiar., cap, 7; ap. Baluz. Cartular., Tom. I., p. 
 150. 
 
 ^* Cluverins, Antiquitat. German., Lib. I., cap. 24. 
 
 ^^ This food, in the nature of witzelbrod, appears to have been eaten at the tomb. 
 Du Cange, Glossarium, sub v. Dadsisas. 
 
 ^^Ibid., sub voc. Convivium.
 
 2o6 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 tillable lands, a statuette of the Holy Virgin was produced, 
 and accorded omnipotent powers to protect future crops and 
 health of herds.'' 
 
 Reference has been hitherto made touching the assumed 
 power of medical women among the pagans, to provoke ten- 
 derness and weaken the courage of the boldest into timorous 
 apprehension, by means of irresistible magic spells. The 
 exercise of a potency so dangerous to martial society and the 
 religious fabric of this era, quickly received vigilant attention 
 from ecclesiastical authority, and was promptly forbidden. 
 Identical with the belief of their older Christian precursors, the 
 power of incantation was fully admitted as an essential factor 
 in the causation and cure of sickness; and as an outgrowth of 
 this puissance, prognostications touching the future, whether 
 of health or infirmities, were faithfully accredited.'^ . 
 
 Sortilege by the brain or other animal matter of man, bird 
 or beast ;'** evoking destructive storms, whether of wind, rain or 
 hail; or auguries from ascending smoke, and the first animal 
 fortuitously met, were solemnly denounced.'^" Of all recited 
 paganistic usages, the practice of which was subjected to 
 pecuniary punishment, those involving the suspension of 
 wooden limbs at the intersection of highways for remedying 
 diseases," and the use of ligatures and phylacteries, are of 
 greatest importance in their connection with the medical econ- 
 omy of the early ages. 
 
 So far as the imitated effigies of Northern divinities are con- 
 cerned, in close relation with the curative property of man- 
 dragora runes, we have previously examined this interesting 
 branch of Teutonic medicine. Ligatures, similar to the earlier 
 amulets, whose efficacy was accepted by some medical writers 
 
 " Indiculus, Superstit. et Paganiar, cap. 30. 
 
 '"Rothii, De Vocabulo Physico., p. 54; and Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis 
 I'liilolog., etc., Lib. I. 
 
 " Indiculus Superstit., etc., cc. 13, 14 and 16. 
 
 ^^ Ibid., cc. 17 and 22. 
 
 '^ Ibid., c. 29.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 207 
 
 and rejected by others^^ as remote as the time of Isidore, 
 appear to have been freely appHed to the prevention and cure 
 of maladies. 
 
 This erudite encyclopaedist, stirred with burning indignation 
 at the successful introduction of a system of cures apostro- 
 phized by him as the "most execrable of remedies," proceeds 
 to describe the method of their preparation. After the im- 
 posing invocations and addition of mystic characters, these 
 medicinal charms were presumed to be of the greatest efficacy 
 and ready for suspension to the neck. While the Spanish 
 scholastic does not deny the remedial qualities of these liga- 
 tures, he expressly charges that they were known and used in 
 Hippocrates' day, and the production of the most pestiferous 
 society of men and malevolent angels, and concludes, " Since 
 they have so diabolical origin, all good Christians should 
 avoid and execrate them."^^ 
 
 It will explain the extensive use of the medical curatives by 
 proselytes, when it is stated that the authority of pontifical and 
 secular power, for ages prior to the Carloman chartulary, was 
 indispensable, not alone to hold popular tendencies to such talis- 
 mans in subjection, but the priesthood itself, a little more en- 
 lightened perhaps than the people, was addicted to fastening 
 these ligatures about the necks of men and beasts, and justi- 
 fied the practice on the ground that they contained extracts 
 from sacred scriptures. The pontiffs distinctly asserted that 
 these, instead of constituting a Christian remedy, were the very 
 venom of the Devil.'* 
 
 Oftentimes these sanitary amulets among the Northern con- 
 verts were prepared with the most pompous incantations and 
 sortileges.^" As a tribute to the saintly character of a devotee 
 
 ^^ Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Ligaturae. The adhesion of Villanova to their ef- 
 fectiveness is doubtful, De Physicis Ligaturis, p. 619 ; Phylactery talismans in 
 the year 1016. Annalista Saxo., sub an., cit.; ap. Eccard. I., p. 442. 
 
 ^•' " Salisatores, etc. Ligaturee execraljilium remedium quae ars medicinum con- 
 demnat." Isidor., Hispal. Etymologior., Lib. VIII., c. 9. 
 
 ^■'Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Ligaturse. 
 
 ''^ Gregor., Turones. De Miraculis S. Martini, Lib. II., c. 45; and Lib. IV., 
 c. 36.
 
 2o8 HISTOR Y OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 in the time of Martin, the Frankish saint, it is recited that 
 visiting a sick woman, found with these ligatures upon her, 
 and after removing this evidence of pagan futihty, the diseased 
 person was instantly restored to perfect sanity by pouring into 
 her mouth the oil of a holy sepulchre.'^'' Down to the age of 
 Boniface, bishop of the Mayence episcopate, these remnants of 
 paganistic medicinal remedies appear to have survived all the 
 the enactments of canon and civil law, inasmuch as this pontiff 
 expressly charges" that some of the women of his day were seen 
 with ligatures and phylacteries on their arms and legs as infal- 
 lible protectors against maladies. Bede states that the Anglo- 
 Saxons made zealous use of such medicinal curatives.^" 
 
 From the text of the rescript decreed by a council of bish- 
 ops, under the sanction of Charlemagne, in the year 787, at his 
 imperial residence, the followers of this avocation were classi- 
 fied by law as obligatores, who arrange these medical amulets 
 designed to expel demoniacal sickness from the human body.^' 
 The chapter of the Indiculus above quoted as No. XV., De 
 igne fricato de ligno, id est Nodfyr, seems to have been a usage 
 adopted to a variety of purposes,'^" among which was preserva- 
 tion against diseases by the assumed sanitative power of fire 
 produced by prolonged friction of two twigs.^^ 
 
 The apparent singularity of the customs cited recedes before 
 a demonstrable fact, that all these observances and methods, 
 so universally adopted in the interest of good health and in- 
 demnity from disease, which indeed, with aged pagans, was 
 equivalent to assassination,^' were based upon the doctrine of 
 controlling the invisible deities of Asgard and their subordi- 
 
 ^''Ibid., op. cit., Lib. II., cap. 32. 
 
 '^ " Dicunt quopue sc vidisse ibi mulieres pagano ritu phylacteiia et ligaturas, 
 et in brachiis, et cruribus ligatas habere." Du Gauge, op. cit., v. Ligaturae. 
 
 ^*Beda, Vita S. Guthberti, cap. 16; Ibid., Ilistor. Ecclesias., Lib. IV., c. 27. 
 On tiieir more ancient use, Eutropius, Hist. Breviar., Rom. Lib. III. 
 
 ^^ Gapitular., Aquisgran, cap. 63. 
 
 ™ Du Gange, Glossar., sub v. Nodfyr. 
 
 '" Roskoff", Geschiciite des Tcufels, Th. I., p. 295. 
 
 '*' Simrock, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 232.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 209 
 
 nate divinities, the incorporeal but visible beings of Nifelhel. 
 The duration of such faith facilitated the introduction and 
 rapid amalgamation of prior teachings of the Christian Fathers, 
 with the crude yet well defined mythology or demonology ol 
 Northern converts. The colossal dimensions of this notion 
 may be inferred from the abjuration formulas reproduced 
 above ; and how profoundly the popular mind was impressed 
 with the vast resources of demoniacal hosts, can be gathered 
 from the creeds and confessions prescribed in the eighth cen- 
 tur)" — where the forces of idolatry, poisonings, conjurings, 
 sortilege, and belief in were-wolves,^* are distinctly incorporate 
 together with diabolical prerogatives. 
 
 The cautionary counsels of the Church authorities against 
 the use of phylacteries and the ligatures, were finally, after 
 useless appeals to the clergy and people had been issued, 
 formally interdicted,^^ together with such mystic formulas and 
 prognostications as foolish men hazarded under the very 
 shadow of sacred edifices redolent with paganism, in the name 
 of Holy Martyrs or Saints of God, thus provoking them to 
 wrath, including sacrilegious fires commonly called Nedfratre.^® 
 Observances of this nature were subject to the prohibitory 
 penalty of reasonable fines, but this practice by the Saxon 
 proselytes was punishable with death.^' 
 
 Substantially the same heathen usages were pressed upon 
 the attention of the clergy by a decree of Charlemagne, in the 
 year 769, with positive instructions to prevent their repetition.^' 
 To the clergy were committed the grave functions of enforcing 
 varied ecclesiastical statutes enacted to eradicate the vital 
 growth of paganistic rites, among which was the preparation 
 and sale of amulets, ligatures and talismanic phylacteries for 
 
 ^^Massmann, Abschworungs Formeln, p. 121, No. 20. 
 3+Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Th. I., p. 298. 
 ^^Cartular., Carolimanni, an. 742, cap. 5; Baluz. I., col. 14S. 
 ^^ Du Cange, Glossarium, sub v. Nedfratres. 
 '''" Cartular., De Partibus Saxon., cap. 8; Baluz. I., col. 250. 
 ^® Baluz., Cartular., Tom. I., col. 191. 
 14
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the prevention or cure of fever and pestilence. While, however, 
 these enlightened edicts added the ponderous force of penal 
 law to this task, the subject-matter of each rescript frankly 
 admitted the abstract existence of those demoniacal poM ers 
 whose potential elements were only checked by Christian 
 faith and the full exercise of martyrology. 
 
 The ordinance of 789 recites the arch-demon as an actual 
 being, and admits the Satanic domination, in declaring: "If 
 any one, deceived by the devil, believes, after the manner of 
 Pag-ans, that a certain man or woman is a witch and devours 
 men, and shall therefore burn the one so charged, or give the 
 decedent's flesh to be eaten, or eat it himself, he shall be pun- 
 ished with death. "^'' 
 
 In a cartulary of the same date, the potential in^ ocation of 
 supernatural forces is clearly set forth in an interdiction laid 
 upon the conjuration of hail storms, by means of charts affixed 
 to beams;''" and it likewise forbade the baptism of bells, pre- 
 suming, perhaps, the concession of a sacred rite against the 
 mighty bolt of Thor or thunder, might vitalize a venerable 
 heathen superstition. Canonical laws, combined with Carlov- 
 ingian edicts, were alike impotent to eradicate effectually the 
 supernal force and virtues accorded the ligatures, phylacteries, 
 runic effigies, and other medicinal symbols of the northern 
 proselytes ; and in defiance to such legislation they survived as 
 unquestioned curatives to a late period of th< Middle Ages." 
 
 The politic introduction of idolatry of -glinted relics at 
 this period, divided the vulgar mind betv oen a gradually 
 increasing apathy to more ancient rites, and the transmission 
 of medical puissance of older ceremonials to visible remains 
 of divinized martyrs and saints. The attractive elements of 
 this culture involved both financial and spiritual gain to the 
 chapels and monasteries possessing such holy fragments, as 
 
 ■"Baluz., Cartular., cap. 6, Tom. I., col. 252. 
 
 ^^ " Nee chartas per perticas appendant propter grandinem." Capitulare Ter- 
 tium, cap. 18; Baluz., op. cit., p. 244; and Uu Cange, Glossar., sub v. Pertica. 
 ■" Dclrio, Disquisition, Magicar., Lib. I., II. and III.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 211 
 
 they not only provided a certain remedy for all maladies and 
 criminalities, but as talismans, preserved the devotee against 
 the terrible afflictions of famine in food or water, pestilence, 
 battle and sudden death.*'' 
 
 Charlemagne materially enlarged the scope of their possible 
 energies, by an edict requiring all oaths*'' and other civil 
 obligations to be attested upon them by actual contact. 
 Wherever, indeed, these holy remains of martyrs and saints, 
 dead in the odor of superior purity, were exposed to excited 
 impulse of vulgar superstition, whether in cloister or cathedral, 
 a knowledge of their miraculous puissance quickly extended 
 throughout contiguous provinces, and oftentimes into foreign 
 countries. 
 
 The chief object in those remote ages appears to have been 
 the possession of desirable reliques, not alone for intrinsic 
 worth, but for the steady and uninterrupted revenues derived 
 from their exposure to suffering sick and infirm, by which 
 means streams of wealth and affluence flowed into monastic 
 and chapter treasuries. In more ancient times these inert ob- 
 jects only obtained simple adoration from zealous Christians, 
 as typical representatives of those who had suffered martyr- 
 dom for the new faith, which rapidly increased into a credulity 
 of their supernal powers, at first in the Eastern Empire," and 
 with the introduction of the monastic system in the West the 
 potential efficiency of this cult was quickly recognized.*^ 
 
 As early as the ninth century in Western Europe, transla- 
 tion of sainted bones was attended with elaborate and formal 
 ceremonies. When a final depository had been selected, either 
 within the perpetual enclosure of a stone sarcophagus, or ex- 
 posed to external examination, a sacred edifice of imposing 
 
 "Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Th. II., p. 55. 
 
 *^"Omne sacramentum in Ecclesia aut Supra reliquias juraretur." Cartular., 
 Quartum., an. 803, cap. 57 ; Baluz., Tom. I., col. 398. 
 
 **Beausobre, Histoire du Manicheisme, Tom. II., pp. 638-642, 652. 
 
 ^^Gregor., Turones. Vita S. Martini, Lib. II., c. 32; and Lib. IV., c. 36; and 
 Beda, Histor. Eccles., Lib. I., cc. 18 and 21.
 
 212 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 proportions was erected over them, and thenceforth the afflu- 
 ence of their rehgious custodians was assured. It is related 
 when the body of Saint Sebastian, legitimately procured from 
 Rome, together with the purloined remains of Saint Gregory, 
 arrived at the cloister of Soissons, so great was the spontane- 
 ous aggregation of invalids who sought the medicinal vir- 
 tues of these relics, that they came in troops, weighted with 
 bodily ills, but departed wholly healed and thoroughly ro- 
 bust/" The influx of gold from grateful donors was so vast 
 that the monks actually counted eighty measures of money, 
 and a hundred pounds in coin." The immense value of such 
 objects may be readily calculated when it is stated in the year 
 1056 Berengar pledged securities to the amount of ten thou- 
 sand solidi, for the production of the reliques of SS. Just and 
 Pastor, upon the legal decision of ownership between him and 
 a Narbonnese Archbishop.** 
 
 Among the first to realize the unbounded commercial worth 
 of these adored and medicinal materials were Venetian mer- 
 chants, whose resources, developed by the fortuitous circum- 
 stances of their illustrious metropolis, enabled them to under- 
 take this lucrative traffic in oriental ports, where naturally 
 these revered remains were most plentiful. Notwithstanding 
 the government of Venice delayed instituting public marts or 
 fairs until the eleventh century, there were in the cities of 
 Rome and Pavia such enterprises a long time anterior, for 
 commercial exchange.^* 
 
 In order to swell the concourse of pilgrims frequenting these 
 displays, originally suggested by pious and infirm wanderers 
 to the sacred relics of an enshrined martyr, especial indul- 
 gences were granted by the pontiffs, together with important 
 
 **Acta SS. Boland., Jan. 20, Tom. II., p. 259. 
 
 *' Roth., Beneficienwesen, Th. I., p. 255. 
 
 ^^" Et volui ei dare obsides per decern millia solidos, ut si ullus homo vel fem- 
 ina ullam vim ei faceret de ipsorum corpora sanctorem," etc. Baluz., Concilia 
 Narbonn., p. 15. 
 
 **Du Cange, Gloss., sub v. Foras.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 213 
 
 immunities and franchises. Meanwhile nothing was neglected 
 which could augment the patron saint's celebrity, under whose 
 tutelary protection the fair was solemnly placed, and each op- 
 portunity was eagerly seized of procuring relics already cele- 
 brated for their miraculous powers.^" 
 
 As a suitable guarantee for the institution of a public mart 
 in Germany, the Reichsberg annals'^^ state that the emperor 
 demanded certain hostages, or the holy arm of Saint George. 
 The Venetians, not satisfied with establishing a fair in honor of 
 Saint Mark, their tutelary protector, and others, purchased 
 famous relics wherever they were procurable. It is, indeed, 
 stated by way of accusation that a negotiation for an exchange 
 of a well-preserved body of Saint Tairise, ancient patriarch 
 of Byzantium, having terminated unsuccessfully, because the 
 Greek monks who possessed it refused absolutely to sell or bar- 
 ter, these enterprising traders quietly stole the desired skeleton.*^ 
 
 Mediaeval bishops used these saintly fragments to obtain 
 contributions for the construction or repair of sacred edifices. 
 For this purpose these venerated objects were circulated 
 among the people of the episcopate under priestly surv^eil- 
 lance, and formally presented with urgent request for pecuniary 
 gifts ;'^ and as a consideration for liberal advances, these bones 
 were as freely applied to the cure of obstinate diseases, as the 
 rifled contents of the Wisigothic tombs." 
 
 Official sanction, given at an early age to the Agnus Dei, 
 excited a deep and devoted interest in their medical economy."" 
 These pellets of paschal wax, distributed to the people after 
 the impressive ceremonies of Sabbatic consecration, were care- 
 
 ^"Daru., Histoire du Venise, cap. t^t^, Tom. I., p. 30 seq. 
 
 '"^ Chronicon Reichensperb, p. 263. 
 
 ^^Daru., Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., cap. 34. In the year 1175 the Venitian 
 merchants stole such sanctified bones from Alexandria, in Egypt. Arnoldi, 
 Chronic. Slavorum, Lib. VII., cap. 8. 
 
 ^^ Du Cange, sub v. Reliquas. 
 
 5^ Lex Wisig., Lib. IX., Tit. II., Lex. 2. 
 
 ^^Walafrid Strabo, De Rebus Eccles., cap. 22.
 
 214 
 
 HISTOR Y OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 fully preserved in humble domiciles as a resistless amulet 
 against disease, or set up within the circumscribed precincts 
 of vineyards and arable fields, became a talisman against 
 demoniacal prestige, and the crushing force of thunder.^® 
 
 **Du Cange, op. cit., sub v. Agnus Dei.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Rise and Progress of Saint Gall — Its Influence on Art and Medical Cul- 
 ture — Lazaretto for Lepers Early in the Ninth Century at this Cloister 
 — Gardens for Botanicaland Pharmaceutical Purposes — Hraban Maur 
 Digests in the Ninth Century a Glossary of Physiology in the Native 
 Idiom for Teutonic Students — Collection of Medical MSS. by this Mon- 
 astery in the Early Ages — Noted Professor of this Art — His Knowledge 
 of Chemistry — Miracle Cures — Curious Means of Preserving Infant 
 Life — Precious Relics — Sources of Monastic Affluence. 
 
 FROM the middle of the eighth century until the early part 
 of the ninth, the cloister of Saint Gall advanced slowly, if at 
 all, along the splendid pathway predicted by its founder.^ Ex- 
 posed from its very origin to unmeasured exactions and 
 impositions of the bishops of the Constance Episcopacy, its 
 progress in the development of those arts and sciences receiv- 
 ing close and faithful attention, was hindered for nearly a cen- 
 tury. In the year 8i6, abbot Gozpcrt having secured a 
 ratification of the ancient conventual franchises, and the con- 
 cession of priceless immunities, upon the abbey subjecting 
 itself to a scrutinizing inquisition,^ he was at liberty to con- 
 struct an edifice of suitable proportions for monkish abodes, 
 and in harmony with the monastery's great name. 
 
 From the plan of this prospective structure in its archi- 
 tectural details, indications sufficiently attest a decided ad- 
 vance in this art, under the cultivated attention of an expert 
 draughtsman, evidently the illustrious scholar, Raban Mau- 
 rus.-' Among essential apartments sketched out as the draft 
 of the new cloister, was the school-room for conventual pupils, 
 and an infirmary or hospital for the sick and infirm, and a sort 
 of Lazaretto for those suffering from contagious diseases. 
 
 ^Otte, Geschichte der Bankunst, p. loi. 
 
 ^Ratpert., Monach. De Origene et Diversis Casib. S. Galli.^ cap. 5. 
 
 ^Otte, Geschichte der Bankunst, p. 96. 
 
 (215)
 
 2 1 6 HISTOR Y OF MEDIC A L ECONOMY 
 
 This erudite scholastic, in accordance with whose plan, still 
 preserved on parchment, the monastery was constructed, also 
 drew out private chambers for a chief physician — medici 
 ipsius. These were composed of three communicating apart- 
 ments contiguous to the Lazaretto. To these in close union 
 was added a room where medicaments were stored and 
 classified under the denomination of pharmacy. Equally 
 significant for the possible progress of medicine within the 
 abbeys of this age, was a botanical garden attached to this 
 convent, and whose productions of vegetables, plants, roots, 
 etc., were gathered especially for medicinal purposes.* Raban 
 Maurus, to whom the above described vellum plan of the 
 medical and pharmaceutical apartments has been justly as- 
 cribed, was tutor of Walafrid Strabo, the celebrated historian 
 of Saint Gall, and as chief of the Fuldane school, was evi- 
 dently selected for his artistic abilities and sincere piety. That 
 Maurus evinced a deep and enduring interest in the substantial 
 advance of medicine, and therefore drafted suitable chambers 
 for the monastic medicus or physician, rests upon other and 
 more positive information touching his skillful knowledge ot 
 the human frame. 
 
 Whether prior or subsequent to the year 820, when the plan 
 alluded to was traced, this scholastic priest, afterwards bishop 
 of Mayence," carefully collated and translated the names of 
 minutest portions of human physiology from their Latin term- 
 inology in the Teutonic language.® Such translations were 
 evidently rendered essential to the tuition of convent schol- 
 ars, who by the law of Charlemagne at this epoch, were 
 required to be instructed in medicinal art. For the German 
 youth a glossary of this description was an indispensable neces- 
 sity for a correct understanding of the subject. 
 
 It should be added that the German language of that date 
 appear5*to have readily provided proper names to the several 
 
 * Ibid., p. loi. 
 
 ^Goldastius, RL-rum Alcmannic, Tom. I., p. 140. 
 
 " De I'aitibiis Iluinaiii Coqjoris; aj). Goklast., Tom. II., p. 64 seq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 217 
 
 hundred technical Latin terms descriptive of human anatomy.'' 
 The formal consecration of a part of the newly-erected edifice 
 and its outlying grounds to medical habitation and pharmacy, 
 attests unequivocally that as early as the ninth century the 
 Carlovingian rescript was effectually follo.wed by instruction 
 in the art and preparation of medicines, and administering 
 remedies thus prepared to the inmates and distressed strangers 
 applying for succor.* About the middle of this century, Grim- 
 old, who had successfully conducted the priory of Saint Gall 
 for many years, influenced by the infirmities of an advanced 
 age, surrendered the practical administration of this rapidly 
 increasing cloister into the hands of his colleague Hartmuth. 
 With the sagacious supervision of. this illustrious monk, the 
 new edifice advanced to completion, rendered additionally at- 
 tractive by the embellishments and decorations of foreign and 
 conventual artificers. Hartmuth's especial claim to illustration 
 was justly due to an aggregation of manuscript volumes, which 
 for that period, and at so remote a distance from the centers 
 of such traffic, where books were multiplied by copyists and 
 sold for enormous prices, may be characterized as extraor- 
 dinary. 
 
 Great zeal was manifested by Charlemagne to propagate this 
 interesting branch of industry, who sought by personal exam- 
 ple,® and by an edict, to render the multiplication of copies an 
 uninterrupted portion of the monastic system.'" To the man- 
 uscripts already at hand, collected by the enlightened efforts 
 of his predecessors, especially by the renowned Gozpert, Hart- 
 muth, during the lifetime of his inferior associate, added a 
 
 '' A curious exemplar of such translation may be found in Nithardi, Historia de 
 Dissent., Filior., etc.; Lib. III., sub an. 843, at which time the imperial contest- 
 ants obligated themsalves with vernacular oath. Correct construction of this 
 formula in Massmann, Abschworungs Formeln, p. 180 seq. 
 
 *"Fuere autem qui medicinem et herbariam profiterentur, tanta faoilitata, ut 
 externos etiam et peregrie profectos ad curationem admitterent." Vadian, De 
 Colleg. Monast. Veterib., Lib. I., p. 23. 
 
 ^ Eiginhard, Vita Caroli Magni, cap. 25. 
 
 ^^ Carlulare, an. 789, cap. 70; ap. Baluz., Tom. I., pp. 237 and 714.
 
 2i8 " HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 great quantity of original treatises, or as the chronist modestly 
 states it, "he assembled no small lot of books."" Among this 
 commendable selection, as may be supposed, such works relat- 
 ing to ecclesiastical history, dogmas and monastic regulations, 
 naturally exceeded the books on other subjects. 
 
 The writings of Josephus and the encyclopedia of Isidore were 
 collected by the enthusiastic scholastic, and placed with others 
 in the conventual library.'^ Upon the accession of this monk to 
 an undivided prelatial dignity in the year 872, he further 
 enlarged the library by an addition of the biographies of the 
 founders of the abbey Saint Gall ; Martin, the Gallic martyr, 
 and Saint Othmer, together with one volume of the polyhistor 
 Solinus. 
 
 This collection was afterwards increased by a donation of 
 other books which he had prepared for personal use and in 
 the most pleasing style.^'' The writings of Boethius, De Con- 
 solatione, so highly prized during the Middle Ages, and fre- 
 quently translated into vernacular dialects," and the treatises of 
 Orosius Martianus,'^ De Nuptiis Mercuri et Philologiae, other- 
 wise the Seven Liberal Arts, at a later period of his life were 
 added to the abbey collection. It seems the abbot possessed 
 a duplicate copy of the Consolatio by Boethius, in five volumes, 
 and also executed with his own skilled hand a map of the 
 world in the most subtle and accurate style.'* 
 
 Included in the aggregation of books made by Hartmuth, 
 and presented to the abbey library, were two volumes of the 
 Etymologies of Isidore, one of which was exclusively confined 
 to the subject of medicinal art." Whether this monastery 
 
 ^^ " Librorum etiam non parvam capiam sub eodem abbate Hartmatus Compos- 
 uit,'.' Ratperti, De Origen. et Divers. Casib. S. Galli., cap. 9. 
 
 ^^ Ibid., cap. 9. ' 
 
 "Ratpert, De Orig. et Diver. Casib., cap. 10. 
 
 "Jo. Ciiofti, Chronicon, sub an. 1401. 
 
 1* Usually written with Capella, Orosius suppressed. 
 
 '® " Inter hos unam niappam mundi subtili opere patravit." Ratperti, op. cit., 
 cap. 10. 
 
 "Nee non et llomiline Caesarii in Vol. I.; Etymologiorum Isidori, Vol. II.; 
 " Medicinalis liber unus." Ibid.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 219 
 
 possessed the writings of other medical authorities besides 
 Isidore and Hippocrates, is uncertain, although it is by no 
 means improbable that outside of the cloister of Monte 
 Cassino, where this art was treated as a system, such treatises 
 by pagan scholars and scientists were exposed to suspicion at 
 this early age. Among the scholastic magnates domiciled in 
 Saint Gall under the priorate of Cralo, four were especially 
 famous: Geraldus, on account of his solid erudition in the 
 liberal arts and sciences, was master of the convent school 
 from early youth to advanced age; Burkhard, from his sin- 
 gular wealth of scientific and religious endowments, was 
 deemed a suitable personage for the sacerdotal robes; and 
 Notker, alike distinguished for the severity of discipline which 
 secured for him the cognomen of Pipergrannus,'* or bitterly 
 severe, and his high excellence as doctor and painter. Of 
 those gifts, however, which elevated him above his associates, 
 a rare acquaintanceship with the practice of medical art sig- 
 nalized him in the early part of the tenth century." 
 
 The monastic chronicler distinctly asserts that the contribu- 
 tions of Notker, the Doctor, to both the art§ of painting and 
 medicine, would amply furnish materials for a great volume.'^" 
 Of the former, many specimens were yet visible in the time of 
 Ekkehard, his biographer, preserved in elegant ornamentation 
 of the portals and mural decorations of the church of Saint 
 Gall, and in the attractive illuminations of numerous manu- 
 scripts in the convent library. At a comparatively early period 
 of his habitation in the monastery, under the administration of 
 Solomon, abbot, he was celebrated for a profound knowledge 
 of musical science. 
 
 Whether it was the figures of the notes, with their heavy 
 sombre colors, or a supposed intimacy with demoniacal spirits, 
 during the last years of the ninth century this illustrious 
 
 ^* Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Pipergrannus. 
 " Ekkehardi, jun., De Casibus Monast. S. Galli., cap. 9. 
 
 2° " De Notkero vero doctore, pictore et medico, cum materiam grandis vol- 
 uminis habeanus." Ibid., cap. 13.
 
 2 20 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 scholastic and physician was accused of unnatural arts, attested 
 by the actual presence of black books of the Devil/^ an incul- 
 pation urged against him by a monastic inmate — the master of 
 conventual builders — decanus operis.'^^ In the curative art, 
 however, his knowledge and successful cures were so great 
 that he was distinguished from a predecessor of like name, by 
 the nomenclature of physicus or physician.^^ From the close 
 of the ninth to the third decade of the tenth century,^* the 
 reputation of Notker was continually ascending, on account of 
 remarkable cures performed by his medical treatment of mala- 
 dies universally regarded as incurable. In addition to the 
 medicinal etymology of Isidore, which the monastic library 
 possessed since the time of Hartmuth, this illustrious monk 
 had profoundly imbued his mind with* the medical aphorisms, 
 specific antidotes, and prognostics or. diagnosis of Hippocra- 
 tes;"^ so that his acquaintanceship, and, indeed, a remarkable 
 one for that period of medicine, was procured from the writings 
 of the sage of Chios, and, doubtless, involved familiarity with 
 the abstract principles of this art. 
 
 Notker's evident readiness in detecting the trick of Duke 
 Henry, by substituting human fluids in order to test the 
 knowledge of the Saint Gall physician, attests both a high 
 proficiency in the essential elements of chemistry, since he not 
 only discovered the crafty substitution, but predicted events 
 based on this inspection, which ultimately, occured,^" and dem- 
 
 ^' " Ne miremini, inquit, si Diaboli, a quo nigros libros noctibus discunt, fal- 
 cinatorum suorum," etc. Ibid., cap. 3, 
 
 '■'''' Du Cange, Glossarium, sub v. Decanno Operis. 
 
 2-<" Unus dicebatur Notkerus Physicus, vir multse scientije," etc. Ekkehardi, 
 Minim., De Vita Notkeri Balbuli, cap. 4. 
 
 ^* Vadiani, Chronologia Abbat. S. Galli., sub an. 942. 
 
 2a « Medendo autem mira et stupenda frequenter fecerat, quoque, quoniam et in 
 Aphorismis medicinalibus, speciebus quoque et Antidotis, et Prognosticis Hippo- 
 craticis erat instructus." Ekkehardi jun., De Casibus et Eventibus, etc., S. GalH., 
 cap. 13. 
 
 ^''" Ut in urina Hienrici Ducis versute se decipere temptantis apparuit." Ibid. 
 Urinal inspection in Cassiodorus' day as part of medical practice. Edicta Reg., 
 Ostrogothor., c. 19.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 221 
 
 onstrates further the undoubted application of strangers to the 
 conventual pharmacy for medical treatment. 
 
 When, moreover, the diocesan bishop was produced before 
 this renowned physician for medicinal attendance in a pus- 
 tular malady, he unhesitatingly asserted his ability to re- 
 press the eruptions, but declined, and attributed the refusal 
 to a disinclination to become incriminated with the prelate's 
 death, which would surely ensue if such treatment were 
 adopted. He also predicted an entire cure for the pontiff 
 without the disorder leaving the slightest trace visible."^ 
 According to the phraseology used by Ekkehard, the annalist 
 of Saint Gall, in portraying the closing scenes of the venerable 
 Keroldo's life, resembling the imposing death of the Anglo- 
 Saxon Beda,^^ when the dying monk, whose eminent abilities 
 and many virtues entitled him to exalted praise, asked for 
 Notker, it is parenthetically stated he was then " in the royal 
 hall, selecting remedies."'" 
 
 During the audience with Otho, emperor of Germany, to 
 whom a delegation of monastic electors officially announced 
 the death of his predecessor and the elevation of Notker to the 
 vacant priorate of Saint Gall, he was referred to as a medicus, 
 in terms indicating a celebrity even in the imperial court.*" In 
 alluding to certain conventual brethren of this renowned 
 abbey, who were regarded as pillars of the church by their 
 utterances and example, a venerable chronicler praises the 
 clerical surgeon for his mathematical skill.^^ The curious 
 means resorted to for the preservation of the infant existence 
 of Burkard, subsequently prior of Saint Gall, as a sample of 
 surgery towards the close of the ninth century, will attest the 
 anxiety to prolong human life in those remote ages. When it 
 became an unquestioned fact that the mother was rapidly 
 
 ^' Ekkehard, jun., De Casib. et Eventib., etc., cap. iS. 
 
 ^* Simon. Dun., Histor. Ec9lesi£e, Lib. I., cap. 15. 
 
 ^*" Erat enim ille tunc pro remediis in aula regia," Ibid., cap. 14. 
 
 ^"Ibid., cap 16. 
 
 21 Cunrad. Fabar., De Casib., Monast. S. Galli, cap. 3.
 
 222 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 declining in health before the entire fruition, preparations were 
 made to save the offspring. 
 
 Fourteen days prior to full maturity the parent died, where- 
 upon, according to this startling legend, the child was removed 
 by excision, yet alive, and carefully wrapt in the skin of a swine 
 just slaughtered.^^ During the priorate of Thieton, in the first 
 part of the tenth century,'" the cloister chapel was almost 
 totally destroyed by fire. Pending this sad fatality, which, 
 however, attested the notable puissance of saintly relics, great 
 numbers of the books in the abbey library were stolen by 
 irresponsible persons summoned thither under the ostensible 
 purpose of aiding to save the edifices adjoining the burning 
 church. Most strenuous efforts were made by the conventual 
 brethren and their lay assistants, to preserve the holy bones of 
 Saint Othmer from combustion.^* 
 
 However singular it may appear, the facts confronting us 
 even simultaneously with the undisputed excellence of Not- 
 ker's medical skill, require an unreserved admission that, not- 
 withstanding the possession of treatises on medicine by Isidore 
 and the illustrious sage of Chios, permitting the application of 
 this art to diseases in the infirmary of Saint Gall, the anomaly 
 of the Middle Ages exists, of an increasing confidence in mirac- 
 ulous cures by consecrated wax, or contact with idolized relics. 
 Before the middle of the ninth century, an event occurred in 
 this cloister, which offers the exact prototype of a saintly path- 
 ological remedy in the twelfth century at Monte Cassino, where 
 scientific curatives had been exhausted, and as a last resort 
 St. Bernard, of Clairvaux, was called to operate a restoration 
 to health.'^ A certain monk of Saint Gall, as the annalist al- 
 leges, " possessed of no slight instruction in medical science,''^ 
 
 •'*'•'" I nfans excisus et aruinse porci recens erucre ubi incutescere et involutus." 
 Ekkehard, op. cit., cap. la 
 
 '"^ Vadiani, Chronologia, sub an. 923. 
 
 "♦ Ekkehard, jun., De Casib. Monaster. S. Galli, cap. 6. 
 
 "■•Fleury, Histoire Ecclesiastique, Tom. XIV., p. 509. 
 
 ^ " Prater quidam ejusdem congregationis medicinali scientia non ignobiliter 
 instructus." Walafrid Strabo, Vita B. Galli, Lib. II., cap 37.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 223 
 
 at a time prescribed for such operations by canon and imperial 
 law," attempted the regulation blood-letting or phlebotomy by 
 incising a vein; but owing to the haste witH which the surg- 
 ery was performed, not only the arm actually lanced, but his 
 entire body, swelled up as a vast tumor. His condition be- 
 came quickly moribund, especially after the application of the 
 highest skillfulness known to medical art had proved nugatory. 
 The ensuing evening he beheld a personage of candid and 
 venerable appearance approach him in a dream, who inquired 
 touching the mortal infirmity. Upon being informed of the 
 fruitless attempts of science to restore health, the old man di- 
 rected him to repair at morning twilight to the crypt, where a 
 flaming light blazed in perpetual flame before an altar within 
 which reposed the bones of Saint Gall, and that of the oil which 
 furnished the material for such holy combustion, he should 
 anoint his wounds, which act would instantly heal the suffering 
 invalid. Following the advice of the nocturnal visitant, and ap- 
 plying the remedy, he was immediately cured.^* In the year 
 8ii,Wolflems having resigned the direction of this cloister 
 upon his accession to the Constance episcopate, he dedicated 
 a church to the patron Saint of the monastery and the Holy 
 Mother. The relics, or body of Saint Gall, being translated to 
 their final domicil — an altar especially constructed for this pur- 
 pose — proved to be a standing and effective remedy for the 
 cure of gout.'^* 
 
 Fragments of the true cross suspended to a tree, in addition 
 to sanitary powers, were of sufficient potency to evoke divine 
 manifestation for the proper location of sacred edifices. Saint 
 Magnus,*" who appears to have carried these puissant objects 
 around with him, completely vanquished demons who fre- 
 
 ^^ By a cartulary of Charlemagne in the year 789, the nuns were forbid resort- 
 ing to this operation in order to provoke an unnatural fairness of face : " Et de 
 pallore earum propter sanguinis minuationem." Capitulare Tertium, cap. 3. 
 
 38Walafrid Strabo, Vita B. Galli, Lib. II., cap. 37. 
 
 ^*" Curatus k podagra per ipsius merita." Vadiani, Chronologia, sub an. 811. 
 
 ^"Theodor. Eremit., De Vita S. Magni Confessoris, Lib. II., cap. 6.
 
 2 24 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 quented a locality selected for a chapel, through the terrible 
 name of Adonai. 
 
 When the omnipotent relics of Saint Blasius were translated 
 from Rome to the monastery of Saint Gall, the specified spot 
 for the altar which contained them was designated by a 
 miracle as strange as the supposed talismanic powers of its 
 patron's mouldering bones." Among other wonderful attri- 
 butes conceded to the celebrated Isone, a monk inhabiting 
 this cloister, was the preparation of an ointment of such 
 resistless curative virtue, that oftentimes lepers, paralytics, and 
 the sightless, were instantly restored to perfect sanity by 
 anointing the affected parts. 
 
 The supremacy of the founder of this abbey over the foul 
 demon vexing, as we have narrated, the ducal daughter of 
 Burgundy, was revealed in a miraculous cure of the suffering 
 girl; and as usual in such cases, the grateful prince caused the 
 construction of an imposing edifice for a perpetual monument 
 of the demoniacal exorcism and of parental gratitude.*^ The 
 chronicler of this saint's life, as a fitting testimonial of his 
 divine prowess in posthumous remedies for the sick and in- 
 firm, states that wax from tapers illuminating the ends of the 
 altar enclosing Saint Gall's mortal remains, was an instantan- 
 eous cure in violent toothache, diseased eyes, and total deaf- 
 ness. 
 
 Eyesight was restored to the blinded orbs of a humble 
 merchant, seeking the blood-stained marks upon the chapel 
 of Saint Magnus, under the inspiration of a divine impulse, and 
 feeling his uncertain way by a staff to the place where these 
 discolorations reappeared more distinctly after each washing 
 
 "Anonym. Script., De Vita S. Findiani, cap. 6. 
 
 " Ekkehard, jun., De Casib. Monast., cap. 2. 
 
 «WaIafrid Strabo, De Vita B. Galli, Lib. I., cc. i6 and 19. 
 
 ** " Nam quicunque dcntium fatigatii doloribus vel oculorum latitudine vel aur- 
 ium praeclusione laborantes de eisdem ceius quippiam ceiTe tulerunt," etc. Ibid., 
 Lib. L, c. 34. Dental surgery was carefully prescribed in the nth century by 
 Constans Afer., Liber de Chirurgia, cap. 35, p. 339.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 225 
 
 with heavy layers of lime/" A v^ase used by the martyred 
 Willabrod for bathing thrice a year, still holding its partially 
 solidified water by divine invocation after her death, was of 
 great medicinal energy in diverse ailments.^'' How profoundly 
 this system of ready recurrence to saintly curatives was 
 impressed upon early mediaeval medical economy, appears 
 from the hasty recourse to the restorative forces of this virgin, 
 by an artificer wounded in elevating, with his confreres, an 
 enormous quadrate stone to an elevated point in a side wall. 
 This block, through incautious handling, glided and fell upon 
 a workman's foot and crushed it. He w^as immediately car- 
 ried to the diversorium or infirmary, and the mangled member 
 carefully anointed with wax. Insisting upon being borne to 
 the sepulchre of Willabrod, it is asserted he obtained so 
 quickly the gracious attention of the entombed saintess, that 
 the following day at dawn, entirely restored to primitive vigor, 
 he went to work with the operatives.*' 
 
 It will sufficiently appear from the summary touching medi- 
 cinal puissance of sainted relics, how vast, of necessity, the 
 affluence of w'ealth must have been to a conventual treasury, 
 where fragments of martyred dead were endowed wnth miracu- 
 lous remedies. Further reference to this usage will be made 
 hereafter, as an index of that abiding faith of the Middle Ages 
 touching demoniacal causation of sickness, whose prompt and 
 efficacious expulsion was submissivly conceded to be inherent 
 in adored types of Omnipotent force, which vanquished dia- 
 bolical and vexatious maladies. 
 
 Therefore, the possession of valued relics was an unfailing 
 source of riches to a cloister, and oftentimes the unremitting 
 exertions of these religious bodies to procure them provoked 
 an interference of authority to divide contested acquisitions.""* 
 
 ** Hepidani Coenob., De Miraculis Wibordise Virginis, Lib. I., c. 35. 
 *^" Sed etiam post martyrium pro diversis languoribus medicabile fuit, et est." 
 Hepidani, Coenob., De Miraculis Wibord. Virgin., Lib. L, c. 20. 
 *nbid., Lib. IL, cap. 16. 
 *8 Wolteri, Chronica Bremensis, sub an. 888. 
 15
 
 226 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Not Linfrequently documentary evidence of authenticity ac- 
 companied a gift of relics, and furnished legal proof of owner- 
 ship, as early as the ninth century.*' Such donations were 
 regarded as the most precious presents, and chronicled, in the 
 conventual annals as events of high importance.'^" The procu- 
 ration of Saint Peter's knife by a German monastery in the 
 twelfth century was deemed the most illustrious act of a benev- 
 olent abbot.^^ 
 
 In the same age a certain nobleman, on a pious pilgrimage 
 to Jerusalem, after long and patient importunity, succeeded in 
 obtaining at enormous cost trifling particles of the relics of 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which, enclosed in a priceless box, 
 he donated to the monastery of Saint Gall. This gift was re- 
 garded so inestimable that it is the single event of the year; 
 but when it is considered, wherever these sainted fragments 
 were deposited, throughout that vicinity there was uninter- 
 rupted peace, unstinted plenty, and salubrious air, the suppres- 
 sion of other matters is amply explained.^^ Amid the sacking 
 of Constantinople by the Prankish forces in the beginning of 
 the next century, the principal object of their ferocious cruel- 
 ties and vigilant searches was the acquisition of precious 
 relics.^'' 
 
 Among these were drops of the Saviour's blood, large pieces 
 of the true cross, bones of Saints John the Baptist and James, 
 and parts of the body of Saint George. Many of these it seems 
 were obtained by a Cistercian monk by the name of Martin, 
 through whom portions were distributed throughout Alsace 
 and Germany.^* 
 
 «Ibid. 
 
 •^"Chronicon Rastedense, sub an. 1121. 
 
 ^' " Et hie gladium sive cultrum Sancti Petri," Ibid., sub an 1 190. 
 
 "'•^ " Ubicumque autem reliquse fuerint, ut illi testati sunt illic pax, et augmen- 
 tum, et lenitas seris semper erit." Hepid. Coenob., Annales, sub an. 1180. 
 
 ■'•'" Spe lucri . . . reliquiis sanctorum innumerabilium, quibus hsec civitas prce- 
 stabat omni Orienti." Otto Fris. Ciir. Cont. Sanblas, cap. 49. 
 
 ■■•^Otto Frising. Chronicon, Continuat Sanblas, cap. 49.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 227 
 
 These relics, captured in Constantinople, were divided by 
 the troops under Marquis de Montfort, with the same justice 
 as prevailed in the division of other booty. In this way the 
 Venetians were enabled to enrich their metropolis with a piece 
 of the sainted cross, an arm of Saint George, part of the head 
 of Saint John the Baptist, the entire skeleton of Saint Luke, 
 that of the prophet Saint Simeon, and a small bottle of Jesus 
 Christ's blood.^" The Greek capital from the remotest times 
 appears to have monopolized this traffic in sacred wares, claim- 
 ing to possess a fragment of the stone on which Jacob slept, 
 and the staff transformed into a serpent by Moses. 
 
 Here also were guarded the Holy Virgin's vestments, her 
 spindle, drops of her milk, the cradle in which the Saviour had 
 lain, a tooth from his adolescent jaw, a hair of his beard, a par- 
 ticle of bread used in the Last Supper, and a portion of the royal 
 purple worn by him before Pilate.^" Naturally clerical adven- 
 turers among the occidental Crusaders, pending the sacking 
 of the Byzantine city, sought out most zealously these valua- 
 ble remnants of pristine glory, and in obtaining them were by 
 no means scrupulous with menaces and violence." When scat- 
 tered through Western Europe, in the monasteries and other 
 religious places, their curative properties increased the pilgrim- 
 ages thither of the sick and diseased. 
 
 ^Daru., Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 64 seq. 
 ^'' Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Th. II.. p. 54. 
 5^ Daru., op. cit., Tom. I., p. 64.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Monastery of Salerno— Celebrated for its Medical School in the Ninth 
 Century — Contest of Duplicity and Poison between a Bishop and a 
 Salernite Professor — MSS. of Hippocrates and Galen Carried in Jour- 
 neys by Monks — A Youthful Cleric and Medical Student — Monkish 
 Professor of this Art — Progress of the Celebrity of Salerno in the 
 Tenth and Eleventh Centuries — Doubtful Methods of Increasing this 
 Fame — A Monopoly of Curatives Established by Force — Imperial 
 Sufferers seek Remedies There — Metrical Version of Hygienic Advice 
 to an English King — Archbishop as Skilled Surgeon — Professional 
 Writers of this Age — Avocation of Medicine Exclusively in Hands 
 of Clergy— Its Great Lucrativeness — Synods Interdict its Practice by 
 Ecclesiastics for Compensation. 
 
 THAT Carlovingian legislation, touching the medical educa- 
 tion of youth aggregated in monastic schools, manifested 
 beneficial results from an early period, independent of the high 
 powers attributed to relics as curatives, admits of historical 
 proof, although to what extent such instruction was based on 
 the writings of Hippocrates and Galen is uncertain. Before 
 the close of the ninth century, under the reign of Carloman, 
 king of Bavaria, Wigbert, ordained as bishop of Mayence, ap- 
 pears to have attained, prior to the year 880, when he died, a 
 high distinction for profound knowledge of medicine.^ 
 
 In addition to this justly acquired celebrity, the illustrious 
 pontiff obtained grateful recognition from his monastery by the 
 gift of books which he had accumulated and adorned entirely 
 by personal embellishment.^ It may be fairly inferred that a 
 portion of these numerous volumes included treatises on the 
 practice of that science which had aided in his illustration. 
 In the year 946, a species of contest for medical supremacy 
 
 i"Qui suo tempore medicinae artis peritissimus fuit." Annalista Saxo, sub an- 
 no 880. 
 
 '^Catalog., Episcop. Ilildes, ap. Leihnit., Tom. I., pp. 743 and 772. 
 
 (228)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 229 
 
 occurred between bishop Deroldus and a Salernite physician, 
 in the presence of Otho, emperor of Germany.^ 
 
 This incident vindicates the assumption that early in the 
 tenth centur}', the subsequently renowned school of Salerno 
 was already reputed for its comparatively elevated standard 
 of the curative art. This struggle, attesting an expansion of a 
 system beyond the crude remedies of holy shrines, is worthy 
 of reproduction. Deroldus, for whom the king entertained a 
 passionate attachment, had the fame of profound medical skill. 
 It is narrated of him by a contemporary annalist, that being 
 deceived by a Salernite medicus or physician, he succeeded in 
 duping the scholastic of the celebrated college. 
 
 Notwithstanding the riv^als were equally versed in a know- 
 ledge of medical secrets, the royal preference leaned towards 
 the skillfulness of bishop Derold, while the queen consort espe- 
 cially patronized the Salernite. A discussion arose between 
 them touching individual profundity in the nature of things 
 confessedly within the boundaries of this art.* To proposi- 
 tions upon such subjects hazarded by the king in their mutual 
 presence, answers were made with the best possible effect. It 
 is stated that the ecclesiastic, from his thorough acquaintance- 
 ship with letters, responded with greater lucidity; while, indeed, 
 the Salernite, unskilled in polite literature, was impartially 
 awarded superior natural endowments, and a more correct 
 experience in the disputed subject. 
 
 One day, occupying the regal table, where they dined 
 together, a heated argument originated as to the relative 
 remedial properties of pharmacy, surgery and botany.^ It 
 will be observed that at the remote period under notice a 
 clear distinction appears to have been obtained touching the 
 technical denomination of these branches of medicine; and 
 strange to relate, the Salernite medicus or physician, ignorant 
 
 •' Richeiius, Historiarum, Lib. II., cap. 59. 
 * Richerius, Historiar., Lib. II., cap. 59. 
 
 ^ " Tractatumque uberius, quid efliciat farmaceutica, quid vero cirurgica, (juiJ 
 etiam butanica." Ibid.
 
 230 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 of the foreign names given to these divisions, blushed and was 
 silent.® So highly incensed was the Italian medicastre that he 
 dexterously infused a deadly poison into the pontiff's food, 
 which caused him to fall. Upon removal, he administered an 
 andidote — teriaca — which as promptly expelled the destructive 
 principle of the noxious drug. Three days afterwards he re- 
 turned to the royal court, and, on answer to inquiry, responded 
 that his infirmity " was a severe cold,"' in order to quiet the 
 defiance of the Salernite, and render him incautious. 
 
 The crafty bishop, thoroughly skilled it appears in toxicants, 
 with the utmost dexterity concealed a powder between his 
 fingers, and while his medical antagonist raised a portion of 
 food to eat, slyly scattered the deadly granules over it unper- 
 ceived.'* 
 
 Upon the king's most imperative request, and the suffering 
 Italian's vehement prayer, the bishop administered antidotes, 
 but carefully desisted from entirely curing his penitent rival; 
 as a consequence, the left foot was permanently affected.^ 
 The response made by the Salernite physician, touching his 
 infirmity, is abundant evidence of the degraded condition of 
 medicine at that epoch. He asserted " the poison had been 
 driven by the antidotes through the veins into the disabled 
 limb." Finally the epidermis seems to have been attacked by 
 the venomous drug, sickness ensued, and, to save his life, the 
 foot, amid great agony, was amputated by surgeons." In those 
 distant ages it was by no means an infrequent occurrence for 
 a cleric, devotedly inclined to a practical culture of the yEscu- 
 lapian art, to carry with him a well-worn manuscript copy of 
 Hippocrates or Galen, in order to study the rudiments of cures 
 
 ® " Et Salernitanus, peregrina nomina non advertens, ab eorum interpretatione 
 crubescens quiebit." Ibid. 
 
 '" Fleumatis frigdore se levitur tactum respondit." Ibid. 
 
 ''" Deroldus toxicam inter auricularem ac salutarem, occultatem ejus cibo su- 
 mend respersit." Richer., Historiar, Lib. II., cap. 59. 
 
 '•*" Nam sumjita teriaca, vis veneri in pedem sinistrum penitus dilapsa est." 
 Ibid. 
 
 '" " Fact()(|ue niorbo, post a cirurgis miserj^biliter absciditur." Ibid.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 231 
 
 commented upon by these venerable writers of medical sci- 
 ence. 
 
 In the year 991, a monk traveling from the city of Rheims 
 to Carnotum or Chartres, utilized with avidity the time con- 
 sumed in the journey by pondering the logic of Hippocrates 
 on liberal studies." The monastic student, having accom- 
 plished the object of the voyage alluded to, and being relieved 
 of all solicitude, proceeded with the study of the Hippocratian 
 aphorisms, under the direction of Herbrand, a person of emi- 
 nent celebrity and science. 
 
 When at length the youthful cleric had familiarized himself 
 with the prognostication of diseases, and recognized that a 
 simple acquaintanceship with maladies would not suffice a 
 person desiring thorough information, he besought his patron 
 to permit him the perusal of a work evidently digested by 
 Herbrand, which was inscribed: Concordance of Hippo- 
 crates, Galen and Soranus.^^ This he obtained, and it was 
 deemed a treatise equally erudite in dinamidia — perhaps 
 dynamical forces — pharm.acy, botany and surgery.^^ His mas- 
 ter, the compiler of the volume, used by the scholastic youth 
 with excellent fruits, was a Carnotum ecclesiastic. • From an 
 incident which happened to Richerius, the medical student 
 designated, when arriving at the entrance of this municipality, 
 it is clear Herbrand was widely famed for skillful pharmacy 
 and surgery. 
 
 The clerical historian, the disciple of this monkish professor, 
 states upon reaching the city of Carnotum, he was met by a 
 
 ^^ " Cum aviditate discencU logicam Yppocratis Choi de studiis liberalibus saepe 
 et multum cogitarem, quadam die equitem Carnotinum in urbe Remonim positus 
 offendi." Ibid., Lib. IV., cap. 50. 
 
 ^'^"In quibus cum tantum prognostica morborum accessissem, et simplex egri- 
 tudinum cognitio cupienti non sufficieret, petii etiam ab ea — Herbiando — lection- 
 em ejuslibri, qui |inscribitur de Concordia Yppocratis Galieni et Surani," Richer. 
 Histor., Lib. IV., c. 50. Vide Fabricius, Biblioth. Graica, Tom. XL, p. 714, 
 touching Soranus. 
 
 '3" Quod et obtenui, cum eum in arte peritissimum dinainidia, farmaceutica, 
 butanica atque cirurgica non laterent." Ibid.
 
 ,.2 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 lad who apparently, like Richerius, was proceeding to the 
 domicile of Herbrand for the expressed purpose of procuring 
 proper instruction in the study of medicine. At all events, the 
 production by this juvenile scholar of an advisory letter touch- 
 ing the readings of Hippocrates' Aphorisms,'* warrants the 
 conclusion that in this town, not far from Rheims, a clerical 
 professor was engaged in the systematic tuition of several dis- 
 ciples of the curative art, and had attained to considerable 
 eminence.'^ 
 
 Similar to the irregular movements, in a progressive form, 
 of philosophy and mathematics, after having been neglected 
 for several ages, medical studies began to revive in those 
 parts of Italy, enlightened by the careful policy of foreign or 
 native dominion, and radiated a certain beneficence to other 
 quarters of Western Europe. By direct influences of such 
 Italian professors of the curative art, as had obtained celebrity, 
 the fame of localities chiefly monasteries, under Teutonic sub- 
 jection, expanded with increasing attraction in the North and 
 occidental Europe, and secured most favorable consideration 
 and substantial rewards to these educational institutions from 
 sovereign! potentates, whether papal or imperial. 
 
 The Salernite school, whose ranking' distinction amon^j the 
 later medical scientists of the Middle Ages was everywhere 
 avowed, should receive the highest eulogies on account of its 
 early elevation of a rational standard of remedies, at an epoch 
 when flimsy pretexts of such a system were equivalent to 
 ecclesiastical censure. We have seen, at a compatively early 
 period of the tenth cenutury, a physician of Salerno justly dis- 
 tinguished for his knowledge of medicine and its cognate 
 filiations of surgery and pharmacy, at the Othonian court, 
 contesting publicly with a more eminent surgeon, bishop of 
 Amiens.'" 
 
 Gervaise, of Tilbury ,"in sketching out the original rise of 
 
 " " Epistolam ]Motulit illc liortatoiiam ad Aphoiismorum lectionem." Ibid. 
 
 '■''Richerius, Ilistorianim, Lili. IV., cap. 50. 
 
 "■'Ibid., Lib. II., cap. 59. 
 
 '"Otia Iinperialia, Divis. III., cap. 15.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 23: 
 
 this science at Salerno, makes the singular accusation against 
 the medical students and professors, that when its celebrity 
 was established and success assured, they resorted to a disre- 
 putable artifice in order to obtain exclusive control of the 
 patronage seeking the monastery and vicinity for a cure of 
 vexatious maladies. He alleges that in the Neapolitan city, 
 otherwise Civitas Putoleum, the wizard Virgil had constructed 
 baths of perpetual utility to the people, with admirable art, and 
 to be exclusively devoted to healing internal and external dis- 
 eases. 
 
 In order to render so valuable a gift practicable for stricken 
 sufferers for whom it was designed, certain shells were inscribed 
 with the particular curative property attributed to these waters, 
 together with a full description of the malady. Afterwards, 
 however, when the study of medicine vigorously flourished at 
 Salerno, the scholastics, influenced by envy, destroyed the 
 notices affixed to the neighboring baths, apprehensive lest the 
 knowledge of their sanitary powers might divert or diminish 
 their lucrative profession among invalids. The gossipping 
 abbot adds that the baths were for the most part intact in his 
 day — A. D., 1211^^ — and a certain remedy for diverse diseases; 
 but sagaciously concludes, those should be suspected which 
 lacked a proper notice, because the medicinal forces of the one 
 might provoke the very disorder it was intended to cure.'" 
 
 Notwithstanding this sweeping diatribe against the medical 
 scholars of Salerno, there are indications that this city was 
 already, at the end of the tenth century, extensively known for 
 the renowned excellence of its physicians, both at home and 
 among foreigners. In the year 984, Adalberane, occupant of 
 the Vendome Episcopate, in France, was transported thither 
 in quest of such curatives for his infirmities as it would appear 
 were not procurable elsewhere.^" About the same period, 
 
 1® Leibnitz, Rer. Bruns., Tom. I., p. 995. 
 
 '^ " Ipsa tamen balnea pro maxima parte intacta, diversis morborum generibus 
 medelam tribuunt." Gervasii Tilburnensis, Otia Imperialia, Divis. III., cap. 15. 
 Other meclianical marvels constructed by Virgil are described in cc. 13 and 16. 
 
 ^"Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. III., p. 394.
 
 234 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Desiderus, abbot of Monte Cassino, afterwards pope under the 
 name of Victor III., seeking a remedy for an aggravated 
 malady with which he was afflicted, had recourse to Salernite 
 physicians." 
 
 Almost simultaneously with the pilgrimage of the relig- 
 ious head of Monte Cassino, searching for medicaments in 
 supreme Salerno, to cure an infirmity, caused by unremitting 
 labor, an emperor of Germany, Henry, son of Otho the Great, 
 in the year 1002, ascended the heights where Saint Benedict, 
 ages before, had founded the great monastery of Cassino, 
 eagerly pursuing the hope of a permanent cure from a dis- 
 tressing disorder. From the details of the operation to which 
 the emperor was subjected, it is evident lithotomy was success- 
 fully practiced in the infirmary or hospital of this cloister, in 
 the tenth century. 
 
 After the extraordinary campaign in Italy, which resulted 
 in restoring Apulia to the Roman crown, on his return from 
 these ancient Greek provinces he was attacked with most pain- 
 ful calculus, and although suffering great agony, endured it 
 with patience. Ascending Monte Cassino, through adjurations 
 to Saint Benedict and the Holy Virgin, he craved a restoration 
 to health. Slumbering in the conventual hospitium, he saw 
 the sainted founder approach, who after addressing consoling 
 words opened that portion of his body where the disease was 
 seated with a "medicinal iron," and the distressing object 
 gently removed, at the same time instantly healing the in- 
 cision." When the imperial patient beheld the stone in his 
 hand, he manifested unlimited gratitude, by rich donations to 
 the abbey. 
 
 Great diversity of opinion exists touching the antiquity of the 
 Salernite medical school in its collegiate form,'"' although there 
 
 ^' " Medendi gratia Salernum perrexit." Leo Ostieiis, Chronicon Casinense, 
 Lib. IIL, cap. 7. 
 
 ^^"Cuni ferro medicinali partem illam corporis ubi habitabat calculus." Chron- 
 ica S. yEgidii, sub an. 1002. 
 
 ''^Savigny, Gcschichtc Roemischen Rechts, Th. IIL, p. 156.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 235 
 
 certainly seem to be reasonable probabilities of the advanced 
 qualities of its medical, institutions, which so early as the first 
 half of the tenth century, as we have seen, had obtained honor- 
 able recognition.^* There can be no doubt, however, that at the 
 close of this age these establishments were extensively known. 
 
 About the middle of the ensuing century, an annalist, speak- 
 ing of the erudition of Rodolphus, a monk of this convent, 
 affirms, "among other learning, such as grammar, dialectics, 
 astronomy, and music, he was as deeply versed in medicine as 
 the Salernites, whose school of the curative art had existed 
 from ancient times, and where none equalled him in this 
 science, excepting a skilled matron."'" Odericus Vitalis, the 
 chronicler cited, carried down his annual record to the middle 
 of the twelfth century, at which period he died. Two centu- 
 ries prior to this era would be fairly within the annalist's mean- 
 ing, and vindicates the statement of Richerius, touching the 
 Salernite physician of his own time.'^" 
 
 A metrical version of the curative properties of certain 
 materials, addressed to Robert of England in the twelfth cen- 
 tury, has been assigned to earlier writers, in order to extend 
 the origin of this medical school to an immediate institution 
 by Charlemagne in the eighth or ninth century. Doubtless, 
 the significance of this would be simply tracing, as other 
 monastic medical schools, these establishments to the Carlo- 
 vingian cartulary prescribing the study as a part of conventual 
 education. 
 
 Whether the excellence of Salerno, prior to the advent of 
 Constans Afer in the eleventh century," in medicinal culture 
 was unique, or transcended the eminence of other institutions, 
 a positive beneficial influence arrived with the famous African 
 scientist, or according to the rational conjecture of Tiraboschi, 
 through Saracen residents of Sicily, introducing Arabic science, 
 
 ^* Richerius, Historiar., Lib. II., cap. 59. 
 
 ''^Odericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiast., sub an. 1059, Lib. III. c. xi. 
 
 ^® Historiarum, Lib. II., cap. 59. 
 
 *^ Petrus Diaconus, De Viribus Illustratibus Casinens., cap. 23.
 
 2^6 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 who, domiciled under Christian domination, furnished medi- 
 cal as well as other books^** — an event rendered quite certain 
 by the sagacious system of legislation adopted by Robert 
 Guiscard at the epoch before us, which promoted a free inter- 
 change of Moslem knowledge.^® 
 
 The conquest of Spain by the Arabs, and their rule for cen- 
 turies, constituted the principal source from which emanated 
 the energizing forces whose operation modified at length the 
 crude medical systems of Europe, and gave them a stricter 
 scientific tendency. The rythmical prescriptions offered the 
 English king by the school of Salerno, assisted in extending 
 the fame of this great monastery to the most distant countries 
 of Europe. These receipts, in alternative hexameter and pen- 
 tameter, are known differently as Medicina Salernitana, De 
 Conservanda bona Valetudine, Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, and 
 Flos Medicinae.^" 
 
 Whether other versions of this curious sanitary poem exist 
 is uncertain, although with the usual prolixity of mediaeval 
 versifiers, some of these reach beyond a thousand lines,^' while 
 abbreviated ones are limited to less than four hundred. The 
 main purpose of this hygienic poem appears to have been the 
 procuration of royal favor from an adventurer then sojourning 
 in Salerno, perhaps Robert, Duke of Normandy, son of Wil- 
 liam the Conqueror. It is, indeed, possible to have been writ- 
 ten at the expressed wish of the king himself 
 
 Popular legends so frequently repeated in the Middle Ages, 
 touching a poisoned wound received by this prince at the 
 siege of Jerusalem, and his probable application to Salernite 
 surgery for medical advice, may have suggested the poem, 
 which prior to his departure for England was prepared in the 
 
 ''^ Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. III., p. 396. 
 
 '■^'' Bazancourt, Ilistoire de la Sicilie sous la Domination des Normands, Tom. 
 II., p. 79. 
 
 ^" Villannova, IVoemium in Lib. Regim. Saliitatis Salernit., col. 1874. 
 =" Vossius, De Natura Artium, Lib. V., cc. 11 and 12; and Regimen Salernit. 
 Scholic, p. 50, \ 7.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 237 
 
 nature of detailed hygiene for the preservation of health, b)- the 
 physicians attending;" Doubtless the viv^id recommendations 
 of this versified prescription added to the increasing celebrity 
 of Salerno, maintained it for many ages in great repute, until it 
 became the subject of frequent commentaries in many lan- 
 guages, by those interested in propagating the system of this 
 medical school among other nations.''^ The authorship of this 
 celebrated sanitary treatise has been attributed to John of 
 Milan,'^* who it is urged compiled it while a student of medi- 
 cine at Salerno, and which obtained the concurrence of the 
 medical professors^'' — an allegation most unequivocally denied 
 by the erudite historian of Italian letters.^*' 
 
 As further proof that the masters of the great school were 
 consulted for a remedy in an incurable disorder, it is vehem- 
 ently urged that these scientists after careful study, declared 
 the poison could be extracted through suction, which it will be 
 remembered was an important element of surgery, and that 
 there was no remaining cure for this fistular malady.^' The 
 king refused to submit to such operation, w]\ich, however, 
 was successfully performed during his slumbers, by the devoted 
 sacrifice of Isabella, the royal consort.^^ How fragile and un- 
 reliable such popular traditions may be, though propagated by 
 written records, readily appears from the metrical rescript 
 itself, as the production and utterances of the united Salernite 
 professors, touching an accepted cure of this identical ailment: 
 
 "Auri pigmentum, sulphur miscere memento: 
 His decet apponi calcem: conjunge saponi: 
 
 ^2 Regimen Salernit. Sanit., Proem. 
 
 ^•' An English metrical version of the Regimen was published in London in 
 1607 for practical use. 
 
 ^^"lo. Mediol. inscriptor totum collegium Salernitatum." Zac. Silvii, Prccfat. 
 ad Scholam Salernitat., cap. 3. 
 
 3oi< Anglorum Regi scripsit schola tota Salerni." Reg. Sanitat., v. i. 
 
 ^* Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. III., p. 402 seq. 
 
 ■"Freind, Historia Medicinse, p. 530 seq. 
 
 ^^Oderic, Vital., Histor. Eccles. Lib. x., c. xi., sub an. iioo, does not mention 
 such event.
 
 2 -,8 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Quator hrec misce, commixtis quator istis 
 Fistula curatur, quator ex his si repleatur."^' 
 
 In this quotation nothing appears to assume a possible cure 
 from suction alone. These hygenic verses, if designed exclu- 
 sively for a sanitary guide to the wounded ruler of England, 
 embodied excellent hints for the preservation of health, in the 
 nature of dietary considerations, which at the time were, in- 
 deed, but little regarded. In its essential advice, this venerable 
 regimen might be followed still most advantageously. 
 
 The Norman prince is urged, if earnestly desiring robust, 
 uninterrupted health, to avoid the oppressive weight of grave 
 cares, flee unjust anger as profane and especially injurious to 
 a sanitary condition ; while a parsimonious use of wine and 
 frugal meals would produce a strong and vigorous physical 
 system ; that it was desirable to arise and exercise after 
 dining, to the utter exclusion of post-prandial slumbers. Such 
 'hygenic attentions, with others, it was claimed, would procure 
 a long and comfortable life.^" 
 
 Expanding celebrity rapidly followed the. fame obtained by 
 this production of Salernite medical professors; so much so, 
 indeed, that in the middle of the next century, Romoaldus, 
 archbishop of Salerno, asserted the city to have been pre- 
 eminent and illustrious for centuries, on account of its studies 
 in medicine and other arts.'** 
 
 William, King of Sicily, summoned the archbishop to his 
 court as expert and skilled in medical culture, according to a 
 confession which he makes himself" Here his profound ac- 
 quaintance with this art provided suitable remedies — a rose 
 .syrup, etc. — for an aggravated disease with which the monarch 
 was suffering." Towards this epoch an erudite Israelitish trav- 
 
 *» Regimen, Sanitatis Salernit., v. 83. 
 
 *" " .Surgere post epulas, somnium fuge meridianum." lb., v. 15; and " Hsec 
 bene si serves, tu longo tempore vives." Ibid., v. 17. 
 
 ^' " Civitatem medicinae utrique arlis diu famosam." Muratori, Scriptor. Rer- 
 iim Ital., Tom. VII., p. 172. 
 
 ""Qui in arte medicina erat valde peritus." Ibid., Tom. VII., p. 206. 
 
 *■''" Nam .siruppum rosatum simplicem fuisse quern dederat." Ibid., op. cit., 
 Tom. VII., p. 320.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 239 
 
 eler by the name of Benjamin, whose writings have been pub- 
 Hshed, having journeyed to Salerno, about the year 1170, 
 bestovv^ed upon this city the cognomen, Schola medicinorum 
 Idumeorum — which he intended to signify as a school of medi- 
 cine designed for occidental Christians. He adds further, what 
 is of interest at this time, that there were over six hundred He- 
 brew students of this science at Salerno, and of these he men- 
 tions some as already famous." 
 
 At Amalfi he found about twenty Jews, of whom Hana- 
 njel, a physician, was a principal man of the city.*^ From the 
 mention hitherto made, touching the presence in France in the 
 tenth century of a Salernite medical professor, it attests that at 
 so early a period in the Gallic kingdom, it was an advanta- 
 geous recommendation for a practitioner, if his studies in 
 medicine were pursued at Salerno. In the year 1 140, Roger I., 
 the Sicilian monarch, promulgated an ordinance, prescribing 
 that none should presume to practice medicine in his kingdom 
 without first obtaining the consent of magistrate or judges, 
 and in case of failure to comply with the conditions of the law, 
 the delinquent should be pnnished with forfeiture of his goods 
 and chattels.^'' 
 
 When it is considered that the edict referred to is the precur- 
 sor of more elaborate regulations of the Hohenstaufen emperors 
 upon this subject, and published for guidance in the monarchy 
 of Sicily, where medical research had become famous prior to 
 the twelfth century, it should excite little surprise that both in * 
 Salerno and its neighboring cloisters, many writers devoted 
 their energies to elucidate the practical details of medicine. 
 Of these Matthew Platearus, a Salernite physician, toward the 
 termination of the age undfer notice, compiled a treatise on 
 Antidotal Selections, and a work on the virtues of Simple 
 Medicines.*' 
 
 **"Salernum devectus sum, urbem medicinorum scholis illustrem." Berijam. 
 Tudelensis, Itinerarium, p. 22 seq. 
 
 *^ Ibid., p. 23. 
 
 *8 Constitutiones Regni Siculi, Titul. XXXIV., De Probabile Experentia Med- 
 icorum, p. 367. 
 
 *'Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latinit. et Infim., Tom. V., p. 52.
 
 2^o HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 In the year 1 163, Saladin of Ascoli, physician to the prince 
 of Sorrento, prepared a compendium on the nature of aroma- 
 tics/* Erotus and Garioneponte, Hkewise of Salerno, obtained 
 distinction in this age, the former as author of a valuable trea- 
 tise on the maladies of women, the latter as writer of eight 
 books on different diseases.""* With rare exceptions, students 
 of medicine of this and preceding centuries acquired a practi- 
 cal familiarity of the curative art as a means to procure eccle- 
 siastical eminence within the range of monastic and social 
 existence, or as a fruitful source of gain, although few of these 
 monkish scholars illustrated their knowledge of remedies by 
 erudite compilations. One of the disciples of Constans Afer, 
 Otho, evidently a German, and chaplain to the Empress Ag- 
 nes, translated into the Roman or vulgar idiom of Italy those 
 works on the healing art, which his master had reproduced 
 from Greek, Arabic, and other oriental languages, into mediae- 
 val Latinity.'" 
 
 Another scholar of the Carthaginian Constans, named John, 
 subsequent to the death of his master, wrote a work of erudite 
 importance on medical aphorisms,^^ which was particularly 
 acceptable and essential to physicians of that age."'' This 
 writer closed his earthly career at Naples, to which city he 
 bequeathed the entire medical books of Constans, his tutor.*^ 
 Other monasteries in Italy cultivated to a high degree the art 
 of medicine at this epoch and earlier, since, about the middle 
 of the eleventh century, Dominicus, abbot of the Pescara 
 
 *^ " Compendium Aromatorum," Ibid., Tom. VI., p. 142. 
 
 ** Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. III., p. 404. 
 
 o" " Capellanus Agnetis Imperatricis, ea (*[uee Constantinus de diversis linguis 
 transtulerat, cothurnato sermone in Romanam Linguam descripsit." Paulus Dia- 
 coniKs, De Virib. lllustr. Casinensis, cap. 24. 
 
 51 " Joannes medicus, supradicti Constantini discipulus et Casinensis monachus 
 vir in physica arte dissertissimus Aphorisimum edidit.," Paul. Diac, op. cit., 
 cap. 35. 
 
 6'i<< I'hysicis satis necessarium." Ibid. 
 
 6««Ubi omnes libros Constantini sui magistri reliquit." Ibid.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 >4i 
 
 cloister, received especial distinction from Henry III. of Ger- 
 many, on account of medical knowledge."* 
 
 Bernard, a Ravennate monk, in' 1028, through skillful use of 
 medicaments, obtained specific mention in the annals of his 
 time.^'^ Endowed with superior culture, both in letters and a 
 rudimentary science, closely associated with the healing art, 
 Italian monks, in its broadest signification, possessed enlarged 
 educational facilities over their confreres of more distant 
 European countries. In consequence of such beneficial endow- 
 ments, other nations gladly welcomed their culture and skill, 
 and advanced them to positions of clerical honor.'"" Thus, for 
 instance, a Tuscan early in the twelfth century, having per- 
 formed for many years the abbatial functions of an Aberdeen 
 cloister, wath distinguished abilities, was a formidable compe- 
 titor for the Canterbury archbishopric,''' but national prejudice 
 against the " Langobard," as he was denominated, prevented 
 his election. Great eulogy is awarded the Italian prelate, for 
 the indomitable energy of his character, and the notable 
 achievements performed by him at his abbey in Aberdeen, 
 which signalized the administration of the monastic property 
 and hierarchial annals, at the period of Robert, Duke of 
 Gloucester's adventurous landing in England.^*' 
 
 Of his medical acquisitions, the ancient records speak in 
 panegyrical terms, and William of Malmsburg, in a summary 
 of Foricius' attainments, asserts in laudatory language his 
 distinguished eminence in the art of medicine.'"' The zealous 
 devotion of ecclesiastics, pontifical''" and cleric, to the practice 
 of this science, especially in Italy, had caused such grave 
 
 ^*" Et eruditus arte medicinali, pro qua multi placuit imperatori." A. D. 1046, 
 Muratoii, Script. Rer, Ital., Tom. II., Pars. 2, p. 854. 
 
 ^* " Bernardus quidam, Ravenna monachus medicinee aitis peritus." Mabillon, 
 Annales Or. S. B., sub an. 1028, Tom. IV., Lib. LVL, p. 345. 
 
 ^* Wm. Alalmsb., De Gestis Pontific. Anglice, Lib. II., p. 253. 
 
 5'Wm. Malmsb., De Gestis Pontif. Angl., Lib. II., p. 230. 
 
 ^^Gesta Stephan., p. 56. 
 
 p^'Wm. Malmsb., op. cit., p. 230. 
 
 ^"Dithmar., Chronicon, Lib. VII., an. 1017. 
 16
 
 242 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 irregularities that several Church councils endeavored to sup- 
 press this ardor under the punitive power of canonical law, with 
 indifferent success. Although it was admitted at the first synod 
 where this matter was inquired into, that the enthusiasm for 
 the culture of medicine, when confined within proper limits, 
 might be highly laudable, it had after the lapse of time, and as 
 early as the year 1 1 36, degenerated into abuse. 
 
 Many monks upon acquiring skill in this art used it as a 
 pretext to remain at inconvenient distances from the cloister, 
 and as ambulatory medici or physicians, wandered be- 
 tween large towns and princely courts. Like inculpation 
 was urged against clerical students of civil and ecclesiastical 
 law.*'^ Therefore, in the twelfth century, a general council, 
 held by Innocent II., enacted and promulgated certain laws as 
 a remedy against this infraction of ecclesiastical rules. It was 
 charged that great numbers of regular and canonical monks, 
 after having assumed vestments and made monastic pro- 
 fession, abandoned the Regula of the cloisters, urged on by 
 a desire of lucre, and devoted themselves to the theory of law 
 and medicine. Such illicit use of secular knowledge was per- 
 emptorily forbidden, and bishops, abbots and priors, were 
 threatened with heavy penalties if they culpably permitted 
 these abuses.''^ 
 
 In the year 1179, similar ordinances w^ere reenacted by the 
 Turonese synod under Alexander III., which further enlarged 
 the scope of the older canon, so as to interdict the regular 
 clergy from teaching either law or medicine in schools.^ Sub- 
 sequent general and provincial councils reaffirmed these pro- 
 hibitory canons."* 
 
 61 Labbe, Concilia Lateran, 11% Can. IX., Tom. XXI. 
 
 •''^ " Spreta beatorum magistrorum Benedicti et Augustini regula leges tempor- 
 ales et medicinam gratia lucri temporalis addiscunt." Labbe, Concilia Lateran, 
 11% Can. IX., Tom. XXI. 
 
 ^ V^m. Neubrig., Historia Anglicana, Lib. III., cap. 3. 
 
 6' In the year 1195 the following was ordered at Montpelier: " Prohibuit prse- 
 tera sub omni severitate ecclesiasticse disciplinse ne quis monachus vel canonicus 
 regularis aut alius religiosus ad seculares leges vel physicam legendas accedat." 
 Concil., Narbonens: XV.; apud Baluz., Concilia, Tom. I., p. 35.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 243 
 
 Notwithstanding the vast number of practitioners devoting 
 time and abihties to the culture of medicine, it made h'ttle pro- 
 gress towards an exact science, and was enriched with no new 
 discoveries. Students and professors of the art, in its univer- 
 sal signification, were apparently occupied exclusively either 
 in translating or compiling the works of ancient medical 
 writers. Doubtless, these efforts ultimately aided an advance 
 towards a more perfect system in the next century, at which 
 period the full benefactions arising from the scrutinizing spirit 
 of Arabic scientists, had so abundantly prepared the way for 
 the immense progress of medicine towards the close of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 Frequent and uninterrupted intercourse with these scientific 
 enthusiasts was maintained at this epoch, and no doubt the 
 European mind was abundantly prepared to receive and act 
 upon a transmission of chemical and medical culture from the 
 Spanish Arabs through such Christian students as attended 
 the great schools of Cordova. 
 
 The diminutive advance of curative art to a more elevated 
 standard subsequent to the advent of Constans Afer, who, as 
 we shall presently discover, was deeply learned in the lore at 
 the time, the exclusive property of Mahometan scholars and 
 Oriental Israelites, unequivocally attests that the imposing 
 movement of those ages, provoked by philosophers and skejD- 
 tical inquirers after realities in the West, opened the entire 
 range of Arabic science, and adopted it when the disintegrat- 
 ing elements of slothful ignorance began to recede before pro- 
 founder knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, 
 and medicine. In the tenth century, the studies of Gerbert 
 among the Saracens were apparently in an age when his con- 
 tributions to the European stock of learning were lost in the 
 dense gloom of superstition.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Arabic Influence on Medical Art in Europe — Rapid Rise of Mahometan- 
 ism — Caused by Justice to Subjects and Conquered Provinces — Their 
 Swift Attainment to Science — Saracens Welcome Christian Scholars — 
 Latter Sect Selected as Tutors by Haroun al Raschid — Translations 
 into Arabic by These — Galen's Medical Books Rendered in the Sara- 
 cen Tongue — Hippocrates' Treatises Preserved at Bagdad — Scholastic 
 and Scientific Culture Arise in Arab-Spain — Sanitary Arrangements of 
 Abderaham — Early Writers on Medicine — Students Flock Thither 
 from other Nations in Europe, Asia, etc. — Moslem Ruler by a Re- 
 script Organizes the Professors of the Curative Art — His Interdict 
 against Charlatans — Hospitals — Possible Early Knowledge of the Use 
 of Aqua Vita. 
 
 FROM whatever causes Mussulman power ascended so 
 swiftly to dazzling greatness, and by the rapid extension 
 of its conquests obtained the most cultured portions of the 
 Orient and Western Europe within two centuries of its organ- 
 ization by Mahomet, is not germane to this treatise. In the 
 seventh century the Arabians had overrun Syria, Egypt, Per- 
 sia, and Africa, and subjugated these nations under lasting 
 dominion ; while in the next era Spain received these invinci- 
 ble conquerors, whose rule was to continue for many centuries. 
 The resolute opposition with which they were confronted on 
 Gallic soil, near Tours, by the Prankish forces under Charles 
 Martel,' doubtless preserved the whole of Europe from perma- 
 nent Moslem empire. In its earliest efforts, this power was 
 exercised in rigid and inflexible vindication of Mahometan 
 faith, uncompromising exaltation of the law, and as a develop- 
 ment of this, the highest attributes of justice.^ Wherever the 
 
 * Mariana, Historia de Espana, Lib. VIL, cap. 3. 
 
 '^Tlie appeal of dissatisfied Christian subjects of Roderick, inviting a Saracen 
 ruler from Africa to Spain in the eighth century, was based on this notion. Conde, 
 Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en Espaiia, p. 13. 
 
 • (244)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 245 
 
 Arabs appeared, and elevated the standard of their fanatical 
 armies, the literature of the Greeks, their pompous and turbu- 
 lent hierarchy, unprincipled civilization, and religious polemics, 
 receded before the fiery zeal of these fervid warriors. 
 
 Everywhere in their triumphal march, to the very portals of 
 Tours, these Oriental invaders appear to have acted upon prac- 
 tical notions of steady and lasting conquest; and as rapidly as 
 the subjugated territory opened, helplessly in advance of the 
 martial tread of resistless forces, the Arabs immediately domi- 
 ciled themselves in abandoned towns and deserted villages, in 
 order that the faith of Mahomet might, by their presence, 
 stand as an imperishable monument for all time. Early in the 
 eighth century, actuated by this principle of permanent occu- 
 pancy of conquered provinces, great numbers of them, with 
 their families, entered into Aquitania,^ where they certainly re- 
 mained to the time of Charlemagne.* 
 
 When the Mahometans first issued in vast hordes from the 
 Arabian deserts, they possessed a slender knowledge of astron- 
 omy, combined with Oriental poesy vivid with the burning 
 imagery of their unculti\'ated minds. Under the Ommiades, 
 immediate successors of the prophet, the study of the Mahom- 
 etans seems to have been confined to native poetry and the 
 interpretation of the Koran f but the trifling culture of this 
 people, upon first emerging from their fieiy sands, was swept 
 away before the great whirlwind of fanaticism for that religious 
 fabric which blinded the quickened devotion of its adherents 
 and eloquent orators to the cultivated excellence of strange 
 letters, which, indeed, were scattered by the destructive march 
 of these uncivilized devotees, or, amid lurid flames, vanished 
 as a holocaust to Mahometan law. 
 
 Persian incursions into the literary city of Alexandria in the 
 
 •* Regino, Chronicon, sub an. 655 — where they entered: "Quasi in ea habita- 
 turi." 
 
 *Anon., De Gest. Carolimagni, an. 797, Lib. III., c. 4, v. 327 seq; and Mari- 
 ana, op. cit., Tom. I., p. 328. 
 
 5 Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V., p. 
 :;oo.
 
 246 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 year 6i6, under Chosroes II., spared the intellectual accumu- 
 lations of ages,'' but the first expedition of the Arabs in 640 
 was as disastrous to Christian zealots as to the literature of 
 Greece. One of their own historians of the twelfth century 
 distinctly states the conflagration of the great Alexandrine 
 library by his ancient compatriots; while another chronicler of 
 Arabic nationality and historical events as unequivocally as- 
 serts, in the ensuing century, that an incendiary fire destroyed 
 the last famous aggregation of books upon the command of 
 Omru, commander of the invading armies. '^ 
 
 The seductive pen of the skeptical Gibbon,^ raised objections 
 against the accuracy of these narratives, although more recent 
 researches would seem to conclude further controversy upon 
 this act. Inasmuch as it is agreed on all hands that the earli- 
 est followers of the prophet were actuated by a devotion for 
 propagating the law, and that Grecian letters were the especial 
 object of their hatred, the elucidation by Matter,'' led to the 
 conclusion, as stated, touching the Moslem destruction of the 
 great library of Alexandria; but as late as the year 1175, the 
 gymnasium still stood outside the city, and appears to have 
 been used at that time by numerous schools for the purpose 
 of teaching Aristotelian philosophy.^" For a century or more 
 subsequent to the death of their religious head, the Saracens 
 were totally illiterate, and divested of all scientific culture; and 
 while extending the energizing forces of Mahometan faith, 
 were apparently content to remain so. 
 
 Notwithstanding the burning animosity of the fervid doc- 
 trines of the Moslems, they were not entirely indifferent to the 
 comparative quietude in religious matters so earnestly desired 
 by their conquered subjects; and under the influence of an un- 
 deviating principle of justice, allowed the Christians of the ac- 
 
 6 Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 333. 
 
 ' Abulfagus, Historia Moslem., p. 114. 
 
 * Gibbon, op. cit.. Vol. V., p. 343. 
 
 '••Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. I., p. 332. 
 
 '" Hcnjam. Tudeleiisis, Itinerariiim, p. loi.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 247 
 
 quired country to maintain, in accordance with the binding force 
 of treaties, the practice of their faith, and prosecute the imposing 
 ceremonies of their worship." In the eastern habitations of 
 the Arabs, thus disposed by an equitable inspiration towards 
 the devotees of other dogmas, the Syrian Christians' appear to 
 have exerted a powerful predisposition among the Mussulmans 
 to an accurate taste in letters. 
 
 Whether the repeal by Justinian, in the fifth century, of an 
 ancient law granting public compensation to the philosophical 
 and grammatical teachers of Athens and elsewhere, caused the 
 dispersion of these literary scholiasts throughout the Orient, 
 who in conjunction with Nestorian scholars,^^ moulded into 
 practical shape Moslem enthusiasm for science and literature, 
 cannot, perhaps, be established beyond a doubt. Other causes 
 perhaps, co-operated with those stated, to propagate the 
 embellishments of polite arts among the Arabs, since for cen- 
 turies prior to the rise of Mahometanism, the Israelites 
 throughout the east, which subsequently succumbed to the 
 crescent and scimiter, on account of their academical institutes 
 of learning, had obtained widely-extended celebrity. In the 
 last year of the third century, this people maintained organ- 
 ized schools and colleges in the city of Bagdad, while in Sura 
 a seminary of the highest culture was greatly renowned in 
 the next age." 
 
 Christian and Judaic civilization certainly assisted in devel- 
 oping the Arabic mind to that erudite culture afterwards so 
 famous, and to which modern scholarship owes so much. To 
 the Syrian followers of Christ, large numbers of Greek books 
 were committed for translation into Arabic, and among these 
 were the medical w^ritings of distinguished scientists.'* The 
 
 ^1 " Todos sujetos a un moderado tributo gozarian el libre ejercicio de su religion, 
 el uso y conservacion de sus iglesias : que se gobernariarn por sus leges y jueoces." 
 Conde, Historia des Arabes en Espafia, p. 20. 
 
 '^ Leo Africanus, De Virisque Illustratib., apud Arabos, cap. i. 
 
 ^^ Graetz, History of the Jews, pp. 237 and 266 : and Leo African., De Medicis 
 et Philosophis Hebraeis, p. 294. 
 
 ^*Abulfagus, Historia Moslem., p. 129. " Atque librorum, qua; scripta fuerunt
 
 248 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 principal personage among these eminent scholars was a Chal- 
 dean Christian, John, son of Mesuach.^^ Syrian physicians, 
 surrounding the sacred caliphs, were enabled to fan the intellec- 
 tual fires which began to illumine these sovereigns, into a 
 glowing, inextinguishable flame. Mahomet, himself, from 
 whatever source originally drawn, perhaps from refugee schol- 
 iasts, was of high excellence in the art of medicine.^" 
 
 His knowledge, similar to the elaborate system of Hippo- 
 crates, assumed the form of Aphorisms, but whether it origi- 
 nated in scientific examination and study, is unknown." How 
 swiftly the oriental caliphs advanced to an appreciation of the 
 higher attractions of mental culture, appears from the fact that 
 Ali Walid ordered Christian scholars, early in the eighth 
 century, thenceforth to publish no books in Greek, but in the 
 Arabic. This illustrious caliph, also distinguished for his 
 fondness for architecture,^^ set an enlightened example, most 
 assiduously followed by Almanazor, to whom astronomical 
 science and due regard for men of letters, at that distant epoch, 
 were under great obligations.^* 
 
 Many mathematical works of the Alexandrian scholiasts or 
 their predecessors, such as the writings of Menelaus and 
 Euclid, were reproduced into the Arabic language from the or- 
 iginal Greek, during his reign and that of Haroun al Raschid.^" 
 To the latter monarch, hero of the "Arabian Nights," lasting 
 gratitude is due for his unremitting patronage of literature and 
 
 in artibus lingua Graeca," etc. " Tunc segregati sunt boni, etc., sicut Medicina, 
 Physica," etc. Leo Afric, De Viiisque Illustr., apud Arabos, cap. i. 
 
 i5«pQsiut supra traditionem lingufe Gracse lonnem filium." Mesuach, Natione 
 Chaldaeus, et fide Christianus Nestorianorum secta, Iliid., cap. i. 
 
 '*" E.xcelloit en particulier dans la Medecine." Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, 
 Tom. II., p. 405. 
 
 ^'Gagnier, op. cit., Tom. II., pp. 405, 413. 
 
 "^Abulfagus, Histor. Moslem., pp. 123 seq; and 129. 
 
 '"Ibid., p. 160. Regular astronomical olfservations were established at Bag- 
 dad in the year 1129. Abulfagus, Annales Moslem., Tom. III., p. 441. 
 
 ■■^"Leo Africanus, De Virisquibus Illustr., etc., cap. i. Euclid was anonymously 
 translated. Casiri, liiblioth. Ilispan., Tom. I., pp. 339 and. 345.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 249 
 
 science, assisted by the ponderous favors of the caHphate. At 
 a time when the Western Empire, under Charlemagne, was 
 plunged into barbarism and groveling ignorance, when the 
 mechanical skill of depraved Romans and uncultured Teutons 
 utterly ignored rotary clock-work, a present from this illus- 
 trious eastern ruler of a horologe to the Prankish emperor, 
 t)'pifying the movements of time and seasons, combining in- 
 telligent action of horses and human figures, adjusted upon 
 calculated pressure and counter-pressure, whose momentum 
 was springs and weights,, driven by wheels, so deeply stirred 
 the imperial court and its chroniclers, that the annalists of 
 this period fully describe the curious mechanism with the 
 delight of youth and reverence of superstition.^^ 
 
 In addition to this, a gift by the same monarch to Charle- 
 magne of an elephant, excited so great surprise and unparal- 
 leled interest at his court, that he dispatched a fleet to bring 
 this absolutely novel specimen of natural history to the impe- 
 rial residence,^^ and named it Abulabax, on account of its Ori- 
 ental nativity .'^^ 
 
 At the same period in the East, a young Nestorian, upon 
 entering the famous city of Bagdad, was so profoundly im- 
 pressed with the zealous devotion of both Mussulmans and 
 Christians to the pursuit of liberal arts, that he, indeed, thought 
 himself translated into a new world. This erudite scholar, the 
 son of Mesuach, as stated, forthwith applied himself so assidu- 
 ously to the acquisition of philosophy, astronomy, and medi- 
 cine, that his profound learning quickly distinguished him as 
 a suitable tutor for Almanazor, son of Haroun al Raschid.^* 
 
 Upon the succession of this prince, in the year 813, the 
 fervid desire for knowledge, characterizing the reign of his 
 royal parent, developed in unrivalled splendor under the son. 
 
 '■^1 Anony., Vita Carolimagni, sub an. 807. 
 ^2 Anonym., Vita Carolimagni, sub an. 807. 
 
 ■■^^ Eiginhardi, Vita Carolimagni, cap. XVI. This was the first animal of this 
 colossal species ever seen in Germany. Ibid. 
 
 '^^Leo African., De Virisquibus, etc., ap. Arab., c. i, p. 259.
 
 2^0 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 One of his first official acts was the formal invitation of the 
 learned to the court; and from them he obtained the titles of 
 such works in the Grecian, Syrian, and Persian languages, as 
 had rendered their authors famous. For the purpose of ad- 
 vancing the intense ardor of the Saracen ruler for scholarly 
 information, extensive explorations were directed to distant 
 foreign countries, in order to procure written relics of the 
 sagacious and wise of former ages. 
 
 When at length vast quantities had accumulated by the in- 
 dustrious zeal of his messengers, a. convention under Alman- 
 azor himself decided upon those works worthy of translation. 
 Among these the treatise* of Galen'^' on Medicine and the writ- 
 ings of Aristotle were translated into Arabic. Similarly influ- 
 enced as Cato, who feared the degrading tendencies of Hellen- 
 istic letters, the chief personages of this remarkable assem- 
 blage unanimously decided to commit to the flames whatever of 
 this aggregation appeared antagonistic to Moslem faith. Many 
 physicians employed at the Bagdad caliphate were Christians, 
 and retained both at this period and in the twelfth century on 
 account of their eminent surgical skill.^'' 
 
 Fired with zeal for knowledge, the Saracens pursued the 
 sciences of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, with an 
 ardor which appropriated the treasures of foreign scholarship, 
 and enlarged their own literary boundaries to include all. 
 Euclid, Archimides, Apollonius, Diaphones, Flippocrates, 
 Galen," and Ptolemy,''* were quickly reproduced into vernacu- 
 lar and made popular by astute and skilled commentaries, 
 which opened the notable value of these exact sciences to the 
 Arabic mind.^** By the establishment of separate caliphates in 
 
 ^* " Traduxerunt Librum Galeni in medicina post qure omnia Aristotleis 
 Arabice," Ibid., cap. i, p. 261. 
 
 2** Abulfagus, Annales Moslem., Tom. III., p. 599. 
 
 2^ Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. I., p. 333. 
 
 ''*'Ibid., p. 334; and Heeren, Influence des Croisades, p. 51. 
 
 *» Those by Alcindi were especially prized. Casiri, Biblioth. Hisp. De Medica, 
 Tom. I., p. 355 scq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 251 
 
 Spain in the year 813, and in Africa, new seats of learning were 
 created nearer the regions of Western Europe. 
 
 Under the prolonged though hotly contested reign of the 
 Ommiades in Spain, the same line of literary and scientific re- 
 search, provoking the admiration of strangers at Bagdad, was 
 m.ost zealously pursued. Here the revolted chieftains of Ma- 
 hometanism obtained well-deserved celebrity for unfaltering 
 culture of polite letters, and by a system of rewards and pub- 
 lic commendation, allured the erudite to the rival courts of 
 Moslem Spain. Although the royal library of the Fatimites 
 at Bagdad is said to have contained at one time more than one 
 hundred thousand volumes, including the entire range of an- 
 cient and modern scholarship, this collection was far tran- 
 scended by those of Almeria, Malaga, Murcia,"" and especially 
 Cordova, selected by Abdelerham, and reached the enormous 
 number of six hundred thousand manuscripts, whose cata- 
 logues swelled to eighty enormous tomes.''^ 
 
 From the year 711, when the Saracens first entered the 
 regions of ancient Iberia and with uniform success to the 
 portals of Tours established permanently their dominion, to 
 the tenth century, a great and wonderful advance was made 
 in those sciences which constituted the excellence of this 
 strange people. In those countries adjacent to Europe, where 
 such accomplishments were accessible to the north, the Arab- 
 ians, through a stretch of two centuries, pursued with ardor 
 that erudition which was to give new life and the mystic 
 principles of unlimited learning to Western Europe.''^ In 
 Cordova and elsewhere in Moslem Spain, Christians still 
 adhering with an uncompromising tenacity to their ancient 
 dogmas were permitted to reside with unmolested quietude, 
 on paying tribute.'*^ As a necessary medium of communica- 
 
 ^° " Complures per Universam Hispamam Bibliothecas, constat." Casiri, Bib- 
 lioth. Hisp., Tom. II., p. 38. 
 
 ^' " Bibliotheca Regia illo aevo ad sex centa volumina millia excrevit : quic 
 non nisi quadriginta ingenti mole catalogis recensebantur." Ibid. 
 
 ^^ Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs, Tom. I., p. 325. 
 
 ••^ Conde, Historia de los Arabes en Espaiia, p. 20.
 
 2^2 ms TOR Y OF MEDIC A L E CONOM Y 
 
 tion these Mozarabes, as they were termed, acquired a fluent 
 acquaintance with the Arabic tongue;^* 
 
 In the year 756, the ruler of that portion of the Saracen 
 government of which Cordova was the chief city, introduced 
 the first pahn-tree, which was planted in a botanical garden. 
 In the same age academical institutes were established for 
 instruction in various branches of human science, in this city. 
 Sages attending the education of youthful Hixem, in striving 
 for caliphate distinction, sought supremacy in these literary 
 schools through erudite embellishments.^^ At this early 
 period the Arabs in Spain appear to have devoted themselves 
 largely to zoological studies, particularly at Cordova, where was 
 an aviary fully stocked with rarest valuable specimens of fal- 
 cons, which the Moslem princes enthusiastically used in unoc- 
 cupied times for the delight and excitement of the chase.^* 
 
 Abderaham, under whose reign the Spanish Arabs ascended 
 the very apex of scholastic culture, signalized his occupancy 
 of the throne by the establishment of numerous institutions of 
 great sanitary value in the prolongation of life and the diminu- 
 tion of maladies, although at nearly the same epoch, TTJ , 
 public hospitals were established under authority of the 
 caliphs at Bagdad.'" 
 
 Previous to his accession to the government of Spain, and 
 prior to the transfer of its varied departments to Cordova, the 
 citizens of this illustrious city, were provided with water 
 according to the primitive methods of the Orient. In the 
 }^ear 826, Abderaham constructed several fountains in the 
 open plazas, and supplied them with cold and refreshing 
 water from the distant Sierras, conducted down the mountain 
 slopes through leaden pipe.''* At this epoch Saracen savans, 
 
 ^* Of these Eulogius, Memorialis Sanctorum, Lib. II., c. i, mentions a Pre- 
 fectus Presbyter at Cordova, distinguished for his Aralnc learning, about the year 
 850 ; apud Bibl., Max. Patr., Tom. IX., p. 656. 
 
 •^^Conde, Historia de los Arabes en Espafia, p. 100. 
 
 '^ Ibid., pp. loi and 207. 
 
 "" Abulfagus, Annales Moslem., Tom. II., p. 43. 
 
 ,18 « 7rajo a la ciudad aquas dulces desdc los montes con encanaJos de plomo." 
 Conde, op. cit., pp. 132, 142.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 253 
 
 before definitely selecting a permanent residence in Spain, 
 pursued their academical education in celebrated schools of 
 Africa, Egypt, Syria, and further into the Orient, where the 
 advantages of literary and scientific accomplishments were 
 added to those of foreign travel. 
 
 Towards the year 939, the savans of Cordova assembled 
 regularly, under the presidency of a cadi, for the discussion of 
 scientific questions propounded for elucidation, in which the 
 highest nobility and princes of royal blood frequently partic- 
 ipated. At the domiciles of Wazir Iza ben Ishor, and Caliph 
 ben Abedel Zahrawi, both equally celebrated for their science 
 and erudite treatise on medicine, stated conclaves were opened 
 of such scholars as were famous for physical and astronomical 
 learning. 
 
 The scientists designated were personal surgeons to the 
 Saracen monarch.^^ In their leisure moments, where inclina- 
 tion and a cultivated taste directed, collections of rare and curi- 
 ous works on science and art were made, which sometimes 
 became sufficiently illustrious to obtain specific mention by the 
 Arabian annalists.''" In the eleventh century, before the time 
 Adam of Bremen, in amazed wonder, wrote that an ecclesi- 
 astic, thrice at Jerusalem and abducted to Babylon, after a 
 heavy ransom returned to Europe," an Arabic savan traveled 
 from Spain to India, where he resided and accumulated there 
 and in other Asiatic cities vast erudition,*'" 
 
 An adventurous Saracen vessel, in the first decade of this 
 age, in exploring the hyperborean regions, was deterred in 
 high altitudes by a viscid liquid, a fate which befel Northern 
 explorers at a later period.*^ A century and a half prior to 
 
 ^*Conde, Historia des Arabes en Espaiia, pp. 212, 242. 
 ''"Ibid., p. 241. 
 
 "Adam Brem., Gesta Pontif., Hammaburg, Lib. IV., c. 68. -Prior to 106S, 
 occasional eleemo.synary gifts were forwarded to pauper Christians in Syria and 
 Egypt, at the close of the eight century, by Charlemagne — Eiginhard, Vita Caroli- 
 magni, cap. 27; and in the year 883 Alfred, Anglo-.Saxon king, sent alms as far 
 eastward as India. Flor., Wigior. Chronic, sub an. cit. 
 
 ^^Conde. op. cit., p. 293 seq. 
 
 *^Ad. Brem., De Situ Dana;, cap. 39.
 
 2^4 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the composition by the nun Roswitha of Latin verses lauda- 
 tory of Othonian battles/* many noble dames at the Ommiade 
 court in Cordova had signalized themselves by the polished 
 elegance of Arabic rhythm, as well as in the more laborious task 
 of scientific investigation. Secluded life was prescribed by a 
 law as rigid to Moslem women as the cloister regulations 
 of Northern Europe; yet in defiance to such isolation, Saracen 
 females obtained the honors of public recognition as a merited 
 distinction for their poesies and the brilliant beauty of their 
 written prose. 
 
 One of these performed the functions of confidential secre- 
 tary to the king, while another attained celebrity for splendid 
 transcription of books for royal use. Ayxsa, daughter of a 
 famous savan of Cordova, excelled in literature; but her chief 
 claim to renown arose from a marvellous collection of volumes 
 treating of arts and sciences, which she had aggregated to the 
 year 973.*" At the houses of leading scientists in this vast 
 metropolis, application for alms and medicaments could be 
 made day and night. As a specific remedy in certain mala- 
 dies thus presented, rose-water baths appear to have been fre- 
 quently used, and with excellent results. In the tenth and 
 eleventh centuries, the fame of Cordovan scholars had extended 
 throughout the civilized globe, and attracted thither students 
 of diversified sciences from Africa, Syria, Persia, and from 
 France and the Roman provinces of the West of Europe." 
 
 Before the close of the latter epoch, Soleiman ben Golghal 
 had obtained universal repute on account of the profound eru- 
 dition of his works on medical science. Equal scientific schol- 
 arship distinguished Ahmed ben Abdala, and so far East as 
 Chorazan this superiority was admitted unreservedly." How 
 lasting was the interest of Moslem Spain in the unstinted cul- 
 ture of letters may be gathered from the fact that in the year 
 
 " De Gestis Odonum, p. 709 seq ; Meibom., Tom. I. 
 *^Conde, Ilistoria de los Arabes en Espana, p. 21 1. 
 **Ibid., p. 263. 
 ^" Ibid., p. 277.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 255 
 
 105 1 the governor of Almeria convoked thither a congress of 
 the most learned savans from the Orient, Spain and Europe, 
 and submitted each week for discussion such propositions as 
 came within the scope of their attainments/** Under the b.ene- 
 ficent reign of Hixem, the hospitals and orphanages of Cordova 
 were adjusted upon a superior arrangement, through personal 
 supervision — a care extended to the public schools and col- 
 leges of his empire. 
 
 Oftentimes this wise and charitable ruler was seen in the 
 infirmaries or hospitals of Cordova, inspecting the condition of 
 diseased and infirm patients, to whom he directed the atten- 
 tions of the royal physicians daily.*' The accession of Gehwer 
 to the throne of Mussulman Spain, early in the eleventh cen- 
 tury, was marked by the promulgation of regulations so judi- 
 ciously planned, touching medical science and its practice, that 
 he deserves the highest commendation for the unwavering zeal 
 with which he supervised this important branch of learning 
 taught in the metropolis. Those evils which the provinces 
 had suffered previous to his rule, through the practice of med- 
 icine by debased empirics, were quickly removed by this saga- 
 cious Caliph. 
 
 Upon the publication of his rescripts, such medical charla- 
 tans or ambulatory physicians as boldly announced themselves 
 to be medici, without a knowledge of the science, were igno- 
 miniously expelled from the provincial towns. He decreed 
 that a college of skilled surgeons should be forthwith organ- 
 ized, for the single specified function of rigidly examining into 
 the assumed qualifications of applicants for licenses to exercise 
 the curative art in municipal or rural departments, or sought 
 professional employment as physicians in the numerous hos- 
 pitals upon the Mahometan domains.^" In the ensuing century 
 
 •'^ Ibid., p. 329. 
 
 ^''"Sus mismos medicos debian visitar cada los almarestanes u hospitales." 
 Conde, Historia de los Arabes en Espafia, p. 310. 
 
 ^^ " Ech6 de la provincia a los medicos charlatanes 6 curanderos ignorantes, 
 que se Ilamaban medicos sin experencia ni conocimentos, y ordin6 un colegio de
 
 2^6 HIS TORY OF ME DIG A L ECONOMY 
 
 the most celebrated medical scientists were selected by a 
 Moorish king as his attending surgeons/^ who, as hitherto 
 stated, were not unfrequently Christians ; and equal attention 
 was, given to the strict regulation of hospital service and col- 
 leges of students within the Spanish and African provinces.^" 
 Before the thorough introduction of Arabic science into 
 Northern Europe, the medical practitioners of Spain appear to 
 have used certain medicaments, aqua vitae or brandy, of which 
 their European confreres were entirely ignorant.. When the 
 governor of Seville, in the year 1068, lost a daughter of great 
 beauty and womanly excellence, so overpowering, indeed, 
 was his grief as to provoke a grievous malady, which impaired 
 the free action of the vital organs. To combat this, the physi- 
 cians administered stimulants which restored their natural 
 vigor, and for a brief period preserved his life; but suffering 
 a relapse, in defiance of laxative remedies and cupping, death 
 quickly ended his earthly existence.^^ 
 
 sabios que examinase a los pretendiensen ejercer la medicina y seivir en los hos- 
 pitales." Ibid., p. 316. 
 
 ^1 Conde, Historia de los Arabes en Espana, p. 492 se p 
 52 Ibid., p. 487. 
 5:>Ibid., p. 337.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Academies of Spain Offer Great Inducements to European Students — 
 Christian Scholars Scoffed at in Cordova — Scientific Culture is Intro- 
 duced to the North — Necromancy Taught at Seville, etc. — Abbots go 
 to Spain to Learn Arabic Language and the Sciences — English Trans- 
 lator- of the Alcoran in the Twelfth Century— Gerard of Cremorne 
 Translates Arab Medical Books into Latin — Frederick II., of Germany, 
 Patronizes Saracen Learning — Arab Savans in Sicily — Friar Bacon — 
 Gerbert, Afterwards Pope, Studies in Spain — Constans Afer, the Illus- 
 trious Medical Writer and Translator — His Curious Adventures — Ser- 
 vices to Erudition of Gerbert. 
 
 OFTENTIMES the Arabs formed alliances, both political 
 and marital, with the Christians.^ Touching the latter re- 
 lation, the Moslem parent dying, the mother educated her son 
 in the religion of Christ, and sent him to Arabic academies, as 
 early as the ninth century, to be educated in Saracen literature 
 and sciences; and indeed, at this period, Christian monks in 
 Spain are alluded to in the chronicles, on account of skill 
 in Arabic lore.^ 
 
 One of the most brilliant rebels who invaded this territory 
 in the eleventh century, was the son of a Christian mother; and 
 another of this faith, wife of an illustrious Arab, became cele- 
 brated in Moslem annals, for her transcendent beauty.'' Not- 
 withstanding the regulations at Cordova admitted scholars of 
 other creeds to the public academies, they were frequently 
 maltreated and derided by Mussulmans whenever they ap- 
 peared on the streets, while juvenile Arabs scoffed and amused 
 themselves by throwing stones at them.* 
 
 1 Conde, Historia de los Arabes en Espana, pp. 233, 278, 467 and 470. 
 * " Isaac Monachus litteris Arabacis imbutus." Eulogius, Memorialis Sanc- 
 torum, Lib. I., Prolog.; apud Bibl. Max. Patr., Tom. IX., p. 646. 
 "Conde, op. cit., p. 409. 
 ''Eulogius, ap. Bibl. Max. Patr., Tom. IX., p. 21S. 
 
 17 (257)
 
 2^8 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOAn 
 
 Uninterrupted amalgamation of Spanish Christians with 
 Saracens from the ninth centur}% and unimpeded intercourse 
 with the Saracen population during the Middle Ages, opened 
 a way for the transition of Arabic literature, language and 
 sciences, into different countries of Western Europe. To this, 
 the most natural means, should be added the frequent assem- 
 blages in the princely courts of Spain of the most erudite 
 philosophers, medical scientists and astronomers convoked ' 
 from all nations,^ which aided in transplanting these sciences 
 to less favored people. It is, indeed, impossible to state with 
 certainty, whether equal liberty of access to the schools and 
 scientific colleges at Cordova was conceded foreign students, 
 or whether the pursuit of such knowledge was restricted to 
 priv'ate instruction, thus excluding them from public acade- 
 mies. The evident skilfulness of Arabic physicians in the 
 preparation of medicaments, and dexterity of remedy, at the 
 period under examination, may be inferred from the fact that 
 the Catholic prelacy of this country entrusted their lives into 
 the hands of Moslem scientists.^ 
 
 In the eleventh century, when the Mussulmans, in their turn, 
 redoubted the fanaticism of the crusaders, the relation of 
 Europeans with the Spanish Moors had begun to reveal itself 
 with increasing activity.^ Scientific knowledge, thus imparted 
 to the northern nations, was largely infected with magical 
 superstitions — the application of which to medicine became an 
 accessory to the curative art. The youth of Scandinavia, 
 Bavaria, and other regions of Europe, flocked in great num- 
 bers to the schools of necromancy and the mystical sciences, 
 opened in Toledo, Seville and Salamanca.^ 
 
 In the thirteenth century, when Alfonso, surnamed the 
 
 *Conde, Historia de los Arabes, p. 278, gives an example of kindly treatment 
 of Christian refugees among the Moslems at Cordova. 
 
 ^ Mariana, Historia de Espana, Lib. VIII., c. 7. 
 
 ' Salverte, Sciences Occultcs, p. 177. 
 
 * " Cum pluris ex diversis regionibus in eadem civitate suderent in arte necro- 
 mania, juvenes aliqui de Swedia et Bavaria." Heisterbach, Illustr. Miracul. et 
 Hist. Memor., Tom. I., Lib. V., cap. 4.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 259 
 
 W'ise, established his university in the last-mentioned city, 
 seeking to rival the Arab savans and their sciences,* he had 
 recourse to Moorish learning in preparing the Alfonsine 
 tables. The relations of this Christian prince with his Moslem 
 competitors, and their erudite scholars, were uniformly of the 
 most courteous character; so much so, indeed, that it was no 
 unusual thing to meet Saracen scientists residing at the Cas- 
 tilian court under the public patronage of the king.'" Gradu- 
 ally many persons of Europe, stirred by a sincere desire of 
 thorough scientific culture solely possessed by the Spanish 
 Arabs, sought their schools and colleges as early as the tenth 
 century — an impulse continuing without interruption until 
 towards the closing years of the Middle Ages." 
 
 Of these, the first to avail himself of the intellectual treas- 
 ures of the Moslems, were Gerbert, touching whose benefac- 
 tions to this age we shall presently refer, and several residents 
 of the British Isles; extending from the arrival of the latter in 
 Cordova and other Spanish cities, early in the twelfth, through 
 the ensuing century. Toward^ the end of the twelfth centur}', 
 Peter, abbot of the celebrated Clugny monaster)^, journeyed 
 to Spain, in order to acquire the Arabic language and make 
 himself proficient in Moorish learning. At Toledo he pro- 
 cured an Englishman by the name of Robert, and a Dalma- 
 tian called Herman, studying astronomy or astrology, to 
 translate the Alcoran into mediaeval Latinity, which the abbot 
 himself afterwards arranged according to its grammatical 
 construction.'^ This was rendered necessary by the slight 
 acquaintance of the translator with this dialect, and for this 
 
 'Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs, Tom. II., p. 270. 
 
 ^"Conde, Histor. de los Arabes en Espafia, p. 557. 
 
 11 Salverte, Sciences Occultes, p. 178. 
 
 '^ " Nihilominus ex Arabice ad Latinitatem perduxi interpretantibus scilicet, 
 etc. Roberto Retenensis de Anglia, etc.; Hermano quoque Dalmeta," etc. 
 " Quos in Hispaniam astrologicee arti studentes inveni," whom he prevailed upon 
 by urgent solicitation — " multo precio " — to undertake their erudite task. Machu- 
 metis Saracenorum, etc., Bibliandri, p. 4 seq.
 
 26o HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 cause a notatorial writer, also denominated Peter, was detailed 
 as coadjutor in these labors.''^ 
 
 Gerard of Cremorne, observing the extreme penury of the 
 Latins in Arabic literature, especially such as related to medi- 
 cine, expatriated himself to Toledo, where he acquired pro- 
 found knowledge of the language, and made several versions 
 of medical text-books, and others on astronomical subjects.'* 
 The Englishman employed by the Clugniac prior was liberally 
 rewarded by his patron, and as an, additional claim upon 
 Western scholars, translated a collection of Saracen laws and 
 letters.'*^ Athelard of Bath, whose works are still extant in the 
 public libraries of England, was in Spain about the year 1 135 
 pursuing Arabic studies, some of which were cognate with 
 medicine,'" upon returning to England, through the medium 
 of a correspondence with his nephew, he was induced to pub- 
 lish to the British people certain details touching the success- 
 ful acquisition of Saracen learning." 
 
 Other valuable contributions to the study of natural sciences 
 in England were made by this laborious student while study- 
 ing among the Spanish Arabs. Under the patronage of Fred- 
 erick II., Emperor of Germany, Michael Scott, celebrated in 
 the annals of England as the Wizard of the North, wrote a 
 treatise upon his imperial patron's prayer,'^ and was sufficiently 
 learned in the Arabian language to translate for the Hohen- 
 
 ^^ " Sed quia lingua Latina none ei adeo familiaris vel noto erat, ut Arabica, 
 didi ei coadjutorem, bene cognitum, doctum virum dilectum Petrum notarium 
 nostrum." Ibid. 
 
 '■• " Tunc medicinzE opera e.x Arabica in Latinum conversa." Murator., Antiq. 
 Ital., Tom. III., p. 936. 
 
 ^^ These appear to have been translated, or at least some of them, by a Toledo 
 professor. " Feci autem eam transferri a perito utriusque lingua viro magistro 
 Petro Toletanto." Machumet. Saracen., Bibliandri, p. 4 seq. 
 
 '"In the Tractabus ejusdem ad Nepotem, cap. 41, Athelard sagaciously ar- 
 gues why married women cannot be infected with leprosy. 
 
 '' Athelardi, Questiones Naturales Perdifficiles, Prologus, Ed. 1489.! 
 
 iH,i Quern secundo loco breviter compilavit a ejus precio." Muratori, Antiqui- 
 tat. Ital., Tom. III., p. 945; and Sarti, De Professorib., Bonon., Tom. I., p. 511.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 261 
 
 staiiffen monarch Avicenna's commentary on Aristotle's De 
 Animalibus — a work used by the celebrated lexicographer, 
 Du Cange, to great advantage." 
 
 How rapidly and with what eagerness the European mind 
 seized upon Arabic science thus imported from the Spanish 
 provinces, may be gathered from the fact that before the close 
 of this age the commentaries of Averroes^" on Aristotle were 
 actually made the subject of public scholastic lectures near 
 Cambridge.^' The writings of Almanazor on the medicinal 
 virtues of plants and the Herbarium of Dioskorides were pos- 
 sessed in the same era, 1194, by a Peterborough abbot, or 
 transcribed, together with a treatise on medicine, by Pantegi- 
 nus," while in the ensuing age an archbishop formally donated 
 to this church the treatises of Avicenna.^'* In the year 1094, 
 an Arabic manuscript volume was presented to the Corvey 
 abbey in Germany ; but the annalist in recording this note- 
 worthy event does not state the name of it, of which doubtless 
 he was ignorant.^* 
 
 In the twelfth century, Roger of Sicily, at whose court 
 many famous Arabic savans and scientists were constantly 
 entertained in royal pomp, caused the writings of Essouph to 
 be translated from the Arabic into Latin,'^'' for use of his 
 scholarly subjects. In the year 12 19, while the Crusaders 
 were before the city of Damietta, a work written in the Arabic 
 language appears to have circulated among these hardy war- 
 
 '" Muratori, op. cit., III., p. 945. 
 
 ^Treind, Historia Medicines, p. 544; and Leo African., De Virisquib. Illus. 
 Arab., cap. 20, p. 282. 
 
 21 Ingulph., Croyl. Hist. Continuat., p. 114. 
 
 ^^"Ars physica Pantegini, et practica ipsius in imo volumine, Almasor et 
 Dioscorides, de Virtutibus Herbarum," Rob. Swaph. De Libris ejus, circ. 1 194; 
 ap. Sparke, Histor. Anglic. Script., etc., p. 99. 
 
 '•^^ " Dedit etiam ecclesiae suae duas libelles quorum una gallice scripta Avi- 
 cenna," Walt, de Whytles, Coenobii Burg. Histor., p. 1 70; Sparke, Ed. 
 ^*Annales Corbeiensis, sub an. 1094. 
 ^•* Leo Africanus, op. cit., cap. 14, p. 278.
 
 262 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 riors, some of whom were sufficiently conversant with this 
 language to interpret its contents.-*' 
 
 About this period Friar Bacon and his ecclesiastical friend, 
 whose contribution to magic remedies will be adverted to 
 hereafter, bishop Grossteste displayed amazing familiarity 
 with the entire range of Arabic authors, including Averroes, 
 Avicenna the great scientist, the equally celebrated Alharen 
 and Alcindi." The scholastic monk wrote an elaborate 
 treatise on the mistakes of physicians — De Erroribus Medi- 
 corum,^® and exhibited remarkable knowledge of Saracen phar- 
 macy.^® 
 
 Although it has been doubted whether Europe really 
 owes to the Arabs that practical acquaintance with chemistry, 
 which under the searching investigations of modern scientists, 
 has become the foundation of medical economy^" — a doubt 
 shared by the illustrious Petrarch himself — as early as the 
 ninth century Alcindi, alone, had composed twenty-two sep- 
 erate works on medicine, about twenty-nine on chemical and 
 physical sciences,''^ while Rhazes of Chorazan, in the ensuing 
 age, swept the entire circle of medical science and its kindred 
 filiations, in his treatises on medicine, botany, oculism, sur- 
 gery and chemistry, and commented the anatomical and 
 medicinal writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Oribasius, Aetius, 
 Pauli, ctc.^'^ To the Arabs high commendation is due for 
 many valuable discoveries, such, for example, as numerical 
 
 2" Oliveri, Historia Damiantia, cap. 20. 
 
 ''^ Bacon., De Arte Chyfnica, cap. VI. of Excerpta, p. 56. The Tractatiis de 
 .Speculis Illustratis, seems to be almost an entire reproduction of Alharen's prin- 
 ciples of refraction of light. On Bacon's knowledge of Arabic authors, vide De 
 Retardandis Senectutis Accidentibus, cc. i, 2, 4, 5 and 6. 
 
 ''^Apud Bale, Scriptores Brittannicse, Pairs I., p. 343. 
 
 ^ De Compositione Elixir, p. 70. The writings of Avecenna are largely used 
 in his Specula Mathematica, Dist. I., cap. 3; and Dist. II., c. 2. 
 
 ""Whewell, History of Inductive Sciences, Vol. I., p. 256 seq ; and Voltaire, 
 Essai sur les Moeurs, Tom. I., p. 334. 
 
 ^^Casiri, Biblioth. Hispan., Tom. I., p. 353. 
 
 "'■'Frcind, Historia Medicincc, p. 4S4 seq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 263 
 
 figures, and the art of dyeing.'''' Among the first to make 
 known to Europe the vast resources of Saracen learning in the 
 science of medicine and philosophy, was Gerbert, although his 
 efforts may not have had the general influence, at so early a 
 period, which characterized the. contributions of Constans 
 Afer, in the next century, to the medical and surgical knowl- 
 edge of southern Italy. 
 
 Inspired with an inextinguishable ardor for a solid learn- 
 ing, this Carthagenian scholar proceeded, in the first years of 
 the eleventh century, from his natal city to the great literary 
 metropolis of the eastern Moorish empire — Babylon, in order 
 to acquire a profound insight into that erudition for which, in 
 its multifarious nature, an equal has been seldom produced. 
 During a prolonged residence in this illustrious city, he applied 
 himself with diligent assiduity to the careful acquisition of 
 grammar, dialectics, physics, and necromancy, which consti- 
 tuted at this epoch in Spain an important branch of liberal 
 education,'^* geometry, arithmetic and medicine, to which he 
 added a thorough theory of the musical art of the Chaldaeans, 
 Arabians, Persians, and Egyptians.^^ 
 
 Having exhausted Babylonish science, he went to India, 
 urged by the same spirit of inquiry prevailing among the west- 
 ern Moors, in order to master the learning of the Indians ; and 
 after an absence of thirty-nine years, returned to Africa, where 
 he practiced, or rather taught, his vast scientific and literary 
 culture to disciples eager to learn it.'*® As usual, in those 
 distant ages, when Gerbert and Roger Bacon were no ex- 
 ception to popular superstitious hatred, Constans was imme- 
 diately exposed, upon domiciling himself in the city of his 
 
 '^^ Heeren., Sur I'lnfluence des Croisades, p. 53. 
 
 ^* Heisterbach, Illust. Miracul. et Hist. Mem., Lib. II., c. 4. 
 
 ''^ Petrus Diaconus, Chronicon Casinense, Lib. III., c. 35. 
 
 .%« ]^g(. uQj-j physica Chaldjeorum, Arabum, Saracenorum, Egyptorum ac In- 
 diorum plenissime eruditus est : completis in ediscendis istiusmodi studiis trigenta 
 et novem annorum curricuhisad Africam reversus est." Ibid., Petr. Diac., Liber, 
 de Viribus Illustratibus Casinensis, cap. 23.
 
 264 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 birth, to a literary martyrdom by the citizens of Carthage, who, 
 startled by the immense learning which he possessed, fearing 
 that he might possess the power of a magician, determined to 
 assassinate him.^' 
 
 On learning the sinister .preparations against his life, he 
 secretly fled to Salerno, where for a considerable period he 
 sought safety in the privacy of a mendicant costume, evidently 
 as a strolling physician. The arrival there of a brother to the 
 Babylonish monarch, disclosed the secret presence of Constans, 
 and' was the means of his becoming attached to Robert Guis- 
 card, king of Sicily, in the official position of confidential sec- 
 retary."® Wearying at length of this subaltern function, he 
 abandoned the Sicilian court, and withdrew to Monte Cassino, 
 in refuge with the prior Desiderus, from whom he received 
 monastic vestments in the year 1086. In this monastery he 
 passed the remainder of his days, employed in translating 
 medical works from Greek and Arabic into the Latin language, 
 and in composing books and treatises on this science.'^^ He 
 finally attained so great distinction as to receive the cognomen 
 of Master of the East and West.*" 
 
 Among other translations, one on fevers, rendered from 
 Saracen into the vulgate, was particularly commended." Not- 
 withstanding the highly eulogistic encomium without stint ac- 
 corded this celebrated scientist, there are excellent reasons for 
 assuming that outside of his own treatise on surgery his medi- 
 cal influence on the age was either dwarfted to the contiguous 
 territory of Salerno, or expanded within narrow circles be- 
 yond. 
 
 ^^ " Quem cum vidissent Afri, ita ad plenum omnium gentium studii eruditum, 
 cogitaverent occidere eum." Paulus Diacon., Liber. deViribusIUustr. Casinens., 
 cap. 23. 
 
 38 Petr. Diac, Chronic. Casinens., Lib. IIL, c. 35. 
 
 ■''"" De diversarium gentium Unguis," Ibid. Among other writings thus trans- 
 lated were the works of Plato, and Hippocrates, and the Simplic. Medicam., of 
 Galen. lijid. 
 
 ^"Il)id. 
 
 '" " i.iljrum febrium qucm de Arabica lingua." Ibid.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 265 
 
 The remarkable impluse given by Gerbert, a century previ- 
 ous, to nations of the North, had perhaps laid the groundwork 
 upon which future development of accurate taste in science 
 might be expected, while, indeed, the energizing forces of Con- 
 stans Afer were impotent to accelerate zealous assiduity in 
 sound erudition, outside the limits of his Italian domicile. 
 Nearly contemporary annalists, as cited, have established the 
 fact that the Carthagenian refugee translated Arabic and Gre- 
 cian medical books into mediaeval Latinity ;*^ but it is equally 
 historical and curious, that these reproductions in the Middle 
 Ages were held in trifling esteem. 
 
 In the- thirteenth century, the famous Florentine physician 
 and professor, Thaddeus, Avrote an expository work on the 
 Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and in the preface dwells upon the 
 translation of this treatise in terms of profound contempt, as- 
 serting a preference for the version made by a native Italian.*^ 
 Thaddeus excuses himself for using the African's translation, 
 as necessitated by familiar references and common usage: " Et 
 translationem Constantini persequar, non quia melior est, quia 
 communior: nam ipsa pessima est, et superflua, et defectiva." 
 He then charges the " insane monk with violating the original 
 in quantity and quality" — "nam ille insanus monachus in trans- 
 fererido peccavit quantitate et qualitate."" 
 
 Considerable activity seems to have manifested itself in vul- 
 gate versions of Hippocrates at this period, when a Genoese 
 by the name of Simon, in cautioning students against the sloth- 
 ful and suspicious interpretation of Constantine, alludes in the 
 most contemptuous manner to a version of the Aphorisms by 
 
 ■^Vide Fabricius, Bibliotheca Grseca, Tom. X., cap. 205. 
 
 *•■' " Turn translatio Burgundinis pisani melior est." Thaddei, Epositiones Oper., 
 Hippocrat., Pn^fatio, p. i. 
 
 ** Thaddei, op. cit., p. I. This distinguished professor himself slumbered in 
 mental inactivity until his thirtieth year, when he awoke from the sale of trifling 
 souvenirs, to become the chief of a great science. Sarti, De Profess. Bonon., 
 Tom. I., p. 467.
 
 266 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 a certain Isaac, perhaps an Israelite: Et si aliqua ex libris 
 Isaac, etc., nam ejus translatio satis est nihi suspecta.^*^ 
 
 It may be added here, that the Spanish Jews were far in ad- 
 vance of Western Christians at the era before us in their knowl- 
 edge of useful sciences, and largely aided in publishing to the 
 nations of Europe many valuable discoveries of medicine and 
 surgery, by transporting Arabic manuscripts with them to the 
 principal trading towns of the North and West, particularly 
 Montpelier,^" long before this municipality was known for its 
 schools of law and medicine. 
 
 One of the earliest Europeans to explore the intellectual 
 treasures of Spain, and to introduce these to contemporary 
 notice was Gerbert, afterwards Pope under the name of Sylves- 
 ter II. His adolescent education was superintended at the 
 convent of St. Gerard Aurillac, in which he had assumed mo- 
 nastic vows of abnegation and celibacy. Here for several 
 years, by close assiduity to grammatical and other liberal arts, 
 he obtained the unrestricted commendation of his superiors." 
 At length Borrelus, duke of a Spanish province, arriving at 
 this monastery to offer humble prayers, was accosted by the 
 youthful scholar, as to whether the culture of science and art 
 among the Arabs was of higher grade than prevailed in schools 
 of the Latin Church ; and upon an affirmative answer, through 
 the abbot, he besought the ducal visitor to assist him in procur- 
 ing from the Moors that erudition to which he fervently aspired. 
 This urgent request was granted, and finally, committed to the 
 care of Hatto, bishop of Ausonia, he quickly illustrated his 
 studies in geometry, music, magic, and astronomy — classified 
 by the chronicler as Mathesi.** 
 
 Pending his residence near the Saracen savans, a frequent 
 epistolary correspondence attests the rapid progress of this 
 
 **Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. III., p. 398. 
 ^''Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturalles, Tom. I., p. 387. 
 ^' Richerius, Historiarum, Lib. III., cap 43. 
 
 •'**"Apud quern etiam in Mathesi plurimum .et efEcaciter studuit." Richerius, 
 Historiarum, Lib. III., cap. 43; Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Mathesis.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 267 
 
 scholar in these sciences, then the exclusive possession of 
 Oriental sages. In writing to a Barcelona ecclesiastic, he 
 begs of him the perusal of a work on astrology, then, and at 
 a later period of the Middle Ages, regarded as a branch of the 
 curative art, and which it seems, had been translated by the 
 Spanish scholastic from Arabic sources, and at the same time 
 alludes to the arithmetical treatise of a certain Joseph the 
 Spaniard/* On another occasion, he distinctly avows the 
 great obligation he was under to Moslem philosophy, and 
 affirms an intention to seek the superior culture of Saracen 
 courts, in order to obtain the finest scholarly facilities. In 
 this letter, Gerbert adverts to the commencement, by him, of 
 a celestial sphere upon which were delineated the heavenly 
 bodies,'*" which, astrological orreries frequently performed im- 
 portant functions in medical prognostics. 
 
 On returning to his native land, the contemporary annalist 
 becomes the panegyrist of Gerbert, and declares this move- 
 ment was by divine command, to dissipate the profound dark- 
 ness of ignorance, beneath whose sombre gloom lay the whole 
 of France."^ Five years subsequent to his return — in the year 
 970, imperial patronage preferred him to the priory of the 
 Bobbio monastery .^^ An early attestation of rising fame in 
 Western Europe was the remarkable affluence of foreign stu- 
 dents, attracted thither by this prelate's scholastic accomplish- 
 ments.^'* The fame of this great scholar spread to the Ger- 
 mans, throughout Italy, and extended indeed, to the Tyrre- 
 nean and Adriatic seas.^^ Among the contributions of Arabic 
 science, which Europe owes directly to Gerbert, are numerical 
 
 ^^ " De multiplicatione et divisione numerorum, editum a Jusepho Hispano." 
 Gerberti, Epistolae, Ep. 17 and 25. 
 
 ^''Ibid., Ep. 148. Gerbert's treatise on astrology was eagerly sought. Ibid., 
 Ep. 24. •• 
 
 ^' Richerius, op. cit., Lib. III., cap. 43. 
 
 ^2 Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. III., p. 258. 
 
 ^'Gerberti, Epistolre, Ep. 13. 
 
 ^* Richerius, Historiar., Lib. III., cap. 55.
 
 268 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 figures/^ whose application, even in this pontiffs age, to higher 
 mathematics, quickly revealed their value in the construction 
 of more elegant and graceful edifices. Richerius, a resident 
 of Rheims, the archiepiscopal see, coeval with its occupancy 
 by this scholastic/'' distinctly asserts that to Gerbert " was due 
 the introduction of the abacus,'""' the description of which is 
 fully given by the mediaeval chroniclers as an object of striking 
 wonderment.^^ After his vexatious expulsion, towards the 
 close of the tenth century, from his pontificate, he sought the 
 protection of Otho, emperor of Germany, and while there con- 
 structed a sidereal clock.^* 
 
 In regulating the exact chronometer movements of this 
 horologe, which was placed in the city of Magdeburg, in the 
 year 999, the learned scientist found the precise time by 
 observing the polar star through a telescope — per fistulam/"' 
 Notwithstanding mathematical science and its cognate branches 
 of astrology and geometry were the predilection of Gerbert, 
 he had obtained profound insight into the theory and practice 
 of medicine, as understood and professed among the Saracens 
 of Spain. On this subject his epistles contain numerous and 
 important references.®^ Similar to the scholars of that period, 
 Gerbert, under the nomenclature of Mathesi,"" directed an 
 inquiring mind into the possibilities of magical science,®* for 
 
 s^Gerberti, op. cit., Ep. 17 and 25; and Richerius, op. cit.. Lib. III., cc. 57, 
 58. Vide on this interesting subject, Matter, Ecole d'Alexandrie, Tom. II., pp. 
 52, 126; and Gouget, Origin des Artes et Sciences, Tom. III., p. no. 
 
 ^® Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. II., p. 22; and Tiraboschi, 
 op. cit., Tom. III., p. 258. 
 
 *' Richerius, op. cit., Lib. III., cap. 54. 
 
 5«Wm. Malmsb., Gesta Pontif. AngUa:, Lib. II., p. 65. 
 
 ^" Dithmar, Clironicon, Lib. VI., sub an. 999, p. 196; and Richerius, op. cit.. 
 Lib. III., c. 55. 
 
 •'"" Illud recte constituens con.si(lerata per fistulam quadam' Stella Nautarum 
 duce." Dithmar, op. cit., Lil). VI., supra. 
 
 ^'Gerberti, Epistolre, Epp. 17, 92, 124 and 151. 
 
 "'^ Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Mathesi. 
 
 ^■'Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. III., p. 259.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 269 
 
 which the Arabians preserved their renown until the fifteenth 
 century. 
 
 The inculpation of these dark arts against this prelate was 
 first urged by the enmity of Cardinal Birno, under the papacy 
 of Gregory VII. After struggling to discredit the papal dig- 
 nity of Sylvester II., the official title of Gerbert, and failing, 
 he was entirely successful in this bold accusation of magical 
 practices," which in the Middle Ages was universally accepted 
 as a demoniacal power. Mediaeval chronists elaborated with 
 much prolixity these diversified charges.'^'' As early as the 
 time of Adam of Bremen, the haruspici or soothsayers of Cur- 
 land, in Scandinavia, w^ere visited by persons from Spain and 
 Greece, seeking prognostications or health,*'^ while at the same 
 period identical enchanters among the Spanish Arabs, whose 
 puissance was able to resurrect even the dead by certain char- 
 acters placed under their arm-pits. Were sought by Europe- 
 ans." A definite allegation against the erudite pontiff was 
 his fabrication of human effigies, which, it was asserted, he had 
 endowed with the virtues of gesticulation and speech.''* 
 
 This extraordinary mechanism was, however, confined to an 
 affirmative or negative response to specific questions;"" but, 
 according to the credulous narrator cited, the figure used by 
 Gerbert was composed by him in perfect adjustment by astron- 
 omical calculations, and possessed the power of predicting its 
 maker's death, which, if the chronicler be accredited, actually 
 happened.'" 
 
 Such effigies, actually fabricated with a self-moving energy, 
 
 6* Ibid. 
 
 "^ Herman, Corneri Chronicon, sub an. 998. 
 
 '■"De Situ Danae, cap. 16. 
 
 ^' Gervais. Tilburn., Otia Impeiialia, Lib. I., c. 20. 
 
 •"^ " Christiani Tholetum, et Saraceni Hispalim urbem, quam Sibiliam vulgariter 
 nominant, caput regni habentes, divinationibus et incantationibus student." Her- 
 man., Corner., op. cit., an. 998. 
 
 •"Wm. Malmsb., De Gestis Pontif. Angliaj, Lib. H., c. 40. 
 
 ™Wm. Malmsb., De Gest*s, Pontif. Anglije, Lib. H., c. 50.
 
 2^0 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 according to a writer of the thirteenth century, by Daedalus,'* 
 recede in their preternatural virtue before the power of Ger- 
 bert to walk with ease upon the surface of deep water." The 
 construction of these puissant images, perhaps a development 
 of the idolatrous mandragora figures of the early Carlovingian 
 period, was a standing incrimination against ecclesiastic schol- 
 ars hated and feared for eminent erudition, down to the time 
 of Albert Magnus, who, it is asserted, successfully compounded 
 one of clay.'^ 
 
 During the Middle Ages it was devoutly believed, and as 
 scrupulously written by pious chronists, that Gcrbert had sold 
 himself to the devil. As late, indeed, as the year 141 8, an 
 annalist, whose register of events is of the most commendatory 
 character, hesitated not to reaffirm this demoniacal transaction, 
 and to detail the articles of the compact, which aid in eluci- 
 dating Malmsbury's intimations.'* 
 
 '^ Gervasii Tilburnen, Otia Impeiialia, Lib. I., cap. 19. 
 
 ^2 Chronicon Halberstadense, sub an. 998; and Herman Corner., Chronicon, 
 sub an. 999. 
 
 ^^Panciroli, De Rer. Rec. Invent., Tom. II., Tit. X., p, 230. 
 "* Gobelin. Personse, Cosmodrom., Aet, VI., cap. 51.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Maladies Traced to Demoniac Sources — Holy Curatives Sanctioned by 
 the Church — Social Troubles and Bodily Ailments Caused by Demons 
 — Flowers Grown on Martyred Tombs of Great Sanitative Power — 
 Healing Force of Prayers — Imbeciles as Tenements of Foul Spirits — 
 Curative Virtue of a Saint's Hair — Monastic Treatment of Sick — Sep- 
 arate Division for the Infirm— Eagerness of Monks to go on the Sick 
 List — The Mediaeval Lancet — Sorts of Medicaments in Vogue. 
 
 THE case of Gerbert is particularly elaborated, in order to 
 attest the ineradicable faith of those ages in the doctrine 
 of diabolical potency, which, it was accorded, included the 
 causation of maladies; and as a corollary to this proposition 
 required saintly or magic interference to vanquish these mani- 
 festations of the arch-enemy or his demons. At a time when 
 popular credence asserted that sudden death was purely a 
 direct revelation of a decedent's evil nature, and that such 
 events were a divine testimonial of judgment inflicted upon a 
 vicious man,^ it may be assumed that the dogma of demoniacal 
 origin of diseases flourished into luxurious expansion among 
 the ecclesiastics above, and rooted itself profoundly in the 
 vulgar mind beneath. An unequivocal doctrine was finally 
 reached and enunciated — inasmuch as Satan caused not only 
 sickness and death, under the restrictive stipulations hitherto 
 designated as dictated by Deit}^ as a logical sequence saints 
 and martyrs, or their material representatives, could heal the 
 diseased and revive the dead. 
 
 Legends of these sainted beings announced the resistless 
 potency of their cure of maladies, together with the spiritual 
 remedies of sinful and irreligious actions. Such virtues ema- 
 nated, in the traditions, to cure hemorrhages, aches and pains 
 
 1 Anglia Sacra, Tom. I., p. 12 seq. 
 
 (271)
 
 2y2 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 of the head, caused by demons/ or of the body; readjusted 
 luxations, united fractures, removed calculus, moderated the 
 agonizing pangs of parturition, restored vision to sightless 
 eyes, and renewed the sense of hearing to the deaf Such 
 remedies were both mediatory and immediate, or represented 
 by tangible objects. 
 
 Thus, for instance, Franciscus de Paula succored an anchy- 
 losed joint, which the malevolence of the person afflicted had 
 alone provoked, by the energetic surgery of three dried figs, 
 which he gave the suffering patient to eat.'* Like potency was 
 displayed through the powerful properties of certain herbs, 
 restoring to robust vigor a maiden grieving under a cancerous 
 disease, when surgical skill had frankly admitted the impossi- 
 bility of medicinal cure.* Hugo the Holy abstracted from the 
 infirm body of a female a serpent by consecrated water, and 
 Saint Melanus revived a child suffocated by the Devil. Coleta, 
 the saintess, awakened from the dreamless slumber of death 
 more than a hundred slain infants by the efficacy of a cross.* 
 We have previously stated the strange forces attributed to the 
 sepulchres of the sainted dead, whose curative prowess was 
 universally accorded to survive their earthly dissolution; con- 
 sequently, when the humble hunchback bowed the knee in 
 adoration at the tomb of Saint Andreas, this irresistible faith 
 instantly released him from his unnatural rotundity.*^ 
 
 The frequent cure of calculus seems to have been a favorite 
 subject for the exercise of this holy expulsive power, sum- 
 marily removing the painful disease. The same curative 
 energy which immediately checked the aching throbs of a dis- 
 ordered head, reappeared in the vastness of magic power." 
 
 '^ Annalista Saxo, Chronicon, sub an. 891. 
 
 'Acta Sanctorum, BoUand., Apr. 2, Tom. I., p. 98. 
 
 ♦ Ibid. 
 
 ^ Acta Sanctor., Bolland., Apr. 29, Tom. III., p. 331 ; and Mar. 6, Tom. I., 
 p. 626. 
 
 *Ibid., Mar. 19 and 6, Tom. I., pp. 14 and 19. 
 
 'Vita S. Prixijccti, Januar. 25, Tom. II., p. 636.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 273 
 
 Thus when the quenched hght, which added to the sombre 
 pomp with flaming rays before the sarcophagus of Saint 
 Severin, had revived in the splendors of renewed fire, it was 
 understood the vivifying sparks flashed forth directly from 
 that occult source which fired the extinguishad tapers in the 
 crypt of Saint Gall.* 
 
 The lapsing of a tower in the Winchester cathedral at- 
 tributed to divine vengeance for the contiguous interment of 
 the unshrived William Rufus," and the falling walls of Leices- 
 ter to a nearly similar reason/" together with the horrors of 
 famine and pestilence to an amazing defiance of the Holy 
 Mother," equally belong to that identical faith according the 
 immensity of curative powers to entombed relics. Cognate 
 with this principle of celestial visitation, through diabolical 
 agencies, was the decree that the same William should imme- 
 diately descend to hell, in case he retained the great see of 
 Canterbury in his own hands.^^ 
 
 With the water in which Saint Sulpicius washed her hands, 
 and with the flowers blooming in aromic beauty at the tomb 
 of Bernard, aggravated infirmities were instantly cured." The 
 devout application to Saint Martin's pall, by Gregory of Tours, 
 as an energetic medicine, has its singular counterpart in the 
 puissant touch of the funebral bier of the above saintess, or 
 by actual contact with the mortuary cloth enclosing her mor- 
 tal remains.^* Hairs of saints in the thirteenth century, 
 especially of Boniface, the famous Teutonic evangelist, were 
 endowed with the virtue of a medicinal purge ;^* and therefore 
 
 sWalafr. Strabo, De Miraculis S. Galli, Lib. II., c. 46. 
 "" Peccatis illius contigisse." Anglia Sacra, Tom. I., p. 270. 
 1" \Vm. Neubrig., Histor., sub an. 1196, Tom. I., p. 192. 
 '1 Scriptore.s post Bedam, p. 382. 
 
 ^■^ Eadmer Monachi, Histor. sui Saeculi, Lib. VI., p. 17. 
 
 ^3 Acta SS., Jan. 23, Tom. II., cap. 8, p. 178 seq. Healing potency of Ber- 
 nard, Helmoldi Chronicon, sub an. 1146, Lib. I., cap. 49. 
 
 ^* Acta SS., Jan. 24, Tom. II.; and Jan. 23, Tom. II., cap. 2, p. 454. 
 ^*" Piles barl)£e : pilli illi in aqua benedicta sibi darentur ad liliiilinum." ■ 
 18
 
 2y_^ HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 when a deeply grieved parent hung this sainted reHc in the 
 face of her moribund daughter, the divinized force was instantly 
 exerted to cure the suffering infant.'" This capillary remedy 
 was of extraordinary potency when compounded with the 
 hairs of saintess Coleta, not only to quickly eject heart dis- 
 orders, but the possession of such objects enabled an innocent 
 person accused of crime, subjected to torture, to pass with a 
 peaceful smile through his agonizing proofs, as though reposing 
 upon a downy bed. Fragments of her veil and the use of a 
 well-worn cloak immediately cured a terrible luxation, and a 
 cataleptic patient was restored to sanity by drinking from her 
 cup.'' 
 
 As a practical part of this mediaeval medicine, the sick were 
 taught the curative powers of liberal gifts to such ecclesiastical 
 objects as the priestly physician indicated. Eadmer distinctly 
 affirms the gigantic influence of the devil and his evil spirits, 
 for ill, when he states that Anselm's return to England was 
 delayed by advice of the demoniacal hosts, in order to crush 
 out the vestiges of British Christianity.^^ 
 
 In all epidemics during the Middle Ages, such persons as 
 were afflicted with pestilential diseases were declared contami- 
 nated by the Devil,'** and carried to churches and chapels, a 
 dozen at a time, securely bound together and thrown upon 
 the floor, where they lay, according to the attestation of a 
 pitying chronicler, until dead or restored to health.^" Astro- 
 logical prognostications for future health, and as a formal 
 guide in the affairs of diurnal existence, were at an early period 
 adopted by both Saracens^^ and Christians indifferently. 
 
 Matth. Paris, Annales, sub an. 1244. Essayed with effect by a Canterbury barber 
 who had cut them from the saint's face. 
 
 1* Acta SS., Febr. 19, cap. 3, Tom. III., p. 146. 
 
 i' Ibid., Mar. 6, Tom. I., p. 626. 
 
 18 Eadmer Mon., Histor. sui Saec, Lib. IV., p. 80. 
 
 i®"In sestate grassavit quadam enormis infirmitatis acsi esset de temptatione 
 malorum spiritum." Knyghton, De Eventibus Anglire, Lib. IV., sub an. 1355; 
 apud Dec, Script. I., p. 2609. 
 
 '•'°" Ubi vincti jacebant donee a Deo relevationcm acciperent." Ibid. 
 
 '■" Coiide, Ilistoria de Li Doininacion des Arabes en Espaiia, pp. 378, 381.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 275 
 
 The chamber described in the acts of Saint Sebastian was 
 composed exclusively of glass, through which was visible a 
 celestial sphere upon whose convexity was delineated the 
 starry universe, with lines and admeasurements, designed to in- 
 dicate the heavenly bodies.^'^ Such orbs appear to have been 
 used to fix certain days during medijEval times for taking 
 physic, a custom carried down to the sixteenth century, when 
 persons as a medicinal act throughly inebriated themsf\VV-t^ 
 in order to secure the purification of the resultant emetic." 
 Oftentimes saintly remedies were applied to curing suffering 
 animals, and frequently this exercise of preternatural power 
 displayed itself in freeing captive birds and animals.** 
 
 To the Devil were attributed powers of evil, which popular 
 belief admitted to be within the possibilities of magic; while on 
 the contrary m.iraculous exhibitions of saintly and canonized 
 martyrs were devoutly thought to possess advantages of un- 
 bounded good to mankind. 
 
 Holy Agnes, upon the pitiful prayer of a friar, saved him 
 from suffocating by a fishbone, and a like invocation to Saint 
 Peter prevented a woman from drowning.*^ Magical puissance 
 of saints was, as we have seen, not restricted to the living 
 body, but the inanimate type of the dead was endowed with 
 forcible energy by contact or petition. Thus at a banquet 
 presided over by emperor Henry of Germany, a costly vitreous 
 urn was exhibited as a notable specimen of Alexandrine fabric, 
 and during its passage around the table, by careless handling 
 of the ecclesiastics, it was broken. Odilo, in attendance at the 
 feast, fearing imperial anger against the clergy, proceeded to 
 a conventual chapel, where by certain prayers and psalms he 
 obtained the divine force which restored the fractured vase to 
 its original integrity.^* 
 
 ^■^ Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Holivitreus. 
 
 ^^D'Aussy, Histoire de la Vie Privee des Franijais, Tom. I., p. 332. 
 ^* Acta SS., Bol., Mar. 5, Tom. I., pp. 318-31, t,2,Z- Dead raised by prayers. 
 Ibid., Apr. 2, Tom. I., p. 94. 
 
 25 Acta SS., Boll., Jan. 21, Tom. II., p. 362. 
 '■'^Ibid., Jan. 21, Tom. II., p. — .
 
 2 y 6 HIS TOR \ ' OF MEDIC A L ECONOM V 
 
 In the year 1243, a Ferrara writer was at Padua for solemn 
 vespers, and while attending these at the tomb where reposed 
 the sainted body of the Minorite Anthony, he affirms that he 
 saw a person, mute from birth, recover his voice and speak 
 audibly. This man, according to the attestation of trustworthy 
 Paduans, had been absolutely voiceless, and they expressed 
 thgir amazement at this miraculous cure, which was performed 
 ■^^* ^^ defunct saint in the presence of the chronicler cited." 
 
 I'hrough the vicious agency of an enchantress in Regens- 
 burg, Satan professed to obtain unquestioned control over 
 persons of evil character. Unsound mind was universally 
 accepted as the specific distinction of diabolical power, and 
 caused by the corporeal presence of an impure spirit. In this 
 instance, Godehard, connected with the above mentioned city 
 and its monastery,^* one day journeyed along the municipal 
 streets on cloister business, and met a personage so afflicted. 
 '/\31ose scrutiny and peremptory interrogatories revealed to the 
 saint the foul presence of a demon, whom, by the resistless 
 power of divinity, he ejected from the enchantress' body, which 
 restored her health to its former sanity.^® 
 
 Imbeciles and the insane were, throughout the Middle Ages, 
 especially conceded to be the abode of an avenging or frenzied 
 demon. In aggravated cases actual presence of the medicinal 
 saint was necessary; in less vexatious maladies the bare im- 
 position of hands, accompanied by plaintive prayer, quickly 
 healed the diseased.'"' Inasmuch as diseases during this period 
 were attributed to Satanic origin, according to the direct trans- 
 mission from the early Church, the principal, and in many 
 
 ^''" Vir natus mutus, ut omnium civium erat assertio, dum orasset, vesperis sub 
 illius sepulchre, loquelam et auditum recipit, quern vidi et audivi loquentem." 
 Kicobaldi, Ilistoria Imperatorum, sub an. cit. ; ap. Eccard. I., p. .1170. In the 
 year 1283, a chronist asserted he saw blind restored to sight by saintly surgery — 
 " oculisciue nostris vidimus." Lerbeccii, Chronic, Epp. Mind., cap. 35. 
 
 '•"*Anon. Chronic, Stcdensberg, sub an. loio. 
 
 •■'»Acta SS., Boll., May 4, Tom. I. 
 
 •^"Ibid., Mar. 22, Tom. II.; Ibid., — , Jan. Tom. II., | 5, p. 259 seq.; and Ibid., 
 Vita S. Marci, Ap. 28, cap. 2, Tom. III., p. 584.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 277 
 
 cases the only remedies applied, were drawn from the reliqui- 
 aries, or procured from materials assumed to contain a divane 
 puissance — objects which the departed saints had used in daily 
 occupation, incidentally touched, or, more powerful still, well- 
 preserved bones, finger-nails, hair, and other fragments of the 
 human frame. 
 
 When certain fevers were apparently too obstinate for treat- 
 ment with medicaments, the immersion in water of a ring w-lsjiv ^ 
 by Saint Remiginus, conveyed to it such magic force tliat it 
 instantly became an infallible potion for such troublesome dis- 
 orders/^ It was doubtless a logical sequence from the premi- 
 ses stating the diabolical origin of maladies, that suitable cures 
 must be sought in those types whose energy transcended the 
 disabling force of Satan, because it was inspired by Deity; 
 therefore, relics performed the most important functions in ex- 
 orcising these impure germs. Thus, for instance, the wine 
 washing such sacred objects, given to an imbecile, forcibly 
 ejected an evil spirit from his mouth; while another tainted 
 with idiocy was restored to instant health by simply trans- 
 porting the fragments of Saint Anastasius.'^^ 
 
 A single hair from the beard of Saint Vincent, placed about 
 the neck of an idiot, drove away a vicious spirit which had 
 withheld the sanitary operation of the imbecile's brain.-'^ In 
 the year 1244, Louis IX. of France, almost in the agonies of 
 earthly dissolution, with rigid body, rigorous limbs, and fluc- 
 tuating spirit, was brought to full health by the application to 
 his moribund body of a piece of the true cross.'* 
 
 How profoundly a belief in the actual presence of evil angels, 
 as causes of bodily sickness, was current in mediaeval society 
 of lay and cleric, appears in the curative operations of Saint 
 
 ^1 " Annulus autem a digito ipsius extractus ab aquis intinctus potum febricitan- 
 tibus varisque languoribus gegrotantibus salubrem dedit." Girald. Cambrenes, 
 De Vita Episcop., Lincol., cap. 10; apud Angl. Sacr., Tom. II., p. 416. 
 
 ^'^ Acta SS., Bolland, Jan. 17-22, \>. 437 seqq. 
 
 33 Acta S.S., Apr. 5, Tom. I. 
 
 3* " Aptavit corpori rigido et frigido, et redeunte spiiitu, revivit." Matthew 
 Paris, Annales, sub an. 1244.
 
 278 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Catharine. A woman possessed of the devil was presented to 
 the immaculate saintess for prompt remedy: by the virtue of 
 divine magic a demon was forced from each part of her body 
 where he had taken refuge, but resisting absolute ejectment 
 from this carnal abode, made a desperate conflict in the throat, 
 when by uninterrupted scratches he reproduced himself in the 
 form of an abscess.^^ Medieval monasteries and cloisters, in 
 r--*cession of sanitary relics, were custodians of an inexhausti- 
 Die bource of riches and adoration. 
 
 We have hitherto stated the greed with which these sacred 
 objects were struggled for by force and fraud in sacking the 
 Byzantine city, and how swiftly the renown of their invincible 
 virtues expanded throughout the West, which rapidly returned 
 in a swelling tide of affluence to conventual treasuries. Thriv- 
 ing incomes were readily derived from them when carried 
 about cities or provincial towns, and urged upon the griev- 
 ously sick and infirm as containing transcendent curative 
 power. In such proffers, enormous sums of money were de- 
 manded by the bearers of these sainted fragments, to furnish 
 access to such as aspired to test their lauded remedial prop- 
 erties.'' 
 
 For such purposes defunct saints inspired the same puis- 
 sance into a limb or other fragmentary member, attributed to 
 their whole bodies." Slothful indifference of pontifical author- 
 ities, urged on by the rising necessities of denuded cloisters or 
 impoverished nunneries, easily provided suitable methods of 
 acquiring ecclesiastical fortunes, or remedying prelatial indi- 
 gence by facile canonization. In such cases an official pro- 
 mulgation of miraculous properties in new saints was procured 
 from the Archbishops,'® and when this notice had issued to 
 the public, the way was opened for traffic. Under specific 
 circumstances conjuration formulas were used as a saintly 
 
 ^»Acta SS., Boll., Apr. 30, Tom. III. 
 
 '* Decern Scriptores post Bedam, p. 25. 
 
 " Eadmer, Monach., Histor. sui Saeculi, Lib. IV., p. 78. 
 
 "" Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Preconizaie.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 279 
 
 medical cure for such diseases as impure spirits caused. 
 Frightened priests resorted to these soothing curatives when 
 afflicted women besought them to exorcise''" a demon provok- 
 ing maladies. 
 
 Oftentimes the formulary book contained no sufficient po • 
 tency to expel the diabolical disease, although in unnumbered 
 instances solemnly adjudged synodal exorcisms, by Churcbi' 
 or Carlovingian authority, readily furnished desired remediQ-i^siSj 
 Laurentia, a maiden of youthful years, placed by her 'fether 
 within the sheltering walls of a cloister, to assume ultimately 
 monastic vows, was quickly captured by an errant demon. As 
 an irrefutable demonstration of the impure origin of her infirm- 
 ity, an annalist asserts, this spirit promptly ans*vered in elegant 
 Latinityall questions propounded; but the strongest confirma- 
 tion of this belief was the miraculous ability which enabled her 
 to disclose the most secret thoughts of others, and divulge the 
 mysterious affairs of her associates. 
 
 In this evident superiority of the afflicted girl maybe traced 
 a sly satire against erudite clerics, who ordinarily were incul- 
 pated with Satanic assistance in the ranking distinction of 
 learning. Saint Catherine at length liberated the suffering 
 female from her diabolical tenant.*^ Frequently the presence 
 of a saint averted a catastrophe ; or in their hands, by the mag- 
 ical stroke of a cross, an efficacious remedy was administered 
 to diseases causing sudden death.*" 
 
 Flowers reposing upon the tomb of a saint, when steeped in 
 water, were regarded as endowed with mirific sanitary power.*' 
 Impostors were everywhere met, according to the annalists of 
 
 ^^ " Qui cum per Bened. Petruni Martyr, dsemones adjuratus est, duo protinus 
 exierunt." Acta SS., Boll., Apr. 29, cap. 14, Tom. III., p. 718. For similar 
 cures, Ibid., p. 716. 
 
 *" Baluzius, Formulje Exorcisor., Tom.' II., col. — , p. 639 seq. 
 
 "Acta SS., Boll., Apr. 30, Tom. III. 
 
 ■*- Ibid., Apr. 30 and 22. 
 
 ■'^ " Quasdam deherbulis, quas devotis populi sacrum jecit in tumulum," etc. 
 " Nam discerptis de his particulis, et frigoriticis cum aquae potu porrectus, pro- 
 tinus cum haustu salutem invixit." lb., Apr. 2, cap. 3, Tom. I., p. 98.
 
 2 So HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the Middle Ages, perambulating the different holy places in 
 Germany, asserting most impudently that they were formerly 
 deprived of sight, speech, hearing, and possessed of devils ; but, 
 in the presence of an excited multitude, swiftly flitting to and 
 fro, as idiots, and with clenched fists pounding their hardy 
 chests, proclaimed themselves the objects of saintly cures." 
 Nuns and consecrated women residing in convents, whose 
 y' '.ii^ie was employed in embroidering fine textures and attiring 
 thePPiSelves in bridal vestments to attract the attention of 
 strange men,^^ after having glided down the fascinating slope of 
 human impulses, instead of relying upon the presumed puis- 
 sance of religion, had recourse to the more practicable method 
 of restoring thdr virginity by medicinal potions — a practice 
 placed under the ban as early as the year 798, by a Carlovin- 
 gian rescript/** In some instances erring sisters bore amulets 
 or applied the preventative talismanic influence of a sacred 
 shirt or girdle, to suppress the manifestation of conventual 
 irregularities. The bold recommendation of medijeval medical 
 professors against the legitimate results of these frailties, 
 attests the extent of an evil justly regarded by the Church as 
 a most heinous crime.*' 
 
 At an early period, as we have seen, in the construction of 
 monasteries, a regular appartment was set apart for a hospital 
 or infirmary surgeon. Of these chambers devoted exclusively 
 
 ** " Personas, quae in nostra patria, usitato more per sacra loca discurrentes, se 
 aut csecos, aut debiles, vel elingues, vel certe obsesses temere simulant, et ante 
 altaria vel sepulchra sanctorum, se coram populo volutantes, pugnisque tundentes> 
 sanatos illico proclamant," etc. Vita Godehardi, Ep. Hildist., cap. 7. 
 
 ■*^ An inculpation by Beda, Histor. Eccles., Lib. IV., cap. 25, against Anglo- 
 Saxon nuns as early as the year 679. Simeon, Dunhelm., Histor. Eclles., Lib. IL, 
 cap. 7. The cartulary of 789, by Charlemagne, evidently contemplated the secret 
 j)rincij)]e involved in the text. Cap. 3, Baluz., Tom. L, col. 243. 
 
 •*« Lex Salica, Tit. XXL, lex. 4. 
 
 ^' " Si mulier bibat quodlibet mane per tres dies duas minas aquns, in qua fer- 
 rarii extingunt forcipes suas steriles sit in perpetuum." Arnold Villannov., 
 Breviarii Additiones, Lib. JIL, c. 5, col. 1338. To ol)tain this result Constans 
 Afer advises "stercus elephantinuni cum melle mixtum ct in vulva muiieris posi- 
 tum." De Chirurgia, p. 320. 
 
 I
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 281 
 
 to cloister maladies or stranger infirm, usually designated by 
 the name of Infirmary, there were several kinds. In the hos- 
 pitals which, in the year 845, in Scotland, were placed under 
 ecclesiastical protection by synodal canons,^^ specific divis- 
 ions were made according to the nature of the diseases to be 
 treated — one of which was solely directed to the care of 
 bed-ridden patients — another received and attended those | 
 whose maladies, elsewhere subject to successful manipulation^ 
 rapidly approached convalescence, while the last gradation in- 
 cluded aged, infirm, blind, and otherwise physically incurable, 
 whose time was passed in carefully nursing monastic sick/' 
 
 An official specially deputed by the abbot, entitled Infirm- 
 erius,"° was charged with the supervision of patients in this 
 department. These rooms were provided with a chapel an- 
 nexed to the infirmary itself, where the disabled brethren were 
 obliged to appear for religious services so far as their dis- 
 ordered condition permitted.^^ Here divine celebration was 
 performed from a breviary placed permanently in this struc- 
 ture.^- Added to the sacerdotal functions of this charitable 
 establishment, other practical adjustments contributed to the 
 ease and comfort of cloister sick. 
 
 Private chambers, distinguished as antexenodochium, were 
 often used as duplicate hospitals for the reception of aggra- 
 vated diseases, requiring removal from the regular infirmary. 
 'Notwithstanding the abbey Regular were so dexterously drawn 
 as to repress, in great measure, fraudulent accessions to the 
 monastic Infirmary, frequently young and robust, but indolent 
 
 *8Mabil]on, Annales Ord. S. Bened., Tom. II., p. 660. 
 
 *' Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Intirmarius. 
 
 50 Ibid. 
 
 5^ Ibid., sub V. Lobium. 
 
 52 Anglia Sacra, Pars I., pp. 393, 399. In the year 6S0, it appears that mori- 
 bund sick were carried into a special chamber to die — " autem in proximo casa, 
 in qua infirmiores et qui prope morituri esse videantur, induci solebant." Beda, 
 Ilistor. Eccles., Gent. Angl., Lib. IV., c. 24. 
 
 ^•^ Du Cange, sub v. Antixenodochium.
 
 282 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 monks, gained a relaxation of severe discipline by blinding the 
 prior, thus obtaining entrance to the hospital. This eagerness 
 of recluses to' procure access to the domum infirmorum, is made 
 the subject of biting sarcasm by the illustrious prior of Clair- 
 vaux abbey, in the year 1120.''* When, however, the malady 
 was slight, it received medical treatment in the Oriel.^^ The 
 principal motive in procuring admission on frivolous pretences 
 1^ J/to this apartment, appears to have been a meat diet or other 
 delicacies,^® which were given when the disease threatened 
 rapid progress." 
 
 Among other necessary appurtenances to the infirmary was a 
 stone slab on which the dead were washed for funeral rites."'^ 
 Medical assistance was provided the brethren and visiting 
 monks, by the communal organization of the convent, when- 
 ever such medicines were essential.^" If it happened, which 
 was indeed rare, that suitable medicaments could not be furn- 
 ished by an abbey, leave was granted to obtain them from 
 other sources. According to the architectural plan of Saint 
 Gall, in the eighth century, which may be accepted as uniform 
 with subsequent edifices till the close of the Middle Ages, the 
 Benedictines kept a botanical garden, not alone for growing 
 medicines and remedial herbs, but a regular pharmaceutical 
 depot, or, as in the case of San Vitalis, a Ravennate cloister, 
 maintained a complete assortment of surgical instruments, 
 adapted to great diversity of operations."" 
 
 Minute regulations by ecclesiastical authority, in conformity 
 to earlier Carlovingian and synodal canons," prescribed phle- 
 
 ^'' " In domo se infirmorum, qui non sunt infirmi, collocare." Apologia ad 
 Guillelmum, cap. 9, ^ 22. 
 
 ** Du Cange, Gloss., sub v. Oriel. 
 
 ^^Chronicon Novalense, Lib. II., cap. i. 
 
 ^' Matthew Paris, Annales, sub an. 1009. 
 
 ^*Matth. Par., cit. 1045. 
 
 ^^ Vadiani, De Collegiis Monasteriis, Lib. I., p. 23. 
 
 *" Observations sur I'ltalie, Tom. I., p. 323 seq. 
 
 8' Baluz., Cartular, cap. 11, Tom. L, p 5S1.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 283 
 
 botomy as a sanitary precaution or certain curative, and aided 
 in developing a filiation of medical economy, which survived 
 most obstinately to modern practice. The lanceola or knife 
 which performed this important function was thus denomi- 
 nated on account of its resemblance in miniature to the military 
 lance of the age ; and the operation was designated commonly 
 minution, originally incised by a monastic servant or barber."'" 
 Dugdale reproduced a curious contract with the founder o.' 
 Piperville abbey, by which he should receive four blood-lettings 
 a year."' 
 
 Constans Afer not only gives precise directions touching the 
 construction, shape, and length of this lancet, but advises the 
 utmost, precaution in such operations,"* and urges the surgeon 
 to cultivate such skill as to be able to distinguish by the touch 
 what portion of the person holds the veins, nerves, etc., neces- 
 sary to be known in these operations, which should besides be 
 treated in connection with golden pellets once a week."'' Mon- 
 asteries of enormous numbers, including regular monks and 
 conversi, appear to have had a small edifice exclusively de- 
 voted to this principal surgic operation of the Middle Ages,*"'" 
 and dangerous oftentimes by a dexterous hand,"' especially if 
 performed, according to the sagacious Bede, in the moon's 
 first quarter."** 
 
 The act of minutio, or cupping, is oftentimes referred to by 
 mediaeval chroniclers, under the general classification of phle- 
 botomy, as performed by the most exalted personages in soci- 
 
 ^'■^ Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Lanceolus. 
 
 ^ " Item vendicat quator minutiones per annum infra abbatiam." Monastic 
 Anglic, Tom. I., p. 818. 
 
 ** " Neque in tenebrose id faciendum est loco." De Chirurgia, p. 324. 
 
 *^ " Item Chirurgici utantur," etc.; " et semel in hebdomada pillulis aureis. 
 Phlebotamor discat tactu digitorum venas, carnem, nervum agnoscere." Ibid., 
 P- 325- 
 
 ^^ Du Cange, sub v. Phlebotamus. 
 
 e^Walafr. Strabo, De Miraculis S. Galli, Lib. II., c. 37. 
 
 ^ Histor. Eccles., Lib. V., c. ^.
 
 284 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 ety/^ both sacei'dotal'" and lay, for purely medicinal purpo- 
 ses." When it became evident that a monk in the Infirmary 
 was approaching earthly dissolution, notice was sent to the 
 prior and convent by the official in charge.'^ Thereupon a 
 monastic servant placed beneath the agonizing friar a hair 
 cloth, enclosing consecrated ashes/^ and in the last utterances 
 , of death two anchorites on watch by the dying brother's side 
 * /^hastened to the cloister portals, and struck a table with a ham- 
 mer, which was a signal of death agony.'* 
 
 Instead of frequent medication, physical exercise on foot 
 with staff in hand," or sawing wood, were recommended in the 
 abbeys as of the highest sanitative efficacy — closely resem- 
 bling the advice of Galen in the second century.'" The gradual 
 increase of secular patients in monastic hospitals, attending for 
 medical treatment, bathing and healthy diet, rendered the in- 
 flux at times so great that the troops of restless valetudinari- 
 ans and impostors became troublesome, and intensified this 
 grievance by liberal interchange of public scandal. This 
 tumultous crowding finally reached to such objectionable 
 features, that strict ordinances were promulgated restricting 
 actual presence in Infirmaries to the sick, physicians, and lay 
 servants attending by medical direction upon helpless inmates.'' 
 
 If the vehement satires of Burton be accepted as indicating 
 the usage of medicaments during the Middle Ages, it would 
 seem that the physic most gladly followed was found in a 
 liberal diet for the robust people of country towns, while sur- 
 
 ** Conrad Ursperb., Chronicon, sub an. — 
 
 '"Paul. Diacon., Chronic. Casin., Lib. IV., c. 100. 
 
 " Du Cange, sub v. Minuere. 
 
 ''- Ibid., sub V. Infirmarius. 
 
 '^ Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Cinis. 
 
 '''* Ibid., sub V. Ferula. 
 
 '•''•' Baculos in manibus sortare jubentur aegrotantes." Bernard, Apologia ad 
 Guillelmum, cap. 9, \ 23. 
 
 ''"Galen, De Sanitat. Tuenda, cap. 8. 
 
 "MS. Cotton, Claud. E., fol. 245.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 285 
 
 felted courtiers and idle gentry resorted to frequent medica- 
 tions.'* Whether mediaeval dentists reached the skill of their 
 more ancient precursors, in the dexterous use of the denti- 
 ducium, there can be no doubt touching the inferiority in the 
 preparation of powders and gold filling of the seventh century, 
 when indeed artificial teeth appear to have been used.™ In 
 the eleventh century Constans Afer advised the preference to 
 file down rather than extract teeth as a cure for the dolorous 
 pangs of tooth-ache/" with which, in an epidemic form, the 
 doughty crusaders were frequently afflicted, so severely indeed, 
 as to become mortal.*^ 
 
 Vagrant monks, in Wickliffe's age, habitually studied the 
 physiological constitution of women from the works of Hippo- 
 crates and Galen, and when possessed of sufficient knowledge 
 to give apparent reason to their medical argumentations, per- 
 suaded wives, in the absence of their husbands, that certain 
 bodily ailments could be alone corrected by permitting them 
 the right of administering the remedy as they pleased.**'' 
 
 In a manuscript diary of Gerald Cambrenesis,^^ two wily 
 cenobites are described as deserting conventual rules and 
 abandoning themselves wholly to a vagrant life, who, after 
 struggling for an indefinite period to maintain an existence 
 honestly or otherwise, finding the effort too severe and un- 
 profitable, turned their attention to the art of medicine, apos- 
 
 ''■^ Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, fol. 36. 
 
 '^ Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 175 seq. 
 
 bo<i Deinde vero super dentem nisi dolor accedat, melius est limare, quam ex 
 trahere." Liber de Chirurgia, cap. 35, p. 339. 
 
 *i Amelrici, Historia Pontilic. Roman., sub an. 1243, Ecc. 11, p. 1775. 
 
 82 " Docentes, cum illis concubere in absentiis maritorum, maxime esse contra 
 varias tegritudines salubre." ^Yickliff, De Hypococrasi, Pars I., p. 475, Ed. Bale. 
 
 »^MS. Cotton, Tib. B. 13. This MS., published by Brewer, at p. 19, Vol. I., 
 Rer. Brit. Med. M\'\\ Scriptores, entitled De Rebus a se Gestis, according to the 
 terminal note on the parchment, lacks nearly a hundred chapters. Fosbroke, 
 British Monachism, p. 236, evidently reproduced the citation in the next note 
 from an unverified source, at second hand, because this portion of the text was 
 destroyed in the last century.
 
 286 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 trophized as a most lucrative profession in the twelfth century 
 — pecuniosam artis medicinalis peritam — and began with im- 
 pudent boldness to practice medicine, without, as the writer 
 indignantly declares, having ever heard or read of Galen or 
 Hippocrates, or other books of this avocation, in schools or 
 elsewhere.** 
 
 . t,-. ,^ ^^f^ ^ " Et pecuniosam artis medicinalis peritam profitere non minus imprudenter 
 i.^ ^' ' pr^sumpserunt, cum turn Hippocratem aut Galeni creterumque librorum facultatis 
 
 illius, nunquam in scolis aut alibi lectionem unnam audissent aut legissent." 
 
 Gerald, Cambr., De Rebus a se Gestis, cit.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Medical Astrology — Its Adaptation to Ordinar}' Social Events — Charms 
 for Expelling Disease — Astrological Treatises of Friar Bacon — Virtue 
 of Magic Words — Alchemy — -Extraction of "Spirits" — Medicinal En- 
 ergy of such Extracts — Curative and Preventative Puissance of Stones 
 or Gems — Necromancy — Mediaeval Scientists Admit the Power of 
 Charms and Letter Characters — Potency of Angelic Names for Cures 
 — Enchanters' Spell — Amulets in the Middle Ages — Prayers or Invo- 
 cations Inscribed on Leaves, etc. — Sanitary Angels — Stellar Influence 
 Applied to the Curative Art — Effigy of Diseased Part Fabricated to 
 Obtain Remedy. 
 
 IN close and intimate connection with the curative art, 
 throughout the entire period of the Middle Ages, was the 
 science of astrology. During the earliest eras of civilization, 
 astronomical influences over the destinies of mankind appear 
 to have been universally accepted, and its details, according to 
 more elevated refinement of the people, reduced to rigid rules. 
 As remote, indeed, as the Babylonians, certain calculations 
 were made to determine the movements of celestial orbs, the 
 subtle essence of which was presumed to be an integral 
 force in the operations of the human body.^ 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that the Fathers of the Church, 
 soon after its development and organization under imperial 
 recognition, altered the plan somewhat of medicine" and as- 
 tronomy, in order to reduce them to a Christian basis,* the 
 vital power supposed to inhere within these heavenly bodies 
 was perpetuated under the form of magic and its diversified 
 operations. In the second century Gamaliel astonished the 
 crew of a forlorn vessel, on which he was a passenger, by an 
 
 ^ Matter, fecole d' Alexandria, Tom. II. p. 80. 
 ^Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, Tom. I., p. 366 seq. 
 ^ Bossuet, Histoire des Mathematiques, Tom. I., p. 160 seq. 
 
 (287)
 
 288 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 abstruse calculation of exact location from the sight of a comet 
 revolving in an orbit of seventy years.* 
 
 Judicial astrology maintained a tenacious vitality in the pop- 
 ular mind in Europe to the very close of the Middle Ages 
 — a function to which the terrible Tamerlane himself seems to 
 have abandoned his reason and discretion, although requiring 
 his sons to be instructed in the science of astronomy in the 
 "^^^ academy of Samarcand, where this abstruse art was taught.* 
 Beyond the limits of magical circles, the human mind eagerly 
 sought, by means of subjective powers, unlimited pleasure, 
 constant health, and uninterrupted affluence. Although astro- 
 logical science in its medicinal application was currently prac- 
 ticed from an early period of the ages under examination, in 
 the fifteenth century, after the fall of the Byzantine empire be- 
 fore Ottoman forces, it was vigorously developed through du- 
 plicate Greek manuscripts, explanatory of this curious subject, 
 mainly derived from corrupt Arabic sources, where such cal- 
 culations were made at birth and carefully recorded.® 
 
 In the year 968, when the envoy of Otho I., Emperor of 
 Germany, was in Constantinople, he found the Greeks using 
 Saracen astrological books, in which prognostications touching 
 future events of that empire were written and awaiting verifica- 
 tion.' Through these various avenues, the potency of astrol- 
 ogy was encouraged and essayed, as appears, successfully in 
 the cure of diseases. Robert Grosteste, bishop of Lincoln, 
 hitherto alluded to as the scientific friend of Friar Bacon, in 
 the first part of the thirteenth century, while at Oxford, cer- 
 tainly utilized his Arabic knowledge to construct charms for 
 expelling maladies.® 
 
 ^ Graetz, Hist, of the Jews, p. 33 seq. 
 
 ''Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. II., p. 477. 
 
 * Conde, Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en Espana, p. 326. 
 
 ' " Habent Greeci et Saraceni libros quos vocant, ego autem sibyllanos ; in qui- 
 bus scriptum repositur, quotannis imperator quisque vivat, quoe sunt futura, eo 
 impcrante, tempora," etc. Liudprandi, Legatio, cap. 39. 
 
 s " Invenit voces, quibus allevare solebat 
 /Kgrorum morbos, subsidiunique dabat." 
 
 De Vita Giostest., cap. 19.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 289 
 
 Bacon himself, notwithstanding his studies and researches 
 in Arabic medicine and pharmacy,^ was not exempt from pro- 
 fessing a firm belief in the omnipotence of astrology to cure 
 maladies, while Gerbert most unequivocally reduced the ope- 
 rations of nature to hazard.'" The progress made in mathema- 
 tical science from the time of Hermanns Contractus, a monk of 
 Saint Gall, in the year 1050, to the Hohenstauffen Emperor 
 Frederick II., advanced in an exact proportion to the mov^ement 
 of astrology. Independent of the private historical writings" 
 of this illustrious author, and his services to geometry at the 
 period designated, he was equally famous for an astrological 
 treatise known as Tractatum Astrolobii.^^ Frederick II., one 
 of the most munificent patrons of solid learning and science in 
 the thirteenth century, in the translation of the Ptolemaic Al- 
 magest, permitted the version to be drawn up on an astrolog- 
 ical basis, similar to the errors contained in the Alfonsine 
 tablets, the conjoined labor and erudition of Jewish, Moslem, 
 and Christian scholars.'^ 
 
 At a time when the best minds of Europe were engrossed 
 with Arabic sciences, whose application aided in the delineation 
 of the metallic plate with the system of Ptolemy's universe, 
 in the possession of Croyland abbey,'* Grosteste, pontiff of 
 Lincoln, essayed the practical adaptation of his Oriental learn- 
 ing to inventing words for exorcising fiends, and other equally 
 mystical characters of medicinal puissance, which, as manifesta- 
 tions of this exalted power, were engraven on valuable gems.'^ 
 
 * Bacon, De Compositione Elixiris, c. 6. p. 70. 
 
 10 " Sors omnia versat." Gerberti, Epistolar., Ep. 15. On his astrology, Ibid., 
 Ep. 8 and 24. 
 
 " According to Otto Frisingen, Clironicon, Lib. VI., c. 33, this was an account 
 of the acts and virtues of Henr)% Emperor of Germany, for private circulation — 
 " quern ipsi destinavit." 
 
 i^Andrse Ratisbon, Chronicon, c. 157. 
 
 i^Bailly, Histoire de 1' Astronomic Moderne, Tom. I., p. 299. 
 
 ^* Henry, History of England, Vol. VI., p. 109. 
 
 Ij" Deque characteribus fuit auctor quos pretiosos. 
 Inscripsit geminos, mira potentur agens," 
 De Vita Grosteste, cap. 19. 
 
 19
 
 290 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 The use of names for speedy curatives was charged upon the 
 Christian evangelist, Saint Swibert, in the seventh century, by 
 the Frisian sacerdoty, who alleged the restoration to sanity of 
 a stricken paralytic was accomplished " not by medicaments 
 and iron," but by the magic word.'" 
 
 Gervaise, of Tilbury, affirmed the Tetragrammaton of the 
 Jews was sufficiently potent to revive a cadaver after long 
 burial," and that the exorcising prowess of Solomon's ring was 
 omnipotent.'* Of the species of minerals most industriously 
 sought for remedial or other properties was the philosopher's 
 stone, to which transcendent wisdom, unremitting health, and 
 the certainty of wealth were ascribed.'^ From the ancient 
 doctrine, that beneficient or malevolent angels peopled the 
 universe, was gradually developed an unquestioned belief that 
 in all things, animate and inanimate, were contained these de- 
 mons, who, by the superior energy of magic or formal incanta- 
 tions, could be subjected to human control; and that within 
 the hidden recesses of metals or minerals resided the subtle 
 essence or spirit,, whose divine powers were manipulated by 
 cabalistic combinations for the benefit of the possessor. 
 
 This system of extracting the energetic beings domiciled in 
 these mystic abodes, was apparently introduced as early as the 
 time of Gerbert in the tenth century, and pursued in the 
 retired pharmacies of convents, upon formulated prescriptions 
 procured from Spain^" — an operation partaking a union of 
 ecclesiastic or theological process, sanctioned by authority, and 
 performed with pious but ardent prayers during the tests. 
 The holiness with which this was originally invested, either 
 through neglect or despair, vanished when the invocations of 
 divinity during the alchemical labors had been forgotten and 
 
 ^*Vita S. Swiberti, cap. 18; ap. Leibnitz, II., p. 234. 
 "Otia Imperialia, Dist. III., cap. 112. 
 ^*Ibid., Dist. I., cap. 20. 
 
 ••'Liebig, Chemische Briefe, Th. I., p. 51 ; and further, 3d Briefe, Tom. I., p. 
 46 seqq. 
 
 ^o Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Lib. L, cap. 5, \ i, p. 29.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 291 
 
 fallen into desuetude towards the thirteenth century, a period 
 wholly engrossed with the superiority of Satan over deified 
 angels — consequently the enthusiastic alchemist or astrologist 
 sought refuge in adjuration of evil demons to consecrate the 
 secrets of this mighty art and render his essays satisfactory." 
 
 Medical and alchemical wTiters of the Middle Ages, in 
 recommending the use of minerals, minutely described their 
 sanitary properties, which made them objects of zealous 
 research. The diamond rendered a man wholly invisible ; the 
 Indian agate provided him with eloquence, prudence, and an 
 agreeable amiability. For its preventative virtues against in- 
 ebriety, the amethyst was greatly cherished ; and the hyacinth 
 was an infallible cure for sleeplessness. The amber was a 
 a sovereign panacea against cerebral troubles and fevers, the 
 jasper cured epilepsy and for such purposes was unrivalled, 
 while the pulverized magnet taken as a potion with milk, pre- 
 vented melancholy. The bezoar was an instant antidote for 
 poisons.^'^ 
 
 Coral hung about the neck as a talisman, strengthened the 
 body, and peculiarly so if held in the mouth — the efficacy of 
 which was attested by experience."^ Constans Afer advised 
 dog-teeth as a specific remedy for rabies.^* Solomon's ring 
 controlled demons.^^ Noblemen wore the smargdum attached 
 to a chain, in the belief of its potential virtues against epilepsy.^" 
 The sard prevented terrible dreams, and the cornelian worn 
 on the finger or suspended from the neck pacified anger and 
 provoked contentment. Onyx superinduced troubled sleep, 
 but fastened to the throat, stimulated the salivary glands," 
 
 ^' Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Th. II. p. 107. 
 ^'^ Panciroli, Rer. Memorabil., Tom. II., Tit. 3, p. 1 17. 
 
 2^ Arnold Villannova, De Distillatione Medicinorum, cap. 11, gol. 591. On this 
 subject Galen, De Composit. Medicam., Lib. IX., cap. 5, \\ 19 and 29. 
 "Constans Africani, De Incantat. et Adjurat., Epistol., p. 318. 
 ^^ Gervas. Tilburn., Otia Imperialia, Dist. III., c. 28. 
 ''^ Const. Afric, op. cit., p. 319. 
 "Ibid.
 
 292 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Saphirs cured internal ulcers and excessive perspiration, when 
 taken as a potion dissolved in lacteal fluids.'* The gaygetes 
 and setite stones were urged as a certain remedy for difficult 
 parturtion/'' while others prescribed the smaragd mixed with 
 honey, in cases of strabismus.'" 
 
 Spider webs constituted. an important article of medication 
 to cure superficial ulcers.^^ It was urged that the green jasper, 
 to possess the proper endowments of sanitary amulets, must 
 be engraved with a dragon figure and radiated mane, accord- 
 ing to the counsels of an ancient Egyptian king, Nicephorus.'" 
 When these gems changed color, it was considered a sure and 
 reliable test of the presence of poison.'^ One of the most 
 curious features of this systematic extraction of .spirits or 
 divine essences enclosed within these stones or metals, was the 
 perfect good faith with which famous alchemists and astrolo- 
 gers persisted in their declarations of possessing such diabolical 
 beings thus obtained, and carried them around, in glass 
 bottles.^'* 
 
 Chemical extracts, or essences procured by mysterious pro- 
 cesses and designated spirits, when liberated and free to 
 exert their natural energies, might, indeed, deceive venerable 
 scientists in those obscure ages, and pass for bottled demons. 
 Mediaeval soothsayers fabricated images in which captive 
 spirits were placed, to suitably instruct their possessors touch- 
 ing doubtful affairs in an uncertain future.'^'' Divination, or 
 augury, as a well-defined branch of astrology, was much used 
 as a means of predicting events and prognosticating maladies. 
 
 ''^Aetii, Tetrabili, Lib. I., Sermo 2, cap. 38. 
 
 ^*Ibid., Lib. L, Ser. 2, c. 24. 
 
 3" Ibid., cap. 39. 
 
 ^' Ibid., cap. 165. 
 
 3'^ Ibid., Lib. I., Ser. 2, cap. 33. 
 
 ^^ Dec. Scriptor., p. 2435. 
 
 •'*Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, Th. II., p. 161 seq. Alchemy zealously pa- 
 tronized Vjy Spanish Sultans in 1190, lb., p. 193. 
 ••"Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Imaginarii.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 293 
 
 For such purposes, cups, basins, swords, mirrors, glass, or 
 other smooth surfaces, were largely used for the prophetic 
 voice.^" 
 
 Early synods of the Church specifically defined this sorti- 
 lege by a Christian as incantation, and consequently forbidden 
 as a nefarious usage, especially to Irish converts.^^ Enchant- 
 ers were sufficiently adepts in occult sciences in the thirteenth 
 century to compel demons to appear by the puissant energy 
 of certain rites, and reveal at the intersection of public high- 
 ways on sacrificing a pair of pigeons at midnight,'*- urns, ships, 
 towers, immense treasures, and other paraphernalia, usually 
 conceded to Arabic jugglers.^' As early as the latter part of 
 the sixth century, medical soothsayers were called upon to 
 cure vexatious and obstinate diseases. Their system appears 
 to have included murmured incantations, throwing of dice or 
 hazards, perhaps prophecy, and the suspension of ligatures to 
 the neck.*" As a direct emanation of alchemical processes, 
 which extracted essential elements from metals or minerals, 
 subsequently imprisoned in crystal flasks under the generic 
 term of imps or evil spirits, was the accusation charged upon 
 certain scholastics of maintaining familiar demons under the 
 common-place form of cats." 
 
 A profound impress was given at a remote epoch to the 
 specific remedies designated for the cure of disorders, and 
 they were constantly used throughout the Middle Ages. Hu- 
 
 '^^ Ibid., sub V. Specularii. 
 
 ■" .Sy nodus Patricii, Canon. XVI.; and Gratian, Concilia, Deer. II., Causa 
 XXVI., Qu. 5, c. 12. 
 
 ^8 Notices et Extraites des MSS. du Biblio. Roi, Tom. V., p. 506. 
 
 39 « Quendam incantor et urnes et navem et domum cum imnienso ostendit." 
 Annales Eccles. Wigiorn., an. 1287; ap. Anglia Sacr., Pars II., p. 509. 
 
 40 << Ariolum quendam invocant, ille vero venire non differens accussit ad eegro- 
 tum et artem suam exercere conatur. Incantationes immurmurat, sortes jactat, 
 ligaturas coUo suspendit." Gregor. Turones, De Miiaculis S. Juliani, Lib. II., 
 cap. 45. Also, Vita S. Prrejecti; ap. Acta SS. Bolland., Januar. 25, Tom. II., 
 p. 636. 
 
 *' " Quidam scriptor Jonnes habens murelegum sibi familiorem." Knyghton, 
 Dec. Script., p. 2535.
 
 294 HIS TOR Y OF MEDIC A L E CONOM V 
 
 man figures, military tessera — evidently the dice employed by 
 medical enchanters — sortes jactat, and certain words, were of 
 universal application instead of medicaments, so much so, 
 indeed, that Maimonides, of Cordova, the illustrious Jewish 
 physician and scholar, in the twelfth century, in the most de- 
 nunciatory epithets, while admitting the curative properties of 
 certain mineral or metallic essences, asserted the absolute folly 
 and mendacity of predicting restoration to health upon the 
 use of images, written- letters, or magic vocables, with which 
 the very air was startled as by the repercussion of thunder/' 
 
 The mediaeval scientists of Western Europe, however, were 
 not so free from superstitions as the Israelitish savan of Spain. 
 Villannova abundantly recognizes the power of lettered char- 
 acters when sprinkled with blood in the hands of an unforgiv- 
 ing rival, to totally transform the enticements of the nuptial 
 chamber.*'' Equally famous surgeons of the eleventh century 
 admitted their adhesion to the salutary benefactions, to suffer- 
 ing patients, of incantations.^' 
 
 Magicians professed to have at their command a triple kind 
 of effigy, whose potency through the incantation or adjuration 
 of fifty-four angelic names was irresistible.*"' Manuscript books 
 on such subjects, explicitly stated, that when Deity granted 
 proper nomenclature to persons or material objects, he simul- 
 taneously inspired certain offices and forces to the names and 
 things, correlatively, which being aggregated evolved an ener- 
 getic puissance, not by reason of the image or pronunciation, 
 but by virtue of that inherent force with which God had 
 endowed both upon calling them into existence.*" 
 
 Therefore magic rings and sanitative seals or gems, on which 
 were skillfully dilineated the potential names of Raphael, 
 Macchabees, Solomon, Eleazer, Zacharias, and Constantine the 
 
 *'•* Ductor Dubitant, Lib. I., cap. 60, fol. 24. 
 
 *■'' " Ne coeant in lecto jacintes; quredam de characteribus scriptis cum san- 
 guine vespertilionis." De Maleficiis, col. 1529. 
 ^■•Constant. African., Liber de Chirurgia, p. 318. 
 *^ Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Lib. I., cap. 4. 
 <«Ibid.,p. 18.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 295 
 
 Great itself, to which — especially the last, on account of the 
 cruciform figure and symbol of Deity, extraordinary powers 
 were attributed.'" To this class of enchanters is to be ascribed 
 an Israelitish physician or medicus, in the year 876, who ex- 
 hibited in the presence of Ludwig, emperor of Germany, the 
 vast resources of the art. He could call forth the sounds of 
 an army moving with heavy tread and hastening march 
 through the invisible regions of space, and evoke the rarest 
 flowers, magnificent gardens and choicest fruits. 
 
 When, indeed, under his enchanting spells, a person ad- 
 vanced one foot, the other must follow.*** Notwithstanding, 
 controversial writers of the Romish Church with explicit 
 denial repudiated the curative forces of words or letters of the 
 alphabet, which by the system of Joseph of Castile, as ex- 
 plained in his Isogoge, combined with the fifty executory 
 spirits, aggregated seventy-two essences, or the Shemham- 
 phorash, it was expressly avowed that the consecrated exor- 
 cisms, formulas of saints, ecclesiastical prayers, were charged 
 by Divinity himself with a vital energy for transcending magic 
 or demoniacal rites.*" 
 
 Upon the accepted principle that those portions of the 
 human body devoted to tender sentiments were in close 
 astrological connection with celestial orbs whose invisible 
 essence or spirit controlled corresponding elements of the 
 terrestial sphere, therefore a skilled magician, physician, as we 
 shall presently see, or alchemist, in its relation to medical 
 economy, was enabled to provoke, through his superior science, 
 those subtle and resistless forces which blindly performed their 
 functions with the certainty of a mathematical problem.^" The 
 use of amulets for the prevention of disease and other pur- 
 
 *'' " Par ratio est de annulis et sigillis magicis quantumvis prasferant speciosis- 
 sima nomina Raphaeliis, Machaeborum, Salominis, Elizei, Zacharije, Constanlini, 
 et quorundamundam sanctorum." lb., Lib. I., cap. 4, Qu. I, p. 18. 
 
 *8Ibid., p. 17. 
 
 **Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Lib. I., cap. 4, Qu. 3. 
 
 ^"Ibid., cap. 4, Qu. 4, p. 27. " Quidam voces ex verborum conjunctione vires 
 adipisci existimant." Vairius, De Fascinatione, Lib. L, cap. 5.
 
 2g6 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 poses, is of high antiquity. Greek athletes before hazarding 
 their physical forces in the struggles of the arena wore amulets 
 or phylacteries, as charms against the magic devices of an 
 antagonist.^^ 
 
 Cognate with access to reliquaries as curatives for maladies, 
 was the custom sanctioned by the mediaeval church, of carrying 
 consecrated objects as talismans suspended from the neck. 
 Certain formulas of prayer inscribed on vellum, leaves or 
 tessera, were regularly borne about as amulets against sick- 
 ness, wounds, dangers by fire and water, at a period as late as 
 the sixteenth century.'^^ Of this nature was the agnus dei, 
 for which especial potency was claimed.^' Church synods 
 distinctly inculpated this medicinal adoption of Paganistic 
 customs, and classified the ursarii, addicted to suspending 
 tinctures to the head or body of bears, and having clipped the 
 hair from the animal's hide a potion was made of it, which it 
 was alleged had the mighty property of expelling disease or 
 arresting evil influences of " fascinating eyes."^* 
 
 The name of Raphael for such purposes was presumed to 
 be omnipotent, and largely used by Gallic peasants during the 
 Middle Ages."'' The principle by which these celestial beings 
 were set in motion was perpetuated from distant periods, con- 
 sisting of that mutual correlation existing between the names, 
 when rightly understood, and the essential power of heavenly 
 personages, whose puissance extended to presaging fatalities 
 and predicting the future."® 
 
 During the , pontificate of Zacharias, a council at Rome, 
 presided over by the pope, after publicly reading a treatise of 
 Adalbert, proceeded by solemn vote to condemn the sanitary 
 
 ^'Juvenal, Satyra, Lib. III., v. i. 
 
 ^■^" Alia quoque amuleta succini ant alteriusmateriie contra morbosgestitabant." 
 Delrio, op. cit., Lib. I., cap. 4, p. 27. 
 ^^ Vairius, op. cit., Lib. III., cap. 10. 
 ^' Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Lib. I., cap. 4, p. 28. 
 
 ^* Legrand D'Aussy, Ilistoire de la Vie Privee des Frangais, Tom. II., p. 195. 
 ^''' Cornel. Agrippa, De Occult I'hilo.soph., Lilx II., cap. 26.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 297 
 
 use of the words Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, Michael, Adimis, 
 Tubuas, Simihel, and Sabaoth." Of these, the last appears 
 to have represented typically the superior and exalted power 
 of the Hebrew tetragrammaton.^* Like magical and sanitative 
 force was presumed to dwell within images fabricated to re- 
 semble celestial beings, whose gracious care was thus con- 
 ciliated. 
 
 If it were desired to provoke a favorable event, either of 
 health or fortune, the right side of a statuette was specifically 
 operated; while, on the contrary, malevolence of body, mind, 
 or wealth, was irresistibly evoked upon an enemy by the re- 
 verse of the effigy.^'' The preparation of such figures for good 
 or ill, is certainly traceable to the universal medical endow- 
 ment accorded mandragora images by pagan Norsemen, for 
 the expulsion of diseases,®" and at a later epoch of the Middle 
 Ages — A. D. 1 190 — such sanitary effigies appear to have con- 
 stituted an important element in the curative power attributed 
 to Sicilian baths.®^ The vitality of this singular credence, 
 when practiced to cure disorders, was sanctioned by secular 
 authority through an interdict against the use of charms and 
 herbs in judicial duels.*" 
 
 Touching the details of the pathology or curative system for 
 aggravated diseases, the mediaeval astrologers, into whose 
 hands the care of infirm and suffering patients was committed, 
 asserting astral influences, divided this art in mathematical 
 departments, where chronology united its force to restore 
 health jointly with medical astrology.*'^ For instance, in this 
 
 ^^Delrio, op. cit., p. 28 seq. 
 
 ^^ Cornelia Agrippa, op. cit., Lib. II., cc. 7 and 8. 
 
 '"■^ Delrio, op. cit.. Lib. I., p. 6. 
 
 ^'^Rothii, De Imagin. German., p. 52. 
 
 ^1 Arnoldi, Chronica Slavorum, Lib. V., c. 19. 
 
 *- " Si quis culpabilis ingravante Diabolo, corde indurato, per aliqua malificia 
 aut per herbas contegere peccata sua voluerit." Goldast, Alaman. Antiquitat, 
 Tom. II., p. 139. 
 
 ^Cornelia Agrippa, De Occult. Philosoph., Lib. II., cc. 36 and 37.
 
 2p8 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 solemn function, when the operations were rendered infaHible 
 by mystic rites and potent words to conjure the most obsti- 
 nate malady, a planet, in accord with the invalid's age, was 
 selected as directly in conjunction with the sickness sought to 
 be cured. 
 
 The great mediseval physicians urged with much vehemence 
 and amazing elaboration the necessity of practitioners familiar- 
 izing themselves thoroughly with the profound and obscure 
 principles of medical astrology, and for such, prepared erudite 
 treatises governing the practical application of this curative 
 art."^ Thus the puissance of Saturn was manipulated for do- 
 tards. Mercury for adolescents, and Jupiter for manhood. To 
 these planets, when properly subjugated by mysterious cere- 
 monies, other virtues were accorded, by which qualities or 
 affections might be superinduced."" 
 
 In such emergencies, Mars inspired hatred, and the tender 
 Venus the sentiments of love. From Aries, at the head, to 
 Pisces, or fishes, upon the feet, corresponding virtues were un- 
 der the control of the dexterous astrological physician. In their 
 atmospheric influences — an important element of medical econ- 
 omy, and fully appreciated by mediaeval practitioners — these 
 orbs were exactly graded : Saturn was asserted to be a planet of 
 dry and frigid action, and contrary to vitality; Jupiter, in his 
 warmth and humidity, was favorable to life; Mars, though 
 tepid and dry, contained the elements of destructive energies, 
 and the Sun, combining heat and dryness, possessed benevo- 
 lent forces.''* 
 
 Erudite and learned medicists of the Middle Ages, in de- 
 fiance to ecclesiastical authority, devoutly adhered to this 
 system of remedies." Oftentimes physicians, in strict harmony 
 w^ith the method of astral treatment indicated, performed the 
 
 ** Arnold Villannova, De Judiciis AstronomiCtE, cc. 5 and 9. 
 ^'^ Cornelia Agrippa, op. cit., Lil). IT., cap. 26. 
 "* Arnold Villannova, De Judiciis Astronomicine, cap. 10. 
 
 "'Delrio, Disquisitio Magicar., Lib. I., cap. i, p. 7; and Condromaclii, De 
 Morb. Vcnefic, Lib. II., cap. 6.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 299 
 
 surgical operation of phlebotomy or blood-letting on certain 
 critical days — dubius criticus, as they were denominated — and 
 administered potions or philters prepared upon similar notions, 
 equally drawn from the postulated assumption that the time 
 fixed for these important events was rendered propitious by 
 the planets controlling the particular disease, and that medi- 
 caments thus compounded were of especial power in expelling 
 sickness. 
 
 So great, indeed, became the abuse of medical astrology, 
 whether by the direct juxtaposition of stellar influence, or 
 through apposite images,^* that a celebrated Church Council 
 at Paris declared that images of metal, wax, or other materials 
 fabricated under certain constellations or according to fixed 
 characters — figures of peculiar form, either baptized, consecra- 
 ted or exorcised, or rather desecrated by the performance of 
 formal rites at stated periods which it was asserted, thus com- 
 posed, possessed miraculous virtues set forth in superstitious 
 writings — were placed under the ban and interdicted as errors 
 of faith.'^" In the ninth century (A. D. 875), it was yet a usage 
 in provoking a remedy for otherwise incurable ailments, to 
 fabricate an effigy of the diseased member and consecrate it 
 for supernatural cure somewhat after the earlier Teutonic 
 pathology. Thus, for instance, if it were a sightless orb to be 
 restored, the similitude of an eye was formally presented.'" 
 When, therefore, Theetmar's son, a sufferer with a disordered 
 head, for many years after the eleventh century surgeons con- 
 fessed, after numerous operations, their utter impotency, an 
 image of the stricken member brought a permanent cure.'^ In 
 the Sicilian baths mentioned, the figures of bodily parts, for 
 
 ®* " Efficaciores tamen largiuntur imaginibus virtutes, si non ex qualibet, sed 
 certa materia fabricientur." Cornelia Agrippa, De Occult. Philosoph., Lib. II., 
 cap. 35. 
 
 ^^Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Lib. I., cap. i, p. 7. 
 
 ™ " Qucedam matrona dolore occulorum gravabatur, occulos argenteos Sanctis 
 transmisit et salvata est." Lerbeccii, Chronic. Epp. Mindensis, cap. 3. 
 
 '^ Vita Bernwardi, Ep. Hildish., cap. 58.
 
 300 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the diseases of which the waters were a remedy," evidently 
 assist in elucidating this curious inquiry. Benno's parent, for 
 many years afflicted by the sterility of his dame, secured the 
 joyous consummation of long-deferred hopes by fabricating 
 a silver effigy of a boy at an early period of the eleventh cen- 
 tury." 
 
 More enlightened scientists during the Middle Ages, dis- 
 tinctly denied the medical energy of these material represen- 
 tatives, evoking planetary spirits,''* although Maimonides other- 
 wise avows the talismanic quality of stones." To this class of 
 mineral pussiance, so ardently sought by erudite alchemists, 
 may be ascribed the Lapis Mizoris or Mozor stone, which 
 had the amazing energy of evoking the most majestic demon 
 of the celestial sphere, and by it the mirific name of this 
 being was procurable, which, conjoined with the stone, 
 was of transcendant efficacy in conjurations. Strange meth- 
 ods were pursued by the diseased Alsatians, in order to 
 ascertain to what saint a malady should be assigned. When 
 the discovery was perfected a suitable specific quickly 
 dispelled the disorder. The punishing saint was found by 
 lighting as many tapers as saintly emissaries, to each of 
 which a proper name was given. The blazing candle, the first 
 consumed, was an unanswerable accusation and conviction of 
 the injurious personage.'* Pregnant women in the Middle 
 Ages usually consulted female obstetricians in advance of ac- 
 couchement, in- order to ascertain whether labor would be pro- 
 longed. These feminine haruspices, by a dexterous inspection 
 of nodules and particles adhering to the umbilicus of slaugh- 
 tered animals, provided ready responses. 
 
 ^^ Arnold, Chronic. Slavor., Lib. V., c. 19. 
 
 '•'" Fieri jubent unius similiiitudinem pueruli ex argento purissimo." Vita 
 Bennonifi, cap. I . But the most singular part of this affair is, the figure was or- 
 dered to be made as near like the father as possible. Ibid. 
 
 '■' Maimonides, Ductor Dubitant, Lib. I., cc. 60 and 72; and Iljid., De Idola- 
 tria, cc. 11 and 12. 
 
 '■^Ibid., More Nevochim, Tars L, cap. 61, p. loS. 
 
 '* Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Tom. IL, Lib. IV., cap. 2, \ i, p. 287.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Chemistry and Mediaeval Pharmacy — Medicaments — Alchemists Prepare 
 Salutary Remedies for Maladies — Notable Discoveries of these En- 
 thusiasts — Subtle Powders — Distillation and Research for Essences — 
 Aqua Vitee, or Eau de Vie — Discovered by Villannova — Thaddeus, the 
 Great Florentine Chemist of the Twelfth Centurj' — Pharmacists in this 
 Age — Venetian Glassware — Their Chemical Acquisitions — Extracts of 
 Gold Water, of Sovereign Potency — Albert Magnus and his Nickname 
 — Lully, the Renowned Alchemist — Agrippa's Familiar Demon. 
 
 OF all appliances closely identified with medicinal art, the 
 one rendering the most signal returns for efforts strenu- 
 ously devoted to penetrating and exploring the secrets of 
 nature, and boldly appropriating the principles thus obtained to 
 scientific curatives, alchemy is certainly entitled to unstinted 
 laudation. Out of that burning frenzy of mediaeval alchemists 
 and astrologers to fabricate the "philosopher's stone," ^ arose, 
 towards the fifteenth century, the exact science of chemistry, 
 and from absurd notions of astrology originated a more perfect 
 astronomy.'^ 
 
 Alchemy, vigorously pursued with unremitting energy by 
 illustrious scholiasts, and after the accumulated learning of 
 years pronounced by a famous scientist to be a mendacious 
 fraud,^ in its medical association, may justly claim the high 
 commendation of establishing that system of extracting essen- 
 tial principles from metals or minerals, whose energetic forces 
 abundantly assisted the cure of maladies. Whether derived 
 
 ' Cornelia Agrippa, De Vanitate Scientiarum, cap. 90, p. 206 seq. 
 ^ Liebig, Chemische Briefe, Th. I., p, 46 seq. 
 
 3 " Ars suspecta probis, ars ipsa invisaque, multis 
 Invisis etiam cultores efficit artis. 
 Mendaces adeo multi manifeste videntur, 
 Qui seipsos, aliosque simul frustantur inertes." 
 
 Cornelia Agrippa, De Vanitate Scientiar, cap. 90, p. 206. 
 
 (301)
 
 202 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 directly from Arabic sources/ or traceable to Egytian hierarchy, 
 as a portion of those hidden sciences exclusively possessed 
 by the ancient sacerdoty, doubtless its medicinal adaptation 
 should be awarded the Saracens.^. 
 
 It would seem that the Christian clergy of an early age un- 
 derstood sufficiently the operations of chemistry to be able to 
 control the results of the judicial hot iron and water adopted 
 as tests of enormous crimes.* The general principles of this 
 science were certainly known in Diocletian's time, by the order 
 of whom Egytian books on this subject, as previously stated, 
 were given to the flames.' Alchemical art was from the first 
 directed to extracting spiritual beings or essences supposed to 
 reside within metals, or minerals and plants ; in the prosecu- 
 tion of this process " drinkable gold" — aure.um potabile — was 
 obtained.® In Villannova's day, it was usual for the prelacy 
 and nobility to boil golden petals with their food f others 
 sweetened it with syrups — electuariis, or converted it into a 
 drinkable form, and imbibed it as a potion. 
 
 Taken in this dissolution, it was asserted to prolong life and 
 act as a preservative of health, although our authority frankly 
 admitted it was difficult to accredit such belief^" A mediaeval 
 alchemist of somewhat earlier period, equally skilled as a phy- 
 sician, cautions practitioners of medicine against the use of 
 gold fabricated by alchemy or artificially." 
 
 Among the earliest discoveries developed from the ardent 
 
 * Pancirolus, Rerum Memorabil. Rec, Tom. II., p. 134. 
 
 ^Goujet, Origin des Arts et Sciences, Tom. I., p. 22S; and Voltaire, Essai sur 
 les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. I., p. 334. 
 
 ^Voltaire, op. cit., Tom. I., p. 507. 
 
 ' Siiidas, Lexicon, sub v. Xtjuui. 
 
 ^'•vSpiritus enim .subtilissimus ex metallis, geminis plantisque ediicens; quo 
 subtiliora," etc., "hoc eflicaciora remedia prjebat." Delrio, Disquisitio Magicar., 
 Tom. I., Lib. I., c. 5, p. 20. 
 
 " " Bullire petias auri cum cibis." Villannova, De Vino, col. 591. 
 '"" Ut difficile sit credere." Ibid. 
 
 "" Quod ipsi caveant ab auro facto per artem alchemise sine prseparando na- 
 turam." Raymund Lulli, Testamentum Novissimum, Lib. II., cap. 21.
 
 DURhVG THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Z°2> 
 
 zeal of these dreamy enthusiasts, in their untiring efforts to com- 
 pound an eHxir which should prolong human life,'- and, in con- 
 junction with the philosopher's stone, provide a certainty of 
 undiminishing happiness,''' may be designated a subtle pow- 
 der, which combined with brass produced most brilliant flames 
 in consumption, causing the original metal to re-appear intact.'* 
 By mystic prescriptions mediaeval alchemists coated the saphir 
 with a suffusion of alien matter, which so closely assimilated 
 it to adamant that connoisseur Venitians were unable to detect 
 the deception. This invention, so valuable to the mediaeval 
 mind in its eagerness for medicinal gems, was supplemented 
 by another process imitating metallic silver so dexterously that 
 in spite of tests and heavy percussion the impurity was be- 
 yond disclosure.''' 
 
 Perhaps the highest practical discovery of these pharma- 
 cists, was that of the essential force of aquafortis, by whose 
 solvent virtues brass or copper was readily separated from 
 gold or silver. This system of purging valuable metals from 
 useless dross was utterly unknown to the ancients, according 
 to the utterances of an illustrious jurisconsult, who declared 
 when brass became amalgamated with gold it was impossible 
 to separate them.'" Chemists, in the Middle Ages, were so 
 profoundly skilled in these operations, disuniting the elements 
 indicated, that oftentimes silver in alloy, when disintegrated, 
 under the soluble virtue of aquafortis, ascended in columnar 
 shape, emitting variegated colors, and when thoroughly laved, 
 and nothing of this substance w-as visible, in a vase of water 
 the pure gold was found resting at the bottom.'' An additional 
 purifying element largely used in those ages was the cupella, 
 fabricated by a chemical process from bones, which enabled 
 
 ^- Delrio, Disq. Magicar., Lib. I., cap. 5, p. 31. 
 
 '^ Cornelia Agrippa, De Vanitate Scientiar., cap. 90. 
 
 '* Pancirolus, Rer. Memorabil., Tom. II., Tit. III., De .\lchymia, p. 136. 
 
 ^^Ibid., p. 136 seq. 
 
 ^^Ulpian, De Rei Venedicat., Lib. V., { 3. 
 
 '^ Pancirolus, op. cit., p. 135.
 
 -,(54 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 gold and silversmiths to purge their wares of every particle 
 of impurity or alloy. It appears to have been operated by 
 covering the finer metals with laminated sheets of lead, beaten 
 very thin, and placing them in a crucible exposed to intense 
 heat. When liquefaction had melted these substance, the 
 above preparation was mingled with the molten mass, which 
 caused a precipitate of pure gold, and denominated aurum de 
 cupella by Italian alchemists.^* 
 
 The great and specific property for which the philosopher's 
 stone was estimated at such transcendent worth, was its power 
 to transmute base metal into gold and silver. On this subject 
 Agrippa confessed absolute confidence. Especially when these 
 efforts where subordinated to spiritual essence of astral bodies 
 and the demon or spirit had been properly extracted, trans- 
 mutation would be instant^" — for which Pancirolus records a 
 receipt. 
 
 Medicine, at the earliest introduction of the results devel- 
 oped from the enthusiastic researches of these pharmaceu- 
 tical scholastics, appropriated the discoveries — not indeed, as 
 grounded upon systematic science, so much as sharing a 
 moiety of its visionary zeal — but adopted the medicaments 
 thus compounded, under the propulsion of exalted laudation.'"'^ 
 Notwithstanding the more erudite of mediaeval scholars as- 
 cribed unbounded virtues to remedies they prepared and used 
 in extraordinary maladies, towards the close of this period, 
 Petrarch, who, as we shall presently discover, cooperated 
 by the pressure of personal influence and the prestige of an 
 illustrious name, to advance medicine towards the plane of an 
 exact science, most unequivocally affirms that alchemy, in the 
 fourteenth century, according to the methods pursued and its 
 
 1^ Pancirolus, Rer. Memorabil., Rec. Inven., Tom. II., pp. 136, 139. 
 '^De Occult, riiilosoph., Lib. I., cap. 14. 
 
 20 << Frugiferum auri semen, cujus drachma si in ducentas quinquagenta liquati 
 plumbi aut stanni drachmas infundatur, id universum in aiireum purissimum con- 
 verteret." Op. cit., Tom. II., p. 147. 
 
 ''I Pancirolus, op. cit., Tom. II., p. 150.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 305 
 
 slender results contrasted with the panegy-rics of devotees, was 
 an impudent scheme of deception and falsehood." 
 
 He further incriminated the physicians of his day, for their 
 mendacious ignorance in locating fevers in the body when 
 their proper location was in the soul.^'^ It was doubtless 
 fortunate for chemical science that the enlarging necessity for 
 solid and rational culture, conjoined with the extraordinary 
 intellectual activity following the great Reformation, enabled 
 critical minds to ridicule the fallacious and impudent assump- 
 tions of these zealots, while exercising judicious discretion in 
 discriminating the meretricious elements among priceless 
 utilities.^* 
 
 Processes of distillation were used at remote periods of the 
 Middle Ages, in order to procure medicaments in such suita- 
 ble and attractive forms as to admit of r^dier acceptance by 
 the sick. Among these may be designated the aqua vita;, or 
 eau-de-vie — as its name implies, life-potion — oil of cinnamon 
 and herbal extracts, such as chickory, etc., with precipitates in 
 the nature of medicinal salts — all were applied to the cure of 
 diseases.''' The preparation of these oils and waters is cer- 
 tainly traceable to the year 1080, and perhaps to the second 
 decade of the eleventh century.'^" In the year 1 160, Mesue had 
 already made distillations of absinthe and rose-water.^' Touch- 
 ing the period of the discovery of spirit of wine, or, perhaps, 
 its importation to Europe from Saracen sources, it has been 
 
 2^ Petrarca, De Remed. Utriusque Fortunre, Dialog., Lib. I., Dial. III. 
 
 '''Ibid., Lib. I., Dial. IV. On his notion of herbal remedies, vide Ibid., Dial. 
 III. 
 
 2* Pancirolus, Rer. Memor., Tom. II., p. 150 seq, quotes a stinging diatribe on 
 alchemical zealots, of which we reproduce the opening lines : 
 
 " Ars fallax invisa bonis, dulcedine captos 
 Jucunde ut perimis ! dementibus improba Siren. 
 Naturam superare putas te posse per ignem ? 
 Stulta, quid insanias." 
 
 25 Pancirolus, op. cit.. Tit. VIII., p. 152. 
 2^ Ibid., p. 154. 
 
 " Rubens, De Antiquitate Distillationis, Lib. I., cap. 4. 
 20
 
 3o6 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 claimed to be due to Arnold Villannova, whose medical writ- 
 ings we have freqnently referred to, the date of whose death 
 is fixed in the year 13 13; but sufficient proofs attest that ante- 
 rior to this famous professor of Montpelier, the Florentine 
 Thaddeus, tutor of Villannova,'® actually used this distillation 
 as a remedy for certain bodily infirmities.^" 
 
 To Villannova should be accorded the praiseworthy adapta- 
 tion and first precise description of eau-de-vie, or brandy, prior 
 to the end of the thirteenth century. In his treatise on the 
 preservation of youth, he explicitly states that the virtues of 
 this potion were already fully known to many by actual expe- 
 rience;^" Then describing its amazing properties, Arnold ex- 
 claims: "Who would believe that from wine can be extracted 
 a fluid which requires different processes, having neither the 
 color, nature, or <iffect of wine! This eau-de-vie, or life- 
 potion," which he alleges, " is called by some eau-de-vie, 
 abundantly justifies its name, since it prolongs human life." 
 
 He proceeded to ' add, that " its tested qualities preserved 
 health, dissipated superfluous humors, revived the heart, pre- 
 vented decay of youthful vigor. "^^ Conjoined with other reme- 
 dies, or alone, it was an infallible curative against hydropsy, 
 paralysis, quartain fevers, calculus, operating certain restora- 
 tion of sanity to the insane, and healing lepers.^^ Rival phy- 
 sicians of the fourteenth century exhausted the entire range 
 of panegyric, in order to enlarge the use of eau-de-vie as a 
 medicament. So great, indeed, was its celebrity, that before 
 the conclusion of the era mentioned it came to be regarded as 
 
 ''^ Villannova, Breviarium, Lib. I., cap. 14, col. 1086. 
 
 ^^ Sarti, De Professor. Bononiensis, Tom. I., Pars i, p. 467; and Ibid., Pars 
 2, p. 227. 
 
 3" Villannova, De Conservanda Juventate, cap. 3, col. 833. 
 • »i Ibid., col. 833. 
 
 ^^ " Ilabet enim virtutatem confortandi cor, desiccat superfluitates," etc., " ut 
 juventutem nutrit, proprie illis, qui sunt in ingressu senectutis vel in ea positi 
 prolongat vitam," etc. Ibid. Nearly equal properties were claimed for the tinc- 
 tures of gold. Villannova, De Vino, p. 590 seq ; and De Distillatione Medi- 
 cinarum, col. 398.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 307 
 
 a universal remedy, and applied indifferently, either extern- 
 ally or inwardly. This liquor was prescribed for a malady of 
 Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, and, by a singular casualty, 
 provoked his death in the year 1387. In order to rejuvenate 
 this exhausted royal libertine, physicians ordered him en- 
 wrapped in linen bandages saturated with brandy, sewed 
 closely to his body. A servant charged with this duty, lack- 
 ing scissors to cut the thread, sought to sever it with a lighted 
 taper; instantly the inflammable texture was fired, and quickly 
 terminated in inexpressible agony the life of this prince, stained 
 with infamous debauches.'^'^ 
 
 In the Italian monasteries, and doubtless elsewhere, until 
 after the Middle Ages, the conventual pharmacies were well 
 supplied with this active stimulant, used almost exclusively in 
 grievous maladies, and prepared by the monastic distillery. 
 As usual in the administration of remedies to the poor/* this 
 medicine was freely given to the impotent and impoverished, 
 consequently large quantities were ever ready for emer- 
 gencies.^" The personages entrusted with the custody of 
 curatives or medicaments in the cloister pharmacy, were dis- 
 tinctively named from an early period as apothecarii — a per- 
 functionary service of so great importance as to receive, from 
 time to time, specific regulations by the principal church 
 synods. 
 
 The storage of medical supplies s'eems to have approxi- 
 mated the pharmacy in the twelfth century, although even 
 earlier the word apothecary appears to have been interchange- 
 able with the booth where assorted wares were offered at 
 public sale.^® Henry, king of England, anterior to the year 
 1 198, maintained a functionary apparently the exact type of 
 the modern pharmacist, upon whom the name of apothecarus 
 
 ^^Le Grand D'Aussy, Histoire de la ViePrivee des Fran<;ais, Tom. IIL, p. 77. 
 •'* Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, Tom. III., p. 170. 
 ^^Le Grand D'Aussy, op. cit., Tom. III., p. 77, Not. i. 
 ^* Du Cange, Glossarium, sub v. Apotheca.
 
 ^oS HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 was bestowed, an officer evidently of high repute in those 
 days, as in this instance he was bishop of London." 
 
 The apothecarii or pharmacopilae, were exposed to the just 
 resentment of patrons, on account of offering for sale diversified 
 drugs, whose energetic virtues were so earnestly eulogized 
 that a single medicament possessed the power of curing the 
 most infinite range of diseases, and by such indiscretion, in 
 their eagerness to vend noxious wares as simple medications, 
 excited defiance and an unprofitable suspicion.^* The Vene- 
 tian Republic, in order to encourage the development of 
 alchemy to a practical use, was influenced by identical reasons 
 of monopoly which forced the government into a bitter con- 
 test with Roger king of Sicily, in the twelfth century, to ruin 
 the factories of silk,^'* established by that sagacious monarch at 
 Palermo in defiant rivalry to the weaving of these goods by 
 the people of Venice.*" 
 
 Doubtless immense advantages were obtained by this mar- 
 itime nation, whose knowledge of dyeing rapidly extended 
 the fame of their fabrics, through valuable immunities granted 
 them in the capital of ancient Egypt," where thorough insight 
 into alchemy was procured from the Saracens, earlier than the 
 people of Western Europe. Venetian traders in the century 
 above noted were also attracted to the Tyrian coast for its ad- 
 mirable glassware, eagerly sought by the Latins.*^ Unrivaled 
 indeed, for many ages* were the productions of their labor- 
 atories in the preparation of alum, borax and cinnabar, largely 
 utilized in finishing dye stuffs, and ultimately an important part 
 
 3'' " Ricliardus, Regis Henrici Apothecarus," Notices et Extrailes du Bibl. 
 Roi, Tom. v., p. 507. 
 
 3^ Cornelia Agrippa, De Vanitate Scientiar., cap. ^t^. 
 
 ^8 Otto Frising., Gesta Imper. Frederici, Lib. I., c. 33. 
 
 '"' Daru, Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 298. 
 
 *' Daru, op. cit., Tom. I., p. 31. 
 
 *^ " Sunt iliac vitrarii artifices qui vitrum conficunt Tyrium dictum przKstantissi- 
 mum, et maximi in omnibus regionibus astimationis." Benj. Tudelensis, Itiner- 
 avium, p. 36.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 309 
 
 of medical compounds imported by them from the Levant or 
 the remote East, and again exported to Occidental nations/* 
 Before the conclusion of the Middle Ages the corporation of 
 dyers published a complete treatise under the name of Mari- 
 agola deir arte dei Tentori. 
 
 An active and scrutinizing mind, Giovanni Ventura Rossetti, 
 discovered a chemical method of fixing superior colors in 
 textures. One of the first results of Venetian alchemy was a 
 dexterous fabrication of ornate leather in such perfection that 
 for ages it constituted a most profitable monopoly, of which 
 the yearly sales reached a net profit of a hundred thousand 
 ducats." From remote periods, long anterior to the beneficial 
 impulse of the Crusades upon this traffic,*" the citizens of the 
 great Italian Republic had directed their attention to the prac- 
 tical compounding of medicaments for consumption in Western 
 Europe. 
 
 These pharmaceutical commodities developed into a vast 
 commercial export, and for centuries they possessed almost 
 exclusive control of the sale of theriacs, not alone to the larger 
 cities of the Levant, but everywhere throughout the West — 
 to the Netherlands tartar, and to France terebinths. A lead- 
 ing article of exportation, whose uses became famous, was that 
 saline matter known by the name of borax, so largely applied 
 to chemical or medicinal purposes, and especially to metal- 
 lurgy, where its specific virtue prom.oted the liquefaction of 
 metals.*^ This substance, obtained by the Venetians from 
 Egypt, where, from the eleventh century, they had acquired a 
 monopoly of trading privileges, and in China, required a pre- 
 paration to render it of practical use, of which the secret was 
 
 *^ Daru, Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 299. 
 
 ** Ibid., p. 299 seq. 
 
 *^ Heeren, Sur I'lnfliience des Croisades, p. 421. 
 
 ^*Ibid., and Pancirolus, Rer. Memorabil., Tom. II., p. 135 seq. The artificial 
 silvering of counterfeit coin in Edward First's reign indicates skillful use of chem- 
 ical properties of silver, copper and sulphur — " erant artificialiter composit^e de 
 argento, cupro at sulphure." Hemingburg, Chronicon, sub an. 1299.
 
 3IO HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 preserved by these enterprising artisans.*'' While the occi- 
 dental nations were still slumbering in slothful indifference, or 
 with amazement began to perceive the faint rays of ascending 
 light, the Venetian artificers turned to commercial account that 
 knowledge of chemistry already known to a few enlightened 
 Europeans, characterized as useless magicians or dreamy en- 
 thusiasts, and had advanced far along the plane of successful 
 manufacture of glassware and optical instruments, the fabrica- 
 tion of which alone occupied over two thousand five hundred 
 workmen. 
 
 In the skillful compounding, however, of chemical wares for 
 medicinal or textile purposes, nearly the entire metropolis was 
 employed; and in all commercial relations with Oriental ports 
 drugs of the most diversified assortment were made a specific 
 object of merchandise for sale in Western Europe,*^ for which, 
 during the Crusades and subsequently, the people of the West 
 exhibited the greatest eagerness.*' To the zealous and inves- 
 tigating anxiety of alchemists for subjugating the spirit or es- 
 sence hidden within the inmost recesses of metals and min- 
 erals, must be ascribed numerous discoveries advantageous to 
 medicine. 
 
 In Villannova's time certain professors of this art pretended 
 to have extracted a liquid styled aqua auri or water of gold, 
 whose curative elements were claimed to be infallible.^" This 
 tincture uninterruptedly for six centuries maintained a vigor- 
 ous vitality as a popular medicinal drink or tonic, and such 
 devotion may be attributed to that excessive zeal among eru- 
 dite scientists to compound a sovereign elixir, elevating its 
 possessor above the necessit)^ of resorting to other remedies.*^ 
 
 *^Daru, Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 300. 
 
 ^8 Ibid., Tom. I., p. 302 seq. 
 
 ^"Ileeren, Sur I'lnfluence des Croisades, p. 421. 
 
 50 << Yx est sciendum quod innovatio et confortatio cutis fit cum potatione aquae 
 auri purissimi proprise." Arnold Villannova, De Juventate Conservanda, cap. 2, 
 col. 818. Here its use is signified as intended to heal epidermic, perhaps lep- 
 rous troubles. 
 
 ^' Le Grand d'Aussy, Histoire de la Vie Privee des Fran9ais, Tom. HI., p. 87.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 31 1 
 
 In its general color this liquor closely resembled the famed 
 aurum potabile or .drinkable gold, and was subrogated as a 
 potion to produce infinite wealth and undying youth. This 
 metal thus transmuted, according to the flaming philippics of 
 Agrippa, was endowed with irresistible energy; but he plainly 
 states his incredulity in its magic virtues or unfailing ener- 
 gies.^^ Fascinated and provoked by the enchanting power as- 
 cribed to this liquid, ardent and frenzied alchemists sought to 
 dissolve gold or transmute it into drinkable fluids, in order to 
 obtain the amazing medical puissance evolved by the meta- 
 morphosis. Towards the thirteenth century, alchemy was 
 pursued exclusiv^ely within cloistered solitudes, and its pro- 
 fessors were for the most part ecclesiastics, of whom many 
 attained illustration for their solidity of intellectual culture 
 and undisputed distinction as chemists. 
 
 Of these may be designated Albert of Bollstadt, usually 
 cited as Albertus Magnus, who died about the year 1282, 
 whose Historia Animalium, professedly an imitation of Aris- 
 totle,^^ is a work of admirable utility; his disciple, Thomas 
 Aquinas, who is said to have translated the Greek Diaclectian,"* 
 and celebrated for a treatise on meteors; Michael Scot, Roger 
 Bacon and Raymundus Lully — the most famous of the medi- 
 eval alchemists. Albert Magnus was universally accorded 
 this appellation by the learned of his day, but the rabble of 
 Ratisbonn do not appear to have shared such veneration for 
 the great scholastic — on the contrary-, they followed him about 
 the streets whenever he was visible in the cit}', hooting and 
 yelling after him the nickname of " Lace-shoe," on account of 
 his wearing closed or laced shoes, customary with preacher 
 monks. The chronicle of this episcopate unequivocally alleges 
 that the distinguished scientist resigned the mitre through the 
 willful perversity and malevolence of the people."^ An annalist, 
 
 *^ Cornelia Agrip., De Vanitat. Scientiar, cap. 69. 
 ^^ Heeren, Sur I'lnfluence des Croisades, p. 421, No. i. 
 ^* Fabric, Biblioth. Grreca, Tom. III.; De Barbar., Aristotl. Versio, p. 305. 
 ^"Resignavit episcopatum propter gentis proterviam at populi vanitatem." 
 Chronicon Episcop., Ratisbonensium, cap. 30.
 
 312 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 who provides an excellent and sagacious resume of Albert's 
 writings, urges that he was doubtless justly charged with 
 necromancy.^*' The alchemists of the Middle Ages, as a neces- 
 sary adjunct to monastic education, cultivated medicine. 
 
 Lully was particularly famous for an alphabetical method of 
 inculcating the entire range of philosophy," a system adopted 
 by the equally scholastic Agrippa.^* Lully expresses himself 
 repeatedly against the possible procuration of immortality by 
 medical compounds, one of the principal factors in the great 
 alchemical problem, and mournfully agrees "they have occa- 
 sion to grieve over it."^" In his medical treatise he advises 
 physicians, or rather earnestly adjures them, to practice their 
 profession upon the basis of a science.* As late as the closing 
 years of the sixteenth century, a professor of medicine, com- 
 menting on the alchemical writings of this scholastic, wrote: 
 "On inquiring, he had found among the English that Lully, 
 as asserted, by chemical processes had obtained a pure and 
 unalloyed gold, which by order of the king was produced at 
 the Tower of London."" 
 
 This, in form of an effigy, was exhibited to the medical 
 writer, who "alleges it was genuine metal, and named after its 
 fabricator, Nobile Raymunde.""^ By a papal bull, in the com- 
 mencement of the fourteenth century, the pursuit of alchemy 
 was placed among forbidden practices, as detrimental to the 
 church and provocative of heresy. Notwithstanding this 
 sweeping interdict, the works of Lully were distinctly ex- 
 empted from the list of heretical books.®^ 
 
 »* Hermani Corneri, Chronicon, sub an. 1265. 
 
 ^'Fr. von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen, Th. VI., p. 423 seq. 
 
 ^^ Occult, Philosoph., Lib. I., cap. 74. 
 
 ^^"Etinisto posso Alchemist?e dolent et habent occasionem." Lullius, Ars 
 Magna, De Novem Subjectis, cap. 52. 
 
 *" Ibid., Testamentum Novissimum, cap. 10. 
 
 ^' Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Lib. I., cap. 5, p. 37. 
 
 *2 Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Lib. III., c. 5; and Mariana, Historia de Es- 
 pana, Lib. XIV., c. 9; and Lib. XV., c. 4. 
 
 "^Delrio, Disquisit. Mag., Lil). I., c. 5, p. 37.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 313 
 
 During Henry IV's reign in England, in the year 1404, a 
 law was enacted forbidding the further pursuit of this science. 
 Towards the close of this era, the council of Venice, likewise, 
 subjected the art to legislative forbiddance.** At this late 
 period of the Middle Ages, the power of necromancy was 
 firmly believed to be attainable; and, notwithstanding the grad- 
 ual extension of knowledge, the art of transmuting metals into 
 gold or silver, and preparing elixirs of immortality, was pursued 
 with unextinguishable ardor, and under the patronage of en- 
 lightened princes at various European courts. In the year 
 1416, John III., bishop of Verdun, was distinguished for al- 
 chemical skill.®^ Although the English king's rescript alluded 
 to may have tended to retard or repress unlimited practice of 
 this visionary avocation, the attempt at necromancy was per- 
 mitted by Henry VI., in the middle of the fifteenth century, 
 under the protecting sanction of royal patents."*^ 
 
 Thus, indeed, in the years 1449 and 1452, a license was signed 
 by the king's own hand — per ipsum regem — to transmute 
 metals and make that priceless medicine, denominated by some 
 the mother of philosphers and imperial medicament, otherwise 
 the inestimable glory, while some alchemists named it quint- 
 essence, "philosopher's stone and elixir of life.'"'' A fewyears 
 later, a patent was granted for similar purposes, and sealed 
 with the royal warrant of England, valid for a limited period.*^ 
 The futility of scientific inquiry into the possibility of compos- 
 ing such omnipotent mineral is pithily portrayed by Agrippa, 
 after his abandonment of the art."' The mystical principle 
 which oftentimes cooperated to render necromantic efforts of 
 this and earlier ages an apparent success, was the direct devel- 
 
 ®*Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, Th. II., p. 192 seq. 
 ^^ Chronicon, Epp. Verdeniens, cap. 46. 
 ^^ Rymer., Foedera, Tom. XI., pp. 240, 379. 
 
 *^ Entitled, " Licentia ad Conficiendum Elixir Vitre et Lapidem Philosophor- 
 um." Rymer., op. cit., p. 379. 
 
 68 1< pgj. biennium duraturas." Rymer, Foedera, Tom. XI., p. 379. 
 *^ De Vanitate Scientiarum, cap. 90.
 
 ^14 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 opment of a faith in the actual existence and irresistible puis- 
 sance of unseen spirits. 
 
 Although invisible, these mighty beings could be subjected 
 by secret ceremonies, and imprisoned within the bodies of ani- 
 mals or men, the master of whom, consequently, possessed the 
 appliances of vast and energetic forces. The speaking heads 
 of Albert Magnus™ and Gerbert appear to have been assigned 
 to the custodian of familiar spirits. It was the corporeal en- 
 velope in which the mighty demon of Agrippa was enclosed, 
 by which the transcendent potency of this skeptical scholastic 
 was revealed;'^ while the famous alchemist, in practically con- 
 ceding the attendance upon Socrates of a familiar spirit, most 
 unequivocally asserts an assumption of such personal imp to 
 be fraudulent, and practiced for imposition to captivate the 
 Ignorant rabble." In direct opposition to what appears to be 
 a clear and unmistakable opinion of this famous scientist, at 
 the close of his age it was currently believed the many myste- 
 rious events savoring of supernatural power attributed to 
 Agrippa were alone traceable to demoniacal assistance. 
 
 Delrio himself, in the sixteenth century, seriously discussing 
 the lawful possibility of evoking demons subject to human will, 
 narrates the following curious history as a vindication of an 
 allegation that magicians by compact were enabled to control 
 such diabolical beings : 
 
 " Cornelius Agrippa, similar to an earlier ecclesiastic," had a 
 commensal or servant of great curiosity, to whose wife he 
 usually entrusted the keys of his laboratory or museum while 
 absent, expressly interdicting the entrance to any one. The 
 husband, of youthful age, having at length found an opportuni- 
 ty, importuned the woman to assist him in entering the mystic 
 chamber. In this apartment he found a book entitled ' Libel- 
 lum Conjurationum,' which he began to read. Engrossed in 
 
 ™ Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Lib. I., c. i, p. 2. 
 "Ibid., Lib. IL, p. 164. 
 '^ Agrippa, op. cit., cap. 45. 
 "•'Knyghton, Decern Scriptores, p. 2535.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 3^5 
 
 the perusal of this curious manuscript, he was aroused by a 
 slight blow on the door, to which no attention was given, when 
 another knock startled the reader, likewise ignored. The fa- 
 miliar demon of Agrippa entered, and demanded why he was 
 invoked, and what he should perform. The adolescent in- 
 truder, in timorous consternation, opened not his mouth, and 
 frigid with fear, spake not a word. He thereupon suffered the 
 dolorous consequence of an indiscreet curiosity. Upon the 
 return of the Archimagus Agrippa, he beheld demons exulting 
 around his domicil; quickly learning the cause, he ordered the 
 cadaver of the young man, possessed by these impure spirits, 
 to arise and pass into the forum or court-yard. This was in- 
 stantly accomplished, and after perambulating the enclosure a 
 few times, the actuating demon fled the body, which imme- 
 diately assumed the rigidity of death. At first the inculpation 
 of suicide was propounded as a solution of this mysterious 
 event; but indications of suffocation being discovered, the 
 sombre affair was finally divulged, and acknowledged by the 
 alchemist's flight."^* 
 
 Nearly at the same epoch, in the year 1483, the royal al- 
 chemist of Louis XI. of France, pursued with devoted avidity 
 the composition of aurum potabile or potable gold, and received 
 from the king ninety-six ecus to reimburse him for an outlay 
 of precious metal absorbed in making this famous beverage, 
 which had been prescribed by court physicians as an infallible 
 medicament.''* 
 
 Mediaeval pharmacists assumed to instruct in the proper 
 preparation of this priceless medicine. Certain alchemists, 
 actively influenced by their visionary notions, sought to im- 
 pregnate table potions with an aureated solution. An ancient 
 medicinal treatise, of the year 1372, prescribed the following 
 method to obtain the proper compound of this beverage: 
 
 '*Delrio, Disquisitio Magicar., Lib. II., Qu. 29, p. 157. 
 
 '* " En remboursement de quatre-vingt seize ecus d'or vielz, quil a mis pour 
 ledit seigneur Roy a faire certain breuvage appelle aurum potabile a lui ordonne 
 pour medicine." Le Grand d'Aussy, Histoire de la Vie- Priv^e des Franijais, 
 Tom. III., p. 87.
 
 3i6 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Heat strips or lamina of pure gold almost to liquefaction, and 
 immerse them in this state forty times in spring or filtered 
 water. The liquid should then be carefully sealed in a glass 
 bottle and drank without diluting or with excellent wine.'® 
 Physicians of those distant ages professed an unshaken faith 
 in the unfailing power of crude golden pellets to remedy with 
 instant results the most obstinate diseases, if swallowed or 
 eaten with food in a pulverized form. 
 
 Others, indeed, not less credulous, were so profoundly im- 
 pressed with the curative properties of this royal substance 
 that they fabricated gold pills and gave them to capons, on 
 the implied principle that the digestion of these fowls would 
 absorb into their edible flesh sufficient of the divine metal, 
 which skilled cookery caused to reappear in tempting, savory 
 soups." 
 
 Prejudices provoked in favor of the chemical power of this 
 material, dissolved for medicinal purposes, by the pretended 
 miracles of Paracelsus, were strictly maintained throughout 
 the sixteenth century. This charlatan, vaunting his puissance 
 of prolonging human life, and dying at the age of forty-eight, 
 asserted as an incontrovertible fact that he had repeatedly 
 cured lepers by a dexterous use of gold. As a consequence, 
 golden elixirs and drops .of gold were everywhere sought with 
 frenzied research, on their assumed remedial sovereignty over 
 most vexatious and unsightly disorders. Among scientists of 
 the age who combated the potential efficacy of such tinctures 
 should be especially distinguished the illustrious Pa-lissy, 
 whose exquisite good sense and thorough familiarity with 
 natural sciences elevated him far above fanatical enthusiasts of 
 his day.'* 
 '« Ibid., p. 88. " 
 
 "Ibid., p. 88 seq; Delrio, Disquisit. Magicar., Lib. I., p. 33 seqq., may be con- 
 sulted for elaboration of this subject, and to great advantage. 
 
 " Le Grand d'Aussy, Histoire de la Vie Privee des Fran^ais, Tom. III., p. 89.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Hospitals in the Middle Ages Developed from the Conventual Infirmary 
 — Hospitia of Cloisters first used for Sick Strangers — Public Institutions 
 of this Character in the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries — 
 Corps of Trained Nurses — Regular Organization of Hospital Assis- 
 tants — Use of Sugar in Syrups at an Early Period in the Orient — Thor- 
 ough Equipment of Hospitals at Bagdad in A. D. I173 — Salaried Phy- 
 sicians and Complete Stores of Pharmacy — Insane Asylum for the Cure 
 of Patients There — Mediaeval Digest of Regulations for Church Hos- 
 pitals — Charity Institutions and Rules for Admissions — Leprosy — Se- 
 clusion of Lepers — Reverence for this Disease — Cures of Varied As- 
 sortment — Lazarettos for Lepers near City Entrances — Revolt of the 
 Lepers — Jews Classed with these Infects. 
 
 FROM the monastic Infirmary and Hospitium was developed 
 a system for the regular aggregation and treatment of 
 sickness and diseases, under rules and ordinances whose care- 
 ful execution contributed to practical medizeval philanthropy. 
 Touching the nature of Infirmaries, sufficient has been written 
 in this treatise, but of the Hospitium or Hospitale, which has 
 furnished a fitting nomenclature for the edifice where indigent 
 or stranger infirm were gratuitously attended, exclusive of the 
 monastery, it may be stated the idea involved in its original 
 conception was fraternal welcome to pilgrims or homeless 
 travelers seeking accommodation in cloisters at a time when 
 inns and hosteries were too remote, or offered less security to 
 life and property than the inviting threshold of a structure 
 generally constructed by the side of public thoroughfares,^ and 
 from the special purpose of its establishment, designated as 
 above written.^ 
 
 In that signification, this department of conventual organiza- 
 tion is of high antiquity,' and as early indeed as the age of 
 
 1 Fosbroke, British Monachism, p. 297. 
 
 ''Wm. Neubrig., Historia Anglicana, Lib. IV., cap. 14. 
 
 ^ Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Hospitium. 
 
 (317)
 
 3 1 8 HIS TOR V OF ME Die A L ECONOM V 
 
 Charlemagne, such separate apartments were used exclusively 
 for sick persons.* They afforded a practicable means of exhib- 
 iting in practice the fundamental principles of conventual 
 charity in providing food for the impoverished, lodging for the 
 houseless, and medical treatment for diseased strangers. Dif- 
 ferent countries altered or modified the uniformity of the mean- 
 ing of these hospitia by diverse interpretations. 
 
 While the original sense of lodging-house for travelers still 
 attached, it was used by English jurists of the Middle Ages to 
 signify students' chambers near the great Universities, where, 
 indeed, as we shall presently discover, they were regularly 
 domiciled in large numbers.^ By whatever series of eventual- 
 ities this monastic institution passed from the strictest inter- 
 pretation, and survived as a hospital, or edifice entirely set 
 apart for reception and cure of maladies, may perhaps be 
 gleaned from notions touching its more ancient purposes, 
 which, under ecclesiastic manipulation, necessarily were re- 
 modelled toward the end of the twelfth century.® In the year 
 1059, ^ hospital exclusively for sick girls had long been extant 
 at Durham, and was highly eulogized by the conventual his- 
 torian.' 
 
 At a much earlier period, however, there were organizations 
 of this character among the Spanish Arabs,* together with poor- 
 houses solely occupied by the indigent and pauper people en- 
 tirely supported by public funds in the year 976.' Before the 
 year 1006, the Venetian Republic possessed a hospital erected 
 at the private expense of the ducal Urseolo.'" 
 
 * Vita Idse Ducissae, cap. i . 
 
 * " Sunt namque in eo decern hospitia minora, et quandoque vero pluraque no- 
 minantur hospitia cancellarite." Fortescutus, De Laudib. Anglise, cap. 49, p. 
 1 1 3 seq. 
 
 " Wendover, Flor. Historiar., Tom. III., p. 227. 
 
 'Sym. Dunelhm., Historia Ecclesioe, Lib. III., c. 46. Touching this form of 
 charity, vide Giselberti, Chronicon Hanoniense, sub an. 1194. 
 
 "Conde, Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en Espana, p. 310. 
 ^Conde, Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en Espana, p. 261. 
 '" Daru, Ilistoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 27.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 319 
 
 When Benjamin Tudelensis was at Jerusalem in 1173, the 
 Christian people maintained an institution of this character 
 exclusively for their own sick." Eight years later, Roger de 
 Moulin promulgated a series of regulations for these eleemo- 
 synary organizations in this city, which may have been sug- 
 gested by earlier rules, and perhaps constituted a safe norm 
 to guide similar philanthropic bodies elsewhere. By these or- 
 dinances each hospital should have four physicians skilled in 
 diagnostics, pharmacy, etc., and a like number of surgeons. 
 To these were added nine serge?is, or assistants as menials, to 
 provide ready service for the feeble and wounded. 
 
 Knights of the Hospital Order, whom these regulations 
 principally controlled, were detailed to a day and night watch 
 over the sick, and, indeed, for this attendance the Hospitallers 
 of either sex we're liable.''^ For ready use syrups or electu- 
 aries were applied as potential curatives.^'' These compounds, 
 it has been stated, were unknown to the Western monasteries 
 at this period, and their existence in this venerable ordinance 
 attests the rapid appropriation of Arabic drugs by crusading 
 adventurers. It is, doubtless, correct to assume the limited 
 usage of such excellent specifics directly derived from the Sara- 
 cens, although a more ancient code, the Jerusalem assises, 
 drawn up about the year 1090, distinctly mentions this medi- 
 cament,^* while certain grades of Oriental spices — classified as 
 aromati — were freely used in Europe after the year 1138,'° 
 perhaps exported by Venetian merchants during uninterrupted 
 voyages to the Levant.^" A substantial diet of pork and mut- 
 ton was provided for the sick and suffering males and females 
 
 ^^ Benj. Tud., Itinerarium, p. 40 seq. 
 
 1^ " Hospitalarii utriusque se.\us, qui in hospitalibus cCgrorum ac pauperum ob- 
 sequiis addicti Regulam S. Augustini profitentur." Du Cange, (Jloss., sub v. 
 Hospitalarii. 
 
 1^ Lessing's Ed., p. 550. 
 
 ^*"La medicato con tal medecine, e siropi, per li quali," etc. Le Assisse et 
 Bone Usanze del Reaume de Hyerusol., cap. 218. 
 
 ^^Annales Bosovienses, sub an. 1138. 
 
 ^®Daru, Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 16,
 
 320 HIS TOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 of the hospital in Jerusalem, at least thrice each week. An- 
 other clause directed that two patients should have one pair of 
 shoes to the twain.^' 
 
 Notwithstanding the ordinance alluded to exacts that all 
 foundling children — quetez — shall be received and nourished 
 by this Hospital, there were institutions in Western Europe of 
 a more remote period where abandoned infants were taken and 
 sustained. Some of these are mentioned by Italian writers,'® 
 while others were already, thus early, in vigorous operation in 
 Switzerland, Germany, France and elsewhere.^^ In the form 
 of gratuitous attendance upon the sick and diseased, the 
 Eastern Arabs in the eighth century possessed a regularly 
 organized system of public Infirmaries in the great metropolis 
 of Bagdad.'" 
 
 In the time of Benjamin, the Hebrew traveler, A. D. 1173, 
 a most efficient and practicable scheme had long existed in 
 this city, for the reception of the disabled and infirm poor into 
 hospitals, thoroughly equipped with sixty salaried physicians 
 and completely furnished with pharmaceutical supplies.'^ But 
 transcendent and above this form of philanthropic benefaction, 
 called into existence by enlightened Moslem economy, was a 
 most thorough organization of a public establishment at Bag- 
 dad for the custody and cure of the insane, brought thither 
 from all parts of the Persian empire. 
 
 This asylum and curative institution in the Saracen tongue 
 was denominated Dak Almaraphthan. Here the inmates 
 were subjected to scientific medical treatment until sanity was 
 restored, when the patient returned to his domicile, where he 
 received professional attendance for several months to prevent 
 a relapse into the malady of which he was cured.-^ That the 
 
 I'Lessing's Ed., p. 550. 
 
 I'^Muratori, Aiitiquitat. Ttal., Tom. III., p. 591. 
 ^^ Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen, Th. VI., p. 533, N. 4. 
 '■"' Abulfagus, Annales Moslem., Tom. II., p. 43. 
 
 '''" Construxit Xenodochia, segrotatibus pauperibus curandis idonea." Benj. 
 Tudel., Itinerarium, p. 62. 
 
 22"Palatium quod Dak Almar.'VPHTHan vocatur, lioc est domus misericor-
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 321 
 
 crusades indirectly opened to the Western nations a practical 
 acquaintanceship with natural science, cannot be successfully- 
 controverted; although wherever the details of this useful 
 erudition were known they appear to have been accepted 
 for qualities of utility in fabricating real necessities, or as 
 indulgences for the refinements of luxury." Little indeed, if 
 anything, was gained for general science. 
 
 Touching increased knowledge of medicine as practiced in 
 eleemosynary establishments of this era, doubtless an identical 
 conclusion should be deduced. The crusades provided ample 
 opportunities to apply a knowledge of this art, although the 
 movement towards a theory based upon rational principles 
 made trifling progress. For ages anterior to that ardent zeal 
 which precipitated the whole of Europe upon the Orient like 
 the fall of an irresistible avalanche, pilgrimages to the coun- 
 tries of Syria provoked the construction of Hospitia or lodging 
 houses, heretofore described, where sick and infirm pilgrims 
 received treatment for their bodily ills."* 
 
 In an era when long voyages on foot constituted a chief 
 claim to divine pardon to old and young,'" of both sexes,-" 
 the affluent and indigent, and when as stated hostelries and 
 inns were either objects of defiance to peaceful travelers, or at 
 so remote intervals along the public highways, the establish- 
 ment of these hospitals at the side of the great routes of travel 
 became indispensable, which the religious authorities quickly 
 recognized and promptly supplied." 
 
 diae, furiosis omnibus in regionibus inventis includandis, vinciendis et curandis 
 destinatum : donee ad mentem redeant : tunc enim sineuli in domum suam re- 
 verti permittuntur, curantibus id examinantibus per singulos menses viris." Benj. 
 Tudelensis, Itinerarium, p. 62 seq. 
 
 ^^ Heeren, Sur I'lnfluence des Croisades, p. 421. 
 
 "Ibid., p. 422. 
 
 ''^ Albert. Stadens. Chronicon, sub an. 1212. 
 
 ^^ Nude women in great numbers, professing to be pious pilgrims, boldly peram- 
 bulated mediaeval cities. Ibid. 
 
 ^" Heeren, Sur I'lnfluence des Croisades, p. 423. 
 21
 
 322 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 At the commencement of this swelHng tide of pilgrims to 
 Palestine, such charitable structures were erected as a com- 
 pulsory adjunct to accommodate voyagers from the north of 
 Europe^* to the city of Jerusalem.^^ In their primitive arrange- 
 ment these hospitals, whose subsequent development in the 
 west reflected lustre and aided in the progress of medicine 
 and surgery, were regularly attended by conventual brethren, 
 who furnished medicines and nursing to disabled pilgrims and 
 suffering wanderers. 
 
 Simple piety and unskilled attendance by monastic friars 
 were the first offerings instead of educated practice, conjoined 
 usually with the potency of sainted reliques or experimental 
 alchemical essences. The Hospitallers'" were consequently 
 scattered along the highways of travel, to the very gates of 
 Jerusalem, and wherever these philanthropic abodes opened to 
 welcome the weary and diseased, the limited resources of a 
 prostrate science were humbly applied to the cure of maladies.^^ 
 They were indeed ecclesiastics and zealous soldiers of God's 
 militant forces, priests and cavaliers — at once physicians, 
 nurses, defenders and consolers of the sick and lowly. 
 
 Hospital regulations, digested by ecclesiastical authority, 
 doubtless contemplated the presence of professional practition- 
 ers during the Middle Ages, although at their earliest incep- 
 tion the only skill produced was furnished by the monks, 
 whose knowledge of medicine consisted usually in the use of 
 traditional recipes, which they applied with excellent inten- 
 tions, and independent of simple maladies were inefficient.^'^ 
 The Clugniacs appear to have pushed their saintly cures quite 
 to the exclusion of terrestrial medicaments. 
 
 Odo, abbot of this illustrious monastery, in response to the 
 demand of a pair of sick friars for medicine, quaintly informed 
 
 ''^Ad. Brem., De Situ Danire, cap. 35; and Annalista Saxo, sub an. 952. 
 
 ^'Heeren, op. cit., p. 423. 
 
 •'" Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Hospitalarii. 
 
 ^' Heeren, op. cit., p. 423. 
 
 '■^Heeren, Sur I'lnfiuence des Croisades, p. 423 seq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 ^ -> -J 
 
 them in conceding their request, "the same remedy had been 
 tried for a similar disorder and found useless!"'''* It was fortu- 
 nate for medical science that such opinions were not accepted in 
 the establisment of hospitals in the west of Europe, where this 
 charitable system was introduced in advance of the ordinances 
 of Roger de Moulin. 
 
 Hospitals for the sick, orphanages for foundlings, and great 
 institutions for the proper care of paupers, developed with 
 immense strides, under the thoughtful and judicious zeal of 
 their founders, and during the twelfth century expanded into 
 gigantic proportions.^* Usually the endowments of these elee- 
 mosynary organizations emanated from the accepted dogma of 
 the atoning virtues of voluntary contributions to the poor, or 
 from the equally energetic propulsion of a belief in possible 
 catastrophes resulting from a haughty indifference to the 
 wants of this afflicted class.'''' 
 
 In the ensuing age, the mediaeval mind was fired with a 
 faith in the efficacy of unstinted charity; members of society, 
 from holy pontiff himself to the humblest cloistered recluse by 
 the way-side, rivalled each other in gratuities of clothing and 
 food, founding of hospitals, and endowment of beneficent 
 public institutions.^® 
 
 Saint Louis' highest claim to pious glor)^ arose from his 
 restless and unstinted charities to the indigent and sick. The 
 intercourse of this king with the diseased in hospitals, where 
 he entered to administer personal consolation, utterly oblivious 
 or indifferent to the dangers of such nursing, may be taken as 
 an important attestation of the extension of this virtue toward 
 benevolent enterprises during the Middle Ages.^' The in- 
 ternal arrangements, and thoroughly practical nature of the 
 
 ^^ " Ac medicamenta eis dari prsecipit, prsefatus, ea simul morbo tentatus antea 
 nihil profuisse." Mabillon, Annales Ord. Bened., Tom. III., sub an. 937, p.437- 
 **Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Eleemosynarii. 
 
 ^^Fr. von Raumer, Geschichle der IIohenstaulTen, Th. VI., p. 533. 
 ^^ Vita S. Ludovici, apud Duchesne, Tom. V., p. 452. 
 3- Ibid.
 
 324 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 ordinances to which the mediaeval hospitals owed their exist- 
 ence, excite surprise and demand unreserved admiration. Or- 
 dinarily, attendants and nurses, after a probation of definite 
 time to test their abilities for this function, were required to 
 obligate themselves with spiritual vows, similar perhaps to the 
 oblati and conversi,^* in order to exalt the dignity of the avo- 
 cation, although hospital goods were administered by the more 
 practical laity.^" To this rule there were exceptions, when 
 both civil and canonical authority managed certain kinds of 
 personal property, as early as the year 1038.*° 
 
 A rigid ordinance of the Brussels hospital interdicted access 
 to its benefactions to any diseased person able to procure a 
 livelihood by personal effort, or through the aid of others/' 
 The original and thoroughly religious character of these chari- 
 table asylums may be gathered from a requirement that each 
 applicant should, similar to postulants of monastic chapters, 
 solemnly confess and abandon, or quit claim to the hospital, 
 his entire possessions. If the invalid was restored to health, 
 he could withdraw and receive everything back again, and as 
 a salutary concession it was ordained whatever remained over 
 the costs and charges incident to medical care of such inmate, 
 by testamentary disposition might be willed at pleasure after 
 death ; but in case the decedent died intestate, the institution 
 inherited his property to the exclusion of all heirs. 
 
 Identical with the Jerusalem Hospital regulations of 1181, 
 patients were to receive three times each week fresh meat, and 
 if sanitary economy demanded, other food was freely provided. 
 Women in pregnancy and foundlings were susceptible of 
 admission, although under such scrutinizing restrictions as 
 tended to prevent the entrance of disreputable persons. In 
 
 ^*Du Cange, Glossar., sub vv. Oblatus and Conversus. 
 
 39(1 Persona idonea ac sacerdotalis eligetur, quseet debitum," etc., " pauperum 
 quoque et infirmarum qui in hospitali curam genere possit, anno 1 126." Miraeus, 
 Opera Diplomatica, cap. 47, Tom. II., p. 964; Ibid., Tom. I., p. 2io. 
 
 ^''"De laicis vir boni testimonii socius eligetur, ad dispositionem temporalium." 
 Ibid., cap. 51, Tom. II., p. 966; and Ibid., Tom. III., p. 104. 
 
 "Ibid., Tom. III., p. 609.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 325 
 
 the Brussels Hospital, entrants upon their reception formally 
 donated earthly goods to the eleemosynary corporation in per- 
 petuity, together with the legal rights which they possessed, 
 and professing an entire abjuration of civil society, assumed 
 the clerical costume of brown or gray. 
 
 No married person was admissible, and all trades or secular 
 occupations were formally interdicted, and no one without 
 imperative reasons was allowed to descend into the city.'^ In 
 the year 1 341, an asylum, partaking of the nature of a hospital, 
 was erected in London, for impoverished and aged goldsmiths, 
 out of the public moneys and by charity.*^ In the treatment 
 or succoring indigent sick, benevolence was in some instances 
 carried to excess; and oftentimes in administering funds appro- 
 priated or donated for such purposes, the monks, as almoners 
 of these gifts, were influenced in their disbursements by a 
 partisan impulse, or diverted them to different uses." Romish 
 pontiffs by personal example, and the vast machinery of the 
 Episcopacy with its priestly subordinates, largely aided in a 
 proper distribution of church alms.*^ which gave especial 
 vitality to proper medical attendance upon the distressed and 
 suffering sick. 
 
 Of all afflictions entailing the severest misery during the 
 Middle Ages, and necessitating a sagacious economy, both of 
 medicine and legislation, leprosy was preeminently the most 
 baleful. This dread disease, in its worst form, was full)- known 
 to professors of the curative art in the last days of declining 
 Rome, and recognized as difficult of treatment. From the 
 application of simple cosmetics to heal cutaneous discoloration 
 
 *2Miraeus, Opera Diplomatica, A. D. 1235, cap. 137, Tom. III., p. 116. 
 
 ^' '• Pro aurifabris Londonis fumo argenti viri coecati." Rymer, Foedera, Tom. 
 v., p. 246. Access to this asylum appears to have been restricted to such as were 
 bUnded by the fumes of metal. 
 
 "Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen, Th. VI., p. 535. Ambulances 
 and refrigerators were used by Frederick II., in 1256, in his army, for sanitary 
 purposes, and to add comfort to wounded soldiers. Gesta Frederici Imper., sub 
 an. 1256. 
 
 *^Otto Frising., Chronicon, Lib. VII., c. 35.
 
 326 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 preceding graver types of this disintegrating infirmity, to 
 severer methods of emasculation, the entire range of medica- 
 ments and surgery was unsuccessfully essayed. The foun- 
 dation of this abhorrent treatment appears to have originated 
 in a professional asseveration that eunuchs and women were 
 exempt from the disease — a notion maintained by the Arabic 
 scholar, Athelard, in the twelfth century/'' 
 
 Although leprosy seemiiirgly assumed not the importance of 
 an infectious disorder, nor became sufficiently extended among 
 the nations of Western Europe to merit serious attempts at 
 repression prior to the vast movement eastward and the reflex 
 action of the Crusades, there can be no doubt of its existence 
 in an aggravated form, dormant or confined to isolated invalids 
 in the Occident, long before the middle of the eleventh cen- 
 tury. Legislative enactments in the year 757, by Pepin, 
 Prankish ruler, forbidding by rescript conjugal relations be- 
 tween a lepef and a healthy woman," and the enforcement by 
 Charlemagne thirty years later of sequestration against this 
 terrible malady, interdicting contact with robust people,^* 
 attest the full knowledge and dread of this disease among the 
 early Teutonic races. 
 
 A century or more anterior to Pepin, hospitals, under mon- 
 astic management, exclusively set apart for the care and quar- 
 antining of lepers, were erected at important points on the 
 colossal extension of Carlovingian territory. In the year 720, 
 Othmar, abbot of the cloister of Saint Gall,*^ directed the con- 
 struction of a small edifice — hospitiolum — not far distant from 
 those buildings abandoned entirely to indigent and weary trav- 
 elers, and isolated or quarantined it so completely that none 
 but the leprous were admitted,^" who, it was distinctly decreed, 
 
 ^''Athelardi, Questiones Perdifficiles, cap. 41. 
 ^' Baluzius, Cartularia, cap. i6, Tom. I., p. 184. 
 ^•^Ibid., Capitulare Tertium, A. D., 789, cap. 20, Tom. I., p. 244. 
 ■*'■' Vadiani, Chronologia, Abb. Monaster. S. Galli, sub an. 720. 
 •''" Walafrid Strabo, De Vita S. Othmari, Lib. I., cap. 2. Voltaire, Essai sur les 
 Moeurs, Tom. I., p. 429, argues the lack of linen vestments as a possible cause
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 327 
 
 were compelled to live disjoined from the society of other 
 men.^^ It may be added, the pious prior hesitated not to lave 
 the feet of these infects, and to purge their eruptions of pruri- 
 ent matter, at the same time serving them with delicate food. 
 
 Under religious influences, this dreaded disorder was the ob- 
 ject of especial reverence from the time of Saint Martin, who 
 cured a leper by kissing him," to Eberhard, under the Hohen- 
 stauffen rulers, whose humility found pious expression in 
 personal attendance upon these unsightly beings,^^ shunned, 
 indeed, by all excepting saints and saintesses. Towards the 
 middle of the sixth century. Saint Radegonde displayed her 
 faith in first washing these repulsive sores, and afterwards ap- 
 plying her sainted lips to them. An insolent leper, indeed, 
 asserted unless his putrefying limbs were kissed by this candi- 
 date for canonical honor, he could not be cured." 
 
 In the time of Charlemagne, Saint Boniface, the evangelist, 
 in a letter to a German bishop, requested him to forward heavy 
 stuffs with which to wipe his feet, and to this evident lack of 
 linen the spread of this malady has been attributed."^ To ac- 
 cept this suggestion, based upon the implied absence of such 
 vestments, would be gratuitous and groundless. It is doubt- 
 less true, the use of linen wear in the Middle Ages did not 
 approximate its adaptation in modern times, neither was the 
 paucity of it so general as stated in those periods. 
 
 We have seen the constant usage of the camisa or under- 
 wear by Charlemagne himself At later epochs this article 
 was oftentimes donated to indigent paupers as a gift of high 
 charity with other clothing,^® Frequently the camisa consti- 
 
 of leprosy, which he says was general throughout Europe four centuries after 
 Charlemagne. 
 
 *' " Nam ad suscipiendos leprosos, qui cseteris hominibus sejunctim manere se- 
 motim consuerunt, constituit." Walafrid Strabo, op. cit.. Lib. I., c. 2. 
 
 5^Sulp. Sev., Vita S. Martini, cap. 18. 
 
 ^' Otto Frising., Gesta Frederic I. Imp., Lib. IV., c. 73. 
 
 ** Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, Tom. II., p. 353. 
 
 ^^ Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. I., p. 429. 
 
 ^^ Vita Meinwercki, Ep. Paderb., cap. 32, \ 8.
 
 328 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 tuted a portion of a tax or rent in kind, in payment of the 
 leasehold by tenants," a fact which confirms the more univer- 
 sal wear of this linen garment late in the eleventh or beginning 
 of the twelfth century. In the next era, Italian wives wore 
 linen outer vestments, which custom is, indeed, mentioned by 
 Ricobaldi as of long continuance.^^ 
 
 Crusaders, unquestionably, provoked contagious diseases, 
 on account of which the Levant for ages had been celebrated. 
 Some of these were mainly generated in the West by infected 
 vessels, dissolute armies, filthy bands of pilgrims, returning from 
 the Orient. Leprosy, with other malignant disorders, engen- 
 dered by unchecked license, excessive indifference to sanitary 
 rules, and almost total indifference to civil precautions, was 
 spread throughout Europe as a vast epidemic anterior to the 
 year 1179,^' to the rapid extension of which the criminal use 
 by several of the same baths, when publicly established in the 
 West, largely contributed.*'" 
 
 In the year 958, the mortality by this disease was so great 
 as to attract the attention of annalists," and in the year 1019, 
 the biographer of a famous ecclesiastic recounts the bitter 
 quarrels of the insane, the blind, the lame and lepers, who 
 crowded the chapel dedicated to this Saint, for precedence to 
 saintly cure."^ The horrors entailed by these infectious dis- 
 orders rendered it absolutely indispensable that extraordinary 
 safeguards against the spread of this particular infirmity should 
 be taken. In addition to causes assigned for the rapid ex- 
 pansion of leprosy about the time of the Crusades, it was ap- 
 parently well understood in the Gallic provinces, that the flesh 
 
 ^' Iliid., cap. 32, \ 52. 
 
 ^'^ Ricobaldi, Historia Pontific. Roman., sub an. 1234. Du Cange, Glossar., 
 sub V. Camisia, has valualjle facts touching the general use of linen vestments at 
 tlie era designated. 
 
 ■'"'' Labbe, Concilia Latcran III., sub an. I179, cap. 23, Tom. XXII. 
 
 *" Heeren, Sur I'lnfluence des Croisades, p. 424. 
 
 *^ Annalista Saxo, suIj an. 958. 
 
 ®2 Vita Ilcimcradi Presbyteri, cap. 34; apud Leibnitz, Tom. I., p. 575.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 329 
 
 of swine promoted cutaneous maladies resembling this great 
 affection, early in the history of the Frankish kings, who 
 appointed inspectors of this food whose duty it was to examine 
 and declare the sanitative condition of slaughtered swine. 
 
 Those exercising this function were designated languyanos, 
 or tongue-inspectors, because this member was scrutinized to 
 detect the impurities of the meat. As late as the year 1375 
 an ordinance required these officials to perform the duty only, 
 after a master of the guild of butchers had made such exami- 
 nation. If any signs indicated the presence of disease, the 
 suspected beasts were marked on the ears in order to apprise 
 purchasers.''^ In some portions of Europe, however, medical 
 practitioners freely advised bacon as a sovereign remedy 
 against the disease of leprosy, when, indeed, paupers were ex- 
 posed to infection from tainted bathing water used by lepers, 
 and at. a time when bleeding and use of the bath, as anciently 
 prescribed," were rendered doubly dangerous by common diet 
 of pork and wine, urged as infallible cures.*^ In general this 
 excellent sanitary system of bodily lotion was regarded gra- 
 ciously by mediaeval chronists.^'^ The waters near Naples," 
 mineral springs at Bath,*"* England, and at Aries, which cured 
 gout,''* were especially famous. Frederick I. of Germany, 
 freely adopted this remedy by advice of his surgeons.'" It was 
 apparently inevitable, to prevent serious results from repeated 
 use of identical water by filthy vagrants and leprous bathers, 
 which, combined with greed for pork as a standard diet, 
 
 *3 Le Grand d'Aiissy, Histoire de la Vie Privee des Frangais, Tom. I., p. 316. 
 
 "^Baluz., Cartiilar., A. D. 817, cap. 7, Tom. I., p. 581. 
 
 ^^ Lessing, Geschichte der Medezin, Th. I., p. 270, No. * 
 
 ^^Beda, Histor. Eccles., Lib. I., cap. i. 
 
 "7 Arnold, Clironic. Slavor., Lib. V., c. 19; and Gervais Tilbur., Otia Im- 
 perialia, Dec. IIL, c. 15. 
 
 ^^Anon., Gesta Stephani, p. 38. 
 
 *' Gervais Tilb., op. cit., Dec. IL, c. 126. 
 
 '"Gothofred, Gesta Fred. L, cap. 29, v. 760 seq. Bruno contemned tlie bath. 
 Rusoger, Vita Brunonis, cap. 30.
 
 330 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 aggravated the types of epidermic eruptions. This meat was 
 regarded by pilgrims as a great dehcacy in their distressed 
 famishing peregrinations to Palestine/^ and a mediaeval roman- 
 cer recites, with gleeful melody, how Richard the Lion- 
 hearted demanded bacon when prostrated with fever in the 
 East, and in the absence of the real was given a generous cut 
 of a boiled Saracen. Upon discovering the substitution, he 
 admitted that Turk flesh was of finer flavor than swine.'^ 
 
 Villannova treats leprosy purely from a professional view, 
 and asserted it was propagated by generation or transmission, 
 and provoked by unnatural food, infected pork, etc. He urges 
 against the use of pure, undiluted wine, the certainty of caus- 
 ing this disease, and makes the following singular reproof: 
 " The French and Burgundians, on account of their immoder- 
 ate potions, are more numerously leprous.'"^ 
 
 He however recommends the free application of Gallic soap, 
 already celebrated as a curative.'* According to this medical 
 professor, a sure test of a leprous condition was cupping the 
 arm for a slight quantity of blood, into which should be ca§t 
 a trifling amount of pulverized lead. If this floated on the 
 surface, the absence of a taint of this disease was verified; but 
 in case it sought the bottom, the proof of leprosy was incon- 
 testable.'^ Mediaeval annalists show the presence of this infirm- 
 ity among the higher clergy and prelates, long anterior to its 
 alleged introduction from the Orient. Thus in the year 1029, 
 Thurgot, the laborious bishop of the Bremen Episcopacy, one 
 day, while assisting the archbishop, was stricken with this 
 loathsome disease, which finally ended his life.''' 
 
 About the year 937, in Germany portents of unusual signifi- 
 cance were visible on the garments of many persons, in the shape 
 
 "Wipon, Vita Cuonradi, an. 1027, cap. 23. 
 
 "Romance Richard Cceur de Lion, vv. 3190-3200. 
 
 "Villannova, Breviarii, Lib. IL, cap. 52, col. 1313. 
 
 '*Ibid., col. 1316. 
 
 '^Ibid., Additiones, col. 1317. 
 
 "''Adam Bremen, Gesta Hammaburg. Pontific, Lib. IL, c. 62.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 331 
 
 of a crucifix, which appears to have been in some way at that 
 remote period associated with the dress of lepers. For this 
 reason prognostications predicted great mortahty among the 
 diseased, which actually happened."' In the year 882, the dis- 
 order wnth which the impious Anglo-Saxon king, Halfden, was 
 punished, has a close resemblance to leprosy.'® The extent 
 to which this calamitous affliction followed European pilgrims 
 and Crusaders returning from the Orient,"' necessitated com- 
 pulsory medical attendance and a more general adoption of the 
 sagacious hospital regulations of Saint Othmar, in the erection 
 of hospitals for such invalids, in order to prevent serious catas- 
 trophe to the human race. 
 
 Isolated houses, distant from the abodes and settlements of 
 men, remote from highways of travel', were constructed to 
 receive pestifers and inoculates, obliged to repair thither vol- 
 untarily or by force.*" In the year 1179, the third Lateran 
 Council decreed lepers should have private chapels and ceme- 
 teries,*' although the city of London, as early as the year 1 1 18, 
 established a Leprosarium for absolute sequestration of such 
 patients.*^ Knights of the Order of Saint John, in the different 
 countries of Europe, had consigned to their care and especial 
 attention eighteen thousand lepers.*^ The same necessity 
 which erected these pestiferous huts and cabins, as an active 
 agent in mediaeval medical economy, forced the practical appli- 
 ance of such methods as were efficient obstacles to the inroads 
 of pestilence in sea-port towns. The first, indeed, to essay sys- 
 
 ''" Witchindi, Annales, Lib. III., c. 61. 
 
 '^Symeon Dunelhm., Historia Ecclesise, Lib. IL, cap. 28. 
 
 ^Sismondi, Histoire des Frangais, Tom. L, p. 429. 
 
 ^^Heeren, Sur 1' Influence des Croisades, p. 424. 
 
 ^1 Labbe, Concilia, cap. 23, Tom. XXII ; and Neubrigeus, Historia Anglicana, 
 Lib. III., c. 3. 
 
 ®^Rog. Wendov., Flor. Historiar, sub an. iiiS. 
 
 ''3 Matthew Paris, Annales, sub an. 1244. In the Auctiarium Additimentum, 
 p. 161, of the same author, copious extracts are reproduced from the ordinances 
 Hospitalis de Sancto Juliano, touching dress, reception, etc., by which this or- 
 ganization was incorporated.
 
 . ^ 2 ^IS TORY OF MEDIC A L E CONOM Y 
 
 tematic prevention was the Venetian Republic in the year 1423, 
 at which time a fully equipped and furnished Lazaretto or 
 Quarantine was constructed by the government.^* 
 
 Lazarettos, also denominated .ladreries, for the seclusion of 
 lepers^ were, in the Middle Ages, sometimes located near the 
 entrance of municipal towns, where such as were infected by 
 this awful disorder were detained in custody and maintained 
 by funds charitably contributed.*^ From the order to whom 
 the care of pestifers was assigned, nurses and attendants in 
 these sequestered hospitals were named lazzaretists.^*^ 
 
 In some cases this sorrowful service Avas faithfully per- 
 formed by Augustine monks, whose regulations present a 
 striking identity with those of Saint Julian.®^ Oftentimes cities 
 by communal ordinance interdicted Lazzaretto establishments 
 in order to avoid possible contamination, while Zurich with 
 extraordinary integrity declared this disease should not render 
 lepers uninheritable,^® although usually the Ladrerie regula- 
 tions admitted testamentary disposition by a leper of his prop- 
 erty.^' These infects were forbidden entrance to towns and 
 villages, and required to avoid possible contact with the 
 healthy, for fear of propagating the hideous malady; and to 
 make such rule efficient they were obliged to carry a bell to 
 sound an alarm upon the approach of travelers.'" When 
 marching to church, their dress prescribed consisted of a close 
 fitting mantle with cape attached, drawn tightly about the 
 head, of a somber, perhaps wholly black, color.''^ 
 
 8*Daru, Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 202; Heeren, op. cit., p. 425, for 
 quarantine of later date. 
 
 •^^Sismondi, Histoire des Fran(;ais, Tom. I., p. 429. 
 
 ^ Cibario, Studi Istorici, p. 382 seq. Nobility often attended lepers as nurses. 
 Ibid., p. 180. 
 
 8' Designated " Pauperes Christi videlicet Lazaris." Dugdale, Monasticon 
 Anglicon, Tom. II., p. 376 seq. 
 
 ^Von Raumer, Geschichte der Ilohenst., Th. VI., p. 534. 
 
 ®*M. Paris, Auctor. Addit., p. 163. 
 
 "" Mohsens, Geschichte der Wissenschaft, in Mark. Brandenberg, Th. II., \ 22. 
 
 "' " Cum ad ecclesiam exierint.ab hospitali, copa clausa ad modum mantelli de 
 nigro panno, cum capucis cjusdem coloris." M. Paris, op. cit., p. 162.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. ^^H 
 
 Whole villages were composed of these outcasts, and a 
 person suspected of touching a pestifer was immediately 
 secluded.'^ Quarantine, in modern times, doubtless is exe- 
 cuted upon more exact principles of science; but it has never 
 been as inflexibly maintained, both by civil and canonical law, as 
 during the Middle Ages. Churches and cemeteries were form- 
 ally set aside for exclusive use of these afflicted beings,*^ and 
 to the world of life and happiness around them they were as 
 thoroughly dead as though sheltered beneath an eternal tomb. 
 In the time of Louis VIII. of France, this disease had made 
 such rapid progress in its sinister movements that at his death, 
 in the year 1225, he bequeathed a sum of money to each of 
 the two thousand lazzarettos in actual existence in his kinsf- 
 dom at this period'* — a figure still undiminished at the middle 
 of the fifteenth century.'^ 
 
 Doubtful manifestations of excessiv^e charity aided in rapidly 
 extending leprosy, and contributed to preserV'C its virulence 
 unimpaired. Thus the priest Thermes actually stole garnered 
 grain for indigent sufferers, and in the strange revelation of 
 divine presence received the undisputed attestation of the 
 purity of his motives,*® while the daughter of Fulk, king of 
 Jerusalem, purged suppurating leprous sores, and when her 
 spirit was daunted by the horrible putrefaction, to vanquish 
 this repugnance she calmly filled her mouth with water from 
 the bath-tub.'" 
 
 '^ " Ut ubicunque tot simul sub communi vita fuerint congregati, quod eccles- 
 iam cum coemetaris sibi constituere." Labbe, Concilia, A. D. 1179, cap. 23, 
 Tom. XXII. From some of these communities married lepers were excluded. 
 M. Paris, op. cit., p. 161 seq. 
 
 ^^ Neubrigeus, Historia Anglicana, Lib. III., cap. 3; Giselberti, Chronic. Ha- 
 noniense, sub an. 1195; and Baluz., Concilia Narbon., Tom. 1., p. 168. 
 
 ®* " Item donamus et legamus duobus millibus domorum leprosorum decem 
 millia librorum videlicet cuilibet earum centum solidos." Testamentum Ludo- 
 vici VIII., Reg. Francor.; ap. Duchesne, Tom. V., p. 325. 
 
 '^ Heeren, Sur les Croisades, p. 424. 
 
 ^Helmoldi, Chronic. Slavor., Lib. I., c. 66. 
 
 *' Iperius, Chronic, p. 643 ; ap. Martene Thesaur., p. 441.
 
 334 
 
 HIS TOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 The necessities of their seclusion apparently provoked a 
 desire of vengeance on the part of the abhorred recluses. In 
 the month of June, 1321, the awful announcement was made 
 to Philip v., king of France, that deputies from all the Ladre- 
 ries in Christendom had convened at four general councils,"® 
 and in accordance with a treaty solemnly compacted with the 
 Saracens, they had agreed to poison all Christians everywhere 
 dispersed, the method of which plan was to place poisons in 
 springs and fountains.®* In its original scope, this sinister 
 conspiracy seems to have been restricted to the robust and 
 healthy of the race, as an impressive vindication of the frightful 
 sufferings of these outcasts.^*'" 
 
 Superior toxicological knowledge of the Israelites, it seems, 
 caused them to be suspected of complicity in this systematic 
 assassination; at all events, Jews were arrested and incar- 
 cerated, charged with furnishing aid and counsel to the venge- 
 ful infects.^"^ 
 
 Although not a single well or fountain was proven to be 
 poisoned, nor one human being to have perished, by means 
 of two or three sachets of alleged venomous contents, includ- 
 ing an adder's head and the feet of spiders, all lepers how- 
 ever, and those tainted with the disease, were seized through- 
 out the French kingdom and in the Provencal provinces.'"^ 
 
 Thereupon the entire force of the Gallic judiciary was set 
 in relentless motion — prelates, barons, municipalities and royal 
 arbiters, authorized by an ordinance of August 18, in that 
 year, "to cleanse the earth of the criminal and superstitious 
 leprous fester." By this most inhuman and calamitous edict 
 all perished in the flames'"'^ — a result impossible to record 
 without a shudder. 
 
 '* Sismondi, Histoire des Frangais, Tom. I., p. 429. 
 
 ^''Ad. Murimuth, Chronicon, sub an. 1320. 
 
 '"^ Sismondi, op. cit., p. 429. 
 • i<""Et Judaei detenti et incarcerati, propter auxilium et consensum eis praesti- 
 tum ut publice dicebatur." Murimuth, Chronicon, sub an. 1320. 
 
 '"'■'Ad. Murimuth, op. cit., p. 32 seq. 
 
 '"■' Sismondi, Histoire des Frangais, Tom. I., p. 430.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 335 
 
 The utter impotency of such diaboh'cal measures to eradi- 
 cate a disease which for centuries was indigenous to France, 
 may be gathered from the fact previously stated, that a cen- 
 tury later an equal number of Ladreries was to be found in 
 this kingdom.^"* In the year 1368, a Narbonnese synod or- 
 dained that lepers should be forcibly prevented from entering 
 public markets, communal churches, walled enclosures, hostel- 
 ries, or other places frequented by healthy persons. 
 
 They were further directed to discontinue the use of varie- 
 gated colored clothes, nor should they wear their hair or 
 dress it so as to resemble the untainted,^"" as an unmistakable 
 stigma. These unhappy people were ordered to fasten a mark 
 on their garments by which the uninfected might the more 
 certainly shun them.''* 
 
 '"^Heeren, Sur 1' Influence des Croisades, p. 424. 
 
 105 « Nee pannos portent varigatos seu coloris, nee pilos nee comas." Concil. 
 Vaurens, cap. 21 ; ap. Baluz. I., p. 167 seq. 
 
 i06<<5igjjoque in vestibus diferant per qure a sanis patent! diffcreniia coguos- 
 ceret per diocesanos ordinanda." Concil. Vaurens, cap. 21.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Abandoned Women : their Relation to Medical Economy in the Middle 
 Ages — Legislation against Them — Resort to Barber Shops — " Ambu- 
 latory Maidens" — Low Grading of Actresses and Laundresses — Mayor 
 Owns a House of Prostitution — Attire of Degraded Females — English 
 Cardinal Landlord of a Bordello, or Bawdy House — Great Number of 
 these Women among the Crusaders — Forbidden to Enter Wine Houses 
 — Prescribed Dress — Scholars Especially Liable to their Fascinations — 
 Municipal Ordinances — Attempts to Reform — Husbands Sought and 
 Obtained by Money. 
 
 PERHAPS the most important matter of medical economy 
 which next to the isolation and quarantining of lepers, 
 during the entire stretch of the Middle Ages arrested the 
 attention of both secular and sacerdotal authorities at a com- 
 paratively early era, was the subjection of unfortunate prosti- 
 tutes to such discipline as would best repress the propagating 
 of disorders of aggravated types, of which some, even in the 
 time of Villannova, seem an exact counterpart of syphilitic 
 maladies.^ 
 
 Doubtless the inspiriting anxiety for their improved con- 
 dition, attested by pontifical regulations and ecclesiastical 
 canons, strongly cooperated to a higher elevation of the dis- 
 reputable class than the lot assigned them in Imperial Rome. 
 A favorite illustration of the unmeasured rapacity and sordid 
 greed of these women, under the declining Roman govern- 
 ment, was aptly drawn from the Egyptian sphynx, whose 
 facial effigy delineated a human head, while the balance of the 
 body hieroglyphically represented powerful claws, typical of 
 the avarice and tyranny exercised upon admirers.^ In the 
 
 ^Villannova, Ereviarii, Lib. IL, cap. 43. 
 *Panciroli, Rer. Memorabil. Deperdit, Tom. L, p. 106. 
 
 (336)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. T^y^ 
 
 imperial city the licentia stupri operated a loss of heirship,-' a 
 law re-established with all its inflexible rigor, in the establish- 
 ments of Sainf Louis.* 
 
 Church legislators in mediaeval times assumed control of 
 abandoned women, and encouraged such organizations among 
 them as promoted a healthier internal polity, designed to check 
 the spread of disease. Consequently from the bordello,^ or 
 houses solely frequented by these females and their para- 
 mours, to Magdalen orders, pontifical vigilance traversed the 
 entire distance for medical or sanitary purposes. 
 
 Parisian barbers appear to have provided apartments con- 
 venient to their shops where the dissolute of both sexes regu- 
 larly met — a nefarious connivance, threatened with severest 
 punishment, but without correcting the mischief." At an earl}' 
 period of municipal governments in Europe, women of fair 
 repute organized themselves into a secular corporation, under 
 the designation of "ambulatory girls," whose ostensible object 
 was performing domestic and other services at annual fairs, 
 imperial diets, church synods, and as Focariae,' or fireside 
 menials, sought attendance upon spiritual magnates. 
 
 These feminine guilds of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
 turies were constructed in all points similar to those of other 
 trades, and had their ordinances, judges, and their jurisdic- 
 tion.* At the great mediaeval fairs in Europe, where the 
 women of doubtful virtue abounded, bargains were struck on 
 the basis of a package of bodkins or lace-needles,' or aiguil- 
 
 »Ibid. 
 
 *" Quand se fait depuceler, elle perd son heritage par droit." Establiss. de S. 
 Louis, Titr. I., c. 12, an. 1254. 
 
 5 In 1 168, the eighth of Henry II., Stow, Survey of London and Westminster, 
 Vol. I., p. 7. 
 
 *Ordonnance de Troisieme Race, Tom. V., p. 441. 
 
 'Du Cange, Gloss., sub. v. Focarte, furnishes full explanation of this word. 
 
 * " Les femmes amoureuses formaient alors, une corporation comme les gens des 
 autres metiers, quelles avaient leurs statuts, leurs judges et leur jurisdiction." La- 
 croix, Prostitut. au Moyen Age, fol. 9. 
 
 ^" Le prix etait un paquet d'aiguieliettes."" Ibid., fol. 31. 
 22
 
 33^ 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 lettes, which they usually carried as a distinctive badge upon 
 the shoulder, a custom surviving to Rabelais' day.'" Annal- 
 ists of the Middle Ages classified actresses,"" female jocula- 
 tores^'' or minstrels, laundresses or lotrices,''* as meretrices or 
 prostitutes. 
 
 The Focarise, above alluded to, were forbidden the license 
 of the city of London in the year 1 129," and an imperial edict 
 ordered their capture throughout the empire of Frederick II. 
 a century later.'" Domiciles for degraded women were, indeed, 
 recognized as a necessity, equalling the demand for lodging 
 houses and cafes. The strictest surveillance was maintained 
 over these, and repeated regulations defined the basis on which 
 the advantages of their vocation were accorded within muni- 
 cipal limits. 
 
 One of these enacted a uniformity of attire. At the period 
 when Froes, of Holland, farmed London Bordellos or bawdy 
 houses, owned by the mayor, the inmates wore a distinctive 
 vestment of red stripes and party colored head-dress."^ They 
 appear, however, anterior to such ordinances, to have arrayed 
 themselves in garments well recognized as the costume of de- 
 praved females. In the year 1058, the appearance of one is 
 thus described: "Seated on a jaded mule, her locks unloosed 
 and falling upon her shoulders, holding a gilded rod in one 
 hand, with which the listless animal was urged forward, and by 
 means of her indiscreet clothing excited the travelers' attention 
 in the highways.'"' 
 
 Streaming tresses appear to have characterized ancient Ro- 
 man maidens of this class, while their Athenian sisters wore 
 
 '" Pantegruel, Liv. III., chapit. 32. 
 
 '' Lambert, Hersefeld Annales, sub v. 1066. 
 
 '■•^ Gisclbert, Chronicon Hanoniense, sub an. 11S4. 
 
 '■^ Hcmingberg, Chronic, sub an. 1 198 and 1215. 
 
 '^ Wendovcr, Flor. Histor., Tom. II., p. 210. 
 
 '^Ricard. de San Germane, Chronic., an. 1228. 
 
 "'Stow, Survey of London, p. 553. 
 
 '" Ilemingberg, Chronicon, Tom. I., p. 500.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 339 
 
 gaudy and highly ornate garments."* After the consort of 
 Louis VII. of France, had by mistake kissed a prostitute, it 
 was decreed such persons thereafter should be prohibited the 
 chlamys or cape.^** 
 
 Other peculiarities of dress distinguished the frequenters of 
 the Roman Lupanaria, of which the bitter satires of Tacitus 
 make repeated mention/" although this variation was rendered 
 indispensable by cubicular exigencies." In the city of Lon- 
 don, as in other municipalities, their residence was contracted 
 to certain streets, or the west part of South wark, where such 
 signs as a gun, castle, crane, cardinal's hat, the bell, or swan, 
 made these resorts unmistakable.^'^ 
 
 In Paris, these females were domiciled in a quarter ulti- 
 mately designated Clapier, a name, as Lacroix urges, perpetu- 
 ated to modern times.-'' Occasionally during the Middle 
 Ages, the proprietress of bordellos was an abbess, who ap- 
 peared greedier of terrestrial profit than the rewards of 
 self-denial,^* and sometimes the scandalous deportment of 
 anchorites visiting such houses became a matter for the mon- 
 astic chroniclers.'-^ In the year 1321, an English cardinal pur- 
 chased a Lupanar in London, as a profitable investment for 
 sacerdotal funds.'® A century later these houses of infamy in 
 Naples were taxed, with their incontinent denizens, by the 
 municipal authorities.'^' The object of secluding or aggre- 
 
 '^Panciroli, Rer. Memorabil, Deperdit., Tom. I., p. 205. 
 
 i'-* Bouquet, Receuil des Historiens FraiKjais, Tom. XVI., Prref. p. 26. 
 
 ™Annales, Lib. XIII., c. 25; and Lib. XV., c. 37. 
 
 21 Panciroli, op. cit., p. 168. Further on this subject, Tertullian, Ad Uxorem, 
 cap. 3. 
 
 '^- Stow, Survey of London, p. 7. 
 
 '■'■'Lacroix, Prostitution au Moyen Age, fol. 11 ; cf. Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. 
 Clapier. 
 
 ^* Lacroix, op. cit., fol. 22. 
 
 ^^ Annales Corbeienses, sub an. 11 13. 
 
 ^^ Rymer, Foedera, Tom. IT., p. 880. 
 
 -'Lacroix, op. cit., fol. 14; and Du Cange, op. cit., sub v. Gabella. Taxed in 
 the year 1283, Ibid., v. Putagium.
 
 240 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 gating disreputable women within certain metropolitan limits, 
 appears to have been the withdrawal from virtuous contem- 
 plation of the sight of a glorified vice, so that honest people 
 might shun the dangers incident to a close vicinage.^^ When- 
 ever an orderly citizen complained of their presence at Ra- 
 venna, a statute required them to instantly depart the neigh- 
 borhood.^* 
 
 Legislation of imperial Rome allowed such complaints, and 
 usually transported the offending debauchees to licensed 
 Lupanaria — sometimes expelling them beyond the city, or 
 ordering them to the suburbs."" During the first crusade of 
 Frederick I., emperor of Germany, a rigid decree was enforced 
 subjecting the dissolute of both sexes to compulsory natation 
 in cold running streams, perfectly divested of clothing, in 
 winter or summer. The order curiously enacted that the 
 bystanders should laugh at and otherwise deride the offend- 
 ers."^^ Like statutory penalties were inflicted by an ordinance 
 of Louis IX. of France, in the year 1269.^^ 
 
 Li the year 1097, incontinent females were so numerous in 
 the Crusading armies that they were forcibly driven out of 
 camp.^^ Hemingberg asserts that in 1291 there were thirteen 
 thousand loose women supported by the Templars^* — an evil 
 perpetually recurring among the Crusaders.^^ A house of dis- 
 repute appears to have been maintained by Saracens at Ahir 
 in the twelfth century.^" Towards the conclusion of the Mid- 
 28 PanciroL, Mem. Deperd., Tom. I., p. 204. 
 
 '''Von Ramner, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen., Th. VI., p. 513. 
 
 ^^ Panciroli, op. cit., p. 204. 
 
 ^' Ansberti, De Expedit., p. 65; Arnold, Chronic. Slavor., Lib. IV., c. 8. 
 
 ^2 Ordonnances des Rois de France, Tom. I., p. 105, Art. 5. 
 
 •'^ Rog. Wendover, Chronicon, Tom. II., p. 95. 
 
 •'* Chronicon, Tom. II., p. 24. 
 
 ^^Otto Frising., Gesta Imp. Freder. I., Lib. III., cap. 26 and 46 ; and Lib. IV., 
 cap. 76; and Giselberti, Chronicon Hanoniense, sub an. 11 88. 
 
 ^^"Notaapud Ahir publicum pro.stibulum merctricum." Arnold, Chronic. 
 Slavor., Lib. VII., cap. 8.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 341 
 
 die Ages, a lawof the municipality of Brunswick enacted that 
 all prostitutes within the city should be under the direction of 
 the public executioner. In order that all avocations, however 
 infamous, might aid in accumulating funds for the city, it was 
 also decreed that persons of this class should pay a fixed sum 
 towards metropolitan service. Proprietresses of brothels were 
 classified as debauchees, and subjected to the same tax.^' In 
 the interest of commercial travelers during those remote 
 epochs, numerous statutes were promulgated by civil author- 
 ities, by which protection was provided against the rapacious 
 and tyrannical spirit distinguishing these feminine sphinxes. 
 
 Many Italian cities forbade their presence within wine- 
 houses, as unusually prejudicial to the immature morals of 
 the young; but Northern municipalities afforded unusual 
 facilities for the pursuit of this nefarious vocation. A Turin 
 ordinance ordered their forcible removal from churches after 
 nightfall.^* While, indeed, the prostitute was by specific re- 
 scripts debarred from an inculpation of criminal force,^' by a 
 law of 1 192, she was protected in judicial proceedings, but 
 refused a hearing when an unjust accusation was made by her 
 to extort money."" 
 
 Violence towards women, whether impure or chaste, was 
 punishable in diverse localities with gradually increasing se- 
 verity from the monetary compensation of older Teutonic 
 legislation, to the barbarous punishment of entombing alive." 
 Frequently the heavier penalties of the punitory codes were 
 
 " Ordinarius Senat., Brunsvic, cap. 91. 
 
 ■**" Item, quod omnes meretrices in vigiliis nocturnis publice expellantiir de 
 ecclesiis." Monumenta Hist. Patr., Italire, Tom. I., p. 726. 
 
 ^9 Decretum Leopoldi, sub an. 1220, in Wiener Yahrb, 1827, p. 18. Accusa- 
 tion of bastardy — "filii meretricis " — by this decree was punished by money fine, 
 but failure to pay provoked scourging and flaying alive : " Verberetur et decu- 
 tetur." Ibid., p. 19. The penalty in Mantua for vilifying a woman — "mere- 
 tricem or coredissam " — was ten solidos, in the 13th century. Monumenta, cit., 
 Tom. I., p. 67. 
 
 *°Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen, Th. \T., p. 513. 
 
 *^ Lex Ripuariorum, Tit. XXXIV., lex. i.
 
 342 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 modified by marriage, if the parents assented,*- otherwise the 
 criminal was capitally dealt with.''^ Early Gothic statutes 
 were especially severe in their repression of inciting girls or 
 virgins to systematic incontinence, punishing both by death," 
 public scourging of the impenitent in the year 504,*" and nose 
 slitting, as late as the twelfth century/" 
 
 In the year 1254, a decree of Saint Louis directed, that men 
 frequenting houses of ill-repute should be branded as infamous, 
 and forever rendered incapable of testifying.*' Unsuccessful 
 crusading in the East made this monarch so highly sensitive 
 upon this grievous stain in municipal government, that by his 
 ordinances all women addicted to this nefarious system were 
 declared outlaws; and as an attestation of an earnest determi- 
 nation to compel these abandoned creatures into a more salu- 
 tary life, he ordered their personal goods, clothing, furs and 
 tunics or linen chemises — pecium,*^ to be taken in custody, 
 and by such as granted the usage of a domicile a year's lease- 
 hold of the property should be forfeited.*" 
 
 As a result of this brutal legislation, troubadors complained 
 that disconsolate maidens might be seen everywhere, fol- 
 lowed by excellent citizens, victims of their amatory charms.^" 
 Whether, indeed, the ardent imagination of adolescent medi- 
 
 *^ " Lo stuprator d'una vergine era tenuto a sposarla si i parenti consentivano 
 e s'ei n'era degno." Cibrario, Economia Politica del Medio Aevo, Tom. I., p. 193. 
 
 *' Edicta Theodorici, cap. 39. 
 
 « Ibid. 
 
 *^Lex Wisigothor. , Lib. III., cap. 18. 
 
 ^•5 Constitutiones Regni Seculi, Tit. XLVIII. 
 
 *^ Ordonnances des Rois de Fiance, Art. X., Tom. I., p. 79. 
 
 **Baluz., Concilia Narbon. I., p. 77; Du Cange, Gloss., sub v. Petium. 
 
 ** Ordonnances des Rois, Tom. I., pp. 74, 104. Later statutes of the rulers of 
 F'rance conceded the right to municipalities of maintaining houses of resort for 
 l^ublic women — " maison pour I'habitacion et residence des filles communes." 
 Ibid., Tom. XX., p. 180. 
 
 ^""Ainsi, on ne voyait partout que filles eplor^es quittaient cites et les bons 
 bourgeois qui les avaient aimees couraient apr^s elles par amour ardent." Cape- 
 figue, Histoire de France, Tom. I., p. 266.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 343 
 
 ?eval students of law and medicine rendered them more access- 
 ible to the susceptibilities of female society, it was universally 
 accepted as a legal maxim that scholars, owing to indolent 
 natures and luxurious habits, were particularly influenced b>' 
 meretricious women.^' 
 
 Municipal law of a rigorous character seems to have be- 
 come indispensable in the French cities wherever universities 
 were located, since immediately above apartments occupied 
 by law or medical students, were the resorts of prostitutes,''^'' 
 and indeed, it was accepted as a rule of interpretation in 
 certain causes involving judicial inquiry into these intimacies, 
 that all women frequenting the abodes of scholars, should 
 be regarded as public debauchees — especially was this the 
 case in Italy.^^ A noted mediaeval professor of medicine, 
 sojourning in this country, narrates singular customs of Nea- 
 politan women, who carried their virginal deceptions to the 
 nuptial chamber;^* but though the devices of the Florentine 
 ladies for recalling recollections of their husbands and lovers 
 during a prolonged absence may argue marvellous fidelity, the 
 historian cannot reproduce the inculpation by Villannova of 
 a more serious crime,^^ even in the unimpassioned enclosure of 
 a dead language. 
 
 Doubtless, in unnumbered instances, natural modesty due 
 the sex asserted itself and provoked kindly commendation, 
 although the biting scandal of their licentious tongues de- 
 manded unmitigated censure/'^ Public females sometimes, in 
 the fullness of remorse, assumed vows of future chastity under 
 
 ^1 Panciroli, Rer. Memor. Deperd., Tom. I., p. 205. 
 
 '"'^ " In parte superioii magistri legebant, in inferiori meretiices inter se at cum 
 Censonibus (sic. Qu. Lenonibus) litigabant." Bulaeus, Ilistoria Univcrsitatis 
 Parisiensis, Tom. II., p. 687. 
 
 ^^ Panciroli, op. cit., p. 205. 
 
 ^* Villannova, Breviarii, Lib. III., cap. 6, col. 1338. 
 
 *^ Ibid., cap. 9, col. 1346. 
 
 56 " Prsevalet in Tingua qui non est fortis in armis ; 
 Nullus in hoc pugna plus meretrice potest." 
 
 Abf.lardi, Opera, Tom. I., p. 346.
 
 344 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 church sanction, and became an integral portion of nunneries, 
 which action the annahsts highly eulogized and gave the most 
 extended notoriety, as an example to be followed by their 
 associates.^' As hitherto stated, sacerdotal authority afforded 
 the most unyielding patience in sincerely struggling to reclaim 
 these degraded personages, destructive alike to morals and 
 health, and oftentimes individual exertions returned notable 
 results. 
 
 Fulco, of Neuilly, intimately associated with the Crusades 
 against Constantinople,^** illustrated his talents as an evangel- 
 ist among abandoned females. By well directed and industri- 
 ous persistency he procured from the Parisian authorities an 
 agreement by which the city should endow with a thousand 
 livres, and the University students two hundred and fifty, 
 each reclaimed prostitute upon her contracting honorable 
 marriage.^® 
 
 Reformatory movements among this class were organized 
 on a munificent scale by famous mediaeval preachers, who, 
 under pontifical warrant, boldly proclaimed that the person ac- 
 cepting a stained creature in matrimony might justly claim the 
 vast benefactions incident to saving a condemned soul from 
 perdition.*" Saint Louis cooperated to check the fearful tide 
 of immorality, by erecting an eleemosynary establishment for 
 the gratuitous distribution of bread to indigent, deserving 
 girls, exposed to dissolute and dishonest lives.**^ 
 
 At the close of the tenth century, the punishment inflicted 
 upon women of this class in Poland was terrible, and in the high- 
 
 ^'Chronicon Engelhusii, ap. Leib. III., p. 1037. 
 
 •''8 Bnlaeu.s, Hist. Universit. Parisiensis, Tom. II., p. 518 seq ; and Albeit Stad- 
 ens, Chronicon, sub an. 1198. 
 
 ^'■'"Casum ex fragilitate timcntes data eis in datem non modica pecunia legiti- 
 mo connubio reformavit." Otto P^'is., Continuat., San Bias, cap. 47. 
 
 ""Bulaeus, op. cit., Tom. II., pp. 519 and 687. 
 
 *' Vita et Conversio Sancti Ludovici, cap. 9; apud Duchesne, Tom. V.,p.452. 
 Fiilco had great success in this reform, and induced many women to cut their 
 flowing tres.ses and enter penitential houses. San Bias Contin., cit., cap. 47 ; 
 and liulaeus, op. cit., Tom. II., p. 518.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 345 
 
 est degree unnatural, while the male accomplice, wherever such 
 action involved violence, was subjected to inhuman torture.*' 
 By their utter disregard of canonical regulations, monasteries 
 aided in the corruption of morals and propagating of disease 
 by disreputable females. 
 
 In the year 1129. a church synod authorized Henry I. of 
 England to execute the laws against infraction of celibacy by 
 the monks ; but according to the inculpation of Wendover, 
 this monarch accepted money from conventual brethren, and 
 abandoned them their paramours.®^ In many abbeys the main- 
 tenance of concubines, perhaps wives, was so customary that 
 the bishop of Constance forbade the Zurich municipality ex- 
 pelling this fragile sex, on the ground that such action was 
 exclusively within episcopal jurisdiction.** 
 
 Oftentimes these uncanonical indulgences were not restricted 
 to humble recluses — bishops themselves debauched the nuns,*^ 
 and at a time when insignificant embraces were placed under 
 the ban, a pontifical legate*" w^as surprised flagrante dclictu 
 with a prostitute. In the year 1 190, the Danish peasantry ag- 
 gregated themselves in favor of the priests against the bishops 
 exacting the expulsion of illicit concubines, in order that the 
 priesthood, possessing their own consorts, would cease to 
 abuse the wives and daughters of the peasantry.*^ Through 
 the sordid avarice of prostitutes, independent of the transmis- 
 sion of disorders of most aggravated types,** degraded women 
 inflcted upon convents enormous losses of treasure by the in- 
 discreet generosity of their monastic lovers. During the dire- 
 
 *^Dithmar, Mereseb. Chronicon, Lib. VIII., p. 248. 
 
 *^Flores Historiarum, Tom. II., p. 210. 
 
 ^* Bluntschli, Geschichte des Zurich, p. 82. 
 
 ^ Hume, History of England, Vol. II., p. 48. Convents furnish Boccacio, II 
 Decamerone, with convenient sources for such scandals. 
 
 '^Panciroli, Rer. Mem. Deperdit., Tom. I., p. 205. 
 
 *^Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen, Th. VI., p. 180. 
 
 «8 Villannova, Breviarii, Lib. II., cap. 43, col. 1288. The embrace of such 
 women was recommended by this great medieval professor as a cure for insanity. 
 Breviarium, Addit., Lib. I., cap. 18, col. 1096.
 
 546 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ful necessities besetting the Bremen episcopate in the first half 
 of the eleventh century, entailing the squandering of its muni- 
 ficent accumulations of gold, silver, and sacred vessels embel- 
 lished with valuable gems,''^ vast numbers of these precious 
 stones were delibertely stolen by amorous inmates, and do- 
 nated to rapacious debauchees.'" 
 
 Deplorable consequences of warfare were aggravated by 
 their presence in the armies, provoking contagious maladies, 
 and sharing the booty of sacked cities. In the year 1084, after 
 the capture of Augusta by means of false keys, the victors 
 made an irruption into the cloister, and having fired its stipen- 
 diary appurtenances, proceeded deliberately to pollute with 
 abandoned women, holy structures contiguous to the convent.'^ 
 The annalist cited under the year 1 092, affirms that the spirit of 
 evil among the Scandinavians provoked a category of vices of 
 such gigantic development that the most debasing crimes failed 
 to excite attention." 
 
 One of the sweeping charges made against Christian, arch- 
 bishop of Mayence, in the year 1 179, was, notwithstanding his 
 vast erudition of Latin, Greek, Roman, Chaldaic, Apulian, 
 and Langobardic languages, his prostitutes entailed upon him 
 heavier expenditures than the charges of royal representation." 
 Although clerical magnates resisted encroachments on their 
 liberties of concubinage, when a certain count in the thirteenth 
 century abandoned his legitimate spouse to follow the fortunes 
 of a meretricious female, the prelate of the Archiepiscopal See 
 quickly excommunicated him. This extraordinary remedy 
 does not appear to have alarmed the erring couple; on the 
 contrary, the concubine opened a lodging-house or hostelry 
 opposite the monastic portals, and the illustrious but dishon- 
 
 **Adam Bremen, Gesta Hammab. Pontific. Lib. III., c. 3. 
 ™"Gemm3e autem distractre quibusdam meretriculis donata; sunt." Albert 
 Stadens, Chronicon, sub an. 1066. 
 ■ '• Chronica Augustensis, sub an. 1084. 
 " Ibid., sub an. 1098. 
 " Clironica Bremensis, sub an. 1179.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 347 
 
 ored Westphalian, as landlord, attended the j^uests who hon- 
 ored the inn with their patronage. The chronicler, however, 
 declares they ended in squalor their existence, because such 
 goods as they possessed were wasted in riotous excesses, after 
 the manner of actors — histrionico more."* Jewish women ap- 
 pear to have shared the frailties of their Christian sisters, 
 according to a formal incrimination by Berthold, abbot of 
 Saint Gall, in this century, against an anchorite of this cloister, 
 whom he accused of thieving and having deserted the monas- 
 tic habit to live licentiously for several years with an inconti- 
 nent Jewess.''' In the year 1295, a monk of Corbeil, singular 
 to state, procured a dispensation from the pope releasing him 
 from monastic vows, and married; the conventual historian 
 doubted the possibility of happiness emanating from this mar- 
 riage, and intimates his opinion of the woman.'* 
 
 '^Chronicon Rastendense, ap. Meib., Tom. I., p. 106. 
 
 ^^" Vixit luxuriose cum quadam Juda?a." Goldast., Alemannicor. Antiquitat., 
 cap. 98, p. 57. 
 '^ Annales Corbeienses, sub an. 1295.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Pestilences and Epidemics in the Middle Ages — These Oftentimes' Pre- 
 dicted — Defects in Sanitary Arrangements — Municipal Authorities En- 
 deavor to Repress Pestilence — The Death Penalty Passed upon Blun- 
 dering Physicians — The Yellow Plague in England — Terrible Ravages 
 — Causes of Epidemics Accurately Traced — Frequently Charged to 
 Diabolical or Stellar Influences — Awful Malady of 1348 — Great Mor- 
 tality at Marseilles — Its Route along the Water Courses — Medical Skill 
 Fails to Arrest It — Jews Charged with Poisoning the Water — Female 
 Surgeons, etc. — Order of Flagellants — Dancing Pestilence — Its Infects 
 Abhor Red Colors. 
 
 PESTILENTIAL diseases, from the decline of Rome to 
 the termination of the Middle Ages, in whatever form 
 they appeared, were usually preceded by such natural phe- 
 nomena as attracted notice of contemporaneous annalists, who 
 in many cases made a permanent record of these strange oc- 
 curences. Earthquakes, falling mines, inundations, comets, 
 and stains on clothing, houses and utensils, which after the 
 most careful ablution reappeared more vividly than before, 
 belonged to these miraculous events appurtenant to each 
 specific epoch, preceding the approach of epidemics, spreading 
 fear and consternation among all nations. 
 
 As possible precursors of epidemics, the habits of animals, 
 according to high medical philosophers,^ should be closely 
 observed as an indication of future diseases, it being urged 
 that serpents shunned their usual places, and birds, instead 
 of flying by day, went in flocks at night, on account of atmos- 
 pheric corruption.'' During the thirteenth century, the nature 
 
 ' Villannova particularly, whose unusual judgment, for the thirteenth century, 
 may be ascribed to his notable acquaintanceship with Arabic writings, which he 
 acf)uired by sojourning in Spain. Vita Villannova, cap. 2. 
 
 '■'Villannova, Breviarium, Lib. IV., cap. 32. 
 
 (348)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 349 
 
 of comets was sufficiently understood to be described as a 
 "blazing star or incendiary cloud,'" and they performed an 
 important function in prognosticating pestilences or other 
 phenomenal disorders, which were predicted upon a minute 
 astrological scheme to the first years of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury.* 
 
 It was usual for astrologists by a series of complicated 
 stellar and mathematical calculations to prophesy the certainty 
 of epidemic maladies, and forward copies of their prognosti- 
 cations to all leading monasteries of Europe. Rycard San 
 Germain reproduced one under the year 1229, drawn up and 
 issued by a Toledo savan.^ Disregard of sanitary rules, woolen 
 clothing® perhaps, and a limited supply of linen vestments 
 worn by the mediaeval populace, prelates and beggars, dwell- 
 ings of defective construction, doubtless aided in propagating 
 the frightful calamities of pestilence. A more malignant cause 
 was the arrangement of private houses and public structures, 
 alike erected upon the principle of resisting armed aggression 
 and successfully defending them through prolonged sieges. 
 In these, contiguous to the principal edifice and part of it, 
 were immense reservoirs constantly filled with water and maga- 
 zines stored with provisions. This fluid, after the lapse of time 
 under confinement, reached absolute putrefaction; and when 
 the germs of disease began to spread among the countries of 
 Europe, its progress was accelerated by such filth, which 
 developed these seeds into pestilential bloom. 
 
 Under the stress of defective regulations, it was impossible 
 systematically to bury the rapidly increasing dead, or prevent 
 infection. In the sixth century, when a frightful pustular 
 malady racked with mortality the metropolis of the Eastern 
 Empire, destroying nearly ten thousand citizens daily, none 
 
 ^ " Quem quidam dicunt ignitum sidus, quidam nubam ascensam." Annales 
 Capit. Cracoviensis, sub an. 1264. 
 
 *Ricobaldi, Compilat. Chronolog., sub an. 1312. 
 
 »Cronica, sub an. cit., p. 980; Fl. Wig., Flor. Hist., Tom. II., p. 156. 
 
 "Ricobaldi, Histor. Tontif. Roman., sub an. i23of.
 
 350 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECOXOMY 
 
 could be found willing to inhume or cremate decaying 
 cadavera. 
 
 Municipal authority superintended these burials, and when 
 cemeteries were gorged with the dead, the roofs of several large 
 turrets were removed to receive the bodies, and after being 
 filled to repletion, the covering was replaced. These singular 
 sepulchres became sources of propagating a disease which a 
 scholastic annalist affirmed so pernicious that the human race 
 nearly succumbed;' the contents were therefore subsequently 
 shipped to sea, on transports and there sunk.® At a somewhat 
 later epoch, the entire Roman empire was subject to a pesti- 
 lence, preceded by the usual signs, and apparently provoked 
 by the heterogenous admixture of foreign nationalities, with 
 enervating depravity of Italian cities. The most celebrated 
 victims of this epidemic, in the year 582, were the bishop of 
 Nantes and the duchess of Burgundy, Austregild. A curious 
 circumstance renders her death of especial significance in this 
 inquiry, as attesting the enforcement of the ancient Teutonic 
 law, authorizing surviving kinsmen to pass judgment upon the 
 medical attendant of a defunct. 
 
 Prior to her death, the Burgundian queen accused the phy- 
 sicians of administering potions intended to deprive her of life, 
 and entreated the king to avenge the crime. After the solemn 
 obsequies were performed, the sorrowing consort, oppressed 
 by the weight of the oath freely given to the deceased princess, 
 satisfied the posthumous desire of the dead by slaying her 
 surgeons.' 
 
 Charlemagne's expedition against the Huns in 791, resulting 
 in the total extinction of their empire, was grievously embar- 
 
 ' " Exitalis pernicies generi huniano incumbebat." Evagrius, Scholast. Histor. 
 Ecclesiast, Lib. IV., cap. 29. 
 
 * Procopius, De Bello Persico, Lib. IL, c. 22. 
 
 '" Rex vero peracto ex more exsequio, oppressus ingenuse conjugre juramenta, 
 implevit prKceptam ini([uitatis; nam duos medicos qui ei studium adhibueiant, 
 gladeo ferire pra;cipit." Gregor. Tuton., Historia Francorum, Lib. V., c. 35 ; 
 and Ibid., Hist. Franc. Epitomata, cap., 82; also, Baronius, Annales, sub an. 
 582, Tom. X., \ 27.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 351 
 
 rassed by a malignant pestilence, which ravaged almost the 
 entire force of his army horses, so much so, indeed, that the 
 metrical annalist of the time dilates grandly upon the destruc- 
 tive energy of this disease, and asserts that of all the vast legions 
 of cavalry, barely a tenth part of the quadrupeds escaped/" 
 
 At intervals during the Middle Ages, with greater or less ' 
 frequency, maladies of mortal infection suddenly appeared, 
 against which medical and sanitary knowledge of the time was 
 utterly impotent. In the year 1093, an epidemical disease 
 devastated large portions of Germany, succeeded by singular 
 phenomena. The principal event appears to have been a flam- 
 ing fire moving throughout the entire universe," and may be 
 taken as an equivocal description of a lurid comet. 
 
 Blood-marks, with which the dread approach of destroying 
 maladies w^as announced, oftentimes presaged the death of prel- 
 ates or pontifical m.agnates; which occurred in the year 1130, 
 when Bertold, bishop of Hildisheim, and Honorius, the pope, 
 died.^^ In the latter part of the seventh century, the yellow 
 plague, which almost denuded England and Ireland of its pop- 
 ulation for a period of twenty years, was preceded by an 
 awful eclipse on the first of May." This pestilence was par- 
 ticularly severe in the Northumbrian district. The number of 
 victims that fell before its raging advance is incalculable, while 
 its death-list was swelled from the ranks of the most exalted 
 and humblest monks. A more excessive destruction seems to 
 have raged among the Irish, of whom two-thirds at least per- 
 ished." 
 
 Twenty-one years later, this destroying malady yet lurked 
 among the Anglo-Saxons in an unusually malignant form. 
 Great peers of the church were swept away by the pestilental 
 
 i^Anon., Annalista, Carolimagni, Lib. II., indie. 14. 
 ^'Chronicon Stadense, sub an. 1093 '> ^P- Meib. I., p. 452. 
 " Ibid., sub an. 1 130. 
 
 '* Fior. Wigiorn., Chronicon, Tom. I., p. 25 seq. Symeon Dunelh., Histor. 
 Ecclesise, Lib. I., cap. 5. 
 
 '*Beda, Eccles., Histor. Septent., Lib. III., c. 27.
 
 J ; 2 IIISTOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 storm, which continued to scourge the whole of Britain.''' 
 Paganistic Danes, according to the annahst of 897, preceded 
 the terrible malady, which added to the inexpressible vexa- 
 tions and sufferings of the English people, and destroyed 
 prelatial magnates and royal ministers, together with others 
 equally distinguished.^" 
 
 Early in the ninth century the mortality in many parts of 
 Germany was so great that in the convents religious services 
 were abandoned.'^ Towards the close of this era a plague 
 was traced with unusual discrimination to the putrefaction of 
 untold millions of dead locusts.'^ Pestilences in the Germanic 
 empire appear to have raged with so remarkable virulence in 
 the year 995, as to depopulate entire towns and cities,'* and 
 sometimes confined their destructive energies to the male sex, 
 while women possessed almost total immunity.^" The epi- 
 demic at Rome, in the year 1 167, by its mortality among men, 
 necessitated widows and other ladies seeking husbands from 
 adjacent Italian cities.'^' These infectious diseases were gen- 
 erally ascribed to astrological or diabolical provocation,'^ but 
 that of the year just designated, by the attestation of a con- 
 temporary, arose from malaria or impure air.^^ 
 
 It would seem that some of the great mediaeval epidemics 
 were of eastern origin, and through inefficient quarantine by 
 the Venetians, imported in the ordinary course of commercial 
 transport, or by the return of their disorganized and diseased 
 armies from the Levant. By the latter agency, in 1172, an 
 
 i*Fl. Wigiorn., Chronicon, Tom. I., p. 38. 
 i*Ibid., Tom. I., p. 115. 
 " Annalista Saxo, sub an. 807. 
 
 18" Ex earum autem foetore atque putredine aer corruptus diram pestem finiti- 
 mis generavit." Ibid., sub an. 884. 
 '^ Ibid., sub an. 995. 
 
 ^"Altahens. Maj. Annales, sub an. 1059. 
 
 *'Otto Frising., (iesta Frederic. Imp., Appendix, Lib. IV., an. 116S. 
 '* Ricobaldi, Compilatio Clironologia, sub an. 1312. 
 *' Ilelmoldi, Ciironicon, sub. an. 1167.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 3-3 
 
 awful pestiferous disorder was introduced into Venice. On 
 the cowardly retreat of the republican forces from the isle of 
 Scio, where this plague had revealed itself, before their arrival 
 at the shores of Italy, the soldiery on board the transports 
 were decimated almost to annihilation. Upon its introduction 
 at Venice, this pestilence made frightful ravages among the 
 immense populace, as it had done two centuries previous.-'* 
 
 For a prolonged period thousands of citizens perished 
 daily .'^^ Frequently the accurate judgment of medical philos- 
 ophers was able to predict the approach of dread diseases on 
 account of the atmosphere indicating an unusual impurity, as 
 happened in the year 1 191, when the emperor of Germany, as 
 early as the fourteenth of April, withdrew his forces into the 
 mountains for sanitary safety.'"' From the Justinian pestilence 
 throughout the Middle Ages, no infectious malady excited 
 greater terror or caused such terrible destruction of human 
 life, as that which appeared in the provinces of Northern 
 Italy late in the year 1347." 
 
 In Venice its approach was announced by a series of earth- 
 quakes, commencing on the 25th of January ensuing. For a 
 period of fifteen days repeated shocks overturned numerous 
 public edifices, shattered into fragments three enormous bell- 
 towers, and inspired unutterable consternation among the in- 
 habitants. ■ To these calamities succeeded the plague of 1348, 
 originally introduced through the close commercial relations 
 between the Genovese and the Ottoman empire. From the 
 shores of the Black sea it was carried in trading vessels to 
 Sicily, and thence spread in a most malignant form to the Tus- 
 can countries — notably Florence.^® 
 
 In this city, according to the vivid discription of Boccaccio, 
 an eye-witness to its fury, more than a hundred thousand per- 
 
 ^* Daru, Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 27. 
 ■■^5 Ibid., Tom. I., p. 28. 
 
 ^® Hugonis, Chronicon, Continuat. Wcingart, sub an. 1195. 
 " Daru, op. cit., Tom. I., p. 124. 
 '■"* Boccacio, II Decamerone, Prefazione. 
 23
 
 ^ ^ 4 HIS TORY OF ME Die A L E CONOM Y 
 
 sons perished during the height of this epidemic.'-" Naples lost 
 sixty thousand of its inhabitants, Sienna eighty thousand, and 
 Genoa forty thousand. 
 
 It has been asserted that at this epoch Europe was deci- 
 mated to three-fifths of its population.^" • Annalists of the time 
 dilate with horror upon the unmitigated severity of this de- 
 structive pestilence, and such of them as survived it apostro- 
 phized its malignant energy, at one time, as threatening the 
 complete extinction of the human race. Indeed, in many local- 
 ities the proportion of the living to the victims was infinitely 
 less than the conjecture of the chroniclers, which Daru inclines 
 to doubt." The annals are nearly unanimous in stating its 
 origin to be traceable among pagan Mussulmans beyond the 
 sea; and so grievous were its ravages in many localities, towns 
 and cities, that the country for a thousand paces in every direc- 
 tion was depopulated of every human being.'^^ The route of 
 this mortal malady, whether originally by sinister approaches 
 emitted from the densely populated Chinese empire,^^ or di- 
 rectly originating with the Ottomen, followed with an irregular, 
 irrational serpentine movement, in the general direction of 
 water courses — so much so in fact that its progress and viru- 
 lent forces were usually confined to seaport cities, and thence 
 along inland streams to larger provincial towns and hamlets. 
 
 Especially was such the pathway relentlessly pursued by 
 this awful destroying agent throughtout Italy ,^* in the Venetian 
 country, and in Provence. At this epoch, the Romish hier- 
 archy occupied the city of Avignon, and during three days 
 preceding Lenten Sabbath, more than fourteen hundred dead 
 bodies were entombed. But the most sinister statement of 
 the contemporaneous chronicler whom we follow, is his decla- 
 
 ''"Daru, Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 124. 
 
 3» Ibid. 
 
 •'" Ibid. 
 
 '^"^ Rebdorf, Annales, .sub an. 1347. 
 
 ^•'' Chronicon Oldenburg, Archi-Comit., sub an. 1350. 
 
 •*'' Rebdorf, op. cit., sub an. 1347.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. ^^r 
 
 ration, that in the municipality of Marseilles so many men per- 
 ished as to leave the city actually uninhabited!''* 
 
 Its subsequent route was across the Alps, passing these 
 high altitudes without mitigating the infectious malignancy, 
 into Hungary, ravaging the whole of Germany, thence into 
 France, where, as in Ireland, a third portion only of the inhab- 
 itants survived its calamitous attacks.^'' Immediately after the 
 brief but decisive campaign against the Poles, anterior to the 
 year 1350, the pestilence began to reveal itself in the more ob- 
 scure places of the Germanic empire. In these regions, the 
 approaching appearance was heralded by the most sombre and 
 unnatural phenomena, such as incredible famine, forcing hu- 
 manity to eat herbs similar to beasts, inundation of many cities 
 and towns, while, indeed, in the same year a marvellous 
 drought was followed by storms of such deluging rainfall as to 
 sweep away entire villages.^' 
 
 Medical skill receded before the inroads of this unpreced- 
 ented malady, which maintained a destructive virulence in 
 some provinces for a whole year,'** in others extending to 
 three.^^ It was generally accepted at this epoch that the mal- 
 ady originated in the Oriental Indies, transmitted by extreme 
 filth, and creeping by stealthy marches as far as the British 
 Isles,*" where it entered England at the principal maritime 
 ports of Southampton and Bristol, during the year 1348." 
 Strange to narrate, notwithstanding the philosophical sagacity 
 touching the origin and development of this dreaded disease, 
 
 ^^"Imo dicebatur, quod iri civitate Marsiliensi ex hoc pestilentia tot homines 
 moribantur, quod locus quasi iiihabitabilis remansit." Rebdorf, Annales, sub an. 
 1347- 
 
 =56 Ibid. 
 
 ■'"Chronica Oldenburgensium, sub an. 1350. 
 
 ^^ Rebdorf, op. cit., sub an. 1347. 
 
 *^ Chronic. Oldenburg., sub an. 1350. 
 
 *" " Pestis lugubris et miserima,'' etc., " quae primo in Asia, apud Indios, ob 
 quasdam bestiolas incipiens." Ibid., sub an. 1350; and Chronic. Oldenberg., 
 sub an. 1350. 
 
 *i Knyghton, De Eventibus Angliix;, Lib. IV.; ap. X. Script., p. 259S seq.
 
 >56 
 
 HISTOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 popular frenzy seized upon the horrible suggestion, that the 
 Jews were chargeable with its propagation by means of poison- 
 ous philters." Such clamorous inculpation was sufficient to 
 arouse the insensate fury of a degraded and terrified populace. 
 
 Everywhere these inoffensive citizens were slaughtered, as 
 a chronicler of the time ingenuously writes, after the manner 
 of cattle — more pecudum." Impartial criticism must decide that 
 superior sanitary precautions by the Israelites enabled them 
 materially in escaping the destructive energies of this disease, 
 which apparent exemption stirred the envious rage of their 
 Christian enemies. In a single province of Germany, during 
 the triennial devastation of the plague, over five thousand her- 
 mit friars perished, according to the annals of this order." 
 Substantially identical indications of that sensitive, nervous 
 excitability related by the historian of the Justinian pest,*^ were 
 reproduced in the year 1 348. 
 
 Men, frightened to the very verge of insanity, abandoned 
 their domicils, and wandered aimlessly in woods and forests; 
 vineyards and fields were deserted, nor was the voice of a 
 human being to be heard. In the dreadful silence of night, 
 and the more appalling tranquillity of the noonday, sounds as 
 of a tumultuous crowd were distinctly perceptible, and at times 
 the suppressed repercussion of an advancing army struck the 
 sensitive ear, but in no direction were their footsteps visible.'"' 
 To the excited vision of many, two angels typifying the malev- 
 olent and beneficent principles were presented sweeping 
 through cities in the awful gloom of night: the malignant 
 spirit, with hunting-spear in hand, by permission of the good 
 angel, struck the portals of certain abodes — on the following 
 day, all the occupants were dead.*' The pestilence arrived in 
 
 ^^Chronicon Oldenhuigens., sub an. 1350. 
 
 ■•^ Chronicon Schavveiiburgcn, sub an. 1348. 
 
 ■^Chronica Oldenb., sub an. 1350. 
 
 ** Procopius, De Bello Persico, Lib. II., cap. 22. 
 
 ^* Chr. Oldenburg., sub an. 1350. 
 
 *'" Tunc visibiliter multis hominibus videntibus apparuerunt duo angeli, unus
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 357 
 
 England preceded by unusual events, which, in this instance, 
 was incessant rain for three or four months. 
 
 At the very beginning its ravages were terrible, especially 
 in the north and on the eastern shores, where the mortality 
 was slightly over a half From the trustworthy attestation of 
 Murimuth's continuator, living at the time of this epidemic, an 
 excellent notion of its awful malignity may be gathered. He 
 states in many religious houses, out of twenty inmates, often- 
 times there were barely two persons surviving its destructive 
 energies.** According to the information evidently obtained 
 by the chronicler from reliable sources, in numerous localities 
 a tenth part of the inhabitants only escaped. As an aggran- 
 dizement of so deplorable calamit)', a pestiferous infection sud- 
 denly fell upon domestic animals, which prev^ented annual 
 returns of the soil ; and then, as he gloomily narrates, the land 
 formerly thrifty with culture, became a solitude, abandoned by 
 the peasantry, and remained untilled. 
 
 So great was the miser^^ that it was feared these provinces 
 would never be restored to their previous condition.'"' The 
 plague of 1355, in England, evidently the propagation of the 
 earlier, was expressly ascribed to malevolent spirits.^" This 
 disorder seems to have caused partial insanity, which forced 
 the infects to wander like frenzied imbeciles and demoniacs, 
 howling through city and hamlet, in the street and on the 
 public highways, everywhere throughout the realm.*^ The 
 third and last of the great pestilences, which for an inter- 
 mittent period of twenty years had scourged the people of 
 
 bonus alter malus transeuntes per urbem nocturno tempore : malus tenebat vena- 
 bulum in manu," etc. Chr. Oldenburg., sub an. 1350. 
 
 • **" In quibus vero religiosis domibus, de viginti non superant nisi duo." Ad. 
 Murimuth, Chronic. Continuator, sub an. 1348, p. 178. 
 
 « Ibid. 
 
 ^^ " Temptatione malorum spiritorum." Knyghton, De Eventibus Anglioe, Lib. 
 IV., p. 2598 seq. " And the fendes was seen in mannes lykenesse, and spake unto 
 men as they traveled by the way." Fabian's Chronicle, p. 474, Ellis. Ed. Not 
 in Ed. of 1559. 
 
 5' Demons seen in iioo. Fl. Wigior., Chronic, Tom. II., p. 46.
 
 358 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 England, began in the year 1369, presaged by incessant in- 
 undations and almost total destruction of the grain crops, so 
 that in the ensuing year a measure of flour sold at three solidi. 
 Mortality of man and beast, at this period, was enormous. 
 One victim was Edward Ill's, queen Phillipa, among a mul- 
 titude of eminent spiritual and secular noblemen.^^ The pesti- 
 lence of 1348 was carried up the Rhone by two fishermen, 
 who communicated it to their spouses. The chronist adds 
 that every human being in the hamlet died with the disease,^'' 
 and during the height of the plague along the shores of this 
 stream, unnumbered dead of towns and cities were thrown at 
 night into the river.*"* An attempt was made in Paris, to 
 enforce a system of sanitary precaution, by forbidding barbers 
 to furnish baths, and surgeons, both male and female, were 
 interdicted throwing blood of pestifers in the streets and alleys 
 of the city.'^ With few exceptions all the monarchies of West- 
 ern Europe were swept by this fearful malady, everywhere 
 revealing itself with dreadful and unifo.rm symptoms. Ulcer- 
 ated suppuration^" was the earliest form of the disorder, whose 
 progress after the few first hours advanced to more serious 
 manifestations. With men, and this sex appears to have been 
 originally more liable to inoculation, the disease appeared in 
 the form of glandular ulcers beneath the armpits and upon the 
 genitalia or elsewhere.^' In many localities it was adolescent 
 males who perished, either through excruciating physical 
 agony, in six or eight days, or by excretion of sanguinary 
 
 »^Ad. Murimuth, Chronicon Continuator, p. 195 seq; and Fabian's Chronicle, 
 p. 245. 
 
 ''■' " Duo piscatores per Rodanum de partibus inferioribus cum piscibus ascen- 
 dentes Lugdunum — Lyons — subintrant, et conlinues vicus ubi hospitabantur in- 
 ficebatur, et mulieres simul illorum duorum piscatorum pestifera contagione 
 morientes." Herman Corneri, Chronicon, sub an. 1348; and Vitorudani, Chron- 
 icon, sub an. 1348. 
 
 ^' Ordonnances, Rois de France de la Trois. Race, Tom. II., p. 383. 
 
 55 Ibid. 
 
 5* Boccacio, II Decanierone, Prefaz., p. 5. 
 
 5' Rebdorf; Annales, sub an. 1348, Freher. I., p. 630.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 359 
 
 exudation. Such diseased spots were denominated emunctoria 
 by physicians, because the secretions or subtle perspiration 
 were the more readily emitted by nature through these parts.^* 
 Throughout Germany this epidemic raged with undiminished 
 virulence for five or six years, and had not altogether disap- 
 peared long afterwards. 
 
 Popular notions touching the poisoning of wells and springs 
 by Jews, largely aided in propagating the curious order of 
 Flagellants, or a religious order of scourgers, without an ac- 
 knowleged head.^'' The advent of this singular mania or 
 malady is chronicled as early as the year 1248, when for the 
 first time they appeared in Bohemia.™ A record is made of 
 their sad procession in Poland twelve years later," and at the 
 same tijne they are alluded to in Italy, as a novelty.^" Usually 
 they traveled in troops of seventy or eighty, armed with a 
 knotted scourge, and by force of fervid enthusiasm, induced 
 multitudes to join their intrepid ranks."^ 
 
 In the year 1260, urged by the necessity of counteracting the 
 consternation which rendered the encroachment of epidemics 
 of comparative ease, this system of public penance spread so 
 rapidly through many provinces, that it was everywhere 
 received and hailed as miraculous." Their first appearance in 
 Southern Europe was assigned to a slender procession from 
 Perugia"'' to Florence, enlarging by the accession of noblemen 
 and merchants in the beginning, and afterwards by rustics 
 and vagrants. 
 
 This mode of penitential suffering, according to contempor- 
 
 ^^ Rebdorf, Annales, sub an. 1348. 
 ^' Chronicon Schawenburg., suli an. 1348. 
 
 60 << Flagellatores iveiunt primii, incipientes in Bohemia et post per mundum." 
 Chronicon Engelhusii, sub an. 1248; Leibnitz II., p. 11 19. 
 ^^ Annales Capit. Cracoviensis, an. 1260. 
 ^-"Quae fertur Perusii recipisse exordium." Ibid. 
 *^ Rebdorf, Annales, sub an. 1349. 
 8* Chronicon Australis, sub an. 1261, Freher. I., p. 461. 
 ^^ Annales Capituli Cracoviensis, sub an. 1 260.
 
 ^6o HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 aneoLis writers and ocular witnesses, was harsh, horrible and 
 pitiable to behold. The immediate object of such organized 
 system of corporeal flagellation was the invocation of the 
 curative powers of divine angelic hosts through self-inflicted 
 pain, in order that this potential sacrifice of personality might 
 provoke a restoration of the infirm to health, and preserve the 
 robust against the destroying force of pestilential maladies, 
 produced by malignant spirits. Entirely nude from- the navcl 
 upwards, a vestment of close texture falling to the feet covering 
 the lower body, they marched with head and face concealed, 
 in order that their identity might remain a mystery.^® 
 
 Slowly advancing in pairs or triplets, oftentimes clerics with 
 a banner or crucifix displayed attending, they scourged them- 
 selves twice each day during thirty-three days, in commenmo- 
 ration of Christ's Passion, wherever their ambulatory move- 
 ments found them, constantly chanting certain songs drawn 
 from the Passionale, with distinct movement by twos or threes 
 in a solemn whirl, or completed the melancholy intonation in 
 sacred edifices; sometimes falling insensible to the earth, or 
 rising in genuflections, elevated their naked arms imploringly 
 to heaven, alike indifferent to mud or snow, the heat of summer 
 and the frigidity of winter.**' 
 
 In Italy, as they passed along the highways, the monoto- 
 nous cry of "Peace! peace!" was sounded, ^\■hile the women 
 flagellants moving in troops partially dijsrobed, regarded those 
 non-conforming to these usages as sacrilegious.®* In the 
 year 1261, so rapid was the increase that they were numbered 
 by thousands among all nations."" Pontifical and secular con- 
 tempt of this popular frenzy gradually tempered the excessive 
 zeal into a corporation, denuded of its exciting displays.™ 
 
 Durine: the stretch of time over which the ardent fanaticism 
 
 '■'"Chronicon Augustalis, sub an. 1260. 
 
 "'Ibid., sub an. 12C0 
 
 •"^ Ricobaldi, Historia Imperatoium, an. 1260. 
 
 "'■* Chronica S. Aegidii, sub an. 1261. 
 
 '"Chronicon Augustalis, sub an. 1261, Freher. T., p. 534.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 361 
 
 of their original enthusiasm glowed with undimished passion, 
 in Germany as early it would seem as 1349, near the festival 
 of the Lord's Ascension, a body of Flagellants in proceeding 
 through a town in the diocess of Bamberg, where were domi- 
 ciled great numbers of Jews, were most unexpectedly assailed 
 by the disgusted Hebrews, who deliberately assassinated four- 
 teen of these inoffensive penitents, and as a fitting termination 
 to so valorous a deed of inglorious murder, fired the citadel 
 and destroyed several citizens/' 
 
 In the same year, however, the scourgers, under the puis- 
 sant exhortation of a German nobleman, seized an opportunity 
 to slaughter all the Jews at Cologne,'" perhaps by way of retali- 
 atory vengeance. Thus advancing from city to village, through 
 towns and hamlets, with blood-stained scourges and burning 
 tapers in hand, they recruited immense crowds to their peni- 
 tential ranks." 
 
 Prophetic voices quickly developed among the Flagellants, 
 which annouriced the forth-coming antipope.'* It is stated in 
 the trustworthy chronicles of the time, when this sect had ex- 
 hibited its vigorous vitality for several months, the women 
 began to assume this repugnant system of mortfication in vast 
 multitudes, denuded to the waist, and scourging themselves 
 severely. The exorbitant assumption by this people of their 
 superior sanctity, their omnipotent force to remit vice and 
 crime, and their unblushing proclamation of sortilege, com- 
 bined with defiant disregard of sacerdotal authority, finally 
 armed the regular church with indignation, especially when it 
 revealed the singular fad that the laity preponderated more to 
 the nude penitents than to their spiritual advisers, and led to the 
 extinction of one of the most curious orders of the Middle 
 Ages." 
 
 " Rebdorf, Annales, sub an. 1349, Freher. I., p. 630. 
 
 " " Tunc vero omnes Judrei in Colonia interfecti sunt sub occasione dicta." 
 Chronica de Marka, sub an. 1349; ap. Meib. I., p. 405. 
 '^ Chronicon Augustalis, sub an. 1260. 
 '*Chronicon Schawenburg., sub an. 1348. 
 '^Rebdorf, op. cit., sub an. 1348.
 
 362 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 The last of the several epidemics described, had barely dis- 
 appeared beneath the relentless power of the Romish Church, 
 when a malady, the most remarkable perhaps ever chronicled 
 in the history of the human race, suddenly manifested itself 
 by an uncontrollable impulse to saltimbulation or dancing, 
 either singly or in groups. 
 
 This disease may with justice be regarded as the very cul- 
 mination of that excitability and exasperation of the nervous 
 organism, so frequently revealing its direful virulence amid 
 the strange eventualities of mediaeval times. Doubtless the 
 frightful calamities survived in the pestilential ravages of the 
 fourteenth century, together with excitations attending the 
 sombre sadness of the sanguinary Flagellants, precipitated the 
 dancing frenzy at the close of the same era. In addition to 
 these elements jointly or operating individually, the super- 
 stitious faith of those ages attests to what calamitous solstices 
 the human mind may swing. 
 
 Vulgar traditions and unreliable legends, repeated nightly 
 around the blazing fires of each domestic hearth, or gravely 
 narrated to awe-struck multitudes at fairs, public markets and 
 on great church festival days, assisted in maintaining an un- 
 reasonable spiritual activity. For centuries preceding the act- 
 ual outbreak of the dancing infirmity, the mediaeval mind was 
 held to an abnormal strain by the impossible narrations writ- 
 ten in monastic annals. A few of these will portray the con- 
 dition of such superstitious faith. In the year 1200, popular 
 tradition propagated the notion that a man by the nailie of 
 Nicolanus Piscis, actually lived in the sea, and could not sur- 
 vive out of water — a domicil enforced upon him by maternal 
 malediction.™ 
 
 Towards the close of this century, it was everywhere be- 
 lieved that Authonica, an Italian woman, was delivered of 
 forty-two children prior to her fortieth year, of whom several 
 sets were twins, others quadruplets." But another annalist 
 
 '^ Ricobaldi, Compilatio Chronologia, sub an. 1200. 
 
 " Ricobaldi, Ilistoria Imperalorum, sub an. 1274. Human flesh eaten in the
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 363 
 
 does not hesitate to affirm the birth of three hundred sons in 
 one parturition.'^ The same legend in PoLmd, ascribed only 
 thirty-six at once to the noble lady, in the year 1270."' Fam- 
 ine was so severe in the 3'ear 13 15, that women ate their own 
 offspring.®" Tartaric invasions of the Greek empire in the 
 thirteenth century, produced such distressing misery that 
 human beings were slaughtered like beeves, and their flesh ex- 
 posed for sale as a vendible commodity in public markets.*' 
 During the great plague of 1348, deaths were so numerous as 
 to preclude the possibility of burying them, and in the terror, 
 both living and dead were carried to the cemeteries for burial. 
 
 From 1350 to 1383, inclusively, this saltatory pestilence 
 devastated many places in Germany every seven years. The 
 historian of the time from whom the foregoing is extracted, 
 unequivocally affirms this malady at Paderborn was not en- 
 tirely extinct in the year 141 8, when he completed the Cosmo- 
 drome.®^ Ardent fanaticism developed from abnormal religious 
 frenzy or irrational social life, and aggravated mediaeval super- 
 stitions, conjoined to extreme dread of swiftly destructive 
 maladies, prepared the popular mind for the singular disease 
 which swept through Germany in 1374. It was described by 
 chroniclers as a wonderful and unheard-of disorder, first arising 
 in Cologne and vicinity, and quickly transmitted to other 
 cities along the Rhine.®* 
 
 Groups of both sexes, driven with the fury of Bacchanalian 
 devotees, leaped and jumped in choral dances, totally divested 
 
 year 1070. Fl. Wigior., Chronicon, Tom. II., p. 4. A Polish annalist in the 
 thirteenth century discusses the probability of green children. Annales Polonior., 
 sub an. 1270. 
 
 ^^ Chronica Osnabergens, sub an. 1270; ap. Meib. II., p. 217. 
 
 ™ Annales Poloniorum, sub an. 1270. 
 
 ^^ Graystones, Historia Dunelmensis, cap. 56. 
 
 ®^ " Interea fames horribilis et inaudita invasit terram Ungarire, et plures perier- 
 unt famse, quam antea a paganis, canes edebant et cattes et hominis, humana caro 
 publice vendebatur in mundinis." Chronica Australis, sub an. 1242. 
 
 *'^GobeI., Person. Cosmodromii, Aetas VI., c. 59. 
 
 *^ Chronicon Engelhusii, sub an. 1374.
 
 2 64 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 of personal volition, incited to involuntary muscular tremor and 
 spasmodic movement by the resistless force of this singular 
 malady.^* In troops, they continued with feverish frenzy 
 their morbid dancing upon the public thoroughfares, through 
 churches, or in private houses, and suddenly, as though 
 demented, would fall singly or in pairs to the ground.^^ 
 A heavy girth or swaddling band encircled the abdomen, 
 appaj-ently to guard against the eruptive force of humid secre- 
 tions, and, in case the cord attaching this girdle happened to 
 become loose, the infects drew it tightly to its place ; but even 
 this did not appear to satisfy these maniacal invalids, who re- 
 peatedly demanded by-standers to tread their feet upon their 
 stomachs while they reclined on the ground; consequently 
 when. one tumbled over he oftentimes raised two or three 
 persons thus treading him by the distended elasticity of his 
 abdominal muscles. 
 
 A curious characteristic of this disease was the abhorrence 
 of red cloth and roseate shoes, which they held in mortal 
 dread. The progressive increase of this malady may be 
 readily inferred when it is stated, on first sight, these suffering 
 and distorted dancers inspired spectators with a feeling of hor- 
 ror, which was gradually transformed into a species of fascina- 
 tion, provoking them to join their ranks. Although the sight of 
 purple garments and pink shoes filled this stricken people with 
 consternation, some were demonstrated to be deceived in colors, 
 whose alarm was therefore fallacious.^^ 
 
 The annalist whom we have followed was an eye-.witness to 
 
 the painful antics of these diseased contortionists, and in the 
 
 •year 1418, when he completed his chronicle,*'*' the disorder had 
 
 8* Ibid. 
 
 *^ Chronicon Engelhusii, sub an. 1374. 
 
 ^^ Gobelin Personse, Cosmodromii, Aetas VI., cap. 59. 
 
 *^"Pannum rubeum, et calceos rostrates se dixierunt abominari." Chr. En- 
 gelhusii, sub an. 1374. Municipal authorities interdicted the use of such apparel, 
 on account of its exciting the possessed to frenzy. Hecker, Die Tanzwuth, p. 4. 
 
 **GobeI. Person., op. cit., Aet. VI., cap. 69.
 
 DURING l^HE MIDDLE AGES. 365 
 
 appeared in Strassburg, where it was known as Saint Vitus' 
 dance by reason of invalids frequenting his chapel for its med- 
 icinal property.*^ At all events, the visible manifestations of a 
 painful malady were too evident for denial, although enlight- 
 enegl minds of the age were in doubt whether this singular 
 pestilence should be classed as a physical disease, or attributed 
 to besetment and possession by impure demons.^" 
 
 Attempts have been essayed frequently to institute a possi- 
 ble similitude between the choral saltimbulations of the Mid- 
 dle Ages and the convulsive leaping of modern religious secta- 
 rians.®' No doubt the external revelation of muscular action 
 assimilates with that of their mediaeval precursors, but the 
 causes inciting such nervous exasperation were of such antag- 
 onistic character as to make the analogy only apparent, and not 
 grounded in reality. Music was used with admirable results 
 as a cure of this malady,®^ and maybe taken as a correct expo- 
 nent of the more ancient incantation, or song remedies in 
 healing disorders.**^ 
 
 8^ Hecker, op. cit., p. 8. 
 
 *' Gobelin Personse, Cosmodromii, Aetas VI., cap. 69. 
 
 ^1 Hecker, Die Tanzwuth, p. 79. 
 
 92 Ibid., p. 42. 
 
 '^" Si autem hi.s conveniens adjungitur medicina," etc., " cum medicina corpus, 
 incantatione anima adjuvetur." Constans African., De Incantat. et Adjural., 
 Epistol., p. 318.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Medifeval Universities for Medical Study— Parisian Schools — Great Ex- 
 cellence of Italian Colleges — Favorable Regulations for Students — 
 Great Numbers Flock to Italy— Have their own Laws — Monetary 
 Value of a Celebrated Professor — Colleges Confer Knighthood — Large 
 Fees to Surgeons — Female Physicians — Public Surgery — Beneficial 
 Ordinances for Medical Culture — Medical Books Translated Direct 
 from Arabic — Text-books on Comparative Anatomy — Regulations of 
 Frederick II. for the Study and Practice of Medicine — Schedule of 
 Medical Fees. 
 
 THE ardent zeal displayed by Charlemagne upon his acqui- 
 sition of the imperial crown to lay a solid foundation for 
 the culture of letters throughout his vast empire, is sufficiently 
 attested by diversified legislation, whose specific object was a 
 mandatory regulation for the monasteries to organize schools 
 of instruction in the famous liberal arts and sciences. The 
 beneficial effects of these laws, entrusted to the administration 
 of clerical authority, were fully revealed in the Middle Ages 
 by the tenacity with which cloisters and convents adhered to 
 their scholastic institutions, which, under discreet and judicious 
 management, developed into the great Universities of Law and 
 Medicine, the embellishment of mediaeval Europe. 
 
 In the tenth century, Adam of Bremen referred with lauda- 
 ble pride to the flourishing schools of that church under the 
 excellent direction of Tiadelhmus.^ Early in the ensuing age, 
 Odinkar, a nephew of the king of Sleswig, was converted from 
 the worship of Thor and Odin, and after receiving Christian 
 baptism was educated for an evangelical mission in the Bremen 
 school.'' 
 
 1 Ad. Brem., De Gest. Pontif., Hammab., Lib. IL, c. lo; and Albert StacL, 
 Chronic, sub an. 961. 
 
 "^ Adam Bremen., Gesta Pontific. Ilammab., Lib. II., cap. 34. 
 
 (366)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 367 
 
 Educational establishments in the Gallic abbeys were famed 
 in the time of the Anglo-Saxons, who sent their youth thither 
 in large numbers for instruction,^ a custom followed by the 
 Danish Cnut, whose sons were entrusted' to the French 
 schools for scholastic culture.* The Scandinavians sent their 
 children to Paris in the twelfth century, to be taught not only 
 theology but secular sciences.'^ Some monastic schools ex- 
 celled others in the diversity and thoroughness of tuition in 
 divinity or theological readings, and also in mathematics, as- 
 tronomy, geometry, music, and versification, according to the 
 Hirsau annals,® and in the more intricate knowledge of the 
 medicinal or curative art. 
 
 One of the most illustrious scholars of the tenth century, 
 whose culture was obtained in the convent designated," was 
 Witchind, of Corbey, who signalized a sojourn at Hirsau by 
 his solidity of erudition, and the vast number of disciples whom 
 he left behind him. His successor, preceptor of Tiadelhmus 
 of Bremen, likewise equally distinguished himself In the 
 early part of the eleventh century the schools of France had 
 acquired extended repute, and were frequented by students 
 from abroad in quest of advanced instruction in arts and scien- 
 ces.® English rulers, perhaps from the time of national con- 
 version to Christianity, were accustomed to defraying the cur- 
 rent expenses of a school for their countrymen at the chief 
 city of Christendom. The edifice erected in Rome by Offa, 
 the Anglo-Saxon king, for the accommodation of students from 
 England, was destroyed in 837 by a great conflagration.^ 
 
 ^ Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, Tom. V., p. 265 seq. Famed in the 
 seventh century. Hen., Huntingd. Historiar., Lib. III., p. 332. 
 
 *Gesta Cnutonis, Lib. IL, cap. 18. 
 
 ^"Nobiliores terrKfilios suos non solum ad cleruni promovendum, verum etiam 
 secularibus rebus institutuendos Parisius mittunt." Arnold, Chronicon Slavor., 
 Lib. III., cap. 5. 
 
 " Chronicon Hirsaug., sub an. 890. 
 
 ' Ibid., sub an. 952-4. 
 
 ^Albert Stad., Chronicon, sub an. 1033. 
 
 "Wm. Malmsb., De Gestis Reg. Anglor., Lib. II., c. 2.
 
 .68 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 In general, conventual scholastic institutions were organized 
 upon a dwarfed scheme, although educational facilities pro- 
 vided in the def artments of Salerno and elsewhere, under ex- 
 clusive control of the Romish hierarchy, more enlarged 
 instruction. 
 
 Anterior to the twelfth century, however, scientific corpora- 
 tions, expanded to the dimensions required by the succeeding 
 ages, certainly had no existence, such at least as presented in 
 the era alluded to. The name universitas signified an associ- 
 ation or organization in the sense assigned by civil law,'" 
 gradually developed by intercommunication of tutors to dis- 
 ciples of the selected subject of tuition, while the words studium 
 generale had reference to the prerogative of each foreign or 
 native student to procure this culture, involving the doctorate, 
 and constituted the exclusive possession of these well equipped 
 schools. Notwithstanding Italian universities, at their origin," 
 were independent of abject royal or pontifical control, the 
 necessities entailed upon teachers by the fluctuating compen- 
 satory collections from their disciples forced them at a later 
 epoch, in escaping this servile dependency, to accept sacerdotal 
 jurisdiction; so that the thirteenth century witnessed this 
 supremacy over the scholastic institutions, the chiefs of which 
 were spiritual guides recruited from the ranks of the church. 
 
 In order that the department of theology might be suitably 
 filled, the popes finally assumed the right of preferment; and 
 indeed such official sanction was eagerly desired, as especially 
 favorable to the popularity of the university .^^ In the contest 
 to subject the students attending the Bolognese colleges in 
 1 216, when the citizens sought to extend jurisdiction over 
 them, Honorius arrayed himself with the scholars, and ordered 
 the immediate repeal of laws affecting their freedom in that 
 municipality.^'' In the preceding century, aided by royal and 
 
 '"Savigny, Geschichte des Rcemischen Rcchts, Th. III., p. 152. 
 11 Ibid., p. 155. 
 
 ^'■'Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen, Th. VI., p. 341. 
 '•'' Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen, Th. VI., p. 341.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 369 
 
 pontifical sufferance, or important dotations, three schools, as 
 early as 1 158, had a reputation which extended throu<j^hout 
 the whole of Europe: Paris for theological studies, Bologna 
 for Roman or civil law, and Salerno as the chief medical 
 school of the west. The Bologna University in the year cited 
 obtained valuable immunities from Frederick I., emperor of 
 Germany, at the diet of Roncaglia, in the month of November. 
 
 One of the priceless results of this legislation, intended per- 
 haps exclusively for Bologna, was its ultimate interpretation 
 so as to extend its beneficent franchises to all forci(jn students 
 seeking information and higher education, whether of law or 
 medicine, in the pontifical colleges. Stranger students, who 
 exposed themselves to greater inconveniences in attending the 
 Bolognese University, were conceded particular immunities. 
 They were at entire liberty to travel to their destination un- 
 hindered, and any interference with these ambulatory preroga- 
 tives was interdicted by the severest penalties, nor were they 
 liable to be arrested and held to answer for delinquencies of 
 their compatriots. By a canon of the provincial synod held 
 in Montpelier in the year 1 195, all scholars, whether natives 
 or otherwise, were to be protected in going or returning to 
 France." 
 
 But the ordinances of the Hohenstauffen monarch proceeded 
 further, and directed when students were accused of crime, or 
 required to appear in a civil action, the invaluable privilege 
 was accorded of trial by a specially constituted tribunal. The 
 phraseology of the code would seem to warrant the inference 
 that this judicial function was to be performed by professors or 
 bishops of the city.'^ Such franchises were certainly claimed 
 and exercised by the scholars in the Medical Universities of 
 Southern Italy at this epoch, by virtue of an application which 
 the ordinance itself seemed to admit, although, as we shall pre- 
 sently see, specific regulations of equally exact and important 
 character were promulgated by Frederick II., in the exclusive 
 
 " Concilium Monpeliense, cap. 7 ; apud Baluz., Concilia, Tom. I., p. 31. 
 15 Codex IV., Titulus 13, lex. 5. 
 24
 
 370 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 interest of medical culture. The profound concern manifested 
 by the emperor at the Roncevaux Congress for the develop- 
 ment of arts and sciences, appears from the rescript quoted. 
 He says : " We consider il indispensable, as all good men merit 
 our praise and protection, therefore those whose science and 
 erudition are to enlighten the whole world shall be protected 
 with unwavering carefulness against oppression.'"" 
 
 By gradual pressure entailed through necessity, and by 
 interest of municipalities where these theological, law, or 
 medical institutions were situated, a salutary eagerness began 
 to display itself, to procure such professors whose extensive 
 reputation and vast learning would add wealth and prosperity 
 to the cities by the affluence of multitudes of scholars attracted 
 thither by professorial fame. In many places — Bologna, Fer- 
 rara, etc. — these savans, or doctors, were relieved of public 
 taxes and other civil burdens; oftentimes important grants suf- 
 ficient to guarantee them a comfortable livelihood were cheer- 
 fully donated.^^ 
 
 Such arrangements were of vital necessity, inasmuch as the 
 departure of a celebrated professor would cause the city to be 
 nearly deserted by its students, who generally followed their 
 tutor to his new professorship, a possible event sought to be 
 avoided by compelling the teacher to enter into a contract.'** 
 It was occasionally stipulated that the scientific lecturer thus 
 provided by the municipal government should at his conve- 
 nience publicly read for the exclusive benefit of native citizens; 
 an agreement which, it would seem, was freely acquiesced in 
 by the erudite doctors ambitious for local distinction.'^ 
 
 That assemblage of scholars, specially convoked by their 
 rectors, was designated Universitas, or University, where the 
 sense of the convocation was taken by a vote with white and 
 black beans, and before which each matriculate must appear at 
 
 '8 Codex IV., Tit. 13, lex. 5; and Constitut., l\ 8-10. 
 "Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. IV., p. 64. 
 'Tetr. de Vineis, Epistolae, Lib. VI., cap. 11. 
 "Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., pp. 56, 257.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 171 
 
 least thrice a year to entitle himself to municipal immunities.'-^" 
 In order to render the ordinances of Frederick I. of useful effi- 
 ciency, the provosts of these schools were at length conceded 
 original jurisdiction over all students, excepting Germans reg- 
 ularly entered at the educational institutions.'-^* As a further 
 inducement for preserving the dignity of the Bolognese Uni- 
 versity unblemished, the prerogative of conferring the knightly 
 orders was awarded it towards the close of the Middle Ages, 
 which, however, seems to have partaken largely of the nature 
 of a financial transaction.'-^'^ 
 
 In the creation and incumbency of professorial offices, early 
 in the thirteenth century, due regard was had, even in schools 
 of less distinction, to elaborate culture of medical knowledge, 
 inasmuch as two surgeons, confessedly engaged for educational ' 
 services, conjoined with teachers of civil law, grammarians and 
 two dialecticians, equipped the new institute at Vercelli.'" 
 Independent of these, municipal authorities employed several 
 copyists, whose functions consisted in furnishing scholars with 
 transcripts of books according to rates prescribed by the 
 rectors. The Paduan University, from its location, enjoyed 
 unusual advantages for obtaining a large clientage of students, 
 and in the year 1262, added to other tutors three professors 
 of natural sciences^ — an incontestible indication of a growing 
 demand in this cognate branch of medicine. 
 
 Later, this scholastic establishment passed into the custody 
 of the Venetian Republic, Avhether to its advantage does not 
 appear.^^ Great care was taken to obtain suitable occupants 
 of University professorships, and oftentimes the applicants for 
 them were subjected to a most rigid examination before a 
 body duly commissioned. In the thirteenth century a statute 
 
 ^"Savigny, Geschichte des Roemischen Rechts, Th. III., p. 182. 
 
 ^1 Ibid., p. 194. 
 
 ^^ Ibid., p. 235. 
 
 ^' Tiraboschi, op. cit., Tom. IV., p. 53. 
 
 ''^ Muratori, Antiquitat. Italise, Tom. III., p. 910. 
 
 ^ Daru, Histoire de Venise, Tom. I., p. 183.
 
 272 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 of Turin prescribed such inquiry into the quahfications of any 
 strange physician, before receiving municipal sanction to prac- 
 tice medicine in this city.''*' 
 
 Fees of juristic or medicinal lecturers aggregated such large 
 sums — carefully collected before proceeding with their read- 
 ings — that not unfrequently these professors attained great 
 affluence." Public surgeons, engaged by the civil authorities 
 of Milan, in this age, for gratuitous services to the poor,^" 
 received a salary from the city treasury amounting to fifty 
 libros a year, in consideration of which they should care without 
 reward for the sick in the municipal hospitals and prisons.'"* 
 In this century, when a woman obtained the doctorate, it was 
 deemed of so unusual occurrence as to receive specific men- 
 tion. In the year 1236, Vitisia Gozzodini held public lectures 
 in Bologna, on the Institutes of Justinian, and usually appeared 
 in male costume.'" The publicity of her readings, however, 
 was confined to her own house.^^ Female professors of medi- 
 cine, following the seclusive system of Vitisia, lectured during 
 the twelfth arid thirteenth centuries in Salerno, on medicine.'''^ 
 
 Many women in England, shortly after the Conquest, as 
 nuns in the wealthy monasteries, were occupied with the study 
 of this art, and composed remedies, which they offered gratui- 
 tously to the indigent.^^ No monarch, from the time of Alfred 
 
 '*" Item si quis extraneus medicus phisicus veniat in Thaurino ad habitandum 
 examinetur a phisicis et clericis." Statuta Taurini, ap. Mon. Histor. Ital., Tom. 
 I., p. 726. 
 
 '^Sarti, De Profess. Boniensis, Pars I., p. 4, ^ 4 seq. 
 
 2*"Unus medicus cirorgie, qui apelletur medicus pauperum, eligatur." Mon., 
 Hist. Ital., cap. 160, Tom. II., p. 1038. 
 
 ■^'' " Et debeant medicane gratis infirmos hospitalium medioloni et carcerum.'' 
 Ibid. 
 
 •■"' Ghirardaeci, Ilistoria di Bologna, Tom. I., p. 159. 
 
 "' " Betesia figliuola e infina all'anno duodecimo di sua eta," etc., " in casa sua 
 lesse la Instituta ^ piu di trenta scholari." Ibid. 
 
 ^■^ Haeser, Geschichte der Medezin, p. 198. 
 
 ^•■'" Beaucoup de femmes, dans les riches monasteres, s'occupaient alors ^ etu- 
 dier la medicine, et ^ composer des remddes qu'elles olTraient gratuitement aux
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 373 
 
 the Great and Charlemagne, wielded the vast forces of a co- 
 lossal empire in the interest of art and science, despite calami- 
 ties by sea and land,'^* comparable to the Hohejistauffen 
 emperor Frederick II., to whom medical culture of that age 
 was deeply indebted for individual laws promulgated for its 
 development, together with the reaffirmation of the ordinances 
 of Roger of Sicily, directly contemplating this subject. 
 
 Although the medical institutes of Salerno and Monte Cas- 
 sino were limited to the dwarfed influences of locality during 
 the entire course of the preceding century, the rescripts of this 
 illustrious ruler, combined with the lucid preparations of pre- 
 decessors, enlarged the perspective of future usefulness to 
 gigantic proportions. As a monarch of exquisite judgment, 
 in view of the singular circumstance that Neapolitans used the 
 Grecian dialect in defiance of the change of ages, he, similar 
 to an earlier Sicilian conqueror,^^ directed the laws having es- 
 pecial reference to this people should be drawn up in this 
 idiom.^" 
 
 Great stress has been placed upon the uncritical assertion, 
 that at this epoch such knowledge of Greek writers, medical and 
 otherwise, as came to Western Europe, was derived from im- 
 poverished Latinized versions of Arabic translations, at a time 
 indeed when the German emperor numbered his Saracen sub- 
 jects in Sicily and on the peninsula by thousands." In the 
 age of Roger of Italy, an archbishop, Roboald, of Amalfi, was 
 deeply skilled in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew'^® — a knowledge 
 eclipsed by the Dalmatian cleric above mentioned.^' 
 
 Hadrian's Greek attainments are made the subject of pane- 
 
 pauvres." Thierry, Histoire de la Conquete de L'Angleterre par les Normands, 
 Tom. IV., p. 86. 
 
 **Tageoni, Descript. Exped. Asiaticae; ap. Freher. I., p. 416. 
 
 '* Bazincourt, Histoire de la Sicilie sous les Normands, Tom. II., p. 76. 
 
 '^ Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaiiffen, Th. III., p. 276. 
 
 ^' Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 318. 
 
 s^Muratori, Antiquitat. Ital., Tom. III., p. 918. 
 
 '" Supra., p. 259.
 
 374 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 gyrical praise by Bede in the eighth century .'"' Saracens in the 
 twelfth century educated their children from infancy to readily 
 interpret this language, with Latin and the Roman, or vulgar 
 Italian idiom.*^ In the year 968, when Liutprand, the Otho- 
 nian envoy to Byzantium, proceeded with his diplomatic mis- 
 sion, he was able to converse with tolerable fluency with the 
 Grecian emperor,*^ sometimes having recourse to an interpre- 
 ter.*^ A Corbey monk, forty years anterior to this period, 
 read Greek at sight in the presence of King Conrad." In the 
 ensuing century, a practical use of this language was vigor- 
 ously maintained,^' so much so, indeed, that circular letters for 
 elementary instruction were issued to certain monasteries in 
 Germany.*" In the year 1146, Burgundio, a Parisian, trans- 
 lated the writings of John of Damascus from original Greek 
 into Latin.*' 
 
 Reference has been made hitherto touching the translations 
 of medical text-books by Constans Afer, in the eleventh cen- 
 tury. Doubtless the writings of Grecian authors on this sub- 
 ject were freely reproduced by scientists of the Hohenstauffen 
 era, and particularly in the fourteenth century, from their 
 venerable dialect into mediaeval Latinity. The burning desire 
 of Frederick II. to accumulate scientific and literary material, 
 revealed itself during the expedition of this ruler into Syria, 
 by his enormous aggregation of Greek and Arabic manuscripts, 
 of immense value to the monasteries of the West.*® The 
 emperor was deeply versed in natural history, and indeed, in 
 
 *°Beda, Histor. Eccles., Lib. V., c. 33; and Sym. Dunelhm., Hist. Ecclesiae, 
 Lib. I., c. 14. 
 
 *' Arnold, Clironicon Slavorum, Lib. VIL, cap. 8. 
 *^ Liutprand, Legatio, cap. 51. 
 *^ Liutprand, Antapodosis, Lib. VL, cap. 9. 
 ** Annalista Saxo, sub an. 948. 
 '■'' Badonis, Syntagma; ap. Meib. IL, p. 494. 
 ^« Udalric, Bal)enberg. Codex, Lib. IL, cap. 4. 
 
 *' Herman. Corneri, Chronicon, sub an. 1146; Muratori, Antiquilat. Italiae, 
 Tom. HL, p. 918 ; and Chronicon Epp. .Verden., cap. 36. 
 ** Tiraboschi, Storia della Littcratura, Tom. IV., p. 75.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 375 
 
 tliis department of medical analogy, he may be regarded as 
 master. His treatise on falconry attests the profoundest ac- 
 quaintanceship with the economy and anatomy of birds, and 
 especially falcons, vindicating a claim to meritorious consid- 
 eration divested of imperial authorship.'*'* 
 
 A curious feature of this work is the careful and judicious 
 treatment of maladies incident to birds of chase, and practical 
 suggestions of admirable curatives, as well as sanitary rules 
 whose adoption was designed to render them robust and 
 spirited. Eichhorn alleges this compendium to be the earliest 
 production in the "nature of comparative anatomy."" It is evi- 
 dent, however, that works on such subjects were extant prior 
 to Frederick II's. time, and necessarily traversing identical 
 ground, and particularly since Albert Magnus himself avows 
 large excerpts from the book of William, falconer to Roger, 
 king of Italy.^' But the most commendatory panegyric of the 
 imperial treatise is the unstinted admission by this erudite 
 pontiff, that his twenty-four chapters on falconry are a com- 
 pilation principally prepared from the work of his patron, 
 adding but little from personal resources."'^ Royal favor urged 
 the court astrologer, Michel Scot, to translate Aristotle's 
 natural history of animals,^^ although Latin versions of the 
 Stagyrite's writings were made by order of the emperor, 
 about the year 1220, drawn partly from Greek and partly from 
 Arabic sources.^* 
 
 The learned Scot appears to have shared the substantial 
 patronage of Edward I. of England, who granted him a pen- 
 
 *8 Legrand d'Aussy, Histoire de la Vie Privee des Frangais, Tom. II., p. 5. 
 
 50 u £)gj. grste schriftsteller in der anatomia comparativa." Geschichte der Lit- 
 teratur und Beredsamkeit, Th. II., p- 95- 
 
 ^' Albert. Magni, Ue Falconibus Asturib., cap. 18, p. 190. 
 
 ^■^"Pauca de nostris adjicientes." Ibid., cap. 19. 
 
 53 li Quern secundo loco compilavit a ejus precis." Muratori, Antiq. Ital.,Toin. 
 III., p. 945. 
 
 **" Circa 1220 jussu Frederici II., imperatoris, partim e Graecis, parlim e 
 Arabico sermone composita est per viros lectos in utriusque linguae prolatione 
 peritos." Fabricius, Biblioth. Grxca, Tom. III., p. 205.
 
 376 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 sion in the year 1291 for services rendered this sovereign.^'^ 
 Jordanus Rufus, who occupied the honored office of com- 
 mander of the studdery, was largely aided and advised by the 
 emperor in composing a work on veterinary surgery.^^ Owing 
 to rare advantages of intimate intercouse with Oriental princes, 
 the German monarch procured, as his predecessor before him, 
 the transhipment of elephants, camels, giraffes, lions, leopards, 
 tigers, etc., to both Germany and Italy, where, to the excited 
 glee of the people, they were perambulated through provincial 
 towns as instructive exhibitions.^^ Such animals, of value for 
 the study of comparative anatomy, as lions, camels, apes, and 
 ostriches, were utterly unknown to Northern Europe, or the 
 West, anterior to gifts sent imperial Otho in the middle of the 
 tenth century.^® Before the close of this era, a camel was 
 donated to Otho III. by a popish magnate.^^ Six camels and 
 two leopards given to Henry, emperor of Germany, in the 
 year 1172, were regarded as a munificent present, and alto- 
 gether worthy of an Eastern soldan."" It is worthy of note in 
 the time of Frederick II., that the people of Spain appear to 
 have kept zoological gardens, inasmuch as a great numi)er of 
 lions, ostriches, parrots, etc., were sent this hero by Genovese 
 legates, selected among spoils captured at the sacking of Al- 
 meria and Lisbon."^ 
 
 Half a century prior to the Roncevaux ordinances of the 
 First Hohenstauffen, which established literature and science 
 on a solid basis throughout Italy, Roger, king of the Sicilies, 
 a descendant of William the Norman, observing the expansion 
 
 ^^ Rymer, Foedera, Tom. II., p. 533. 
 
 ^* Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 213. 
 
 *^ Rycardus San Germano, Chronica, sub an. 1228; and Wilkins, Crusades, 
 Vol. VI., p. 510. 
 
 ^''Annalista Saxo, sub an. 955. 
 
 **Annalista Saxo, sub an. 9S6. 
 
 *''Arnoldi, Chronic. Slavorum, Lib. I., cap. 9. Touching gifts of curious ani- 
 mals to Frederick I., vide Ibid., Lib. IV., cap. 8. 
 
 ^' Otto Frising., Gcsta Frcdcrici Imper., Lib. IV., cap. 13''.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 zn 
 
 of medical studies within his Hmitcd kingdom, and especially 
 at Salerno, by the advice of spiritual and secular peers of the 
 realm, issued an edict requiring each person desirous of en- 
 gaging in the healing art to present himself for an examina- 
 tion before royal officials, who should pass judgment upon his 
 qualifications."^ If the board of examiners refused a certificate 
 of ability in the practice of medicine, and in defiance of such 
 adjudication he presumed to attend invalids as professional 
 adviser, for such temerity he was punished by imprisonment 
 and confiscation of his goods and chattels.''^ 
 
 Necessity evidently compelled the enactment and rigid ad- 
 ministration of this law, at least the inference is unequivocal 
 from the concluding sentence of the rescript, that this legal 
 ordinance was enforced as a guard for his subjects against 
 dangers incident to the mendacious practitioners of medicine."* 
 Although the law here referred to is the earliest known Euro- 
 pean regulation by competent authority, touching the profes- 
 sional use of this science preceded by judicial examination, at 
 Jerusalem in the year 1090, a standing rule in the code of this 
 kingdom prescribed formal investigation into the possible ac- 
 quaintanceship of any person, whether " from beyond the sea," 
 or Saracen,"^ before proceeding to cure maladies."* The ex- 
 aminers were selected by the archbishop, who scrutinized the 
 applicant's abilities under the pontifical presidency, and, having 
 satisfied themselves as to his learning, gave him a license — 
 evidently written — to practice medicine " in land and town," 
 subject to archiepiscopal jurisdiction."' 
 
 ^^ Constitutiones Regni Siculi, Titulus XXXIV., De Probabili Experientia Med- 
 icorum, Lex I. 
 
 «3 Ibid., Lex IV. 
 
 '*"Hoc enim prospectum est, ne in regno nostra subjecti periclitentur ex im- 
 peritia medicoruni." Ibid., Lex I. 
 
 ^"Similemente nessun medico extraneo, che venisse d'oltra mar 6 di li infi- 
 deli non deve medicar de urina nessun." Le Assisse del Reaume de Hyerusa- 
 lem, cap. 218. 
 
 66 « Yin che non sia provato da li miglior medici de la terra." Ibid. 
 
 *^" Medicar li deva esser data licentia de medicare per la terra dove val per la 
 citta di quae Vescovo." Ibid., p. 529.
 
 378 * HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 If it appeared that he lacked sufficient knowledge of the art, 
 the pontiff and authorities notified him either to ieave the city 
 at once, or remaining, to abandon the profession absolutely. 
 In case he disobeyed, he was scourged publicly and driven out 
 of the municipal limits.*^ When Frederick II., in the year 
 1224, founded in Naples a new university, he granted access 
 to all subjects of his immense empire,®'' and endowed it with 
 the most celebrated professors of the age.'" To such students 
 as applied for matriculation especial immunities were conceded, 
 and the solemn sanction of the ordinance stipulated entire 
 freedom of person and independence of goods from municipal 
 assessments. 
 
 In order to concentrate local scholars within the precincts 
 of their own university, he directed all pupils attending dis- 
 tant institutions to immediately return to Naples under a 
 penalty, neither should any depart the Sicilian kingdom for 
 scholastic purposes. In publishing this statute, apparently 
 monopolizing the educational interests of Southern Italy, he 
 suggested the amenities of the location, plentitude of provision, 
 and its unalterable tranquillity.''^ Notwithstanding the ponder- 
 ous weight of state affairs at home and abroad, resting heavily 
 upon the Hohenstauffen ruler, his constant attention, when 
 temporarily relieved of the emergencies of imperial govern- 
 ment, was devoted to developing polite letters and the cultiva- 
 tion of scientific studies. Some of his rescripts at this period 
 warrant the conclusion that no one was permitted to instruct 
 or give readings in grammatical art to any but children, ex- 
 cepting in the Neapolitan domains.'^ 
 
 Of the decrees challenging unstinted eulogy and respect, 
 promulgated by the emperor for the progress of sound science 
 
 ^ " Et farlo frustrar per la terra." Ibid., p. 529. 
 
 ^^ Peter, de Vineis, Epistolse, Lib. III., cap. 10. Especially as a place for lib- 
 eral arts: " doceri artis cujusque professionis." Ibid., cap. 13. 
 
 ™Ibid., Lib. IV., cap. 7. 
 
 '^ Gobelin, Persona; Cosmodromi, Aetas VI., cap. 54; De Vineis, Epistola;, 
 Lib. III., cap. 13. 
 
 ''•^Gobelin, Person., op. cit., Aetas VI., c. 54.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 379 
 
 and maintenance of sanitary conditions, those relating to 
 medical qualifications are pre eminently superior for the age. 
 The sale of diseased meats, particularly unhealthy pork and 
 deleterious bread, was forbidden under severe punishment." 
 Accurate notions of sanitative requirements were well under- 
 stood and practiced in the Middle Ages in the interest of 
 good health. In the twelfth century, it was a usage of the 
 nobility to take up their residence in mountainous regions to 
 escape the intense heat of summer, and purely for sanitary 
 benefit." Lady Margaretta was conveyed thither under medi- 
 cal advice, in order to derive the advantages of pure air, 
 which was vital in her depreciated physical state.'* A city 
 ordinance of Turin forbade householders throwing waste or 
 excremental matter over balustrades or out of the windows, 
 into the public streets.'" 
 
 By the mandatory directions of the Neapolitan constitution, 
 no person could be admitted as a student of medicine, unless 
 previously for three years he had familiarized himself with 
 logical science; neither must he teach in a school, nor exer- 
 cise the craft of curing diseases without an examination by 
 medical scientists at Naples or Salerno, who should make in- 
 quiry into the sufficiency of his knowledge of medicine and 
 surgery. In order that public sanction might attest, as far as 
 possible, the abilities of the postulant, his credentials were to 
 be presented to the royal officers, whp thereupon issued letters 
 patent, authorizing him to practice medical and surgical art," 
 drawn as follows: Noster N. ad curiam nostram accedeus 
 examinatus fidelis et de genere fidelium artus, et sufficiens ad 
 
 '^Rycard, San Germano, Chronica, sub an. 1232. 
 
 '*Geiselberti, Chronicon Hanoniense, sub an. U94. 
 
 75i< pj-opter salutatem seris advehi fecit." Ibid., an. cit. Further, Ibid., sub 
 an. 1 195. 
 
 '® " Item quod nemo ejiciat vel effundat urinam, vel aliquid putredinem, vel 
 quid aliud horribile de lobia, vel fenestras." Statuta Taurin.; ap. Monument, 
 Histor. Ital., Tom. I., p. 726. 
 
 '' Constitutiones Regni Siculi, Titulus XXXIV., Lex 3.
 
 .So HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 artem medicinas exercendam extitit, per nostram curiam 
 approbatur.'^ 
 
 It is evident from the regulation compelling legal attestation 
 of Salernite professors, that this school yet maintained its 
 ancient reputation, notwithstanding the founding of a new 
 University in Naples. In the ordinary course of study at 
 regular medical institutes, when the matriculate had devoted 
 himself with assiduity to mastering Galen and Hippocrates, 
 together with surgical operations, presupposing a certain 
 knowledge of anatomy, during a continuous period of five 
 years, he was entitled by the law of the land to an examination 
 before the proper board.'® To a diploma thus signed and 
 sealed, granting unimpeded exercise of the profession, the im- 
 perial chancellor, illustrious Peter de Vigne, makes allusion in 
 a letter from which we have quoted.™ 
 
 Minute and specific rules were prescribed for professional 
 guidance of youthful physicians, and to whose observance they 
 were solemnly sworn,^^ requiring gratuitous attendance upon 
 indigent invalids who, with others, should receive at least two 
 visits daily, and, if summoned, once at night. Whenever a 
 physician suspected pharmacists or compounders of medica- 
 ments, as failing to prepare medicines in strict accordance with 
 prescriptions, it was his imperative duty to report such delin- 
 quents to civil authority for punishment. 
 
 Practitioners were prohibited a price beyond an amount 
 fixed by law for medical visitations, and cautioned against 
 secret association with druggists to defraud patients by illegal 
 additions to the legal cost of compounding remedies, which 
 prohibition naturally rendered it essential for physicians to 
 
 '* Pctrus de Vineis, Epistolte, Lib. V., cap. 24. 
 
 "*" Libros authenticos, tarn Hippocvaticos quam Galeni, in scholis doceant tam 
 in theorica quam in practica medicince, et prnesertim anatomiam humanorum 
 corporum," etc. Constitut. Reg. Lie, cit., Lex 3. 
 
 ^T.pistol., Lib. IV., c. 24. 
 
 *' " Ibte medicus jurabat servare foiinam curire, hoctenus, observatem." Ibid., 
 Lex 3.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 381 
 
 complain of unjust pharmaceutical charges, and to make pay- 
 ment for medicines upon the schedule of prices established by 
 advice and consent of a medical faculty sanctioned by statute/' 
 Large cities at that distant period alone possessed public phar- 
 macies, exclusive of the monasteries, whose function was pre- 
 paring medicaments subject to supervision of the profession, 
 the number of whom was not limited in this inquiry, only in 
 conformity to specific regulations. Ancient statutes holding 
 these compounders responsible for negligence were rigidly 
 enforced during the Middle Ages, the penalty for which uni- 
 formly extended to loss of personal goods — oftentimes to cap- 
 ital punishment. 
 
 Sales of deadly poisons for other than recognized legitimate 
 uses were repressed by the ignominious death by hanging. 
 Apothecaries were allowed excellent but Regular profits upon 
 their wares, in just proportion to the diminishing stock of com- 
 modities and scant supply, or the possible inactivity of certain 
 but necessary unvendible stuffs: into this calculation a fair 
 proportion of money invested also entered.^^ As an admirable 
 sanitative precaution, no flax or hemp was permitted to be 
 fired wathin a quarter of a mile of an inhabitable place.^* 
 Whether the frequent epidemics ravaging mediaeval cities, 
 accessible to vessels laden with pestilential germs from the 
 Levant, forced a higher grade of sanitary ordinances touching 
 inhumations, this emperor ordered that dead bodies of men or 
 animals should be buried in remote localities, or shipped to sea 
 and carefully sunk. A pestilence arising in the year 1231 from 
 numbers of locusts in Apulia, the emperor decreed that sworn 
 emissaries should take and burn a certain measure of these 
 insects each morning before sunrise.*" 
 
 Sepulchral preparations throughout mediaeval times were of 
 
 ^- Constitutiones Regni Siculi, Titulus XXXIV., Lex 4. 
 *' Ibid., Lex 4. 
 
 **Rycardus San Germano, Chronica, sub an. 1232, reproduces the decrees pub- 
 lished under the Constitutions, Lib. IIL, Tit. XLVII-LXXXIL 
 ^ Rycardus, op. cit., p. 105.
 
 382 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 simple character. After clothing with suitable vestments, the 
 cadavera, even of royalty, were enrolled in bull's hide for 
 burial,^® or girthed with ropes.^' According to a writer of the 
 early thirteenth century, the dead were transported on inland 
 streams, drawn through the water, with a coin securely fas- 
 tened in the mouth.*^ 
 
 ^^ Rog. Wendover, Flor. Historiar., Tom. IV., p. 134. 
 
 ^^ Flor. Wigiorn., Chronicon, sub an. II41, Tom. II., p. 134. 
 
 ^^Gervasii Tilburniens, Otia Imperialia, Dist. III., cap. 90. It may be added 
 here, as remotely connected with the subject, that bodies of the drowned were in 
 pagan times carried immediately to the temple of Thor or Odin — perhaps for 
 divine resuscitation. Vita S. Swiberti, cap. 12.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Public Physicians Salaried by Municipalities — Translations from Arabic 
 — Hyperbolical Panegyric of Eminent Professors — Guild of Physicians 
 in Milan, Thirteenth Century — Corporation of Apothecaries — Union 
 of Pharmacists and Medicists Forbidden by Law — Distinction of Bo- 
 logne's Medical Schools — High Salaries of Professors — Culture of 
 Botany — Thaddeus, Master of Villannova — His Commentaries of Hip- 
 pocrates and Galen — Anatomy — Physicians not Allowed to Marry till 
 A. D. 1451. 
 
 THE example of the illustrious Hohenstauffen emperor, in 
 honoring the Neapolitan University with his amity and 
 protection, was strictly followed by Charles I., his successor, 
 who called thither, in the interest of medicine, Philip da Cas- 
 tilenio, to whom an annual stipend for professional services, of 
 twelve ounces of gold — Tarrene' — were given, a sum of con- 
 siderable magnitude for a person of whom nothing is known.' 
 Evidently the introduction of Arabic methods in preparing 
 medicaments, and a better system of cures, either through 
 Constans Afer or Gerard of Cremorn, who was, according to 
 Sarti, the first to translate Saracen medical text-books into the 
 Vulgate,'^ after the famous Carthaginian, found an early en- 
 trance and fervid welcome in the schools of Salerno. At all 
 events, under munificent patronage, the medical universities of 
 Sicily advanced, from the close of the twelfth century, to the 
 apex of justly-earned celebrity. 
 
 With heroic rhythm, in the year 1198, v^gidus Corbeilens 
 lauds the Salernite school in panegyrical terms, and declares 
 the city anciently sacred to Phoebus, and nurse of Minerva, 
 was then " the fountain of physic, the athlete of cures, and 
 
 • Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Tarreni Salerniti. 
 ' Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 209. 
 ■* De Professorib. Bononiensis, Tom. I., p. 511. 
 
 (383)
 
 384 HISTOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the very gardener of medicine,"* and attained untarnished 
 celebrity for the restorative properties of its medications. 
 With burning enthusiasm he chants the transcendant excel- 
 lence of pharmaceutical compounds, the notoriety of which, it 
 seems, had expanded throughout the universe — per orbem — 
 causing great affluence to Salerno. Saracen mixtures were 
 well known to ^i^gidus, and in eulogizing Salernite medica- 
 ments, he refers to compositions wholly made up of Arabic 
 drugs." In the opening stanzas the versifier pays a glowing 
 tribute to medical professors of this venerable institution, 
 whose names do not appear in the erudite collection of Fabri- 
 cius, although according to the learned historian of Italian 
 letters, they were distinguished in their day, and left to pos- 
 terity certain treatises upon subjects highly important in the 
 treatment and cure of diseases, by the subtle preparation of 
 food and drink for invalids.** 
 
 The first of these Petras Musadinus, yEgidius affirms to be 
 the culmination of glory to Salerno, and like the dazzling rays 
 of a cloudless sun must gild its other fame for all time ;' the 
 second Maurus, who had received the vigor and intellectual 
 strength of the former, so that medicine lost nothing by the 
 death of Musadinus. Among noted medical celebrities of the 
 age alluded to in this poem are Matthew Platens, the medi- 
 cinal remedies of whom the spirited author reduces to verse, 
 and Orsus, a Salernite physician, famed for conv^ersational 
 powers.^ Johannes was equally lauded for his poesies by 
 yEgidus, and to Romoaldus is awarded the commendation of 
 
 * " Urbo Phoebes sacrata, Minervse sedula nutrix, 
 Fons Physiciae, pugil encrasiae, culcrix medicinx." 
 
 Liliri Quator de Virtutibus et Laudibus Composit. Medicorum, Lib. III., v. 467, 
 p. 502. 
 
 *" Trifera Saracenica," Ibid., p. 661 ; and "Cum rheubarbicis data Saracenica 
 dragmiis et mirobolanis," etc., " mixtis." Ibid., v. 742 seq. 
 
 * Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 211. 
 
 '" Musandinus apex, quo tanquam sole et nitet et nituit illustris fama Salerni." 
 Aegid. Corb., op. cit., Lib. I., v. 91. 
 
 "Ibid., vv. 112 and 120. 
 
 1
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 385 
 
 profound acquaintanceship with civil and canon law, but final 
 and transcendant excellence as a professor of the curative art, 
 to w^hom he gives the cognomen of "medical president."* 
 Rumoald's distinction as an author of physic — auctorem phy- 
 sicije, or successful practitioner — obtained for him the position 
 of official medical adviser to the pope.'" During the thirteenth 
 century there was rapid increase throughout Italy in the num- 
 ber of medical schools. 
 
 Physicians in Milan, in the year 1288, were so numerous 
 that they aggregated over two hundred, and were, perhaps, 
 organized in a guildic corporation." The Ferrara College of 
 Medicine at this epoch, in conformity to statutory regulations, 
 prescribed the conditions under which entrants into the pro- 
 fession should be privileged to practice. It was enacted that 
 each practitioner should possess a horse upon which his 
 patients were to be visited, and whenever a certain number of 
 troops under orders from this city, or the Est Marches, were 
 called into active service two surgeons must accompany them.'-' 
 At Brescia, the medical profession in its collegiate form ob- 
 tained from episcopal authority a confirmation of these valued 
 immunities and prerogatives conceded them by imperial 
 patronage.'^ 
 
 About this time physicians and apothecaries instituted 
 themselves into a guild at Florence, similar to other trades.'^ 
 In the same century, a municipal law of Nice interdicted abso- 
 lutely such union of medical professors and pharmacists,'^ and 
 elsewhere conjurations for other than legitimate traffic were 
 
 ^Aegid. Corb., Libri Quator de Virtutib. Medic, Lib. I., v. 131 seq. 
 
 ^^ Muiatori, Scriptores Rerum Italic, Tom. VII., p. 206. 
 
 "Ibid., Tom. XL, p. 712. 
 
 ^'^ " Et teneatur quilibet ipsorum medicorum habere suam eqiuim proprium, 
 super quo equitare debeat et possit per civitatem visitando infumos." Borsetti, 
 De Gymnas. Ferrar., Lib. I., c. i, p. il. 
 
 '^"Hic privilegia immunitatis medicorum — largissima inanu confirmavit." 
 Malv., Chronicon, cap. 124; ap. Murator., op. cit., Tom. XIV., p. 962. 
 
 '* Ungewitter, Geschichte der Hscndel, p. 234. 
 
 ^^ Monum., Hist. Patr., Tom. L, p. 97 seq. 
 25
 
 386 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 placed under the ban.'*' The Paduan University does not appear 
 to have devoted much attention to the curative art, inasmuch 
 as instruction in medicine there was by private, unprivileged 
 tutors. Bologna, during the course of the thirteenth century 
 acquired universal fame for the eminence of its medical and law 
 schools," and in the preceding age the honorary title of Master 
 of Medicine was freely assumed by the profession there, of 
 whom one, mentioned in Sarti's able biographies of Bolognese 
 professors as the first, was Jacobus Bitinarius, who, in the year 
 1 199, entered into orders among the regular canonicals of 
 Saint John the Martyr. In Sarti's Nectrologium he is desig- 
 nated : " Dompnus Jacobus Medicus Canonicus." By testa- 
 mentary disposition, his library went to the church of Saint 
 Victor.^® Towards the middle of the thirteenth century, a cus- 
 tom appears fully established to crown with laurel such devo- 
 tees of the ^sculapian art as attained high distinction in the 
 Universities, or were designated by the popular applaudits as 
 worthy of this great honor.^^ 
 
 A lively emulation arose between the legists and medicists 
 of Bologna in the nature of an unusual zeal to comment and 
 elucidate the writings of venerable predecessors; consequently 
 a body of medical commentators or scholiasts originated and 
 remained separate from University departments. For a pro- 
 longed period, as hitherto stated, both public lectures on law and 
 medicine had depended upon the generally scant and uncertain 
 fees of disciples. The earliest celebrated professor of the 
 Bolognese medical school to receive a municipal stipend was 
 Johannes of Parma, in the year 1304."° 
 
 The civil authorities of Bologna, perhaps instigated by the 
 older Sicilian ordinances, as early as 12 14 regulated a defini- 
 tive compensation for medical attendance upon indigent infirm 
 
 '^Statuta Taurinini, ap. Mon., Hist., cit., p. 724. 
 "Savigny, Geschichte des Roem. Rechts, Th. III., p. 183. 
 i^Sarti, De Professorib. Boiioniensis, Tom. I., Pars i, p. 441. 
 1^ Ibid., p. 434 seq. 
 20 Ibid., p. 435.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 2,^-^ 
 
 within limits of the municipahty. The sahiiy awarded the 
 Lucchese professor, thus called to a foreign city to practice 
 gratuitously his vocation, was fixed at six hundred Bolognese 
 liri." At a somewhat later period, a Bergamese physician, 
 designated as a Master of Medicine by the argumentative per- 
 suasion of an annual pay of high figure, was induced to migrate 
 thither to occupy a domicile specially erected for him, which 
 it was agreed should thenceforth remain his permanent abode.^- 
 The vast number of practitioners existing by the intelligent 
 skill of this profession in Bologna at this period, may be gath- 
 ered from the fact, that this art was already subdivided into 
 diverse parts, such as doctors of physic, barber medicastres, 
 physicians for the eyes and various parts of the body."^ This 
 state of surgery, in the fourteenth century, caused Philip the 
 Fair, king of France, to enact a law which compelled the male 
 and female surgeons of Paris to be licensed.'"'* 
 
 Notwithstanding the possible degradation of surgical art 
 in the great centres of medical culture, in the scientific exami- 
 nation of the human frame upon anatomical principles and 
 a systematic endeavor to supply rational medication chemically 
 compounded, it is demonstrable that at this epoch Italian 
 universities were so far equipped with such appliances as to 
 necessitate the employment of professors of botany and chem- 
 istry, whose specific functions were the suitable preparation of 
 pharmaceutical compounds."" For this purpose botanical gar- 
 dens were most assidulously cultivated.'" The accepted union 
 of astrology and alchemy with mediaeval medical art, even at 
 an age when particular attention was given to the perusal and 
 study of great Arabic writers on the latter science at Bologna,'^' 
 
 ^1 Ibid., p. 444. Further on this subject, Monument, Histor. Patr. ItaHas, 
 Tom. II., p. 1038. 
 
 ^^ Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 216. 
 
 ^ Sarti, De Profess. Bonon., Tom. I., p. 434 seqq. 
 
 ^* Ordonnances des Rois de France, Tom. I., p. 491 seq. 
 
 ^^ Sarti, op. cit., p. 437 seq. 
 
 26 Ibid. 
 
 ^^ Ibid., Tom. I., p. 435.
 
 388 HISTOR Y OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 was reaffirmed in the personal profession of two famous schol- 
 ars devoted to these sciences^ — Franciscus Asculanum and 
 Petrus Albana, the former of whom taught astrological medi- 
 cine to Bologna students for thirteen years.-® 
 
 In the contract reproduced by Sarti, binding Hugo^^ of 
 Lucca to attend the impoverished sick of Bologna gratui- 
 tously, the agreement stipulated that, in case of severe mala- 
 dies treated by him among citizens of mediocre means, he 
 should have the legal right to demand and receive a load of 
 wood, and from affluent invalids, twenty solidi, or a measure 
 of hay. ^^ It was made imperative upon the Lucchese sur- 
 geon whenever demanded, to accompany the municipal troops 
 in their predatory campaigns. In the year 1 218, he was regu- 
 larly enrolled in a professional capacity, and attended a regi- 
 mental body of Crusaders of Bologna, in an expedition to 
 Palestine, where he remained for three years, and returned to 
 this city for permanent residence." 
 
 This famous physician acquired great distinction by the 
 successful application of vinous potions, as a cure for aggra- 
 vated wounds, which he appears to have been the earliest to 
 adopt as a standing remedy. To his medical knowledge he 
 added an excellent understanding of the principles of chemistry, 
 and doubtless secured, during the sojourn in Syria, like other 
 pilgrim surgeons of high professional culture, many valuable 
 notions hitherto exclusively the property of Saracen physi- 
 cians. Bologna's wide-spread repute for its medical schools 
 in this age attracted students and professors not only from 
 Italy, but as far north as England, rivaling indeed the exalted 
 celebrity of Salerno. 
 
 Nicholas of Farnham, an Englishman, formerly professor of 
 
 28 " Franciscum Asculanum, vulgo Ciccuni appellatum,, non minus doctrina 
 quam vitse suae casibus, qui extremis hujus sseculi XIII. annis astrologiam Bon- 
 onise docuit scholaribus electus." Ibid. 
 
 '■'^ Master of Viliannova, Breviarium, Lib. I., cap. 14; Additiones, col. 1086. 
 
 ^0 Sarti, De Professor. Bonon., Tom. I., Pars. II., p. 146. 
 
 31 Ibid., Tom. I., Pars I., pp. 448, 457.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 389 
 
 philosophy in the Paris University, domiciled himself in the 
 above metropolis, where he both studied and taught medicine, 
 with which he appears to have had a renowned familiarity as 
 then practiced.^^ The Sicilian provinces were frequented by 
 eminent English physicians in the century preceding, whither 
 they came seeking the munificent patronage of Roger.^^ 
 Nicholas remained at Bologna, until the year 1241, previously 
 directing his attention to sacred studies, at which period, 
 accepting the suffrages of an election to the Durham Episco- 
 pate, where his accession was signalized by miracles and gen- 
 eral gayety of the monks. Seven years later, however, the 
 erudite pontiff being accused of simony, at the pressing insti- 
 gation of the archbishop of York the see was declared vacant, 
 and another selected in his stead.^* 
 
 Among the most distinguished Bolognese professors of med- 
 icine at this epoch, the Florentine Thaddeus, master of Arnold 
 Villannova — Brevarium, lib. I., c. 14, Addit. col, 1086 — may 
 be classed as preeminent, although the discreditable legends 
 touching his dullard youth and somnolent temperament have 
 been seriously questioned by Tiraboschi.^" His biographer 
 recites that until thirty years of age, Thaddeus was noted for 
 an invincible stupidity, and employed the time listlessly by the 
 sale of trivial tokens,^® apparently dwarfed by those natural 
 impediments to mental development which frighten parental 
 affection, and chill the interest of unindulgent tutors. Similar 
 to undeveloped intellects of juvenile years, suddenly the energy 
 of genius stimulated the sluggish inactivity of the Tuscan into 
 rapid and marvellous fruition. 
 
 Having obtained profound insight into the entire range of 
 liberal arts and sciences, the basis of an accomplished scholar, 
 he abandoned himself thoroughly, with a robust mind, to the 
 
 ^'■'Ibid., Tom. I., p. 448. In the year 1229. 
 
 ^^Gervasii Tilburniensis, Otia Imperialia, Dist. III., cap. 112. 
 
 ■''* Robert de Graystones, Historia Dunelhmensis Ecclesire, cap. 5, p. 41 seq. 
 
 •'^ Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 418 seq. 
 
 '^ Sarti, De Profcssoribus Bononiensis, Tom. I., p. 467.
 
 59° 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 painful acquisition of medicine, and in the year 1260 opened 
 a scholastic professorship in this art at Bologna. To this illus- 
 trious scientist the commendation is due of having made a 
 practical introduction of Arabic sciences to the medical schools 
 of Italy.'" Notwithstanding many of Thaddeus' commentaries 
 on Hippocrates and Galen would be at the present time re- 
 jected with derision, he was the first known mediaeval writer 
 who essayed in good faith, and with excellent judgment, to 
 unite the philosophy of the age with rational medicine. As a 
 further claim to grateful distinction, it should be stated that 
 much of valuable lore appended to his treatise on the great pre- 
 cursors of the curative art was translated directly from Saracen 
 sources.^* In his day, this professor obtained the honors of 
 oracular celebrity. As the earliest author and lecturer to re- 
 veal the most sacred and recondite signification of works com- 
 mented by him, he quickly acquired the same confidence in 
 medical exegesis as was accorded to the Florentine Accorso, 
 a learned expounder of civil law, his contemporary.'* 
 
 A commentator of Dante's Commedia, in the year 1262, 
 apostrophises Thaddeus as a famed physician, and declares him 
 to be equal to Hippocrates in originality.*" A Ferrarese writer, 
 with unmeasured panegyric, designates him as the most skilled 
 medicist of the age*^ — a phraseology exactly reproduced by an 
 annalist in the year 1295, the date of the erudite scientist's 
 death."*- Consequently, the unusual exemptions and franchises 
 granted him by the civil authorities of Bologna appear to be in 
 harmony with the ranking eminence reflected upon the Uni- 
 versity. It was decreed that Thaddeus and his heirs should 
 
 37 Ibid. 
 
 ^^ Sarti, De Profess. Bonon., Tom. I., p. 467. 
 
 '^''" Chiosatore e illuminatore di ragione civile." Villain, Vite d'lllustr. Fioren- 
 tini, p. 32. 
 
 *" Dante, Paradisic, Canto XII., "e a Taddeo," Comment., Benevenuti Imo- 
 lensis; ap. Murator., Antiq. Ital., Tom. I., p. 1262. 
 
 ■*' " Medicorum magister peritissimus." Murator., Scrip. Ital. Rcr., Tom. I.\., 
 pp. 143, 253. 
 
 ^^ Ricobaldi, Historia Imperatorum, sub an. 1295.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 391 
 
 be privileged to purchase or inherit property wherever they 
 elected, while such scholars as frequented his medical lectures 
 were entitled to immunities identical with those allowed the 
 students of civil and canon law. This ordinance, ipso facto, 
 elevated medicine to the same grade as other studies.'" 
 
 His vast renown caused him to be summoned to Athens 
 professionally, by the magnates of secular and ecclesiastical so- 
 ciety, from whom he received munificent compensation. In 
 the year 1285, upon accepting a call to render medical ser- 
 vices to an Italian nobleman, he demanded a solemn assur- 
 ance from the elaborate escort conducting him before the 
 suffering aristocrat, that during the voyage to Bologna he 
 should be subjected to no damage, and afterwards be returned 
 uninjured in person and goods. No restraint was to be used 
 to detain him in Modena against his wishes, and in case of 
 any or all of these articles being contravened, the procurators 
 mentioned should indemnify him in the sum of three thousand 
 Bolognese liri." Similar guarantee was obtained from the in- 
 valid peer, w^ho agreed to pay him the above amount of money 
 for his personal attendance, upon restoring to health the illus- 
 trious patient. Whether this excessive charge represents the 
 measure of value for medical services or simply a contingent 
 payment, it is manifest the profession at this period boldly de- 
 manded and received large sums in the ordinary exercise of 
 the practice of medicine.*" Dante, however, at nearly the 
 same epoch, states that a cavalier should give a scudi for each 
 visit by a physician.^" Thaddeus' heavy bequests attest the 
 immense accumulation of wealth by this professor, who directed 
 two thousand five hundred lire to be permanently invested as 
 a fund for deserving indigents of Bologna, and a further sum 
 
 *^Sarti, op. cit., Tom. I., Pars II., p. 227, subtitulo, Rubr. III., De Privilegiis 
 Mag., Thadei Doctores Fixice. Further, p. 155. 
 
 " Sarti, De Profess. Bonon., Tom. I., Pars I., p. 469. 
 
 *^Ibid., p. 434; and Muratori, Scriptor. Rer. Ital., Tom. XX., p. 54, 
 
 *® Dante, Convivium, Tom. I., p. 23.
 
 392 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 sufficient to defray the collegiate expenses of a Minorite monk 
 in studying theology at Paris.*' 
 
 Among excellent results from his career as professor and 
 educator, his translation of Aristotle's ethics, commended by 
 Dante,** and the famous comments upon the Aphorisms and 
 Prognostications of Hippocrates and Galen, are worthy of 
 specific mention.*^ William of Brescia attained high distinc- 
 tion on account of his erudite science and the severaltreatises 
 composed by him on medicine. After directing the studies at 
 Padua for many years, attracted by the reputation of Thaddeus, 
 he placed himself under the Florentine's instruction, and finally 
 reached to so great eminence as to obtain a laurel crown and 
 be advanced to the honorable office of personal physician to 
 the pope.^" In addition to other sacerdotal dignity, he became . 
 an archdeacon at Bologna.'''^ A favorite subject for treatment 
 by eminent physicians at that remote period, seems to have 
 been the preparation of treatises on preserving health. 
 
 Thaddeus, himself, was author of a work involving this sub- 
 ject still extant in the Vatican library, and William of Bresicia 
 enlarged his own dissertation so as to include remedies for all 
 maladies, concluding it by designating himself as "aggre- 
 gator," on account of selecting diversified curatives or rescripts 
 from numerous medical authors. These efforts appear to have 
 obtained especial commendation, and were much used by med- 
 icists of the ensuing age. One of Thaddeus' pupils arose to 
 eminence as a rival to his master, and by reason of success- 
 fully adapting his science to curing distinguished personages. 
 
 From a nobleman of Este, to whom he was called pro- 
 
 *'" Pro expensis unicus fratris de ordine Minorum de provincia Bononiensis, 
 riiii stare debeat in studiis Parisiensi." Ibid., Tom. I., Pars II., p. 156 seq. 
 
 *** Dante, op. cit., Tom. I., pp. 29, Tj'x,- 
 
 ■"• Known as " Thaddei ExpositionesOperum Hippocratis ;" vide Sarti, op. cit., 
 Tom. I., p. 472. 
 
 ■^'' Pezii, Thesaurus Anecdot., Tom. I., p. 430. 
 
 ^' .Sarti. De Profess. Bonon., Tom. I., p. 436; and Pezii, Thesaur. Anecdot., 
 Tom. I., p. 430.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 393 
 
 fessionally, he obtained a sum of money equal to two hundred 
 and sixty gold florins.^- Simon of Genoa, by some asserted to 
 be a monk, was the last of medical professors in the thirteenth 
 century to receive the honors of his science. Tiraboschi 
 attributes to him the authorship of an excellent treatise on the 
 clue to health, entitled clavas sanationis.^^ About the middle 
 of this era, Roger, of Parma, a city celebrated for the excel- 
 lence of its grammar school so early as the eleventh century,^* 
 by personal experiments and such as were drawn from Arabic 
 sources, drew up several treatises touching upon anatomical 
 science."" This original anatomist and compiler appears to 
 have occupied the office of Chancellor in the University of 
 Medicine, at Montpelier, which evidently owed much of its 
 scientific origin to Spanish Jews, because a century anterior to 
 the period under notice it was visited by the traveler, Ben- 
 jamin, who declared the city was only known as a place 
 favorably situated for commercial traffic.^" 
 
 Guy di Chauliac, with other eulogistic references to Roger 
 as the first anatomist of the Middle Ages," distinctly states, 
 according to the admissions of Roland of Parma, also famous 
 for surgical and anatomical skill, that he had followed almost 
 servilely both the sense and letter of the erudite manuscript 
 prepared by his predecessor.^* A heated discussion, verging 
 upon fanaticism, suddenly arose touching a claim by this able 
 dissector to have cured a pulmonic malady by the excision of 
 a lung. Enthusiastic partisans asserted such surgery to have 
 been performed by Roland, others equally confident attributed 
 it to Villannova's master, Hugo of Lucca. Sarti inclines to the 
 
 ^^Sarti, op. cit., Tom. I., p. 486. 
 
 "•'Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 226. 
 
 ^* " Urbs Parma, quae grammatica manet alta." Vita Mathildte Ducatricis, cap. 
 II, V. 6, etc. 
 ^^Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latinit., Tom. VI., p. 119. 
 ^* Benjam. Tudelensis, Itinerarium, p. 15. 
 
 ^' " Quorum primus fuit Rogerius." Chauliac, Capitulam Univer.saH, Pr^efat. 
 58 Ibid.
 
 394 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 belief that both were successful in restoring to health a person 
 abandoned in the last stages of pulmonary disintegration, and 
 by this equivocal suggestion seeks to reconcile the contra- 
 dictory statements emanating from admirers of these rival 
 surgeons.^^ 
 
 Several treatises of the Parma anatomist are still extant in 
 the British Museum under the title: "Flossula seu Apparatus 
 quator Magistrorum super Chirurgium Rolandi.'"* In addition 
 to these, he published a pamphlet on the best method of curing 
 pestilential diseases,"' and another on Physionomia, or " Rolan- 
 di Physionomia in sex libros divisa.""^ A leading surgical 
 operator in this century, Jamerius, appears to have obtained 
 the repulsive appellation of " Brutal in Dissection," for the same 
 reason as applied to Archogathus, while Bruno is placed by 
 Guy di Chauliac in honorary conjunction with Roger and 
 Rolandus. Bruno's chief excellence in this branch of medical 
 economy was collating and admirably commenting on the writ- 
 ings of Galen, Avicenna, and Albucazi, and in this interesting 
 occupation he labored under the great disadvantage of lacking 
 an entire translation of the Galenic books — all of which at this 
 epoch had not been reproduced in a Latin version.®* 
 
 It has been alleged this surgeon enjoyed the amity of the 
 illustrious Petrarch, thus transporting his existence to the en- 
 suing century, a notion which the erudite Tiraboschi utterly 
 disproves.*'* Notwithstanding the inculpation against Theo- 
 dorick of Lucca, that he boldly appropriated the most valua- 
 ble parts of his system of curatives from Bruno, adding to it 
 such elements filched from his compatriot master, Hugo, he 
 
 s^Sarti, De Professor. Bonon., Tom. I., Pars I., p. 449. Patristic biographers 
 fondly dwell on such exercise of divine power exhibited through saintly physi- 
 cians. Petrus Enierit., De Vita Patrum Emeritens, cap. 4. 
 
 '^ Catalog., MSS. Angl. et Hib., Tom., I., p. 169, Codex 350. 
 
 "Fabricius, Biblioth. Med. et Infin., Latinit., Tom. VII., p. 122. 
 
 ^'■'Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 230. 
 
 ^''Chauliac, Capitulum Universali. Praef. 
 
 ®' Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 231. 
 
 1
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 395 
 
 was nevertheless one of the most skilled and successful anato- 
 mists who applied indifferently vinous lotions as a standing 
 remedy for serious wounds.** This eminent dissector and 
 medicist of the thirteenth century arrived at Bologna when the 
 University was at the apex of professional glory, accompany- 
 ing the famous Hugo, his tutor, under whose direction for a 
 prolonged period he pursued the practice of this science. 
 
 Finally, influenced by an aspiration for closer relations with 
 the church, he assumed monastic vows in the Order of Preacher 
 Monks, but continued to practice medicine, although the can- 
 ons forbid its exercise professionally — consequently such un- 
 interrupted pursuit may have been limited to the conventual 
 infirmaries, or these ecclesiastical edicts were not vigorously 
 enforced until a later epoch."'' Pontifical favor followed the 
 labors of Theodorick, being elevated in the year 1262 to the 
 episcopal mitre of Bironti, and finally to that of Cervia, whose 
 incumbency he accepted the year of his death, in 1298. His 
 residence appears to have been permanent at Bologna, where 
 he faithfully prosecuted the curative art, and aggregated large 
 sums of money. Among specific inventions applicable to the 
 cure of aggravated diseases and wounds, first made during the 
 Middle Ages by the Lucchese surgeon with beneficial results, 
 was the use of mercurial ointments,"^ although Freind declares 
 similar ungents to have been known to Aetius.*"^ 
 
 Anterior to this century, it is uncertain whether these valu- 
 able remedies were of extensive application, but at the period 
 before us, or later, Chauliac urgently recommended them as 
 possessing remarkable sanitative properties.*' Unprofessional 
 writers advised the preparation of unguents, presumably magi- 
 cal, according to a gossiping chronicler of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, beneath the bright glances of a virgin's eyes, in order to 
 
 65 Ibid., Tom. IV., p. 233. 
 
 6® Sard, De Professorib. Bononiensis, Tom. I., Pars I., p. 460. ' 
 
 ^^ Freind, Historia Medicina;, p. 575. 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 393. 
 
 ^^Tractat. I., Doctrina I., de Anatomia, cap. 5, p. 10.
 
 396 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 render them efficacious.™ Influenced by charitable impulse, 
 doubtless, the episcopal surgeon wrote an elaborate treatise, 
 still in manuscript, touching the maladies of horses and their 
 proper remedies.^^ Some of his dissertations and compilations, 
 of great utility at the time, were translated into the Catalan 
 dialect by the Bishop of Valencia, to whom he dedicated 
 them." 
 
 Preceding the close of this age, two medicists attained wide 
 .spread fame by their successful practice and the publication of 
 important anatomical works, which in those days appear to 
 have captivated attention more readily than treatises especially 
 of maladies. One of the physicians, designated William of 
 Piacenza, was equally expert in medicine and surgery, whose 
 abstruse system, as then understood and taught, he illustrated 
 by admirable works on both subjects." In defiance of canon- 
 ical interdicts against ecclesiastical profession of medical 
 science, sarcerdotal authority manifested praiseworthy interest 
 in the composition of text-books. It was indeed in deference 
 to the urgent request of a Piacenza abbot, that the erudite 
 surgeon alluded to prepared a treatise on the conservation and 
 care of health. His other surgical writings were completed 
 in the year 1275, in Verona, whither he was called by the 
 municipality, and regularly salaried as medical adviser to the 
 city. Prior to his advent there he was a resident of Bologna 
 for many years." 
 
 Medical and surgical attendance at this epoch appears to 
 hav^e been engaged with the same intricate formality as other 
 contracts, sanctioned by law and attested with legal solemnity. 
 Thus for example William, the surgeon, entered into bonds 
 drawn up by a notary, regularly signed and sealed, with a 
 German student matriculated in the University, by which he 
 
 ™Gervais. Tilburn., Otia Imperialia, Lib. I., cap. 17. 
 
 " Sarti, op. cit., p. 460. 
 
 "■' Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 235. 
 
 '^Chauliac, Capit. Univeis., sulj fin. 
 
 "* Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 236.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 397 
 
 agreed to cure him of a distressing disorder, specifically and 
 in detail set forth, designated "Fleume sarse," within two years 
 from date of the obligation. In case of restoration to perfect 
 health, the invalid bound himself likewise to pay thirty-six 
 Bolognese liri.'^ This erudite physician, together with Lan- 
 franc, secured a numerous patronage on account of the remark- 
 ably soothing nature of unguents and emplastra for grievous 
 wounds.'® 
 
 Perhaps the most famous medical and surgical practitioner 
 of his age was the Lanfranc alluded to. Notwithstanding the 
 superior excellence of Italian scholastic institutes, the Milanese 
 scientist passed into France, where he quickly ascended to 
 the dazzling apex of celebrity. In the preface of a work of 
 surgery, composed in honor of Philip, the French monarch, 
 it is stated he was constrained to abandon his native country, 
 on account of persecution by Matthew Viconti, Duke of 
 Milan. His first domicil was at Lyons, where he remained 
 long enough to write a compend of anatomy for practical use, 
 and when otherwise disengaged from professional duties, 
 directed the education of his sons." This is a singular fact 
 when it is considered that physicians were enforced celibates 
 and not allowed to marry during the Middle Ages — it being 
 assumed that sanctity must largely cooperate in producing 
 favorable results as an adjunct to medicaments. The mem- 
 bers and professors were all clerics and unmarried, which was 
 the logical deduction of that transcendent worth which religion 
 ascribed to the state of chastity.'® 
 
 Ecclesiastical sanction was not given to the nuptials of phy- 
 sicians until the year 145 1." High dignities in the Parisian 
 
 "^Saiti, De Professorib. Bononiensis, Tom. I., Pars I., p, 460 seq. 
 
 '^Chauliac, Capitulum Universale, sub fin.; and Tractat. I., Doctrina. I., de 
 Anatomia, cap. 5, p. 10. ■ 
 
 " Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. IV., p. 238. 
 
 ^*"Les membres et professeurs des universites fussent tous clerco ou celibi- 
 taires: suite de la haute estime que la religion attachoit a I'etat de virginite." 
 Notices et E.vtraites des MSS., du Bibl. Roi., Tom. V., p. 492. 
 
 ■3" C'est qu'en 145 1 que les medecins obtiuerent d'etre maries." Ibid.
 
 398 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Univ^ersity were filled by unmarried professors of medicine 
 until 1542, when these were conceded the right of matrimony 
 by pontifical allocution, conveyed thither by an ablegate spe- 
 cially dispatched.**" On Lanfranc's arrival at Paris, he shortly 
 aggregated so great a number of disciples that other medical 
 professors urged him to promulgate in book form a complete 
 treatise on surgery and medicine, which he at length com- 
 pleted in 1296. In this work, the author admits his Milanese 
 nativity, and the former usage of the curative art while living 
 there. 
 
 He also recites a remarkable cure effected by him of a 
 diseased canonical affiliate of the Order of Saint Augustine, 
 who while riding horseback narrowly escaped death by a 
 fall. To him doubtless surgical science owed its most decided 
 progress towards an enlightened system based upon anatomy. 
 While it should be admitted with unreserved candor that at 
 this period medicine and surgery were taught at the Italian 
 Universities by the most skilled tutors of the age, it must be 
 confessed likwise that original research and invention were 
 practically unknown. 
 
 In nearly every instance a professor of these arts arose to 
 eminence and just distinction through servile imitation or ab- 
 ject translation of Greek and Arabic authors — a subserviency 
 admitted by Chauliac, who refers to his Saracen predecessors,^' 
 and contemned with bitter sarcasm, as we shall hereafter ob- 
 serve, by Petrarch.*^ As a consequence, while medical science 
 of the Arabs, and its cognate departments were far advanced, 
 Italian scientists still slumbered over Latinized versions of 
 Moslem authorities, contented indeed to rest inert and sloth- 
 ful before the surprising accumulations by infidel scholars of 
 valuable contributions to a profession evidently used in West- 
 ern Europe as a means of gain. Nevertheless, the free adoption 
 
 ''""Car et permisit per privilege especial aux docteur.s en medecine de pouvoir 
 estre mari^s." Pasquier, Recherches sur I'Histoire de France, p. 244. 
 *i Chauliac, Capitulum Universale. 
 8*Petrarca, Scnil., Lib. XII., Ep. 2.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 399 
 
 of such writings aided in resurrecting medicine from the tomb 
 of ignorance and superstition, where it had rested for centuries, 
 and provoked the well-directed enthusiasm for the science in 
 Italy throughout the fourteenth century.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Students and* Student Life in the Middle Ages — Great Numbers at the 
 Medical Schools of Salerno and Bologna — Ordinances of Church Syn- 
 ods-^Montpelier — Mature Age of Mediaeval Students — Their Apart- 
 ments Designated as Hospicia — Feuds between these and Civilians — 
 Ecclesiastical Authorities Interfere— Seditions — Popes Invariably Favor 
 Students — Freebooter Scholars — Rates of Lodgings Specified to Pre- 
 vent Exactions — Straw Bales used by Students for Seats — Examination 
 of Graduates — Books and Libraries for Consultation — Copyists — Great 
 Prices of Manuscripts — Books not Dutiable — Standard Text-books 
 Maintained by Municipalities for Accurate Transcripts. 
 
 FAVORABLE legislation by the Hohenstauffen emperors, 
 involving as we have seen especial franchises and immuni- 
 ties to professors and scholars, attracted large numbers of 
 eager students to the Universities of Italy during the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries. The great reputation of these theo- 
 logical schools at Paris caused an immense affluence of pupils 
 at the same epoch that the law and medical colleges of Bologna 
 and Salerno drew students of these sciences into Southern 
 Europe. Scholars returning to their homes, after engaging in 
 the studies selected at foreign Universities, were frequently wel- 
 comed publicly by admiring compatriots.^ Excepting unim- 
 portant educational establishments of slightly more elevated 
 gradation in Italian cities, the only preparatory tuition was to 
 be found within the monasteries, or located elsewhere under 
 exclusive sacerdotal direction. 
 
 Frequent pontifical allocutions and synodal canons pre- 
 scribed certain studies as mandatory in conventual schools, 
 generally classified under the denomination of studium gener- 
 ale, in order to prepare aspiring disciples for the elaborate 
 University instruction. While Bologna and Salerno were ap- 
 proaching the full development of their scholastic greatness, 
 
 ^Comitum de Scha»venburg; apud Meiborn, Tom. II., p. 513. 
 
 (400)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 401 
 
 Other Italian cities gradually realized the absolute neccssit}^ 
 for intermediate schools, which, without rivaling the expansive 
 colleges, so closely assimilated to them as to admit of easy and 
 natural transition to the higher educational institutions. Reg- 
 gio, Parma, Trevisio, and other important towns, maintained 
 at public expense grammarians or philosophical teachers ac- 
 cessible to the people, and also theological instructors for 
 clerical pupils.^ 
 
 Succeeding church synods repeated the original mandate, 
 that suitable persons should be appointed to impart knowledge 
 to the monks without compensation, that each cathedral 
 should provide a professor of polite letters, and the metropoli- 
 tan see should be equipped with a theological tutor.' Five 
 years were fixed for the study of logic and philosophy, and 
 four for theology,* although students oftentimes pursued a 
 seven years' course, as attested by the statement of Petrarch, 
 concerning his sojourn at Montpelier.* 
 
 By a decree of the Turonese council convened in the year 
 1236, it was ordained that no person should be honored with 
 a judicial appointment, or be privileged to appear to the bar 
 as an advocate, unless he had previously studied civil and 
 canon law consecutively for the period of three years.*' It will 
 readily appear from the prolongation of such prescribed study 
 in these scholastic institutions, that the number of students at 
 times must have been enormous, especially in Paris' and Bo- 
 logna. In the latter city, about the year 1260, there were over 
 ten thousand." 
 
 ^Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 74. 
 
 3 Von Raumer, Geschichte der Holienstauffen, Th. VI., p. 343. 
 
 *"Deinde post quinquennium audivi." Pezii, Thesaur. Anecdot., Tom. I., p. 
 430- 
 
 ^Petrarca., Rerum Senil., Lib. X., Ep. 2, p. 868. 
 
 ^ " Nisi per triennium jura audierint." De Avocatis, Concilia Turonesis, cap. 
 2; Labbe, Tom. XXIII., sub an. 1236. 
 
 'Alberici, Chronicon, p. 451. 
 
 ^Odofredus: " Vidi ego Bononiae, aderant eo tempore ferme decern millia 
 scholarium." Muratori, Antiq. Ital., Tom. III., p. 899. 
 26
 
 402 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 A century later the roll of regular pupils at the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford reached the almost incredible figure of 
 thirty thousand. *• As early as the year 1209, there were 
 about three thousand scholars at this illustrious institution.'" 
 Independent of favoring state and municipal regulations, 
 which alike adjusted the price of commodities and lodg- 
 ing for the scholars, in order to bring the same within the 
 possibilities of indigent students, at Montpelier the praise- 
 worthy ordinance was enacted directing the selection of four 
 Bachelors, to whom the specific duty was assigned of assist- 
 ing matriculates in their studies. For that purpose they were 
 authorized to propose certain treatises to the medical pro- 
 fessors, best adapted to that end. 
 
 Minute statutes were published establishing the particulars 
 of attire and weapons to be borne by scholars, and also dis- 
 tinctly forbidding any such hilarious sports as breaking into 
 private houses on fete nights, or disturbing the tranquillity of 
 the lecture rooms." It was not essential that pupils should 
 subject themselves to graded lectures, since these were ar- 
 ranged upon a scheme permitting the youngest and oldest 
 alike to be appreciative auditors. 
 
 Scholars in attendance upon these public readings of law and 
 medicine, were of far more advanced age than the matriculates 
 in modern universities. This was rendered necessary by the 
 distant location of the schools, the routes to which, in the 
 Middle Ages, were attended with considerable peril and great 
 inconvenience. Doubtless the native students were of less 
 mature years. Petrarch began the study of civil law before 
 attaining the age of fifteen,''^ and Andrea, an Italian, so young 
 indeed as to designate himself puerulus — a small boy.^'^ In 
 general, when these scholars arrived at the University from 
 
 9 Turner, Hist, of England, Vol. II., p. 583. 
 
 '" Rog. Wendov., Flor. Historiar., Tom. III., p. 228. 
 
 " .Savigny, Geschichte des Roinischen Rechts, Tom. III., p. 399. 
 
 •2 Rerum Senil., Lib. X., Ep. 2., p. 868. 
 
 '••Sarti, De Profess. Bonon., Tom. I., Pars. L, p. 372.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 403 
 
 abroad, there are excellent reasons to suppose their ages 
 ranged between twenty and thirty, or older. According to 
 the tendency of the times, students organized themselves into 
 clubs or guilds for mutual protection, associations which 
 papal authority was impotent to destroy." 
 
 It would seem in the thirteenth century, as in more recent 
 times, immediately after having arranged for the fees with the 
 law and medical professors, as allowed by the statutes of 
 1220 and 1242,'^ they incorporated themselves into thes-e 
 unions, whose history, especially at Oxford, where this form 
 of aggregation assumed the shape of aiding the indigent 
 pupil,"* shows the character of the period, in the struggle be- 
 tween rival guilds, in which many members were killed.'' In 
 nearly all universities, the medical and law professors main- 
 tained an official styled Banquierus, who superintended the 
 audience-room, carried the manuscript rolls for consultation 
 or reference, and of right demanded and received from each 
 auditor twelve deniers for such services. The tutors gradually 
 obtained the statutory rights requiring payment of stated 
 compensation from their disciples. Usually this was a mini- 
 mum of five sous, although night lectures commanded double 
 price." 
 
 Apartments »occupied by students were, for the most part, 
 congregated in particular localities, and in England were 
 denominated hospicia." More direful, indeed, than internal 
 feuds, was the embittered hatred between them and citizens of 
 the municipalities where the universities were ' situated. In 
 
 "Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen, Th. V., p. 344. 
 
 '^Savigny, Gesch. des Romisch. Rechts, Th. III., p. 396. Frederick II. of 
 Germany established the salary system, so that learning might be obtained by im- 
 poverished pupils. Gesta Frederici II., etc.; ap. Eccard. I., p. 1026. 
 
 •®De Chambre, Histor. Dunelh. Eccles., p. 138. 
 
 "Matthew Paris, Histor., .sub an. 1258. 
 
 '^Savigny, op. cit., Th. III., p. 397. 
 
 '* Fortescutus, De Landib., Legg. .\ngl., cap. 49; and Flor. Wigior., Histor., 
 Tom. II., p. 174.
 
 404 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the year 1200, the servant of a German divinity student at 
 Paris, by order of his master, sought a tavern or wine-house, 
 to procure wine. During the purchase, he was set upon and 
 so badly beaten that in the melee the pitcher which he 
 brought with him was broken. The theological scholars of 
 the same nationality, hearing the affray, assembled and entered 
 the saloon, where they in turn savagely assaulted and wounded 
 the host, whom they left half dead. A great riot ensued 
 among the populace, who were led by the Provost of the cit}' 
 himself, and attacking the quarters of the students' hospicia, 
 assassinated the offending German, together with several of 
 his companions. 
 
 The University authorities appealed to the king, who or- 
 dered the apprehension and incarceration of the Provost and 
 accomplices. On account of the French monarch's fear that 
 these pupils would abandon the city and go elsewhere, they 
 obtained more enlarged and valuable concessions, in the inter- 
 est of permanent peace and tranquillity. The incriminated 
 official, upon being informed of the royal indignation, attempted 
 to evade the scourging demanded as his punishment by escap- 
 ing from confinement, but gliding down a fragile rope, it broke 
 and instantly killed him.^° In the middle of the next age, an 
 immense sedition arose between the Oxford scholars and the 
 townsmen. The citizens, with the assistance of the peasantrj- 
 from- the surrounding country, assaulted in great numbers 
 their aggressors, with such atrocity as to wound many and kill 
 some. After having destroyed their property, the assailants 
 were forced to flee. 
 
 Ecclesiastical interposition produced a temporary armistice 
 by means of a sacerdotal interdict. By this compact it was 
 agreed that the laity of Oxford, as offenders in the riot, should 
 thereafter perpetually abstain from maliciously or wantonly 
 injuring the scholars, or inciting them to anger. The civil 
 authorities gave to the University as damages two hundred 
 
 20 Roger. Hoveden, Annales, p. 803 seq.; and Y\. Wigiorn., Chronic. Continu- 
 al., Tom. II., p. 164.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 405 
 
 and fifty pounds sterling, saving the right of indemnity to ag- 
 grieved individuals.*' Three years later the excommunication 
 against the city was removed. It is stated by the annalist that 
 the sedition was caused by citizens violently assaulting several 
 clerics residing at Oxford as students, and for this contempt 
 of priestly vestments the malediction was laid upon the muni- 
 cipal ity.'- 
 
 In the year 1229, at Paris, a vengeful tumult of the laity 
 again broke forth with dangerous violence, in which many con- 
 secrated scholars were murdered. The origin of this seditious 
 trouble appears to have originated in the unjust and indelicate 
 accusation against Blanche, queen of France.'"'' Large numbers 
 at a later date abandoned the Parisian University, and scat- 
 tered to celebrated schools in the provinces, or entered as 
 matriculates at Anjou to complete their studies."^* About the 
 middle of the same era a conflict suddenly originated in the 
 mutual hatred between members of the great French Univer- 
 sity and the mendicant friars, which even terrible loss of life 
 was unable to terminate. 
 
 Results identical with those above described followed the 
 sanguinary struggle. So many students deserted the city that 
 royal and papal interference was necessary to secure tranqui- 
 lity, and their return,"^ under the express stipulation of full in- 
 demnification, out of the go\'ernment exchequer, of personal 
 losses.^" In utter defiance of carefully digested statutes of the 
 Bologna University, it was oftentimes difficult to preserve pub- 
 lic peace, frequently broken by slothful or hilarious students; 
 so much so indeed that an illustrious writer of the aee com- 
 
 '■^' Adam Murimuth, Chronicon Continuat., sub an. 1354. 
 
 '"Adam Miirimuth, Chronicon Continuat., sub an. 1354. 
 
 ■-■* Matthew Paris, Historia, sub an. 1226. 
 
 '-'*" Ita ut studium in Andegaviam transferrentur." Albert Stadens, Chronicon, 
 sub an. 1279. 
 
 ^^ " Egressi per diversas provincias sunt dispersi." Gesta Ludovici, Lib. IX., 
 P- 597- 
 
 -^ Herman Corneri, Chronicon, sub an. 1234.
 
 4o6 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECOA'OMV 
 
 plained that the University authorities failed to mete out just- 
 ice sufficient to secure repression of these scholastic wrangles." 
 In the repeated collisions between citizens of Bologna and the 
 scholars, its law schools were in danger repeatedly of total ex- 
 tinction. Sometimes the matriculates in a body abandoned 
 the city, driven to such extremity in vindication of their valu- 
 able rights, and solemnly pledged themselves under mutual 
 oath never to return again, When, therefore, a truce had been 
 agreed to, it became indispensable for pontifical power to ab- 
 solve the obligated disciples of law and medicine, in order that 
 they might renew their studies without perjury."''^ 
 
 Usually such adjustments were signalized by a confirma- 
 tion of old immunities, or by the concession of new ones.^** In 
 the year 1237, or according to the Cottonian manuscript of 
 Hemingburg's chronicle in 1238, Otho, a lateran legate, was 
 sent to England, where he arrived in July, invested with plen- 
 ary authority to correct excessive dissipation of both clerics 
 and people. On arriving at Oxford, the cardinal and his suite 
 were received by masters and students with utmost gayety.^** 
 Inasmuch as the scholars were more readily inclined to the 
 delectations of disreputable women,^' one of the earliest at- 
 tempts of the papal emissary was the repression of scholastic 
 debauchery.'^* 
 
 When the tutors and scholars in the University became 
 acquainted with the immediate object of the legate's visit, they 
 were highly incensed. Having aggregated their members into 
 formidable array, they made an irruption upon the messenger's 
 retainers, killing three and wounding many. The papal pleni- 
 potentiary himself fled, and took refuge in the sewers of 
 
 '■^' Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. III., 396. 
 '^^Sarti, De Professor. Bonon., Tom. I., Pars II., p. 106 seq. 
 '^■'Ibid.; and Herman Corneri, Chronicon, sub an. 1234. 
 ^"Matthew Paris, Histor., sub an. 1238, p. 317. 
 
 '1 Panciroli, Rerum Memorabil. Perdit., Tom. I., p. 206; and Buloeus, Histor. 
 Universit. Parisiensig, Tom. II., p. 687. 
 •"•^ Hemingb., Chronicon, sub an. 1237.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 407 
 
 Ossenay, until the burning wrath of the Oxford students and 
 professors had subsided. The seditious fury becoming at 
 length allayed, he placed the entire town under an ecclesi- 
 astical ban, while the king ordered the arrest and punishment 
 of the principals in the outrage, directing them to be sent to 
 London for trial. 
 
 The chronicler thus sneeringly concludes his narration of this 
 event: "When the cardinal had loaded himself with money, 
 and promulgated certain edicts, he returned to Rome.""'^ At a 
 later date the Oxford students exhibited their hate of Israelites, 
 into whose avaricious hands they had evidently fallen for 
 usurious pledges and advanced funds, by stirring up sedition 
 against them. It is not stated, however, what crime was 
 charged to their account — perhaps the practice of sortilege 
 with Talmudical books, which were ordered burned in the year 
 1255, by the Gallic Synod, as furnishing the magic for such 
 prognostications.^* 
 
 Notwithstanding the assassination of many Jews at Oxford, 
 during the affray referred to, lawful proof was not produced 
 to convict the parties accused. The presence of vast multi- 
 tudes of scholars in constant attendance upon college lectures 
 in the cities of Europe during mediai^val times, was as stated, 
 the source of inexhaustible wealth to citizens. In order to 
 conciliate and retain them, municipalities where medical and 
 other schools were located granted franchises of the most 
 valuable character, to the universities and their matricu- 
 lates. These were, however, at times, insufficient to restrain 
 the ungovernable impulses of adolescent literates from aban- 
 doning the city, subjecting them to such indignities as to 
 provoke sanguinary resistance. To place these oft-repeated 
 migrations under the restrictive obstacle of a religious obliga- 
 tion, Bolognese students were formally sworn not to desert 
 the city, either individually or with their professors. 
 
 In all civil annoyances imposed upon foreign pupils and 
 
 3^ Ibid. 
 
 ^*Baluzius, Concilia Narbonne, Tom. I., p. 76.
 
 4o8 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 tutors, the ponderous influence of the Popes appears to have 
 been unreservedly in favor of equitable adjustment of the diffi- 
 culties.*^ Annals of this part of the thirteenth century show- 
 most unmistakably that about the year 1222, Bologna scholars 
 transferred their studies from that municipality to Padua."'" 
 Frederick II. when in collision with Bologna, endeavored to 
 destroy the usefulness of the University by annulling its privi- 
 leges; but the causes provoking an armed struggle ceasing, 
 the enlightened but irritable monarch hastened to withdraw 
 his obnoxious rescript. During the conflict with Austria, 
 students of that nation were banished from Universities situ- 
 ated on territory of the German empire." 
 
 Indolent or sluggish matriculates, more ardent in pursuing 
 pleasure and worldly gratification than the substantial happi- 
 ness of letters and science, organized themselves somewhat 
 upon the scheme of condoterii, and in this incorporated shape 
 wandered as well-armed vagrants throughout the different 
 provinces of Europe, forcing themselves, in defiance to cleri- 
 cal resistance, upon the hospitality of convents and cloisters, 
 or perhaps nunneries, and sought the companionship of listless 
 patrons of wine-houses, which naturally conducted to the bor- 
 dellos of prostitutes. Both civil and canon law were invoked, 
 and severely applied, to crush out this manifestation of schol- 
 astic vagrancy, and punished such vagabonds by imprisonment 
 and deprivation of all ecclesiastical immunities.^* Indigent 
 students of fair repute, compelled by their impoverishment to 
 join these ambulatory outlaws, were not only urgently recom- 
 mended by frequent synods to indulgent citizens and affluent 
 cloisters as objects deserving of generosity, but provision was 
 made by the emperor Frederick II., for their support b)- 
 private and public funds.*" 
 
 •'^ Herman. Corner., Chronicon, sub an. 1234; and Tiraboschi, Storia della 
 Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 45. 
 ^*Muratori, Scriptor. Rerum Italic, Tom. VIII., pp. 372, 421-59 and 736. 
 •" Pezii, Thesaurus Anecdot., Tom. I., p. 430. 
 •'*'* Ibid., Tom. II., p. 526. 
 •'^Gcsta Frederici II., Imperator. ; ap. Eccard., Tom. I., p. 1026.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 409 
 
 Notwithstanding minute regulations, published by municipal 
 authority where Universities were established, touching lodg- 
 ings, dress and food for students, there were complaints to the 
 officials of Paris in this age, that the price of apartments had 
 gradually advanced until it was excessive.*" Attached to all 
 mediaeval colleges were numerous halls, devoted either in 
 whole or part to lecture auditoriums, under the management of 
 the faculty, or used by specific branches of culture connected 
 with the regular course of study.*' The slender appointments 
 of these rooms, otherwise commodious, may be inferred from 
 the fact that students attending the University lectures there 
 during the Middle Ages used a bundle of straw to sit on, which 
 they brought with them.*'-' 
 
 In the bloody affrays so often precipitated between clerical 
 scholars and their natural antagonists — the laymen — rivals for 
 the affections of incontinent women, these bundles of straw 
 became dangerous allies in firing the woodwork of resisting 
 domiciles opened for secular refugees. It may be stated here, 
 that the magnificent abodes of nobility at this epoch were plen- 
 tifully strewn with straw instead of carpets, and the same stuff 
 provided in winter to render the cold less sensible to the feet 
 on festival days in large churches and cathedrals. There was 
 a street in Paris where it was sold for the purpose of exclusiv^e 
 use by students attending medical and other instruction in the 
 cheerless audience-rooms of the University. For centuries 
 this custom of vending straw to the matriculates furnished a 
 name for the street, which was denominated Rue du Fouare. 
 
 Philosophic licentiates were obliged to provide the Chan- 
 cellor of the University with this material, each of them pay- 
 ing for that purpose the sum of twent>'-five sous.*^ After the 
 medical or law student had completed the time specified for 
 faithful study of these sciences, he was entitled to an examin- 
 
 ^''Pezii, op. cit., Tom. VI., cap. 151, p. 427. 
 
 " Savigny, Geschichte des Romisch. Rechts, Th. III., p. 374. 
 
 *'■* Legrand d'Aussy, Histoire de la Vie Privee des Frangais, Tom. III., p. 160. 
 
 *3Ibid., Tom. III., pp. 154-161.
 
 4IO 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 ation for promotion, which involved the stately reception of 
 the honorary and profitable title of Doctor. As early as the 
 year 1158, such doctorates of laws are mentioned by a con- 
 temporaneous writer present at an important Imperial Diet in 
 Italy, who further adds, they were conferred by Bologna." 
 In the ensuing century, medical students passing stipulated 
 examinations were honored with the gradation of Doctors of 
 Medicine or Physic — doctores medicinae, or fixicae.** In the 
 year 1267, a Polish student, upon returning to his native land 
 from Bologna, brought with him a doctorate, which was es- 
 teemed of sufficient importance to be permanently recorded 
 in the annals of Poland.*" 
 
 This advance or promotion brought the newly created doc- 
 tor the privilege of professing his law or medicine without 
 hindrance, and gave him jurisdiction over his disciples, in- 
 cluding the right of participation in the examining conclave.*' 
 In the thirteenth century the doctoral presentation was at- 
 tended with signal splendor, and performed at cathedral 
 churches, in the presence of a convention or judicial faculty. 
 Here the licentiate who had passed the private and public ex- 
 aminations, and obtained the title of licentiarius, read an argu- 
 mentation upon a subject cognate with his profession, which 
 was afterwards opened to the scholars for discussion. When 
 this disputation had terminated, the arch-dean of the univers- 
 ity, with a suitable address, endowed him with the doctorate, 
 the insignia of whose dignity consisted of a book or manu- 
 script volume, a doctor's hat and ring, while at the same time 
 his proper seat in the Minster was assigned him. The pro- 
 cession then left the sacred edifice with pomp equal to the 
 ceremony with which it entered.** 
 
 **" Viros disertos, religiosos et in lege doctissimos, legumque in civitate Bonon- 
 iensi doctores et multorum auditorum prjeceptores." Otton. Prising, Gesta 
 Frederici Imperatoris, Lib. IV., cap. 5. 
 
 ■'•''Sarti, De Professor. Honon., Tom. I., Pars I., p. 434; and Pars II., p. 227. 
 
 ■"■Annales Polonorum, sub an. 1267. 
 
 *'Savigny, Geschichte des Romisch. Rechts, Th. III., p. 206. 
 
 '^^ Ibid., p. 214.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 411 
 
 Monasteries from their institution endeavored to assemble, 
 in an apartment specially dedicated for the purpose, such 
 books, whether relating to profane or sacred letters, as were 
 procurable by purchase or transcription. Charlemagne him- 
 self took great pride in the collection of a library tolerably 
 complete for his age. This aggregation, including many vol- 
 umes gradually gathered, he directed by his testament should 
 be disposed of at appraised prices, whose proceeds were do- 
 nated to paupers.*® 
 
 Oftentimes books of certain kinds were carried about by 
 their owners in sacks.^" To these indeed, or isolated parcels, 
 such as the poems of Saint Columba, preservative powers 
 were ascribed, and likewise borne as amulets in the din of 
 sanguinary battles.'^' The gift of elaborately illuminated vol- 
 umes was highly prized as the most suitable expression of 
 personal esteem. When, therefore, in the year 844, Hraban 
 Maurus, ofthe Fuldane cloister, presented to His Holiness the 
 Roman Pontiff a metrical treatise, De Laude Sanctae Crucis 
 Christi, illuminated with symbolic types and figures, it was 
 deemed a public event worthy to be enrolled in the cloister 
 annals.^^ As early as Bede's day the nobility were accustomed 
 to seeking access to monastic libraries for purposes of read- 
 ing."^ The prior of Lauresheim, in the tenth century, was 
 highly praised for numerous treatises which he had composed 
 and donated to the monastery; the bindings and ornamenta- 
 tion of ivory and inwrought silver were admirable to behold;"** 
 and when, several ages later, the convent was rifled of its liter- 
 ary treasures, three volumes of this lot appear to have consti- 
 
 *^ Eginhardi, Vita Carolimagni, cap. 33 ; vide Mabillon, Annales Benedicti, 
 Tom., II. p. 335. 
 
 ^^Ekkehard, jun., De Casibus Monaster. S. Galli, cap. i. 
 
 ^1 Montalemberl, Les Moines d'Occident, Tom. III., pp. 124, 138. 
 
 S2 Annales Francor., P'uldens, sub an. 844; Histor. Monast. S. Emer., Ratis- 
 ponje, sub an. 888. 
 
 ^^Beda, Histor. Ecclesiar., Lib. III., c. 27. 
 
 ** Chronic. Laureshamensis, sub an. 970; vide Freher., Tom. I., p. 128.
 
 412 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 tuted the chief element of chagrin.'^^ Oftentimes these inesti- 
 mable collections were stolen by cloister officials, for sale or 
 other disposition.^" 
 
 Penitential offerings were esteemed of greater potential effi- 
 cacy if these included manuscript dissertations on sacred or 
 profane subjects/' and the aggregation of such objects consti- 
 tuted frequently the principal panegyric of a defunct bishop."^ 
 The King of Germany, in 1052, stirred with charitable pity 
 for the undeserved catastrophes which had overwhelmed the 
 Bremen episcopate, contributed among other holy furniture a 
 number of books to the monastic library.^^ Dissipation of 
 these collections by fierce conflagrations provided the mediae- 
 val annalist with suitable subjects of lamentation, in whose 
 devouring element oftentimes the most prized appointments of 
 a beloved abbey vanished before affrighted monks,"" or the 
 peaceful inmates of a tranquil cloister would awake in the 
 silence of midnight to see the appalling spectacle of their 
 library fired by the lurid flames of the Norman Viking's 
 torches."^ 
 
 Siward, abbot of Rastedense monaster}', possessed a great 
 number of well assorted volumes for the twelfth century. 
 Towards the end of his pontificate, he formally presented to the 
 cloister his entire aggregation of books, collected by purchase 
 or copies, during a long and active life. Among these were 
 diverse works on episcopal ordination, a missal and matutinale 
 in one volume, together with a graduale, one collectorum, 
 excerpts of canons, four evangelists, by himself, a herbarium 
 and lapidarium, bound together; the Gemmam, or speculum 
 of the soul; one elucidarum; penitential Baptistery; Chron- 
 
 *^ Chronic. Lauresh., sub an. 1125. 
 
 ^ Ekkehard, jun., op. cit., cap. 15. 
 
 ^■^ Dithmar, Chronicon, Lib. II., p. 37. 
 
 5«Ibid., Lib. VI., pp. 160, 183. 
 
 •'''* Albert Stadens, Chronic, sub an. 1052. 
 
 •"• Gobelin, Personse. Cosmodromii, y^tas VI., cap. 50. 
 
 ®^Adam Bremen, Gesta Hammab., Pontif., Lib. I., cap. 23.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 413 
 
 icles ; Isidore's Highest Good; the regula of Benedictus, a 
 martylogum, in one volume; a divine officio, penitentia, and 
 a philology in one volume; the life of Saint Mary of Egypt; 
 orators, Juvencus, Sedula, and Prosperus, bound in one ; six 
 books on the virtues of medicine; Plato's Timaeus, Prosper 
 Regula de Visibus, Theodolun, Cato, and Ivorum, the Pan- 
 dects, Horace, and Boethius,*' and a work on the signification 
 of episcopal vestments.*^^ 
 
 In this list, which is specially reproduced as an exhibition 
 of a well-filled monastic library in the Middle Ages, some 
 treatises on medicine certainly appear. It is also probable 
 that the herbarium of Abbe Siward was the work of Dios- 
 corides. Several centuries subsequently, a prior of this cloister 
 presented the archbishop of Bremen with a Decretalium, the 
 Summam Raymundi, and Johannus de Ascula.** Lay schol- 
 ars of that distant era were certainly versed in the classic re- 
 mains of Roman poets and historians. In the year 1295, a 
 high secular functionary of a province in Germany died, 
 whose celebrity was mainly attributable to his vast knowledge 
 of ancient authors, acquired during student life, at the Uni- 
 versity of Paris.**' In the register of books published by 
 the Oldenburg annalist, the price of a scant number of vol- 
 umes was estimated, about the middle of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, at the enormous value of two hundred florins."® 
 
 The eagerness with which monastic students sought to ob- 
 tain transcripts of Roman writers, may be inferred from the 
 readiness of Gallic monks to exhange in the ninth century a 
 portion of their saint's body for a correct copy of Cicero." 
 Manuscript copying during mediaeval times constituted, ex- 
 
 *^ Ratperti, De Orig. et Divers. Casib. S. Galli, cap. 10. 
 *^ Chronicon Rastedense, sub an. 1 134. 
 "^Ibid., sub an. 1374. 
 
 **" Oratorum ac Poetarum et Historicarum familiaritate, dum esset in Univer- 
 sitate Parisiensi."' Chronicon Oldenburgens., sub an. 1295. 
 ^''Ibid., sub an. 1295. 
 ^' Depping, Histoire des Expeditiones des Normands, p. 146.
 
 414 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 elusive of conventual scribes, an important element of success- 
 ful livelihood.*'* In all monasteries, apartments set aside for 
 shelving books''" were under the care of a custos or chantre, 
 who was compelled to exercise vigilant attention over his lit- 
 erary aggregation, and was restricted from loaning or selling 
 the works without equivalent value. The mental vision of 
 this high dignity was sometimes clouded either by abstinence 
 or excess, which evoked invisible spirits, as happened to 
 Becelinus in the year 1095, who beheld a spectre in the library.'" 
 
 On the establishment of English abbeys, it was apparently 
 a' uniform custom to request through letters patent of neigh- 
 boring religious houses such contributions of manuscripts as 
 they felt at liberty to donate, which when thus given were cer- 
 itfied for authenticity and accuracy.'' In order to render these 
 collections tolerably complete, whether consisting of sacred 
 letters, including decretals and canons, or the writings of an- 
 cient medical sages, Hippocrates, Galen," Dioskorides," So- 
 ranus, Isidore," and others, it was a general usage to import 
 from foreign sources duplicates and triplicates of original text 
 books, of such for instance as the Justinian Pandects.'^ As 
 early as the time of Benedict Biscop, the monastery library of 
 Weremouth in the seventh century was largely enriched by 
 literary additions of this monk, to whom England owed the 
 introduction of stone churches and glass windows."" 
 
 Among other gifts to the convent were three copies of the 
 Pandects denominated. However, when in advanced age this 
 
 *''" Scribendo videlicet libros, quos vendidi et in id redegi, quomodi potui,' 
 etc. Opusculum Reinhardi, an. iioo; ap. Leibnitz I., p. 705. 
 *"'•* Chronic, Epp. Hildesham, cap. 21. 
 ™Annales Corbiensis, sub an. 1095. 
 " Dugdale, Monastic. Anglicon., Tom. I., p. 924. 
 " Richerius, Historiarum, Lib. IV., c. 50. 
 
 '•'' Roberti Swaphami, Ccenobii Burgens, Historia, circ. 1194, p. 99. 
 '^Ekkehard, jun., De Casil). Monast. S. Galli, cap. 10. 
 '^ Du Cange, Glossar., sub V. Pandectse. 
 '"Wm. Malmsbur., Gesta Regum Angliit, Lib. IL, c. 2.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 415 
 
 ecclesiastic took one of them, evidently in lieu of finances to 
 defray expenses of returning to Rome, he expressly abandoned 
 the remaining pair to the monastic library." Compared with 
 the sombre and gloomy apartments where mediaeval monks 
 congregated their manuscripts, the libraries of the Roman em- 
 pire were of startling magnificence. The most notable of their 
 vellum books arranged in rolls were oftentimes studded with 
 gold and silver, frequently with polished brass embellish- 
 ments.'* Illuminated manuscripts still extant attest the fre- 
 quent use of wooden chests for storing conventual volumes.™ 
 
 The libraries of the monasteries were in general, before the 
 eleventh century, of trifling utility and limited numbers."" 
 During the Gothic campaigns in Italy, the monasteries en- 
 rolled their parchment books, and hid them in the most secret 
 resorts.*^ Of this ©arly period, a copyist of manuscripts at No- 
 valla was celebrated for the correctness and velocity of his 
 transcriptions.**'^ The principal cause of the elaborate assem- 
 blage of books owned by the Corby monastery was a regula- 
 tion by Prior Machevart, in the eleventh century, requiring 
 each novice upon entering this convent on the day of his pro- 
 fession, to present the library with a volume of prescribed util- 
 ity and value. At the same time he issued an order to all 
 abbots whose cloisters were subject to his jurisdiction, direct- 
 ing them to proceed at once to have the annals of their mon- 
 asteries drawn up in writing, of which copies were to be sent 
 to him.**^ In the year 1060, Albert de Hambeore, or Hamburg, 
 enriched the Corby collection with many books.*' 
 
 Urged on by their ardent enthusiasm to accumulate valuable 
 
 "Beda, Hist. Wirem., c. 15. 
 
 '® Panciroli, Rerum Memorabil. Deperdit., Tom. I., p. 64. 
 
 ™ Du Cange, op. cit., sub v. I>ibellare. 
 
 *" Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. II., Lib. I., c. 4. 
 
 ®^ " Libros atque membranas." Chronicon Novaliciense, I.il). II., c. 19. 
 
 "'^ Ibid., Lib. III., cap. 20. 
 
 ^^Annales Corbienses, sub an. 1097. 
 
 ^^Ibid., sub an. 1060.
 
 41 6 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 works on theology or medicine with which noted abbeys 
 abounded, patrons of noble birth frequently donated as much 
 as a hundred pieces of gold for the purchase of such manu- 
 scripts.®' Mendicant friars in the fourteenth century mani- 
 fested an inordinate greed for treatises on theology, canon law 
 and physics, and sought to rival clerical antagonists in Eng- 
 land by aggregating the largest libraries. At the time men- 
 dicant convents became famous for enlarging collections of 
 theological and medical volumes, their inmates endeavored to 
 entice aristocratic pupils to their schools. In the year 1357, 
 the archbishop of Armeagh, in a sermon before the Pope at 
 Avignon, accused these beggar monks of sometimes discharg- 
 ing disciples from educational establishments on account of 
 failing to procure them, " oon gude bible, nather othere conven- 
 able bookes."*"' The great prices, perhaps exaggerated,**' which 
 transcripts or original manuscripts, whether vellum, parch- 
 ment^^ or paper — the latter was used in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury^^ — readily commanded, necessitated such ordinances by 
 municipal authorities where universities of medicine, etc., were 
 established, as to bring the use or acquisition of text books 
 within the compass of individual finances of attending stu- 
 dents. In some places books for professors and scholars were 
 admitted within the city free of duty."" By an ancient regula- 
 tion, the university officials of Paris were privileged to attend 
 the great fairs along the Seine for the purpose of selecting by 
 right of priority such vellum or parchment, together with 
 such other utensils, as were requisite for transcripts or origi- 
 nal compositions."' 
 
 ^^Ibid., sub an. 1233. The records of this abbey state a curious fact, that in the 
 year 1306 a peasant was accidentally shot through the body with a leaden bullet 
 by a hunter in the excitement of the chase. Ibid., sub an. 1306. 
 
 «« Turner, History of England, Vol. II., p. 583, No. 28. 
 
 "vSavigny, Geschichte des Rom. Rechts, Theil III., p. 594 seq. 
 
 ***'Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. IV., p. 75; and Hallam's Litera- 
 ture, Vol. I., p. 142. 
 
 ^'Toulman Smith, English Guilds, p. 133. 
 
 ""In Padua, Faccioloti, Fast. Gymnas., Tom. II., p. 10. 
 
 ^' Histoire d'une Fouille du I'apicr, p. 87.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 417 
 
 All principal universities maintained a functionary to whom 
 this, duty was especially delegated as a regular occupation, 
 classified as stationarius, nearly equivalent to the English 
 vocable stationer. A law of the Parisian school, in the year 
 1275, made it compulsory for the incumbent of this honorable 
 and profitable ofifice to solemnly obligate himself to faithfully 
 perform the functions of this avocation, adhering to such 
 usages and statutes regulating the traffic of receiving, keeping, 
 exposing and selling vendible books.**^ The Alfonsine laws 
 prescribed the duties of a stationarius to be the constant sup- 
 ply of books of pure and reliable text and glosses, which they 
 were required to loan scholars at regular rates for trans- 
 cription, or emending older copies.'^ Although the statute 
 arranging the duty of the Parisian librarian evidently con- 
 templated the purchase and sale of books as a proper element 
 of his profession, the Bolognese ordinances specifically inter- 
 dicted such commercial traffic under heavy penalty,"* while the 
 attributes of the office were distinctly defined to be, similar 
 to the Spanish rules, the procuration of expurgated text-books 
 for loan at fair prices to students, for copying or correction of 
 transcripts. Law professors appear to have leagued with the 
 stationarii of Bologna, to enhance the compensation of circu- 
 lating volumes, and to exclude certain glosses in the interest of 
 those which both found financially more profitable.®^ Conse- 
 quently the more enlightened arrangements facilitated the ac- 
 quisition by medical and other students of those treatises ab- 
 solutely indispensable for the successful and intelligent study of 
 their professions. In numerous cities of Italy, anterior to the 
 establishment of important educational institutions, municipal 
 
 *■■* " Corporeale prasbeant juramentum qui vulgo Librarii appellantur, quod libros 
 recipiendo vaenales, custodiendo, esponendo, venendo eosdem," etc., " fidcliter 
 et legitimi se habebant." Buloeus, Histor. Universit. Parisiensis, Tom. III., p. 
 419. 
 
 '^ Du Cange, Glossarium, sub v. Stationarius. 
 
 9*Savigny, Geschichte der Rom. Rechts, Th. III., p. 588. 
 
 ^•^Sarti, De Profess. Bonon., Tom. I., Pars II., Rubr. II., p. 224. 
 27
 
 4 1 8 H^S TOR V OF MEDIC A L E CONOR! V 
 
 authorities would agree to procure at their own expense and 
 maintain one or more revised copies of desired text-books or 
 works of reference, for the sole purpose of copies. 
 
 By a statute of Nice, in the thirteenth century, a public copy- 
 ist was hired at the city's cost, apparently to facilitate the pro- 
 curing of accurate and reliable transcripts from authoritative 
 manuscripts.^*' It will readily occur to the reader that the 
 possession of such volumes of acknowledged value and purity 
 as to text and gloss, whether of Hippocrates and Galen, or 
 the Digests and Pandects, was equivalent in many cases to the 
 increased affluence of the university or municipality control- 
 ling them, and their custody became the object of especial 
 concern. Therefore, peremptory statutes made it a criminal 
 offense to sell these, particularly to foreign universities^\ 
 Touching the medical works of Arabic authors, although the 
 frequent reference by writers of this age to Saracen treatises 
 not yet translated into mediaeval Latinity, attests an extensive 
 familiarity with Oriental languages during the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries, such compends prepared by Arabs on 
 medicine were generally accessible to the student through 
 Latin versions. 
 
 Gerard of Cremorne sojourned nearly ten years at Toledo, 
 in the twelfth century, among the Spanish Arabs, where he 
 went for the expressed purpose of acquiring their dialect and 
 to translate authoritative medical text-books for use in South- 
 ern Europe, of which there was great' dearth.^* Arnold of 
 Villannova studied the Arabic language among the Saracens 
 of Spain. 
 
 This illustrious scientist was equally skilled in a thorough 
 knowledge of Hebrew and Greek;"" and, similar to his great 
 
 96Statuta Nicise; ap. Monum. Hist. Patr. Ital., Tom. I., p. 718. 
 
 ^'Savigny, Geschichte des Rom. Recljts, Th. III., p. 588. 
 
 98.1 iii(. jjiu ijj Hispania cum inter Arabos versatus esset, primes aliqua Medi- 
 corum Arabum opera in Lingua Latina convertit,-(- 1130-40." Sarti, De Profess. 
 Bonon., Tom. I., p. 511 ; and Muratori, Antiq. Ital., Tom. III., p. 936. 
 
 "'*' Vita Villannovae, cap. 2. 
 
 I
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 419 
 
 predecessor in this service, he devoted many years to the 
 careful compiHng of Arabic medical writings, to be used ex- 
 clusively as text books in Western Europe. Among many 
 others, he translated the famous Avicenna's : De Viribus Cor- 
 dis.^°° Simon of Genoa was also serviceable in reproducing 
 the medical treatises of the great Arab scientists into the 
 Vulgate. An Italian library still possesses in manuscript such 
 a translation of a suppositious work of Hippocrates on diseases 
 of horses, made by Magister Moyses de Palermo,'"^ evidently 
 a Jew. 
 
 i** Ibid. ; and Freind, Historia Medicinge, p. 543. 
 
 lO^Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. IV., p. 342.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Medicine in the Fourteenth Century — Progress in Chemistry, Pharmacy 
 and Anatomy — Petrarch's Aversion of Physicians — Charges them with 
 Mendacity — Their Greed — Pomposity and Elaborate Costume — The 
 Poet's Satires — Physicians go in State — Carry Medical Books with them 
 — Decline of the Salernite School — Commentators of Arabic Books of 
 Medicine — Public Lectures — Illustrious Patients Forced to Pledge Jew- 
 els for Medical Attendance — Celebrated Italian Professors — Medicine 
 as part of General Education — Authority of Arabic Writers Diminishes 
 — Junction of Astrology and Medicine — Great Stipends Paid Medicists 
 — Treatment of Eye Maladies — Digest of Pharmacy — Style of Gradu- 
 ates — Early Knowledge of Oriental Languages. 
 
 MEDICAL science in the fourteenth century was exposed 
 to the same implacable enmity of illustrious scholars 
 which had characterized the incipient practice in the ages of 
 Cato and Pliny. It is true the curative art during the era im- 
 mediately preceding the one before us, had made rapid ad- 
 vance from the scrutinizing investigations of Rolandus the 
 anatomist, Thaddeus the professor of medicine, and Villan- 
 nova the practical chemist, in the mystic domains of dissec- 
 tion, pharmacy, and pathology, although the embittered hatred 
 of Petrarch, as the most renowned and influential savan of the 
 period, in a measure delayed the progress of this science. 
 This impassioned hate was directed equally against the system 
 and its practitioners. 
 
 In one of his epistles to Franciscus di Sieno, a famous phy- 
 sician of this epoch, the Florentine poet, with infinite compla- 
 cency, relates an incident with spiteful jocundity against med- 
 icists, Clement VII., the Roman Pontiff, being seriously ill 
 of a malady which excited grave apprehension touching the 
 possible restoration to health of this aged prelate, Petrarch, 
 sufficiently intimate with the pope, wrote him to guard him- 
 self especially against medical treatment, which, in the hands 
 
 (420)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 421 
 
 even of the most eminent physicians of the times, was synon- 
 mous with certain death. 
 
 At the same time he called his attention to a witty inscrip- 
 tion on a tombstone: "The multitude of physicians has killed 
 me!" and charges the profession with mendacity in parading a 
 slender stock of medical knowledge.^ The surgical advisers of 
 His Holiness, upon reading this severe letter, ridiculing in the 
 most withering paragraphs the science of which the pontifical 
 physician was a principal practitioner, replied in bitter and 
 indignant Latin. Resulting from this inimical correspond- 
 ence was a treatise by Petrarch entitled: Invectivarum contra 
 Medicium quendam,^ or Invectives against Medicists, in four 
 books, in which, divested of philosophical moderation of lan- 
 guage, the avocation of medicine is held up to scorn and 
 contempt. In another epistle he deliberately declares that 
 medical consultation is utterly useless.'^ Nothwithstanding 
 frequent protestations that the work was designed to distin- 
 guish the false from the good, it sweeps remorselessly, like an 
 unrestrained hurricane, all, even the pure, before its tempestu- 
 ous inculpation. Allusion has been made to the nature of 
 vestments incident to conferring the doctorate upon aspiring 
 scholars; but a letter from the satirical and erudite laureate to 
 the equally famous Bocaccio furnishes a valuable insight into 
 this usage touching the dress and habits of the medical guild 
 in that age. It was customary for physicians to appear in 
 public with all the splendor and magnificence which social gra- 
 dation and affluence could provoke. Their attire consisted of 
 royal scarlet, plenteously embellished with priceless gems or 
 rings, finished with gilded spurs. Petrarch gibes the profes- 
 sion by saying its members lacked little of the honors of a 
 triumphal procession, with its most solemn adjuncts, since 
 they could and did rightfully boast of having slaughtered at 
 
 ^ " Mendacia vero medicorum, sed eorum qui falsi medici volunt odi fateor." 
 Petrarca, Rerum Senil., Lib. XV., Ep. 3. Cf. Xiphil., vit. Hadriani, p. 296. 
 ^Editio Baslre, A. D., 1554. 
 ^" Nihil adjuvat Medicos consulere." Petrarca, op. cit., Lib. XIIL, Ep. S.
 
 42 2 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 least five thousand men ; but the only element wanting in such 
 munificent tribute to murderous genius, obscured behind the 
 scalpel^ and monumental pile of drugs, was the trifling differ- 
 ence of circumstances under which the assassinations occurred. 
 Wreaths of laurel and mural crowns were justly due to him 
 who slew many enemies with a gauntlet of steel, while in 
 the case of medical murders it was compatriots ruthlessly 
 destroyed by an unarmed person dressed in the toga.^ From 
 several physicians to whom he propounded questions, the 
 answers were confirmatory of the contempt in which practi- 
 tioners of the age should be held, one of these appears to 
 have obtained the honors of special laudation on account ol 
 an injurious confession made by him that he was not so im- 
 pious as to use an art to captivitate the mind, when he knew 
 it to be fallacious." The anecdote related by the satirist 
 touching a venerable medicist will fully reveal the social gra- 
 dation of the profession in Italy at this era. Summoned to 
 attend Galeazzo Visconti, the celebrated Lombardic autocrat, 
 it was agreed the professor should receive for curing the ducal 
 patient the sum of three thousand five hundred scudi, besides 
 expenditures entailed by the journey, at the end of which a 
 magnificent reception awaited him. 
 
 Petrarch affirms he was in Milan the day of this surgeon's 
 arrival. Upon entering the city he dispatched a messenger to 
 the Duke, notifying him of his presence in the municipality; 
 whereupon Galeazzo, awakened from a sound slumber, di- 
 rected that the pompous medicastre should be formally 
 received, as was the usage, with splendor and gayety. Serv- 
 ants, a detachment of cavalry and courtiers, escorting a steed 
 gentle as a lamb and white as unstained snow, for the illus- 
 trious physician, advanced to meet this mighty representative 
 of a legalized corporation of assassins, sacred within purple 
 robes and its ornamentation of glittering jewels. 
 
 * Du Cange, Glossar., sub v. Spatula. 
 ^Petrarca, Rerum Senil., Lib. V., Ep. 4. 
 6 Ibid.
 
 DURIXG THE MIDDLE AGES. 423 
 
 This feted practitioner, apparently of Teutonic nationality, 
 by the haughtiness of his deportment, inspired the populace 
 with a belief that so much pompousness must equal divine 
 puissance, and could resurrect the very dead. Upon entering 
 the ducal palace, the German Hippocrates ordered fresh eggs 
 and a certain preparation of flour concocted into a beverage. 
 The result of this magnificent visitation was the rapid increase 
 of Galeazzo's malady, and the loss of the charlatan's impu- 
 dence, who finally declared he must consult his magic books 
 for an infallible remedy.' From so illustrious a personage, 
 who had experienced the most disenchanting of all events, an 
 actual trial of their skill, it is by no means surprising that the 
 active mind of the amatory song-writer, and equally lucid 
 satirist, should subject medical pretenders to the scorn of 
 literary ridicule. 
 
 He proceeds to narrate in unrivalled beauty and impres- 
 siveness his experience, which exposed the entire profession to 
 remorseless jocundity. In the month of May, 1370, a sudden 
 attack of malarial fever prostrated him, and perhaps some 
 years later concluded an existence of incalculable worth to let- 
 ters and philosophy; at least the epistle constituting our guide 
 expressly states at the time of its composition he was still 
 troubled by recurring intermittent maladies.* Physicians has- 
 tened to offer gratuitous attendance with the same alacrity as 
 in the epidemic of 1359," under the impulse of benevolent affa- 
 bility towards the distinguished invalid, and the urgent demand 
 of the son of Jacopo, his patron Francisco di Carrara. 
 
 After deliberating a long while, the only point, as the poet 
 humorously writes, upon which they united was in asserting 
 pretentiously Petrarch's death at midnight of the same day, the 
 evening of which had already begun. Their only remedy pro- 
 posed was a forcible restraint from sleep by the aid of exciting 
 cordials, which would prolong his life until the following dawn. 
 
 ^Petrarca, Rerura Senil., Lib. V., Ep. 4. 
 
 * An excellent resume of Petrarch's life is prefi.xed to the Didot Ed. of Le 
 Rime di Petrarca, p. 23 seqq. 
 
 ^ Sade, Memoires de Petrarche, Tom. III., p. 523.
 
 424 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 In accordance with his usual unmistakable commands to the 
 servants, and passionate appeals to personal friends, that no 
 physician should be permitted to approach him, the illustrious 
 poet abstained from following the prescription of his medical 
 advisers, but reposing the whole night in the sweet, tranquil 
 slumber described by Virgil, the next morning, when the as- 
 tute medicists arrived, as he says, to arrange funebral prepa- 
 rations, they found him pleasantly engaged in writing. The}' 
 expressed their stupefaction by exclaiming: " He was a won- 
 derful man!"^" 
 
 Unswerving fidelity to the medicinal treatises of the Arabs, 
 doubtless, retarded the rapid progress of medicine in Western 
 Europe as an independent science during the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. We have adverted to the extensive use of Saracen 
 sciences and the servility of imitation, especially in Italy, where 
 translations and perhaps original treatises were carefully pre- 
 served by the stationarii for professional consultation. This 
 blind and irrational subserviency highly offended the inquisi- 
 tive spirit of Petrarch, who seized an excellent opportunity in 
 corresponding with a medical friend, to express with impas- 
 sioned indignation his contempt for Arabic poesy, which he 
 asserted to be effeminate and horribly obscene, and so far as 
 scientific testimony was valuable, he hesitated not to declare" 
 in distinctive terms his disapprobation of it. 
 
 Evidently a too rigid adherence to the system of these 
 authorities undermined the beneficial expansion of the Saler- 
 nite school, towards the close of this era. In his description 
 of a journey to Palestine, alluding to the Neapolitan kingdom, 
 the Florentine unequivocally sets forth the remarkable decline 
 of this University of Medicine when he says : " Here Salerno 
 may be seen, which formerly possessed fame as the source of 
 the sciences, but now presents the decrepitude of dotage."^^ 
 
 loPetrarca, Rerum Senil., Lib. XIII., Ep. 8; and Lib. XIV., Ep. 14. Also, 
 Vita de Petrarca, p. 34. 
 
 " " Seclusis Arabum mendaciis." Petrarca, op. cit.. Lib. XII., Ep. 2. 
 
 ''^" In (|iio Salernum videbis. Fiiisse hie medicin;Te fontem fama est, sed nihil, 
 quod non senis exarescet." Petrarca, Itinerarium Syriacinn, Tom. I., p. 560.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 425 
 
 Although original methods of tuition appear to have been 
 maintained in the Italian universities, the Gallic schools 
 rivalled these in the absorption of useful professional talent. 
 The poet laureate himself, as we have seen, at an early age 
 pursued a course of law studies at Montpelier, which ap- 
 parently had overshadowed the traditional renown of Italy for 
 general culture, and was certainly in high repute in the four- 
 teenth century — so much so, indeed, as to induce Villannova 
 to seek its medical and scholastic lectures.''^ 
 
 A singular confirmation of the decadence of Italian schools 
 at this epoch may be gathered from the significant conduct of 
 a Paduan nobleman, who selected with vigilant care twelve 
 youth from families of his principality, and after full}' equip- 
 ping them with outfits and finances, sent them to the Parisian 
 University, in order that there they might aquirc a more pro- 
 found and skilled knowledge of medical science than was taught 
 in their own countr)'." Notwithstanding this evident ten- 
 dency to send students abroad for such education, there were 
 professors of this art still extant in Italian colleges whose emi- 
 nence, perhaps exaggerated, and erudition, gained them almost 
 divine honors. Of these, the Florentine Dino, after having 
 for years obtained in Bologna the supreme glor^' for success- 
 ful teaching of medicine, being forced to leave the city through 
 that envy which is ever the repulsive portraiture of weak 
 minds, continued elsewhere his public lectures and repeatedly 
 declined to return to th.e celebrated university from which 
 jealousy had driven him.^'' 
 
 So great was his reputation that during his sojourn at 
 Bologna, his expanding celebrity drew multitudes of scholars 
 from the most distant parts of the universe to the city.'® 
 
 "Vita Villannovae, cap. 2; and Freind, Historia Medicince, p. 543. 
 
 ^*Vita Princip., Carrariensis; ap. Murator., Scriptor. Ital. Rer., Tom. XVI.. 
 p. 168. 
 
 i^Villani, Vite d'lllustr. Fiorentine, p. 47. 
 
 1*" Che di volonta di tutto I'universola studio fu promesso alia cathedra." lb., 
 p. 47.
 
 426 ///'S' TOR Y OF ME Die A L E CONOM Y 
 
 While domiciled here, he commenced full commentaries on 
 the writings of Avicenna, in universal renown at this time, 
 perhaps through the admirable versions of Villannova," pro- 
 ceeding, however, with his usual lectures, until deprived of 
 this right by a municipal edict, as suggested above. 
 
 Whatever may have been the apparent causes of Dino's 
 banishment from Bolonga, the subsequent career of this great 
 scientist was adventurous, and seems to have consisted in 
 emigrating from place to place, until the year 13 19, when he 
 completed his comments of Avicenna, at Florence. Whether 
 Bolognese envy or national hatred compelled him to abandon 
 the city in the first instance, or on account of a curious dia- 
 tribe touching the bold plagiarisms of a defunct physician's 
 compendium, which enhanced so greatly the professional 
 celebrity of the persecuted Florentine as to provoke numerous 
 demands from contiguous cities for his permanent residence 
 among them,^® cannot be certainly established, although the 
 incontestible fame of Dino caused him, in companionship with 
 an equally known physician, to be selected as professional 
 advisers of a notorious Paduan statesman, dispatched to Flor- 
 ence on an embassy. In a metrical narrative of this journey to 
 the Tuscan city, the invalid envoy describes his sudden malady 
 and the general characteristics, moral and physical, of the 
 attending surgeons. Subsequently, but prior to the year 
 1325, this famous professor retired to Sienna, in order to con- 
 tinue his medical readings. As an indication of a popular 
 and apparently just celebrity, it is stated many Bolognese 
 students followed him to his new professorship. 
 
 At the epoch of his final voyage to his native city, having 
 completed the commentaries on Avicenna, he read them pub- 
 licly in the cathedra or lecture dais — an event by no means 
 unusual at this period of the Middle Ages in Italy, where 
 
 '' Vita VillannovEE, cap. 2. This scientist was upon most intimate terms with 
 the king of Aragon, and proceeded to Avignon in the year 1309 as envoy extra- 
 ordinary to Pope Clement V., in order to negotiate a recognition for his patron 
 of the title " King of Jerusalem." Freind, Historia Medicinre, p. 543. 
 
 i'*Villani, op. cit., p. 52.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 427 
 
 oftentimes expository lectures in the nature of textual com- 
 ments were delivered in public upon Avicenna, Galen, and Hip- 
 pocrates.^' In the year 1327, the illustrious Florentine closed 
 his earthly existence in this city, having obtained a just repu- 
 tation as the chief medical scientist of the time.^" Besides the 
 Avicennian expository treatises, extending his renown in that 
 age, Dino wrote a compendium of Hippocrates on obstetrical 
 knowledge, some letters touching the sanitary property of 
 supping and dining, and a book on surgery. To these should 
 be added, as betraying talents of antagonistic description, a 
 lucid explanation of a famous amatory chant by Guido Caval- 
 canti.^^ Careful analysis of this professor's character attests 
 that at times he would ascend to ecstatic contemplation in the 
 quiet seclusion of his private doorway, while the opinion — 
 nearly unanimous — regarding his genius,"'^''' awarded him the 
 noble commendation of readiness to attend gratuitously the 
 diseased — a suitable appendix to that distinguished acumen 
 by which his vast illustration was fairly earned.^^ Equally 
 famed for the tuition of medicine and his lucubrations on this 
 subject, was Torrgiano, also of Florence, and contemporary 
 with Dino.'^* Having completed his professional studies at 
 Bologna, he opened a school for the curative art at Paris. 
 Touching his skill and profundity in medicine, he received the 
 eulogy of transcending ordinary commentators, which lauda- 
 tory title was conferred on account of an excellent analysis of 
 the Galenic system, and under such designation this work was 
 published.^^ 
 
 I'* " Hie in expositionem Avicennte, Galeni et Hippocratis," etc., " prrecipue co- 
 dex ille nostrce Avicenn^e." Muratori, Scriptor. Italia Rer., Tom. XXIV., p. 
 1165. 
 
 2" Villain, Vite d'lUustr. Florentine, p. 46 seq. 
 
 ^iFabricius, Biblioth. Latinit., Tom. II., p. 39. 
 
 ^2 Petrarca, Rer. Memor., Lib. II., cc. 3 and 4. 
 
 ^^Villani, Vite d'lllustr. Florentine, p. 46 seqq. 
 
 ^*Ibid., p. 49 seqq. 
 
 ^^Fabricius, Biblioth. Latinit, Tom. II., p. 66.
 
 42 8 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Frequently medical professors attained to so great eminence 
 during the Middle Ages that affluent invalids readily believed 
 it impossible to escape death unless such attendance should 
 be procured on terms dictated by the medicists themselves. 
 Abuse of this morbid belief advanced these celebrated prac- 
 titioners rapidly to enormous wealth and pomposity. In this 
 age the great English surgeon Gaddesen/** and Nicholas Col- 
 net, royal physician to Henry V., the latter of whom forced 
 his patron to pledge certain jewels of the crown as a guaran- 
 tee of annual salary ,^^ may be referred to here as conclusive 
 proof that the grade of the profession satirized by Petrarch 
 was uniform outside of Italy, who accused its members with 
 trifling with bodily ills in order to accumulate money .^^ 
 
 Panegyrical praise has been awarded Tomaseo, an Italian 
 scientist of this century, whose vast ability doubtless justifies 
 the hyperbolical encomium of ^sculapian similitude. In ad- 
 dition to wide-spread distinction and quickly-acquired riches, 
 he was honored with the sincere amity of Petrarch, who has 
 preserved in one of his letters an unequivocal attestation of 
 the excellence and worth of the scientist. He unreservedly 
 affirms, notwithstanding his well-known skepticism touching 
 the science, that this medical professor was superior in deserv- 
 ing celebrity to all physicians of the age.^* At the time of 
 Tomaseo's visit to Viscount Galeazzo afflicted with gout, 
 Petrarch asserts that in magnificent robustness of health, 
 which was acknowledged to be the finest in the provinces, 
 he resembled this great practitioner.^" 
 
 An acquaintanceship with medicine was deemed essential 
 
 ^^ Freind, Historia MediciiiEe, p. 551. 
 
 ^' " Ferra le dit nostre Seigneur le Roy liverer an dit Nichol en gage joialx, 
 queux par I'agreement se purront bien valoir la somme la quelle les ditz gages, 
 pur iccl quarter s'extendront." Rymer, Foedera, Tom. IX., p. 235. 
 
 28 <( Medici, qui de malis hominium, ludum et mercemonium fecere." Petrarca, 
 Rerum Send, Lib. III., Ep. 4. 
 
 2» Petrarca, Rer. Senil, Lib. XII., Ep. i. 
 
 ^"Villani, Vite d'lllustr. Florentine, p. 49 seqq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 429 
 
 to the culture of an unprofessional scholar during the Middle 
 Ages, developed as a proper sequence of ancient legislation by 
 the Carlovingians, and canons of the church establishing the 
 range of monastic education. As late as the year 1366, when 
 a distinguished geometrician died in Italy, he directed by tes- 
 mentary bequest his collection of medical books should be 
 given to the modern rival of yEsculapius, the illustrious Toma- 
 seo.^' Villani relates a prediction, publicly announced by the 
 great scientist, touching the day and manner of his own death, 
 long in advance of the event, abundantly proving the profound 
 conviction of mediaeval medicists in the virtue of necromancy 
 and astrological sortilege. 
 
 Persuaded of the near approach of the end of his earthly ex- 
 istence, he ordered an altar constructed in his domicile for the 
 selemnizing of mass, importuning the clerical celebrant with 
 utmost devoutness to consecrate the Corpus Christi, and while 
 observing with steadfast gaze and awe-struck tenacity the tran- 
 substantiated material, expired at the prognosticated hour.''* 
 Among his published works are commentaries on the Galenic 
 variations of fevers, and a treatise touching the most suitable 
 mode of living during pestilences, evidently prepared for emer- 
 gencies developed by the great plague in this century. His 
 death alone prevented the compilation of the Summa INIedi- 
 cinse.^^ A Florentine professor, Nicholas, arose to distinction 
 in this age for the brilliancy of his medical knowledge, which 
 celebrity was prolonged into the first year of the ensuing era. 
 According to the energetic laudation of a panegyrist, this sci- 
 entist's familiarity and skill in medicine were almost divine, 
 combining a thorough culture of polite letters similar to schol- 
 ars of the Middle Ages in Italy'* and among the Spanish 
 Arabs.'' 
 
 *i Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. V., p. 253. 
 
 32 Villani, op. cit., 49 seqq. 
 ''^ Tirabuschi, op. cit., Tom. V., p. 254. 
 ■'* Lanzi, Storica Pittorica della Italia, Tom. I., p. 13 seq. 
 
 ^^Leo Africanus, De Virib. Illustr. Arab., cap. 9, p. 268; and cap. II, p. 273. 
 Also, Freind, Historia Medicinae, p. 504.
 
 43° 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 The writings of this accomphshed professor were eagerly- 
 sought, and preserved their reputation unimpaired for curative 
 methods, which engaged the attention of both practitioners 
 and suffering infirm. From the adulatory encomiums of the 
 writer referred to, it appears the medical profession of that 
 time, after essaying the subtilities of the Arabian Avicenna, or 
 the more ancient Hippocrates and Galen, abandoned the arbi- 
 trament of their authority and carried alone the works of Nich- 
 olas, which perfectly indicated what remedies controlled and 
 vanquished the most obstinate diseases.'"' 
 
 So great indeed was the celebrity of this professor that a 
 spurious antidotarium was attributed to him for several centu- 
 ries." Mediaeval families whose members were distinguished 
 for their knowledge of medicine similar to the medicists of re- 
 mote antiquity ,^^ transmitted the more recondite mysteries of 
 the curative art to their posterity as an heirloom, and in this 
 way the son of Bartholemew, William, the renowned Bologna 
 doctor, obtained illustration as early as the year 1302.^® His 
 treatises on the cure of maladies have been carefully preserved, 
 although the dedicatory letter prefacing the work betrays the 
 undisguised frailty of vain scholasticism, and in the redun- 
 dancy of phraseology utterly divested of signification, are cer- 
 tainly to be detected the traces of that constant tendency 
 throughout the Middle Ages to inspire increased credulity by 
 the collocation of mysterious words. 
 
 Notwithstanding this inculpation, his descendants were in- 
 cumbents of professorial sittings at Bologna upon the high- 
 est compensation allowed in the year 1 381, almost equalling 
 the enormous salaries of the preceding era.^° At this epoch, 
 when the popular mind was still sunken into profound obscu- 
 rity and ignorant superstition, when dedicatory prefaces to 
 
 8*Mehus, ad Vit. Ambr., PiEef., p. 29. 
 ^^Fabricius, Biblioth. Latinit, Tom. V., p. in. 
 ^^Goujet, Origin des Arts et Sciences, Tom. I., p. 213. 
 ^^ Sarti, De Professor. Bonon., Tom. I., Pars I., p. 483. 
 ^"Muratori, Scriptor. Rer. Ital., Tom. XX., pp. 54 and 940.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 431 
 
 medical books sought to provoke unusual confidence, profes- 
 sors claimed the privilege of endowing themselves with the 
 superbly ponderous title of Prince of Medicine. 
 
 So far as the panegyric of the Florentines designated above 
 extended, doubtless there was abundant reason to assume the 
 merit of this public honor, which oftentimes elevated the suc- 
 cessful practitioner, in those distant ages, to transcendent gran- 
 deur, but when accorded unfitting personages, presents the 
 appearance of unequivocal mendacity. At the close of the 
 century under examination, Gentilis da Foligno, a medicist of 
 trifling importance, was awarded, by vulgar acclamation, the 
 colossal distinction, Divinus Gentilis Fulgiens nostree et sua^ 
 setatis Medicorum princeps — divine prince of physicians of 
 his age." To this adorable surgeon is to be attributed the 
 determination of the Carrarese ruler to aggregate twelve 
 Paduan boys, and after fully supplying them with liberal out- 
 fit and finances, to send them for medical instruction to the 
 Parisian university.*" Independent of his princely gradation 
 in society, Gentilis is said to have been the personal physician 
 to the Roman pontiff, John XXII., and that he died during 
 the frightful pestilence of 1 348, at Perugia.*^ 
 
 The predecessor of this pope in name was of profound skill 
 in medical science, and wrote a work professedly for indigents, 
 containing such directions as rendered the practice of the art 
 possible, without having recourse to physicians.** The death 
 of Gentilis seems to have been superinduced by the multi- 
 plicity of pestiferous patients, and prevented the publication of 
 an elaborate treatise on the causes and remedy of the plague,*^ 
 an effort, as hitherto stated, engaging the attention of other 
 medical sages at this epoch. 
 
 «Ibid., Tom. XXIV., p. 1155. 
 
 «Ibid., Tom. XVI., p. 168. 
 
 ^^Fabricius, Biblioth. Latinit, Tom. III., p. 32. 
 
 **" Hie fuit magnus medicus, et scripsit libium in medicina qui Thesaurus pau- 
 perum vocatur : in aliis scientiis fuit generalis." Martini Fuldensis, Chronicon, 
 sub an. 1276; ap. Eccord. I., p. 1715. 
 
 *5 Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. V., p. 259.
 
 43- 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Jacobus da Forli inspired so great afTection in the people of 
 Padua, on account of his vast science in medicine and its 
 practice, that when he died early in the ensuing age,^® the 
 manifestations of grief were only equalled by those provoked 
 by the death of Hippocrates." During his life, this eminent 
 practitioner attained the honorable distinction of Royal Divin- 
 ity of Medicine, and was declared repeatedly by the famous 
 Savonarola, also a physician, to be the first medicist of the 
 time/^ The accomplishments of Jacobus were of the most 
 extended character, including public readings in natural and 
 moral philosophy, logic, philology and medicine. After sev- 
 eral years of exclusively philosophical lectures, otherwise the 
 mediaeval Quadrium and Trivium, he yielded himself up 
 entirely to medical instruction in the Paduan University, where 
 his system attained such high repute as to be prescribed by an 
 authoritative decree as the order of examination — secundum 
 questionem Jacobi Forlioiensis.*" Greek authorities in medi- 
 cine attracted earnest commentations from this erudite pro- 
 fessor, of which the most celebrated were his exposition of 
 Galen's Arte Medica, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the 
 works of Avicenna.^** 
 
 From the Sancta Sophia family descended a long and illus- 
 trious lineage of medical practitioners and instructors, whose 
 fame spread beyond the limits of Christendom to barbarians — 
 perhaps the civilized Ottoman and Spanish Saracens.^^ Of 
 these, Marsiglius, according to the hyperbolical panegyric of 
 enthusiastic Savonarola, describing " the magnificent orna- 
 mentations" of Padua, equalled divinity himself in ability to 
 cure vexatious maladies, which procured for him the appella- 
 
 *^ Facciolati, Fasti Gymnas. Pat., Pars II., p. loi. 
 
 *' Tiraboschi, op. cit., p. 261. 
 
 *^ De Magnific. Ornament. Reg. Civ. Paduae, Lib. I., cap. 3. 
 
 ** Tiraboschi, op. cit., Tom. V., p. 261. 
 
 ^Fabricius, Biblioth. Latinit., Tom. IV., p. 11. 
 
 ^^ De Magnif. Ornament., cit., Lib. I., c. 3; Muratori, Scriptor., Tom. XXIV., 
 p. 1 163.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 433 
 
 tion of prince and monarch of physicians, and entitled him to 
 undivided honor from posterity. He narrates that Marsiglius 
 obtained from all Italian Univ^ersities the erudition and sci- 
 ence possible to be imparted, and having in turn lectured to 
 them, communicated the redundant splendor of his brilliant 
 science to less cultured ultramontane nations. 
 
 Visconti, the first duke of Milan, manifested especial inter- 
 est in this professor. Consequently, when Marsiglius, confid- 
 ing in his scholastic abilities, offered to attend university lec- 
 tures at Paris, and to publicly dispute with its teachers any 
 point of medicine or the liberal arts propounded for discus- 
 sion, the ducal patron readily proffered to- send the literary 
 athlete thither at personal expense, an arrangement however 
 which the sudden demise of Galeazzo rendered nugatoiy.** 
 The immense stipend allowed the illustrious surgeon unequiv- 
 ocally proves the estimation in which he was held by Vis- 
 conti. Under the denomination of physician ordinary to 
 this prince, he received an annual salary or pension of one 
 hundred and thirty liri, which for that epoch was an enor- 
 mous sum of money .^* 
 
 Professional treatment of the Milanese ruler by Marsiglius 
 consisted of "solemn" liquids and famous medicaments com- 
 pounded by the distinguished physician himself, which con- 
 temporary history affirms prolonged the august patient's life 
 for several days. The annalist concludes the encomium by 
 pronouncing him the best and most learned medicist of the 
 universe.""* This reputation obtained for him at the Bolognese 
 university the signal distinction of reading his lectures on 
 medicine in the morning — an honor usually restricted to 
 
 ^^ Savonarol., De Magnific. Ornament. Paduce, Lib. I., c. 3; ap. Murator., 
 Tom. XXIV., p. 1 163. 
 
 ^ Muratori, Scriptor. Rer. Ital., Tom. XX., p. 940. In the year 1342 Inno- 
 cent, by decree, allowed astrologists reading at Placentia, the modest sum of thir- 
 teen lire. Ibid. 
 
 ^* " Reputato il migliore e piu sapiente medico del mondo." Istoria Padov. ; 
 ap. Murator., op. cit., Tom. XVII., p. 857. 
 28
 
 434 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 native professors.^^ His brother also attained to eminence for 
 the lucid expositions which he made of the works of Hippo- 
 crates, Galen and Avicenna, and for a commentary on a trea- 
 tise by the Arabic scientist, commended for its remarkable 
 excellencies.^* 
 
 In the panegyrical inscription upon this professor's tomb in 
 the Paduan cathedral, the ordinary exaggerations of such eu- 
 logies are far transcended, for he is declared " the most sub- 
 lime monarch of medicine, and the very salvation of the city 
 where reposes his sepulchre," and that "as the father of study 
 he cured the maladies of the languishing." The versifier adds: 
 " He extracted the inmost essence of Hippocrates, Aristotle 
 and Galen, combining truest practice with the puissance of re- 
 storing health to the entire world, while his shining glory per- 
 meated the globe."" The Sancta Sophia family boasted with 
 just pride of another famous medical professor, whose renown 
 called him in extreme youth to the Austrian metropolis, 
 where he publicly lectured on the science for many years; at 
 the same time he was surgeon ordinary to the ducal magnates 
 at a large stipend. Later in life he returns to his natal city 
 with the moderate celebrity of " most famous."^* 
 
 Italian colleges were singularly fortunate in possessing fam- 
 ilies whose medicinal culture, transmitted from more ancient 
 progenitors, enabled many of their descendants to acquire 
 great illustration and rare distinction for admirable works of 
 medicine and surgery at the close of the fourteenth century, 
 or early in the next. Prior to the year 1347, it is attested, the 
 most famous Gallic surgeon of that era was a disciple of medi- 
 cine, and perhaps anatomy, under a Bolognese professor. 
 This tutor, named Bertuccius, is referred to by the celebrated 
 Guido di Chauliac as his master — Bertuccius magister meus^' — 
 
 *5 Ibid., Tom. XXIV., p. 1163 seqq. 
 
 ^Muratori, Scriptor. Rer. Ital., Tom. XXIV., p. 1165. 
 
 *' Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteiatura, Tom. V., p. 265. 
 
 =*Muratori, op. cit., p. 1165. 
 
 •^'Chauliac, Tractat. I., Doctr. I., De Aiiatomia, cap. i, p. 3.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 435 
 
 who fell before the destructive energy of the great pestilence."" 
 A work in the nature of a compend of medicine by this anato- 
 mist is reproduced as a worthy monument by the erudite 
 mediaeval literary cyclop?edist." One of the numerous medi- 
 cal or surgical tutors of this epoch seems to have had such 
 notable success in restoring health by means of unguents that 
 he offered to cure Boniface VIII., the Roman pontiff, with 
 them®'^ — the medicinal property of which was largely increased 
 by placing them upon the extremities.®^ 
 
 Other Italian professors of medicine, in addition to those 
 already designated, have perhaps escaped oblivion through the 
 pen of the illustrious Florentine, Petrarch. Albino de Cano- 
 bia received from him a formal letter of acknowledgment of 
 an invitation to accept the hospitality of the medical gentle- 
 man at his villa, and at the same time to receive professional 
 attention.*'* To this courteous request the poet responded, 
 and as a gracious concession to the polite offer of the scientific 
 host, avowed, notwithstanding his enmity against the profession, 
 that in trivial disorders it could be of slight utility. His epis- 
 tles to Franciscus of Sienna, and William Rosen, both eminent 
 surgeons and medical authorities, are charged with witty utter- 
 ances at the expense of their avocation.^' The former of these 
 published at Avignon, in the year 1375, a work on the sanitary 
 properties of the bath, which, it may be remarked, indicates 
 extraordinary sagacity for the age, and another on the nature 
 of poisons. 
 
 This author appears to have divided professional endow- 
 ments between researches and lectures on the science of astrol- 
 ogy in its remedial elements, and on medicine as a curative 
 art. The extension of this popular credulity, touching the 
 
 ^Muratori, Scriptor. Rer. Ital., Tom. XVIII., p. 402. 
 
 *i " Collectorius artis Medicinae." Fabricius, Biblioth. Latinit, Tom. I., p. 245. 
 
 ^^Chauliac, Tractat, I., Doctr. I., De Anatomia, cap. 6. 
 
 ®^ " In extremitatibus Membrorum." Ibid., cap. 2, p. 10. 
 
 *'Sade, Memoires de Petrarche, Tom. III., p. 523 seq. 
 
 ®^ Petrarca, Rerum Senil, Lib. XV., Ep. 3 ; and Lib. III., cap. 4.
 
 436 
 
 HI ST OR Y OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 effective junction of these apparently disunited sciences, may 
 be inferred from the fact that the erudite lecturer was per- 
 sonal surgeon to the pope, but such practice was the con- 
 tinuation of the earlier astrological system openly taught by 
 Villannova and his predecessors, who claimed that certain 
 elixirs must be prepared under lunar or planetary influences.®* 
 
 Petrarch mentions John of Parma, in the most eulogistic 
 terms, and in such warmth of laudation that its genuineness 
 should not be questioned. He alludes to him as justly pos- 
 sessing a grand name, both at home and in the Roman court, 
 then in the city of Avignon. Another curious statement 
 clearly indicates the vastness of the number of medical adven- 
 turers in the pontifical capital. By way of suitable contrast, 
 the poet-laureate asserts this reputation of the Parma professor 
 would distinguish him amid the affluence of satraps and tur- 
 bulent crowd of physicians at the papal court.*^ The cele- 
 brated historian of anatomy appears to have enjoyed an inti- 
 mate acquaintanceship with the erudite scientist while in 
 Avignon.®** 
 
 The frequency of professional engagements in the leading 
 universities of Italy, vindicates the solidity of his fame, while 
 the magnitude of yearly stipends during his sojourn at 
 Bologna and Brescia, demonstrates the importance of these 
 lectures. At this period, as we shall presently discover, the 
 practice and profession of medicine were restricted to the laity, 
 and interdicted under severe penalties to clerics and regular 
 monks. In defiance of such canons, Jacobus of Ferrara, 
 early in this century — in the year 131 1, incumbent of the 
 episcopacy of Modena — had attained great distinction by pre- 
 eminent medical knowledge, imparted in public readings and 
 to schools of disciples."^ Clement, the Roman pontiff, seems 
 to have cherished medical talents. 
 
 "^Rosarius Philosopharius, Lib. II., cap. 28. 
 
 *'" Sed in Romana curia inter illos ingens medicorum turba." Petrarca, Rer- 
 um Senil, Lib. XII., Ep. 2. 
 
 •'^Chauliac, Capitulum Universale, Preef. 
 
 69 Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital., Tom. XL, p. 58.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 437 
 
 In the year 1307, Edward I. of England, addressed his 
 HoHness a respectful petition asking for the return of Nicholas 
 Tyngewick, royal surgeon, whom the Pope retained evidently 
 as his own physician.™ Villannova was also present about 
 this period in Avignon, on political business for the king of 
 Aragon." Guido da Bagnolo, whom Petrarch honored with a 
 sincere amity, freqently united with him during his sojourn at 
 Venice, in supporting the philosophic argumentation of the 
 Arabic sage, Averroes." 
 
 Although possessed of sound learning and judicious intelli- 
 gence, in the rapidity of discussion his ideas became confused, 
 while at times the consciousness of his own mental superiority 
 rendered him superb with pride and pomposity. Influenced 
 by such weakness, Guido haughtily announced himself as phy- 
 sician to his majesty the King of Jerusalem and of Cyprus. 
 The habits of this medical professor provoked luxurious in- 
 dulgence during his residence at the Levantine Island, where 
 he owned a slave by the name of Francesca. In the testa- 
 mentary disposition of his personal property he directed that a 
 daughter, offspring of the servile mistress, should be sent to 
 Lombardy and placed under the tutelage of her paternal rela- 
 tives. Upon arriving at marriageable maturity, she must be 
 sought in matrimony only by a scholar matriculated at the 
 Bologna University. He bequeathed his collection of medi- 
 cal books and treatises on art to the exclusive benefit of indi- 
 gent students." 
 
 The inscription on his sepulchral monument at Venice, with 
 hyperbolical exaggeration, awards him the supreme praise in 
 philosophy and medicine. It appears Guido drew up a chron- 
 icle in several volumes, containing notable acts of the Dukes 
 of Reggio minutely narrated.^* 
 
 '"Rymer, Foedera, Tom. II., p. 1056. 
 "^^ Freind, Historia Medicinse, p. 543. 
 " Ibid., p. 504. 
 
 '^ Faccioli, Memorie di Reggio, Tom. II., p. 251. 
 
 '* Prosm. ad Histor.; apud Muratori, Scriptor. Rer. Ital., Tom. XVIII., p. i 
 seqq.
 
 438 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Towards the conclusion of this era a surgeon named Bar- 
 tholomew, domiciled in Bologna, was celebrated for the re- 
 markable success of his treatment of ocular maladies — so 
 much so indeed as to be reputed miraculous for such diseases, 
 and the preservation of sight. He received an annual salary 
 from the municipal authorities of twenty florins, and quickly 
 obtained satisfactory evidence of external fame beyond the 
 place of his abode, where he was greatly esteemed/^ Other 
 departments of human physiology appear to have received 
 especial study, and become objects of undivided practice, such 
 for instance as removing calculus by surgical operation. 
 
 Several writings of this century, elucidating this important 
 subject, were published, the titles of which we reproduce from 
 Tiraboschi :'" " Remedium adversus Lapidum efformationem 
 in vesicis et Regimen ulceris vesicae." Increasing subdivision 
 of medical science into its cognate branches entailed the 
 necessity of preparing numerous compilations, designed 
 doubtless for less celebrated and skilled practitioners of the 
 curative art. Of these the Opus Pandectarum Medicinae ap- 
 pears to have been substantially an encyclopedia of alphabeti- 
 cal receipts for compounding medicaments, and a full explana- 
 tion of medical terms, with their practical uses. This volume, 
 of which many editions were subsequently published, has 
 received the eulogy of Freind as presenting the most com- 
 plete and satisfactory treatise on the curative properties of 
 herbs extant in compendious form." 
 
 From a statement contained in this pharmaceutical Pandect, 
 it would seem that the compiler early in this century had been 
 called to a professorship in the Salernite university.'* Com- 
 pared with the slender services by other European medical 
 instructors of the age, the Italian writers, by no means ad- 
 
 ^5 " Riputato uomo miracoloso per tutti i mali degli occhi, e per conservare la 
 vista." Ghirardacci, Historia di Bologna, Tom. II., p. 455. 
 ''^Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. V., p. 272 seq. 
 "Historia Medicinre, p. 501. 
 '''Pandect. Medicinar. Opus, p. 164.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 439 
 
 \-ancing the science to its progressive perfection, were further 
 in the v^an than their predecessors in elucidating obscure por- 
 tions of human pathology ; and for this reason the history of 
 the economy of medicine as illustrated in the great schools of 
 Southern Europe justly merits specific examination. Mon- 
 dino's nativity, similar to the fate of the illustrious bard of 
 Scio's isle, was claimed by five cities of Italy. Florence, 
 Bologna and Venice, through distinguished scholars, assumed 
 to prove the origin of the restorer of anatomical science in 
 their several municipalities."' 
 
 Touching the Bolognese professor who appears to have par- 
 ticular claims to the individuality of the renowned anatomist, a 
 document published by the careful biographer of the cele- 
 brated medical sages of that university, establishes Mundino's 
 ancestry as parties to a contract with a famed tutor, thus sol- 
 emnly obligated to instruct them in the details of this art 
 upon the somewhat singular basis of a stipend in the nature of 
 profit and loss.®" According to the terms of this agreement, 
 executed in the year 1270, the opening of pharmaceutical traf- 
 fic was stipulated, which having continued for many years, was 
 transmitted to this great scientist, whose highest encomium is 
 contained in Sarti's brief phrase : " Mundinus anatomes restitu- 
 tor — restorer of anatomy."**' Thirty-six years after the insti- 
 tution of the drug trade, his uncle Lucian and one of the con- 
 tracting parties to the bond, both apparently in full practice 
 professionally, were elected to medical professorships in the 
 university of Bologna.*^'* 
 
 Ten years later, the son of Robert, King of Sicily, leaving 
 the city under the propulsion of an insult, the teacher of med- 
 icine and his nephew, afterwards illustrious Mundinos, were 
 dispatched with other principal citizens to offer suitable excuses 
 
 ''Fabricius, Biblioth. Latinit., Tom. V., p. 90, calls him " Florentinus; " and 
 Villani, Vite d'lllustr. Florentine, p. 55. Also, Freind, Histor. Medicine, p. 505. 
 ^Sarti, De Professor. Bononiensis, Tom. I., Pars I., p. 463. 
 »• Ibid. 
 •^^ Ghirardacci, Historia di Bologna, Tom. I., p. 505.
 
 440 
 
 HISTOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 and plausible explanations, including a petition for forgiveness 
 to the municipal authorities. In the work cited the principal 
 emissaries are designated doctores physiciae,®* or as written by 
 Sarti, Fixice,** which at that period had begun to be the title 
 of medical practitioners, excluding ultimately vernacular 
 phraseology among the polite nations of Europe.*^ 
 
 Perhaps the most authentic writer upon whose judicious 
 statements absolute reliance should be placed touching Mun- 
 dino's birthplace, is Guy di Chauliac, nearly contemporaneous 
 with this distinguished professor, whom he distinctly asserts 
 to be Bolognese — Mundinus Bononiensis.^ Soon after the 
 event alluded to the uncle died, leaving the nephew to the full 
 enjoym.ent of family grandeur and the performance of a duty 
 to elevate to the decedent's memory a tablet on which was 
 engraved the representation of a professor of medicine sur- 
 rounded by a troop of eager disciples, before the professorial 
 chair. The epitaph ingeniously compares his curative powers 
 with the sublimest efforts of the Pergamic scientist, and ac- 
 cuses invidious fatality with suddenly severing the thread of 
 so noble an existence.^' Subsequent to his kinsman's decease, 
 Mundino pursued his professorship of medicine at the Bolog- 
 nese university, where he obtained the large compensation of 
 a hundred liri annually for scientific lectures.** 
 
 The exact date of his death is unsettled. An annalist under 
 the year 1326 fixes that period as the end of his earthly and 
 valuable labors.^^ The chronist presumably in a summary 
 form reproduces what appears to be the united accord of all, 
 his great reputation as the most skillful surgeon of the uni- 
 verse, to whom the highest honors of Bologna were awarded.^" 
 
 83 Ibid., p. 591. 
 
 8* Sarti, op. cit., Tom. I., Pars II., p. 227. 
 
 *^ Rothii, Explicat. Vocab. Physic, \ 13. 
 
 ** Chauliac, Tractat. I., Doctr. I., cap. i, p. 3. 
 
 ^' Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura, Tom. V., p. 278. 
 
 **Ghirardacci, Historia di Bologna, Tom. II., pp. 18, 56. 
 
 **9Muratori, Scriptor. Rer. Ital., Tom. XVIII., p. 340. 
 
 """Che fii reputato uno de megliori Medici del Mundo." Ibid.
 
 DURING THE ^flDDLE AGES. 44 1 
 
 A conventual record earlier by one year, however, records the 
 donation of certain gifts to a cloister, subject to the order of 
 Saint Frances, for masses to the repose of Mundino's soul.*' 
 Guy di Chauliac, historian of surgical science down to his 
 own time, narrates that during his studies in Bologna under 
 the tutelage of this famed anatomist, Mundino was celebrated 
 for the excellence of his lectures, and numerous treatises on 
 dissection."^ Some of these are still extant in manuscript 
 among the libraries of Italy. 
 
 A writer of the period, describing one of Mundino's me- 
 chanical compositions used in illustrating the science of anat- 
 omy, declares him to have had exalted pre-eminence in syn- 
 thetical demonstration of the art, and in the number and range 
 of writings on medicine. The chronist, in the fervency of 
 panegyricism, naively adds : "When he read them himself, his 
 soul was filled with unlimited joy." He also urges as the spe- 
 cific source of Mundino's renown his dexterous preparation of 
 human effigies designed to elucidate the literal portions of ana- 
 tomical lectures. Upon this invention the annalist hesitates 
 to express an opinion, " because the poverty of words must 
 restrict a sounding eulogy."*'^ 
 
 Faccioli affirms this Bolognese professor was the first to 
 compose a full and complete treatise on dissection since the 
 days of ancient surgeons; and so ponderous was the weight of 
 his influence, that contemporary scientists cited a single para- 
 graph from his works, as a guide for an entire reading before 
 their disciples.*** A statute of the Paduan university pre- 
 scribed that medical licentiates matriculated there should fol- 
 low literally and rigidly the comments and explanations of 
 this distinguished anatomist in their studies on surgery' — a 
 regulation subsisting in full force until the sixteenth century.^* 
 
 91 Tiraboschi, op. cit., Tom. V., p. 279. 
 . 92 Chauliac, Tractat. I., Doctr. I., De Anatomia, cap. I, p. 3. 
 
 s^Muratori, Scriptores Rer. Ital., Tom. XXI., p. 1162. 
 
 ^'^ Fasti Gymnas. Pat., Pars I., p. 48. 
 
 9»" Ut Anatomici Paduani explicationem textualem ipsius Mumlini secjuantur." 
 Portal, Histoire de I'Anatomie, Tom. I., p. 259.
 
 442 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 It is admitted by medical historians, both in Italy and else- 
 where, that Mundino is justly entitled to the honor of restoring 
 anatomy to the proportions of an exact science, and in all re- 
 spects, from the multiplicity of his writings explanatory of this 
 art, passes as the precursor of the modern system.'® At a 
 time when deep and profound interest began to advance medi- 
 cine swiftly along the plane of an accurate science, it was for- 
 tunate there were persons of erudition to translate, compendi- 
 ously, the voluminous works of ancient and more recent 
 sages into the professional Latinity of that age. 
 
 Many of these translators, doubtless deeply interested in 
 the progress of the curative art, possessed, however, no further 
 acquaintanceship with it than could be gleaned from versions 
 carefully made of medical authorities, Greek or Arabic, for 
 which they were abundantly compensated by municipal and 
 university laws. When western scholars had acquired sufficient 
 familiarity with oriental languages,''^ acting upon the example 
 of Saracen predecessors in making translations of Syriac and 
 Grecian writings,"® they reproduced the literature of the 
 Arabs into the learned idiom of medijeval Europe. Toward 
 the end of the fourteenth century, when the European mind 
 loosened slightly the crippling processes of irrational induc- 
 tion, Italian cities maintained their advance of scientific culture 
 propagated from the Sicilian schools. 
 
 Padua and Venice vigorously upheld this rational distinc- 
 tion, and endeavored, especially the latter, by the repressive 
 energy of legislative interdict, to retain their students within 
 the educational limits of domestic colleges.'^ At this time the 
 Paduan University possessed a register of eighteen thousand 
 scholars attracted thither by diversified departments of science 
 and art, which were remarkably endowed with the most com- 
 
 '®Sarti, De Professoribus Bononiensis, Tom. I., Pars I., p. 463. 
 "^Daru., Histoire de Venise, Tom. II., p. 308. 
 
 '•* Heeren, Sur I'lnfluence des Croisades, p. 51; and Leo African., De Viris 
 (^uibus Illust.; ap. Arab., cap. I, p. 261. 
 "'■• Dam., op. cit., Tom. II., p. 311.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 443 
 
 plete collection of subjects illustrating natural history; a 
 botanical garden, vast accumulations of manuscripts, a chem- 
 ical laboratory, and a fully equipped amphitheatre exclusively 
 devoted to anatomy.'*"' Many cities of Italy during the cen- 
 tury before us attained great celebrity on account of their ag- 
 gregation of oriental books and numerous translations of the 
 most important works. 
 
 Pisa, Milan, and Pavia, were distinguished for the ardent 
 zeal with which they pursued such labors, while Venice ap- 
 pears to have been the first to furnish the best and purest ver- 
 sion of Arabic authors, notably Avicenna — in the ensuing 
 era.'"' Anterior to 1345, translations of nearly the entire writ- 
 ings of Galen were made by Nicholas de Reggio from the 
 original Greek. To this literary pursuit he devoted his lin- 
 guistic culture over a period of thirty years, during which he 
 certainly produced the most authentic translation of this ven- 
 erable authority on medicine. 
 
 Contemporaneous with Guy di Chauliac, he had early ob- 
 tained favorable notice for such services, and although an un- 
 professional scholar, his versions were accepted as the purest 
 and most perfect, so much so that upon production at the 
 papal court in Avignon, they were commended by expert 
 linguists to be of a style more elevated and lucid than those 
 reproduced from Arabic sources.^"^ Some years prior to 
 Nicholas, a Montpelier professor of medicine by the name of 
 Armengardus Blasius, translated the Canons of Avicenna 
 directly from Arabic into the Vulgate. This version also 
 included the commentaries of Averroes. Aviccnna's treatise 
 was entitled : "De partibus Medicinse," and in its translated 
 form was so arranged as to provide a means of ready use to 
 physicians, both for memorizing and instruction.*"* 
 
 loo Ibid. 
 
 ^"^ Daru., Histoire de Venise, Tom. II., p. 309 seq. 
 
 '"2 Chauliac, Tractat., Prcem. 
 
 103 Herman. Corneri, Chronicon, sub an. 1293 ap. Eccaid. ; II., p. 947.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Status of Physicians in the Middle Ages — Their Practice — Clergy Eagerly 
 Adopt this Profession — Its Lucrativeness — Interdicted the Monks — 
 Decretals of Synods — Physicians Confined to the Laity — Pharmacists 
 Sell Drugs and Confections — Gallic Disgust of Medicaments — Speci- 
 men of German Surgery of the Twelfth Century — Mediaeval Surgical 
 Practices — Barbers and Phlebotomy — Fame of Jewish Physicians — 
 Unscrupulous Charlatans— High Ecclesiastics Disprove Medicine — 
 Contempt of Scientific Treatment — Clerical Division of Medicine — 
 Popular Respect for Practitioners — Often Satirized by Romancers — 
 Fees According to Wealth or Indigence of Patients. 
 
 ALTHOUGH ecclesiastical society in its numerical majority 
 naturally inclined to the study of theology, many clerics, 
 influenced by secular gain, or impelled by innate taste, 
 eagerly sought the important culture of medicine. For this 
 reason priestly physicians incurred the censure of sensitive 
 reformers, and among these, no less a personage than Saint 
 Bernard himself, who bitterly complained, about the middle 
 of the twelfth century, that monks, professedly under church 
 discipline, preferred the rescripts of Justinian to the sacred laws 
 of the Lord, and charged that it profited little to religion to 
 seek corporeal medicines,' administered by worldly-minded 
 recluses.^ 
 
 Out of this general incrimination directed at clerical schol- 
 ars of the Pandects, the writings of Galen and Hippocrates 
 developed frequent decrees of Synods, whose uniform design 
 was the extinction of the thirst for lucre, superinduced by the 
 practice of medicine and civil law. As early, therefore, as the 
 year 1130, a general council held at Rheims ordered that the 
 
 ' " Propterea minime competit religioni medicinas quaere corporeales." Ber- 
 nardi, Abbat. Clairse V., Epistok^, Ep. 345, Tom. V., p. 550. 
 ^Ibid., Ep. 491, Tom. I., p. 706. 
 
 (444)
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 445 
 
 study of the Roman codes and physic should thenceforth be 
 interdicted the monks.^ The immediate causes leading to this 
 canonical law, as previously stated, doubtless originated in 
 the accusation that the acquisition of these sciences neces- 
 sarily demanded the absence of monastic students from the 
 cloisters, during prolonged and intolerable periods of time. 
 This decree was frequently reiterated — nine years afterwards, 
 and in the years 1163 and 1180, through a decretal of Pope 
 Alexander III." 
 
 At a provincial council, held in the city of Montpelier, where 
 fifteen years previously a magnate of the province had estab- 
 lished a school of medicine, subsequently so celebrated that 
 in 1220 new statutes for better government were obtained 
 from a pontifical legate, in the year 1195 the following canon 
 was promulgated as a proper norm for the monasteries: "It 
 is prohibited under strictest ecclesiastical penalties, for monks 
 or regular canonicals to pursue the study of law or physic."' 
 The statutes authorized by Alexander at Montpelier and 
 Tours, regulating this infraction of church discipline, were 
 formally reaffirmed, empowering diocesan bishops to punish 
 the priestly offender. In order to accelerate the penalties 
 prescribed, other regulations equally minute were enacted by 
 the Narbonnese synod.'' An important extension of this for- 
 biddance emanated from the decretal of Honorius III., issued 
 in the year 12 19. 
 
 According to a fragment of this rescript still extant, this re- 
 striction was made to include all priests. It was found, how- 
 ever, by actual experience to be impossible to maintain the 
 rigidity of the decree, and consequently curates of a rectorship 
 
 '" Leges temporales et medicinam gratia lucri temporalis," etc. Labbe, Con- 
 cilia, sub an. 1130, Con. V., Tom. XXT. p. 438. 
 
 * Ibid., Con. IX., sub an. 1139. 
 
 *" Ne quis monachus vel canonicus regularis aut alius religiosus ad seculares 
 leges vel physicam legendas accedat." Concil., Monspeliense, sub an. 1195, 
 Can. XV. 
 
 8 Concil., Monspeliense, sub an. 1195, Can. XX.; ap. Baluz., I., p. 35 seq.
 
 446 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 were, in the interest of their patrons, exempted from its opera- 
 tion. The most significant means adopted at this period to 
 hold in check these violations, were edicts of Innocent IV., 
 who directed all pupils of law and medicine should largely 
 draw on their foreign benefices.' 
 
 When at a later date in the papal metropolis, a celebrated 
 professor of civil and canon law publicly read his lectures in 
 1285, this pontiff, evidently realizing the necessity of securing 
 the attendance of suitable disciples upon these lectures, so far 
 modified this regulation as to admit the presence of all clergy, 
 excepting bishops, abbots and monks.* In the next century, 
 the University of Bologna procured a similar dispensation per- 
 mitting the matriculating of clerics as licentiates to both read- 
 ings of law and medicine — a decretal subsequently re-affirmed 
 in the year 1321 and 1419.^ About the same period in 1344, 
 the school of Pisa received like authorization for regular and 
 uninterrupted attendance upon medical lectures. The princi- 
 pal object of such dispensations was the important privilege 
 of clergy, absent from their prebendaries and churches, to re- 
 ceive and enjoy revenues arising from these distant and neg- 
 lected rectorships.^" For similar reasons a papal decretal, in 
 the year 1220, directed that clerical students upon such read- 
 ings in the University of Paris should be peremptorily placed 
 under the ban, inasmuch as Roman law was not applied in the 
 civil courts of that muncipality." 
 
 On account of undisputed precedence given by this great 
 school to theological studies, it has been fairly assumed that 
 the foregoing decree was designed to definitely crush out by 
 the weight of Vatican authority any attempt among scholars 
 indiscriminately to perpetuate lectures on civil law.''^ Although 
 
 ^Savigny, Geschichte des Romischen Rechts, Th. III., p. 365. 
 
 *Ibid., p. 366. 
 
 ^Ghirardacci, Historia di Bologna, Tom. I., p. 539; and Tom. II,, pp. 7 and 
 626. 
 
 '"Savigny, op. cit., Tom. III., p. 366. 
 
 " Ferricre, Ilistoire du Droit Romaine, cap. 29. 
 
 '■■' .Savigny, Geschichte des RcLniiscii. Rechts, Th. III., \>. 367.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES 447 
 
 the licentiates in the Itah'an Universities, during the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries, were semi-clerical, and until the 
 sweeping canon of church synods and papal rescripts, com- 
 posed largely of enthusiastic ecclesiastical students of medi- 
 cine, the evident determination of the sacerdoty to enforce 
 their legislative decrees materially altered the character of 
 scholastic frequenters of medical instruction, especially before 
 the year 1190, and throughout the entire course of the ensn- 
 ing age. 
 
 Medical students were therefore from the first three decades 
 of the twelfth century recruited in greater numbers from the 
 laity, subject however to a partial sacerdotal discipline, which 
 prevented their marriage until the fifteenth century,'^ and 
 obliged them to assume a quasi-clerical costume. It was per- 
 haps unfortunate for the development of this science upon the 
 elevated plane of a rational system, that the most cultivated 
 minds of the time were debarred by the repressive power of 
 synodal and decretal interdict from that searching inquir\-, 
 which the scholastic intellect was competent alone to furnish. 
 Naturally depressed by hierarchical hindrance and canonical 
 rulings, the curative art too often was dwarfed into the stinted 
 companionship of ignorance and charlatanism, until toward the 
 close of the Middle Ages, when the standard of professional 
 inquirers reacted favorably upon medical practitioners. 
 
 History may narrate the occasional prominence incidentally 
 given the licentiate of medicine at infrequent intervals during 
 the progressive expansion of the scholastic establishments of 
 Southern Europe ; and although the lack of medical and sur- 
 gical skill may painfully surprise, it should be remembered 
 that the critical rule of modern times must constitute the most 
 illiberal accusation against the mediaeval profession. Phys- 
 icians in those remote periods seem to have prescribed certain 
 rules by way of sanitative precaution in the ordinary details of 
 domestic life, including the order of diet, food and drink at 
 the table. Pharmacists sold drugs and conserves indifferently, 
 
 '^ Pasquier, Recherches Sur I'Histoire de France, Liv. III., p. 244.
 
 448 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 as may be gathered from the following extract of the Guiot 
 Bible : 
 
 Lors dient-ir, ce m'est avis, 
 
 Qu'il ont gigimbret et pleris 
 
 Et diagragent et rosat, 
 
 Et penidium et violat.^* 
 
 But these attractive medicines, eagerly sought by feminine in- 
 valids, recede before the necromancing preacher Monk, who 
 seriously ordered his patients to eat snakes and frogs as a spe- 
 cific against all infirmities, particularly for the cure of eye dis- 
 eases.'^ 
 
 The chronicler's charging this practitioner with abandoning 
 urinal inspection in diagnosing for maladies,'" is convincing 
 proof of the survival of this adjunct of practice since the time 
 of Cassiodorus." It was adopted during the sickness of Wil- 
 liam the Norman'^ and the foundation of permitted practice 
 under the Jerusalem code in the year lopo.'** Deviation from 
 this regulation entailed public scourging.^" 
 
 In the place of such test, the Teutonic preacher-physician 
 used small closed pouches, the contents of which no one was 
 permitted to inspect, and as a remedy suspended them over 
 the diseased at night. A Polish nobleman and his wife par- 
 took of the medicinal diet of snakes, lizards and frogs, and as 
 the annalist avows, were completely cured." As early as the 
 year 1055, juniper berries, perhaps an extract, were found to 
 
 i* Notices et Extraites des MSS. du Roi, Tom. V., p. 506. 
 
 1^ " Comedere serpentes, lacertas et ranas contra quamlibet infirmatatem, sive 
 fuit dolor oculorum vel aliiid." Annales Polonor., sub an. 1 278. 
 
 i«Ibid. 
 
 I'Cassiodor, Formulae, XIX. 
 
 18 Flor. Wigior., Chronicon, Tom. II., p. 29. In 1 195 sagacious prediction 
 from such examination. Golscheri, Gestae Archirpp. Trevierens, sub an. 1 195, op. 
 Kcc. 1 1., p. 2205. 
 
 '"Le Assisse et Bone Usauge del Reaume de Hyerusalem, cap. 218. 
 
 2" Ibid. 
 
 21 " Bursiculas clausas singulas super singulos infirmos per notem." Annales 
 Polonorum, sub an. 1278.
 
 DUR/XG THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 449 
 
 be an excellent remedy for colic, and made a matter of per- 
 manent record by the conventual chronicles/'' 
 
 In France especially, where the inhabitants, according to 
 Villannova, evinced the utmost disgust at taking medicines,^^ 
 attention was early directed to the adaptibility of edibles and 
 their suitable admixture with potable liquids as a sanitary 
 substitute for other means of preserving health. In order to 
 aid the natural warmth of the stomach, ragodts and sauces, 
 strongly flavored with spices, were partaken for principal 
 food, which should be followed with aromatic wines and flav- 
 ored essences.^* The use of fruits was either dispensed with 
 entirely, or indulged in with defiance and grave apprehension. 
 Many of the great mediaeval professors of medicine regarded 
 these productions rather for medicinal than dietary qualities,"^ 
 and consequently ordered both robust and invalid to eat them 
 invariably at the commencement of repasts, so that the season- 
 ing of meats, combined with the fermenting heat of wines, 
 might correct the pretended pernicious effect of their frigidity. 
 
 For this reason it was a standing prescription to the close ol 
 the Middle Ages that fruits the most readily decomposing 
 must be eaten before, while astringents, such as chestnuts, 
 almonds, pears, and figs, should be reserved for dessert. Ex- 
 cepting perhaps the individual accomplishments of a few 
 priestly medicists, the Jewish physicians were certainly hon- 
 ored with more frequent summons to attend Christian patients, 
 on account of their famous medical skill. 
 
 Wherever the Israelites had domiciled in the provincial 
 towns and cities of occidental Europe, many of them, as early 
 as the tenth and eleventh centuries, had embraced the lucra- 
 tive practice of law and medicine.'^ In this science they be- 
 came distinguished at a period when their Christian rivals 
 
 *'' Annales Corbeienses, sub an. 1055. 
 '"Villannova, Breviarii, Lib. IV., cap. 22, p. 1419. 
 
 ■•'* Legrand D'Aussy, Histoire de la Vie Priv^e des Fran(;ais, Tom. III., p. 332. 
 -^Villannova, Regimen Sanitatis ad Inclytum Regem Aragonum, cap. 11. 
 ^Wm. Neubrigens, Historia Anglicana, Lib. IV., cap. 10. 
 29
 
 45° 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 were almost wholly given up to the suppositious material 
 benefactions of superstitious devices," but were frequently 
 charged with administering poisons under the guise of medi- 
 cines, as happened in their treatment of Hugo, a Gallic prince 
 in the tenth century .'■^^ 
 
 Doubtless the most eminent and famous professor of med- 
 icine among this people was Moses Maimonides, to whose 
 writings we have repeatedly referred, a native of Cordova, 
 who died about the year 1208. In addition to this science, his 
 knowledge swept the entire range of mediaeval liberal arts, in- 
 cluding astrology, philosophy, and mathematics.^^ In France, 
 in 1009, great multitudes of this nationality, of whom many 
 were accomplished surgeons, were remorselessly slain amid the 
 operations of war provoked by Caliph Haken becoming pos- 
 sessed of the holy sepulchre. 
 
 Under Richard the First of England, whose celebrity made 
 him an exemplar for the closing years of the next age, Jewish 
 citizens were exposed first to the fiery zeal of the London 
 Christians, which culminated in wholesale assassinations in 
 the city of Lynn. Here, under the incitement of hatred sur- 
 reptitiously evoked by foreign youth present for commercial 
 traffic, the rage increased to such an extent that all Jews were 
 murdered, including an Israelitish personage whose great 
 medical skill, successful practice, and modest merit, had en- 
 deared him to Christian patrons.'^" 
 
 By a decretal of the Avignon Synod, held in the year 1327, 
 Christians were forbidden to invoke the medical or surgical 
 science of this people, unless in an emergency when it was 
 impossible to procure other professional attendance. The de- 
 cree recites that recourse was had by unscrupulous and un- 
 godly persons to Jewish medicastres for noxious drugs and 
 
 '■" Sismondi, Histoire des Frangais, Tom. I., p. 191. 
 2** Richerius, Historiarum, Lib. IV., c. loi. 
 
 ''^Leo Africanus, De Medicis et Philosophis Hsebraeis, cap. 20, p. 296; and 
 Buddx'us, Histor. Philosoph. Hjebrorum, p. 124. 
 
 '*" Neubiigcnsis, Ilistoria Anglicana, Lib. IV., cap. 7.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 451 
 
 potions.^' These medications, objects of sacerdotal animad- 
 version, were provided, it appears, equally by male and female 
 physicians;^'^ This law was repeated forty years later, a suf- 
 ficient indication of the radical tenure which this illicit practice 
 maintained in defiance of canon law.^' In the year 1410, 
 Henry IV., of England, issued letters of safe conduct to Elia 
 Sabot, a Hebrew doctor of medicine, to travel withersoever he 
 pleased throughout the realm.''* 
 
 Leopold, Duke of Austria, whose heartless captivity of 
 Richard the Lion-Hearted was the frequent subject of mediae- 
 val romances, was overtaken by a frightful calamity in the 
 year 1195, which contemporary and later English annalists 
 accepted as a just punishment of Deity, who had " placed the 
 remorseless axe at the tree's root." While celebrating Christ- 
 mas festivities with haughty pride, exhibiting his personal 
 grandeur to admiring subjects amid martial pomp, Leopold 
 was thrown from his horse, which fell violently upon the 
 rider's foot, fracturing it so terribly that the bones protruded 
 through the flesh.^^ 
 
 On the arrival of surgeons or medici, quickly summoned to 
 attend the aggravated wound, they prescribed such remedies 
 as might possibly heal the grievous fracture.'"' The following 
 day the wound presented such a sombre appearance that the 
 surgeons decided it to be absolutely essential to amputate the 
 mutilated member." 
 
 Wendover, who evidently transcribed official documents of 
 later date than the annals cited, distinctly affirms when the 
 medical advisers consulted upon the sinister presentment of 
 
 ^1 " Pro medicamentis imd verius nocimentis indifferenter recurrunt." Con- 
 cilium Aveniense, Can. LXXII. 
 
 '- " Judaeis utriusque sexus ut in curandis." Ibid. 
 
 3^ Concilium Vaurense, cap. 1 14. 
 
 3*Rymer, Foedera, Tom. VIII., p. 667. 
 
 3^Flor. Wigior., Cont. Chronic, Tom. II., p. 160. 
 
 3^ Neubrigensis, Historia Anglicana, Lib. V., cap. 8. 
 
 " Ibid.
 
 452 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 the mortified limb, they announced to the ducal sufferer that 
 the application of a searing iron, combined with the tumid 
 aggregation around and above the broken bones, would cause 
 excruciating agony ,^^ and in such a deplorable conjuncture, it 
 was futile to attempt a cataplasm.^" The duke refusing to 
 subject himself to tortures thus plainly stated, ordered im- 
 peratively the injured foot to be forthwith severed from the 
 tibia. The most singular part of this strange narrative, which 
 provides a significant specimen of mediaeval surgery in the 
 twelfth century, remains to be related. When the noble 
 patient had directed amputation, there was no one sufficiently 
 skilled in surgery to attempt this operation : regardless of his 
 earnest adjurations to prolong life, surgeon, friend and son 
 equally declined the risk.*" 
 
 His chamberlain being called, under duress and minatory 
 compulsion, while the duke himself held a battle-axe upon the 
 diseased limb — a service refused by horror-struck bystanders 
 with a heavy mallet or beatle, severed the foot in three blows." 
 The physicians thereupon applied their medicaments to the 
 wound, and when, the next morning at dawn, they visited the 
 sufferer, immediately recognized signs of approaching mor- 
 tality," which originated, as our chronicler says, in the brutal 
 operation driving consuming fires nearer the vital parts of the 
 body, instead of alleviating crucial pangs.*^ By their voice 
 and countenance, the medical attendants announced to him: 
 " Fix thy house, for thou shalt die and not live."** 
 
 Canonical rules, existing for more than a half century, inter- 
 
 ^*" Quin igne quem infernalem vacant, tumori admixto intolerabiliter cruciare- 
 tur." Flores Historiar., Tom. III., p. 88. 
 
 S9 <i Nullo medicorum potuit cataplasmate sedari." Ibid. 
 
 ■"' Neubrigensis, op. cit., Lib. V., c. 8. 
 
 ♦' " Dum ipse dux dolabrum nianu propria tibioe apponeret, malleo vibrato, vix 
 trina percussionepedem ejusabscidit." Ibid.; and VVendover, op. cit., Tom. III., 
 p. 88. 
 
 *^ Hemingburg, Chronicon, sub an. 1 194, Tom. I., p. 210. 
 
 *•' Wendover, Flor. Historiar., Tom. III., p. 88. 
 
 *^ Neubrigensis, Historia Anglicana, Lib. V., cap. 8.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 453 
 
 dieting the practice of surgery and medicine to the clergy, 
 might warrant the presumption that these physicians were not 
 of monastic profession, notwithstanding the solemn and signi- 
 ficant quotation of the Vulgate Bible.*^ It is needless to add, 
 the Austrian ruler died as a sacrifice to ignorant surger)-.^® 
 
 Of the diversified filiations of medicine, to which the mediae- 
 val mind naturally turned with unremitting zeal, engaged in 
 constant and cruel warfare, surgery, or the cure of wounds, 
 was doubtless of transcendent attraction, although the science 
 itself does not appear to have progressed beyond the simplest 
 treatment known to remote antiquity," which indeed recog- 
 nized its utility/* It is barely possible the delicate surgical 
 operation of trepanning may have been known at a distant 
 epoch of the Middle Ages. 
 
 In the year 891, a monk afflicted with agonizing cephalic 
 pains was directed "to saw into his head."*® About the same 
 epoch, an eminent Gallic ruler lost his life through surgical 
 ignorance in amputating a wounded member. Richerius, the 
 devoted student of a medical compilation in the tenth century^ 
 describing the results of this operation, is redolent with learned 
 technical verbosit)'',^° but his diagnosis of the march of the dis- 
 ease terminating Lothair's existence in 986 is a most admira- 
 ble specimen of disease-sketching.^^ Mediaeval surgeons were 
 doubtless abundantly able to protect their personal interests in 
 defiance of sacerdotal interdicts, by means of guilds ;*' although 
 the apparent dishonor attaching to this curative art may be 
 understood, when it is stated that the status of practitioners 
 
 *"Reg. II., c. 21. 
 
 ** Neubrigensis, op. cit., p. 139; and Hennngburg, Chronicon, Tom. I. p. 211. 
 
 *^Goujet, Origin des Arts et Metiers, Tom. I., p. 216. 
 
 *8Celsi, De Medicina, Lib. I., Praef.; and Lib. VII. 
 
 *'"Jussus est pro remedio in capite secari." Annalista Saxo, sub an. 9S1 ; 
 ap. Eccard. I., p. 229. 
 
 ^^Historiarum, Lib. I., c. 2. 
 
 "Ibid., Lib. TIL, c. 109. 
 
 ^2 Ungewitter, Geschichte der Hsendel, p. 234. Guilds of actors and acrobats 
 in 1040. Otto Prising., Chronicon, Lib. VI., cap. 32.
 
 454 
 
 HISTOR V OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 was assimilated to the social degradation of barbers and blood- 
 letters until the year 1406, at which time Wenclaus, emperor 
 of Germany, by imperial rescript ordered that thenceforth this 
 profession should be deemed honorable.'^^ 
 
 Repulsive and barbarous methods, involving the terrible 
 usage and frequent abuse of the searing-iron, preserved a vig- 
 orous existence beneath the pressure of canon law and ignor- 
 ance, which abandoned such operations to ambulatory charla- 
 tans or rural empirics^* and vagrant monks, wandering unli- 
 censed along the public highways of Europe.^^ In the time of 
 Tertullian, a red-hot iron was universally used to attest the 
 presence of death in the human cadaver/^ which, however, was 
 not invariably satisfactory, since it was recognized the results 
 were not uniform.^' On account of surgery being subjected to 
 the dishonoring censure of both civil and ecclesiastical society, 
 and its consequent abandonment to barbers and perhaps 
 Jews,^® whenever history has preserved notice of their opera- 
 tions, until the resurrection of the science by Italian pro- 
 fessors, they excite contempt and disgust. 
 
 In contemplation of mediaeval statutes, surgeons united to 
 their occupation that of pharmacy, and oftentimes prescribed 
 medicines for patients, subjecting themselves to the discipline 
 of excommunication in case of vending injurious drugs, 
 whether for poison or unnatural uses.^" Like penalty was 
 placed upon the purchasers."" In the year 1337, by a synodal 
 decree, it became mandatory for apothecaries to make oath 
 
 *^ Friedlander, Geschichte der Heilkunde, p. 231. 
 
 ^*Goujet, Origin des Arts et Metiers, Tom. I., p. 215. 
 
 ^^ Chronicon Engelhusii, sub an. 1097. 
 
 ^^ Apologetica, cap. 15. 
 
 "Celsi, De Medicina, Lib. II., c. 6; and Plinii, Histor. Natural., Lib. VII., 
 cap. 52. 
 
 ■'■'^ Per contra, Abulfagus, Annales Moslem., Tom. III., p. 599. Christian sur- 
 geons 1 164 to Chalif of Bagdad. 
 
 ^^ Notices et Extraites des MSS. du Roi, Tom. V., p. 506. 
 
 8"" Herbas mortiferas in mortem vel abortivam." Concilium Vaurense, an. 
 1368, Canon. 156.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 455 
 
 before civil courts, to observe this law.®' Count Richard, 
 marshal of the English king, and his lieutenant in Ireland in 
 1234, by the unscrupulous infamy of a surgeon, terminated a 
 short but brilliant life. After an engagement provoked by the 
 treachery of his advisers, this warrior was captured. Although 
 severely wounded, he was able to move about his chamber and 
 at dice. Finally, the pain of his wounds caused him to summon 
 a physician to relieve him. Whereupon Muricius, chief of the 
 Irish justiciary, under whose custody the marshal was placed, 
 ordered the attendance of a surgeon, the ability of whom, it is 
 charged, " was greater for destruction than preservation."*^ 
 The illustrious soldier seems to have felt an instinctive defiance 
 of the surgical operator, and before submitting to carnal medi- 
 cation, received the viaticum and made a legal testament. The 
 medicastre afterwards presented himself to perform the func- 
 tions of the profession. With a long iron implement, used in 
 this horrible ordeal, heated to a glowing red, he burned open 
 and into the tumescent wounds of the moribund count so fre- 
 quently and so profoundly, as started the vital fluids to flowing 
 freely.^ Immediately following this severe searing, the valiant 
 warrior succumbed to a hasty fever a fortnight subsequently, 
 and was interred in a sepulchre prepared for him by Minorite 
 monks at Kilkenny, as an unusual example of modest erudi- 
 tion for the age." It is evident the sneer of the annalist 
 touching the surgeon's utter incompetency, produced b}' an 
 enemy to attend the martial invalid, is justified by the un- 
 equivocal complaisance exhibited in assassinating a suffering 
 patient under the indelicate exterior of professional skill. 
 
 Equally important and germane to this inquiry is the curious 
 legend touching the legitimacy of Frederick the Hohenstauffen 
 emperor of Germany, which illustrates the evident depravity 
 
 fi^ Concilium Aveniense, cap. 23. 
 
 *2 Wendover, Flor. Historiar., sub an. 1234, Tom. IV., p. 307. 
 ^ " Medicus autem ad eum accedens cum ferro longo et ignito vulnera ejus 
 aperuit, et tarn srepe et profunde ferrum demersit," etc. Ibid. 
 ^* Annales Waveliens, sub an. 1234, p. 314.
 
 456 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 of medical practitioners in the thirteenth century. When in 
 the year 1220, this enhghtened ruler was crowned by the 
 Roman pontiff, he was asserted to be of illegitimate birth, 
 being the son of Henry, his putative father, only in name.*^ 
 
 The following statement is given touching this singular ac- 
 cusation. At the time of her marriage to the Emperor, Con- 
 stantia was upwards of sixty years of age. By virtue of an 
 ante-nuptial settlement, in case the imperial spouse should die 
 childless, the royal provinces of Apulia, Sicily and Calabria 
 reverted to certain heirs, and in consequence grave apprehen- 
 sion was expressed concerning the empress' possible sterility. 
 At this important juncture the imperial physicians suggested 
 a plan by which the domination of the countries designated 
 could be retained within Teutonic lineage. Upon their re- 
 sponding for the success of the nefarious scheme, he sanctioned 
 the proposition to provoke fecundity. 
 
 By the uterine introduction of energetic medicaments, which 
 these crafty and unscrupulous professors themselves com- 
 pounded, the noble lady began gradually to reveal the appear- 
 ance of fully answering the necessity of providing an heir to 
 the throne in question,*"* and the emperor himself, as the chron- 
 ist ingenuously relates, "most vehemently asserted the impe- 
 rial dame advanced in pregnancy.'"" Towards the maturity 
 of gestation, the complaisant medical advisers arranged for the 
 production of an infant from several women; and at the period 
 of the consummation of this impudent plot a new-born child 
 was transferred secretly within the regal bed chamber of Con- 
 stantine, which was ultimately recognized in public as the 
 heir apparent — subsequently renowned as the illustrious 
 Frederick II. 
 
 Notwithstanding the uniformity of the use of the searing- 
 iron as a necessary remedy in the treatment of wounds, the 
 cure of Edward king of England by different means is a not- 
 
 ** Albert Stadensis, Chronicon, sub an. 1220; ap. Schilt. I., p. 302. 
 
 fi6 11 Feceiunt aiitem uterum ejus jier medicinas paulatim intumescere." Ibid. 
 
 *' " Ut Imjjcrator eani veheineiitcr ciederet imi)ia;giiatem." Ibid.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 457 
 
 able instance of contrary practice. The Solclan of Bab)'lon, 
 seeking a method of ridding his territory of the EngHsh mon- 
 arch, dispatched a Saracen menial to assassinate him, and suc- 
 ceeded in wounding the King with a poisoned dagger. It is 
 stated he was unexpectedly healed from the destructive effect 
 of this blow by means of certain medicines,®" which seems to 
 imply an unusual knowledge and thorough familiarity of the 
 attending physician with antidotes. When Jewish suitors at 
 law were in mediaeval courts formally complaining against 
 Christian defendants, they were required to take the juridical 
 oath by Sabaoth, Eloi, and Adonai, and the ten names of Je- 
 hovah ; and as corporeal punishment for perjury against this 
 imposing array of divinities, they were placed under the invo- 
 cation of fevers, to which they agreed by responding Amen.*" 
 The remedy for a malady thus provoked, which appears to 
 have possessed the attributes of infallibility, was suspending 
 the patient between two dogs. 
 
 Bernard of Clairvaux advises the less summary curatives for 
 these fevers — the Quartain remedied by manual labor, and the 
 Tertian with cold or tepid water; if still obstinate, wine or warm 
 potions should be administered.'" Superstitious or saintly 
 usages, in preference to terrestrial medicaments, maintained 
 uninterrupted existence throughout the Middle Ages, and were 
 invariably sought when the complications of disease surpassed 
 the science of secular and clerical physicians, who, in defiance 
 of canonical law, persisted in practicing medicine. In the year 
 1 137, the celebrated Abbot of Clairvaux was called to Salerno 
 in order to accomplish a celestial cure of a person whose bod- 
 ily infirmity had exhausted the resources of medicists.'' A 
 dream having advised the invalid to drink the water with 
 
 **Steron., Annales Altahensis, sub an. 1270. 
 
 ^ " On annoncait la fievre tierce, quatre, et quotidienne, s'ils se parjuiaient." 
 Voltaire, Essai Sur les Moeurs et Usages, Tom. III., p. 52. 
 
 '"Apologia ad Guillelmum, cap. 4, | 7. 
 
 " Fleury, Histoire Ecclesiastique, Tom. XIV., p. 509.
 
 458 IJIS TOR Y OF MEDIC A L ECONOMY 
 
 which Saint Bernard washed his hands, the priestly physician 
 proceeded thither and healed an incurable disease/^ 
 
 Annalists oftentimes expressed contempt for scientific treat- 
 ment of maladies. Thus, in the year i lOO, when the monkish 
 medicastres, or archiatri, attending the Dauphin of France, an- 
 nounced his approaching death, summoned a physician from 
 Barbary — perhaps a Saracen country is generally to be under- 
 stood — Odericus Vitalis, in recording the event, alludes slight- 
 ingly to him as a " haiiy person."" Hugo St. Victor illus- 
 trates in brief the medical theories of the mediaeval profession, 
 which are worthy of reproduction in their original form: 
 " Medicina continet occasiones operationes. Occasiones sunt 
 sex: aer circumdans nos, cibus et potus, somnus et vigiliae, 
 motus et quies, inanitio et repletio et accidentiae animae. Ope- 
 rationes siunt intus et foris. Intus ut ea, quae intromittantur 
 per OS, per anum, adexcitandas sternutationes, vomitiones, pur- 
 gationes. Foris, ut amplastra, incisio, ustio."'* 
 
 In his treatise of Medicine of the Soul, St. Hugo lays down 
 the rule that a physician should not only know the present 
 but the past of a disease, so as to decide upon its future pro- 
 gress.'^ The doctrine of temperaments constituted a leading 
 feature in Middle Age medical culture,^" doubtless" more exten- 
 sively than in modern times. From the quotation above — 
 accidentia animae — as an integral element in the curing of dis- 
 eases, it would seem that a pathology of the soul was regarded 
 as essential to successful practice. Under the distinction ustio 
 was included searing-iron, and operations necessitating abnor- 
 mal heat. In the thirteenth century great diversity of systems 
 was developed in detail by Italian professors of medicine, 
 
 T2" De boire de I'eau dont il auroit lave ses mains." Ibid. 
 
 '^ " Apodixem medicinalis peritiK super desperatum, juvenem excere coepit — 
 quidam hirsutus de Barbarie." Oderic Vital., Annales, Lib. XI., cap. 7. 
 
 '*Tractat. de Origine et Divisione Artium, Lib. I., cap. 21 ; De Medicina, p. 
 201. 
 
 '^De Medicina Animre, cap. 9. 
 
 "'" Quator humores corporis humani, sanguis, cholera rubra, cholera nigra, et 
 phlegma." Ibid., cap. 2.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 459 
 
 while the science itself advanced slightly through apparent in- 
 difference to experimental observations. 
 
 Some of these appear to have contemplated the use of im- 
 mense quantities of medicines, which a monkish annalist of this 
 age hesitated not to satirize, although his experience of such 
 things was gleaned by professional visits during a prolonged 
 illness." The clergy continued to study the curative art as 
 licentiates in the next age, and were oftentimes sufficiently dis- 
 tinguished for their skill to perform diplomatic missions to the 
 papal court,"* notwithstanding the decretals against priestly 
 practice of medicine were rigidly maintained." In England so 
 universally were clericals preferred incumbents of secular offi- 
 ces that they were made secretaries of government, the privy 
 seal, cabinet counsellors, treasurers of the crown, ambassadors, 
 commissioners to open Parliament, presidents of king's coun- 
 cil, supervisors of royal works, chancellors, and masters of the 
 rolls. 
 
 Added to these, which would seem to exclude other offices, 
 physicians to Henr>^ VI. and his celebrated regent, Duke of 
 Gloucester, were regularly recruited from the monastic profes- 
 sors.^" In the fourteenth year of this monarch, a petition was 
 received in council to grant the request of a Greek, st}'ling 
 himself a Master in Medicine, to become a citizen of England.'^ 
 Surgeons in France under the unfortunate reign of Charles VI. 
 were largely involved in the revolutionary troubles of the year 
 1355, when Jean de Troyes, regarded as the most skillful prac- 
 titioner of his age, was an active element of revolt. Curiously 
 enough, fifty-nine years later, called before the Dauphin for in- 
 
 77 " Die paratus nono elleborum, 
 
 Dolce non est ut mel aut zuccarum. 
 Quod Magistrorum propter ministerum, 
 Mihi confertur in refrigerium." 
 
 Rycardo San Germano, Chronica, sub fin an. +1239, p. 15S seq. 
 '8 Chronica Comit. de Marka, sub an. 1357. 
 ■''Jaffe, Regesta Pontific. Romanor., pp. 562, 585. 
 soTurner, History of England, Vol. III., p. 217. 
 81" Maistre en Medicine, natif. de Grece." Rymer, Foedera, Tom. X., p. 35.
 
 460 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 surrectionary conduct he concluded a rhetorical censure, by 
 imposing upon the royal head a white cap as a distinctive 
 symbol of liberty.*'* An English physician was prominent in 
 1333, according to the records of Durham, in aiding an adjust- 
 ment of archiepiscopal troubles agitating this affluent See.*^ 
 
 Popular respect in general during the Middle Ages was ac- 
 corded physicians unreservedly, although accused, with a 
 unanimity quite significant, of avarice. A metrical romance 
 charges them, in conjunction with jurists, of possessing only 
 those principles of idolatrous reverence due to well filled 
 purses. A versifier of the thirteenth century complains bit- 
 terly of excessive prices demanded for drugs by physicians : 
 
 "Triois cuilleretes de syrop, 
 Qui, a envis valent un oeuf, 
 Nos vendent-ils, dix sols ou neuf."** 
 
 The Romance of the Rose thus inveighs against the disci- 
 ples of law and medicine vending for filthy lucre their scien- 
 tific knowledge: 
 
 "Advocatz et physiciens 
 Sont tons liez de telz liens, 
 Ceulx pour deniers sciences vendent 
 Trestous a ceste harte se pendent 
 Tant ont le gaing et doulx et fade. 
 Que cil vouldroit pour ung malade, 
 Qu'il a qu'il en fust bien cinquante."*^ 
 
 The indignant romancer proceeds to inculpate them with 
 disloyalty and covetousness: 
 
 "Tant les art, couvoitise et guille,*® 
 Ceulx ne vivent pas loyaulement," *^ 
 
 and that many of them in following these professions were 
 
 ^^Sismondi, Histoire des Francpais, Tom. II., p. 35 seq. 
 
 '"^ Gray.stones, Hist. Dunelh., cap. 43. 
 
 ^* Mir. de Notre Dame; ap. Extraites des MSS. du Roi, Tom. V., p. 506. 
 
 *'' Roman de la Rose, vv. 5307-5512. 
 
 *fi Ibid., V. 5316. 
 
 *' Ibid., V. 5321
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 461 
 
 influenced by vain glory to the damnation of their souls, con- 
 cluding with this melancholy satire : 
 
 " II est moult de telz dcceveurs."'* 
 
 It was a standing incrimination against mediaeval physicians 
 that they had neither friends nor relatives whom they desired 
 to find robust and well, when going through the empty form- 
 ality of a visit. 
 
 The Guiot Bible makes the sweeping inculpation of charla- 
 tanism as the principal attribute of Montpelier licentiates, 
 whose skill was particularly displayed in imposing upon the 
 credulity of patients in order to enhance the price of their 
 drugs/* Raymund Lully asserted practitioners of medicine 
 were more dexterous in killing invalids, under the weighty ex- 
 terior of doctorates, than saving jeopardized lives by science.*" 
 Municipal authority was frequently invoked during the Middle 
 Ages to readjust charges for medical services, upon more 
 equitable and reduced rates*' — an evident attestation of that 
 same pecuniary avarice urged against .^sculapius himself'^ 
 
 The Statutes of Nice forbid the association of medicists and 
 apothecaries, in order to guard against extortions.*'* In the 
 earlier ages the attendance of professors was recognized as a 
 luxury so costly as to place ordinary citizens beyond the reach 
 of medicines. Oftentimes chronicles turn upon excessive 
 demands by physicians as an inducement for saintly remedies. 
 Frequently, before recourse was had to these curatives, an en- 
 tire patrimony was swallowed up in medical attendance.** 
 
 ^ Roman de la Rose, v. 5325. 
 
 89 " S'il reviencnt de Montpellier electuaire 
 Lor lectuaire sont moult chair." 
 
 Notices et Extraites des MSS. du Roi, Tom. V., p 506. 
 ^ In Contemplatione Dei. 
 
 91 Constitutiones Regni Siculi, Tit. XXXIV., Lex 3. 
 9* Clemen. Alexand., Cohortat. ad Gentes, cc. i and 2. 
 '•■' Monumenta Histor., Patr. Ital., Leg. Munic., Tom I., p. 80. 
 9* Vita Godehardi, cap. 2.
 
 462 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Celestial cures were, notwithstanding, assumed to be worth ter- 
 restial compensation. In the year 1094, the Monastery of 
 Corbey accepted three conditioned beeves for prayers so effica- 
 cious as to restore health."^ 
 
 Many physicians regulated their schedule of charges ac- 
 cording to the affluence or indigence of invalids. Conse- 
 .quently, influenced by an inflexible rule of diversified application 
 to wealthy gentlemen and matrons, they prescribed specific and 
 uncommon pharmaceutical compounds as necessary medica- 
 ments, or assigned double portion of drugs for remedies, while 
 for impoverished or pauper patients the smallest allowance was 
 ordered from apothecaries, upon the presumption that this 
 quantity sufficed to cure the indigent, which for the rich was 
 utterly inadequate.'^ 
 
 ' The illustrious medical practitioner, Johannes Gaddesden, 
 in the opening years of the thirteenth century, especially dis- 
 tinguished as author of the Anglican Rose — Anglicanae Rosae 
 — invented a graduated system of medicines to be used in treat- 
 ing the varied classes of society : the refined, the noble and 
 affluent. He urged most diligently upon his disciples, both 
 by example and voluminous treatises, to peremptorily decline 
 transmitting these graded drugs to the diseased and infirm 
 without receiving in advance the compensation fixed for pro- 
 fessional services and pharmaceutical compounds.®' This 
 writer, against whom the charge of necromancy was freely 
 made, did not hesitate to declare that man's credulity was the 
 most successful element of medical practice"*^ — a reproduction 
 of Constans Afer's solemn argumentation.'® 
 
 Another surgeon of Great Britain, in the same age, exhorts 
 
 ^^ " Tres boves saginatos misit conventui pro reconvalescentia filii sui, precibus 
 Fratrum nostrum impetrata." Annales Corbeienses, sub an. 1094. 
 
 ^ Rothii, Disquisit. Nomin. Loch., etc., cap. 2, \ 5. 
 
 ^' " Quod tamen medicamentum dari non debeat, nisi acceptis prius salaris." 
 Freind, Ilistoria Medicinae, p. 553. 
 
 98 Ibid., p. 551. 
 
 ""De Incantat. et Adjurat., Epistol., p, 318.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 463 
 
 the profession to proportion salaries and perquisites in exact 
 accord with unreasonable demands of patients. Gaddcsden 
 himself invariably advised his disciples to exact double fees 
 from the affluent^ It is evident eminent English practitioners 
 of the ensuing era were enabled to demand and obtained enor- 
 mous compensation for their services. In 1333, the profess- 
 ional skill of Pontius de Coutrone, was so gratefully appreci- 
 ated by Edward II., that his successor endowed him with an 
 annual pension of a hundred pounds sterling.'"^ 
 
 Thirty years later, Joannes Paladyn was paid twenty pounds 
 as a fee for medical attendance upon Edward 111.'°'^ His 
 queen caused a Florentine physician named Petrus de Floren- 
 tia to be enrolled as a pensioner for twice that amount annu- 
 ally."' In referring to exemplary rules established by Johan- 
 nes de Saliceto touching medical ethics, the renowned English 
 scientist, Gaddesden, recommends members of the profession 
 to tolerate no familiarity from the laity, " because too great 
 familiarity breeds contempt,"^"* and what was more deplorable, 
 rendered the demand for increased compensation of increased 
 difficulty. But the paragraph of this statute regulating the 
 profession ethically, which must provoke admiration from the 
 members of all learned avocations, is the significant suggestion 
 that large fees for attendance rendered a physician more esti- 
 mable to the invalid, and conferred on him proportionate 
 authority and respect."^ 
 
 Guildic co-operation of surgeons doubtless aided in main- 
 taining this pleasing rule in full practice, although some 
 Italian municipalities forbid conjurations of eveiy kind.^"® In 
 
 100 4< j)ypiuni ejus quod paviperibus detur; pro divitibus impcrat." Freind, op. 
 cit., p. 551. 
 
 ^"^ Rymer, Foedera, Tom. IV., p. 560. 
 
 i»2 Ibid., Tom. VI., p. 417. 
 
 '"^bid., p. 587. 
 
 1"* Freind, Historia Medicine, p. 551 seqq; and Rothii, Disquisit. Nomin. Lach., 
 etc., p. 93. 
 
 1"^ Freind, op. cit., p. 551. 
 
 1"® Monument, I'atr. Ital., Leges., Tom. I., p. 724.
 
 464 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY 
 
 France, under Louis IX., it is possible these unions may have 
 suggested incorporations — the actual precursors of the modern 
 societies."" An ordinance of Philip IV., issued 131 1, promoted 
 the substantial interests of surgery by directing that there- 
 after no surgeon, whether male or female, should pursue this 
 profession unless first submitting to an approved examination 
 into their abilities before a sworn syndicate — per magistros 
 Chirurgicos — and receive a formal license in the nature of a 
 diploma.^"* A guild of physicians was in existence at the me- 
 tropolis of Lombardy as early as the year 1228.'°* In the hos- 
 pital infirmary of the Order of Saint John at Jerusalem, four 
 surgeons and an equal number of practitioners of medicine 
 were assigned to the proper treatment of the sick and dis- 
 abled."" 
 
 Whether or not the allegation of Eichhorn"' be chargeable 
 with exaggeration, that the thirteenth century in its manifesta- 
 tions of advancing culture is inferior to the ages succeeding 
 and preceding, strict justice should admit that so far as medi- 
 cal science is concerned, the sweeping inculpation cannot ap- 
 ply to the profession so successfully pursued in the Universi- 
 ties of Italy. An important change of significant character 
 occurred at this era, which energetically contributed to modify 
 ecclesiastical dogmas, and largely aided in reducing the ope- 
 rations of the mind to the basis of sounder ratiocination. Up 
 to this period, the teaching of Augustine had been in general 
 an exclusive rule of guidance in argumentative inquiries touch- 
 ing matters profoundly agitating the mediaeval reason. 
 
 From the thirteenth century, and with surprising velocity, 
 they were wholly excluded by translations of Aristotle, pro- 
 
 'o^Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, Tom. I., p. 408 seq. 
 
 '"8 Ordonnances des Rois de France, Tom. I., p. 491 seq. 
 
 '09"Collegio noV)ile di Medici Milanese prendendo principio dal 1228." Ket- 
 tinelli, Risorgimento d'ltalia, Tom. I., p. Il6. 
 
 """ Concedit ut in domo hospitalis semper quator medici totidem sint chirurgi- 
 ci." Jaffe, Regesta Pontificor. Romanor., N. 9766. 
 
 '" Geschichte der Beredsamkeit, Tom. II., p. 94 seq.
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 465 
 
 cured from the Arabs in part as hitherto stated, throLi<^h the 
 munificent patronage of Frederick II.,"- whose legitimacy his 
 papal enemies sought to question. Some of these Saracen 
 manuscripts discovered by the Crusaders at Antioch were 
 brought to Southern Europe and translated."^ Anterior to 
 the introduction of the Greek philosopher's writings into 
 Germany by Otto Frisingen,'" the illustrious Norman prelate, 
 Lanfranc, appears to have had a profound acquaintanceship 
 with the Dialectics of Aristotle in the eleventh century."" 
 
 These versions, when conjoined with the commentaries of 
 Averroes and Avicenna, great scientists in philosophy and 
 medicine, when publicly lectured upon in the Parisian Univer- 
 sity, seemed of so sinister presage to the fundamental dogmas 
 of the Romish church, that a decretal was issued forbidding- 
 further readings of the Stagyrite, and directing his works 
 burned by secular authority."" Xhe" spirit of searching inves- 
 tigation, however, arose uninjured from the ashes smouldering 
 with the charred writings of the Hellenistic sage, and directed 
 with subtle energy awakening minds to the splendor of exact 
 sciences. 
 
 Scholasticism doubtless quickened a desire for more rational 
 explanations of natural relations between causes and effec- 
 tive results, upon which system of investigation reposed the 
 future of medicine, and while such tendencies progressed in 
 graded value towards the solution of numberless problems 
 glittering with undiminished but meretricious pomp, ages of 
 superstition and painfully slow advances of intellectual culture 
 were necessary to vindicate for the ^sculapian art the classi- 
 
 112 Fabricius, Biblioth. Grjeca, Tom. III., p. 305. 
 
 "^ Muratori, Antiquitat. Ital., Tom. III., p. 993. 
 
 ''*Gesta Frederici Imperator, Lib. IV., cap. 11, sub an. 1158. 
 
 ii^Oderic, Vital. Histor. Ecclesiastic, sub an. 1090. 
 
 ii^Launoy, De Varia Aristotl. Foituna, p. 139. Philip Augustus was present 
 at the conflagration. Ibid., p. 138. Etabili, publishing a work of Aristotle in 
 the year 1327, was burned alive. Maffei, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. 
 L, p. 75. 
 
 30
 
 466 HISTORY OF MEDICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 fication of an exact science. That impress which medicine 
 and its system of cures had received subsequent to Galen's 
 time unfortunately preserved with vigor the undaunted mirac- 
 ulous remedies and astrological preventatives throughout the 
 Middle Ages to Paracelsus, who sought in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury to introduce a novel scheme of medicinal curatives."' 
 
 1^'' Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, Vol. I., p. 363.
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 I.egum Wisigothorum, Liber XL, Titulus L, De Medicis et Ai- 
 grotis. Circa A. D. 504. 
 
 Lex I. Ne absentibus propinquis mulierem medicus flebotomare 
 praesumat. Nullus medicus sine prcesentia patris, matris, fratris, 
 filii, aut avunculi, vel cujuscunque propinqui, mulierem ingenuam 
 flebotomare praesumat : excepta si necessitas emerserit gegritudinis, 
 ubi etiam contuigat supradictas personas minime adesse, tunc aut 
 coram vicinis honestis, aut coram servis aut ancillis idoneis, secun- 
 dem qualitatem segritudinis, quae novit pendat. Quod si aliter pra:;- 
 sumpserit X., soHdos propinquinisaut marito coactus exsolvat: quia 
 diflncillimum non est, ut sub tali occasione ludibrium interdum ad- 
 haerescat. 
 
 Lex 2. Ne medicus custodia retentos visitare praesumat. Nullus 
 medicorum ubi comites, tribuni aut judices, aut villici in custodiam 
 retruduntur, introire praesumat sine custode carceris : ne illi per 
 metum culpae suae mortem sibi abeadem explorent. Nam si aliquid 
 mortiferum his ab ipsis medicis datum vel indultum fuerit, multum 
 publicis rationibus deperit. Si quis hoc medicorum praesumpserit, 
 sententiam cum ultione praecipiet. 
 
 Lex 3. Si medicus pro regritidine ad placitum expectetur. Si 
 quis medicum ad placitum pro infirmis visitando, aut vulnero cu- 
 rando poposcerit : ut viderit vulnus medicus, aut dolores agnoverit, 
 statim sub certo placito cautione emissa infirmum suscepiat. 
 
 Lex 4. Antiqua. Si ad' placitum susceptus moriatu, infirmus. 
 Si quid medicus infirmum ad placitum susceperit, cautionis emisso 
 vinculo infirmum restitutat sanitati. Ceste si periculum contigerit 
 mortis, mercedem placiti penitus non requirat, nee ulla inde utrique 
 parti calumnia moveatur. 
 
 Lex 5. Si de oculis medicus ypocismata tollat. Si (piis ypocisma 
 abstulerit, et ad pristinam sanitatem perduxerit infirmum V. solidos 
 pro suo beneficio consequatur. 
 
 Lex 6. Si per flebotomum ingenuus vel servus mortem incurrat. 
 Si quis medicus dum flebotomum exercet, ingenuum debilitaverit, 
 C. solidos coactus exsolvat. Si vero mortuus fuerit, continuo pro- 
 pinquis tradenduus est, quod de eo facere voluerint, habeant potes- 
 tatem. Si vero servum debilitaverit aut occiderit, hujusmodi ser- 
 vum restituat. 
 
 (467)
 
 468 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Lex 7. Antiqua. De Mercede discipuli. Si quis medicus famu- 
 lum in doctrina susciperit, pro beneficio suo duodecim solidos con- 
 sequatur. 
 
 Lex 8. Antiqua. Ne indiscussus medicus custodise deputatur. 
 NuUus medicus inauditum, excepta homicidii causa, in custodiam 
 retrudat. Pro debito tamen sub fidejussore debet consistere.
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 Le Assisse, et Bone Usauge del Reame de Hyerusalem, A. D. 
 1090. 
 
 Caput 218. De li fisici che medicano li amalati, dandoli medi- 
 cine, siropi et altre cose li quali morino per la mala ciira. 
 
 1. Sel avien che un schiavo 6 schiava sia amalata, e im medico 
 vien al suo patron, 6 patrona, e li dice volerlo giiarire, accordan- 
 dosi con esso per nominate precio, et accade poi che quel medico li 
 da cose calde, e molificative, e egli li doveva dar cose frede, e res- 
 tretive, e nol fece, per il che more ; la rason commanda, e judica, 
 che liu sia obligato restituir un servo simile al suo patrono, 6 il precio 
 che li costo fina quel giorno che morite de jure. 
 
 2. Similim.ente sel avien che uno servo sia amalato da caldo che 
 ha di dentro grande, e il medico li fa trar sanguine avanti el termine 
 conveniente, e li traze troppo sangue, si che per la grau debilita il 
 calore li da sopra la testa, e more, la rason vole che quel medico 
 debe refar al patrona del servo il valor di quello, cive quanto valeva 
 il di che morite, overo quanto I'havera comprato de prima comprita 
 de jure. 
 
 3. Parimente sel avien che uno mio servo sia amalato da fredo, e 
 un medico me vien a dire di volerlo guarire, e s'accorda meco, e 
 tuol la cura guarirlo, e li fa trazer sangue sopra quel fredo, il che fa 
 per la sua poca cognition de urina, e pero secca I'orina, e perde la 
 favella per causa del sangue trattoli, e con questo more, la rason 
 vole che mi debbe far restoro di tanto quanto mi costava quel mio 
 servo de jure. 
 
 4. Similiter s'io ho un servo, 6 serva dropica, e un medico si 
 mette a guarirlo, e li taglia il ventre la dove e il male, e poi non fa 
 trarge li humeri di dentro con rasone, anzi lassa insio la prima, 6 
 la seconda volta, che se indebilisse, e perde il fiato, e more, la rason 
 vole che mi deba pagar el mio servo. Similimente se un servo, 6 
 serva e amalato con la febre quotidana, e un medico prende di gua- 
 rirlo con purge de medicine, e li da poi la medicina a strashora, e 
 tanta schamonea in quella medicine, e la fara si forte, che more il 
 servo bevendola, overo andara del corpo tanta che suddi il ventre, 
 el figito, e il pulmone, e more, overamente non tempera il medico 
 la medicina bene, si che non lo menara, e per questo more, la rason 
 vole chel medico sia tenuto de pagar al patron del servo il valor di 
 quello. 
 
 (469)
 
 470 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 5. Cosi se un servo ha male al fondamento, e un medico tuol in 
 si de guarirlo, e piglia un ferro ben calde e li vol curare, del qual 
 vene quel male, el lui non savera farlo, e brusa el budello talimente 
 che si retira, e non potra pui andare del corpo, e more, la rason 
 judica, che il medico dia tenuto pagar del servo il precio che I'ha 
 comprato, 6 quanto valeva. 
 
 6. Parimente se un schiavo 6 schiavaha mal di san Lazaro orogna 
 secha, 6 alcun' altra malatia, e un medico s'accorda de guarirlo con 
 condition che la mita del precio che sara venduto sia del medico, e 
 r altra mita del patron del schiavo, e il medico li fa quanto sa, ma 
 non lo giova, e more, la rason judica che in questo caso el medico 
 non e obligato de restorar el schiavo, 6 schiava, per che lui perde 
 prima le sue fatiche, e poi quanto doveva haver; e questo e de jure 
 per I'assisa. 
 
 7. Similiter se un medico medicara a questo modo alcun homo 
 libero, 6 donna libera, le rason judica che esso medico debba esser 
 impicato, e tutta la sua faculta dove esser del signor de la terra, e 
 avanti chel sia impicato, deve esser menato frustrandolo per la terra, 
 con uno urinal in man, per spaviar li altri da simel caso de jure. 
 
 8. Ben dovete sapere ch'e di rason che vi siano do testimonii, 
 avanti chel medico sia convinto, sel denega d' haver medicato nel 
 sopra ditto caso, e deveno jurar li testimonii, come in presentia loro 
 ha medicato con tal medicine, e siropi, per li quali morite quello 
 amalato, e come intesono dir a I'amalato che per le cose datali ha 
 sentito dentro al cor suo ch'era per morire ; e con questo deve esser 
 convinto el medico de jure, per quello homicidio del servo che die 
 restrorar, 6 del Christian, per el qual deve esser impicato, e non al- 
 tramente. 
 
 9. Silimente nessun medico extraneno, che venisse d'oltra mar, 
 6 da li infideli non deve medicar de urina nessun, fin che non sia 
 provato da li miglior medici de la terra, in presentia del Vessovo de 
 la terra; e cognoscendolo sufficiente a medicar li deve esser data 
 licentia de medicar per urina, e questo e di rason per I'assisa de 
 Hierusalem. Et se non sara bon medico, el Vescovo, et la corte 
 deveno commandarlo che debba suddar la citta 6 stando a la citta 
 chel non debba medicar alcuno. 
 
 10. Et sel avien che alcun medico medicara in la citta senza li- 
 centia de la corte, et del Vescovo, la corte deve prenderlo, et farlo 
 frustrar per la terra, de jure, et per I'assisa del Reame de Hierusa- 
 lem.
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 Constitutiones Regni Siculi, Titulus XXXIV., De Probabili Ex- 
 perentia Medicorum. 
 
 Lex I. Rex Rogerius. Quisquis amodo mederi voluerit, ofificial- 
 ibus nostris, et judicibus se pra^sentet, eorum discutiendum judicis; 
 quod si sua temeritate prtesumpserit, career! constringatur, bonis 
 suis omnibus publicatis. Hoc enim prospectum est, ne in regno 
 nostro subjecti periclitentur ex imperitia medicorum. 
 
 Lex 2. Imperator Fredericus. Utilitati speciali prospicimus, 
 cum communi saluti fidelium providemus. Attendentes igitur grave 
 dispendium, et irrecupababile damnum, quod posset contingere ex im- 
 peritia medicorum, jubemus in posterum nullum medici titulum 
 prsetendentum audere practicari aliter, vel mederi, nisi Salerni 
 primitus, et in conventu publico magistrorum judicio comprobatus, 
 cum testimonialibus litteris de fide, et sufficienti scientia, tam mag- 
 istrorum, quam ordinatorum nostrorum, ad praesentiam nostram, vel 
 nobis a regno absentibus, ad illius praesentiam, qui vice nostra in 
 regno remanserit, ordinatus accedat, et a nobis, vel ab eo medendi 
 licentiam consequatur : poena publication is bonorum, et annalis car- 
 ceris imminente his, qui contra hujusmodi nostrse serenitatis edic- 
 tum in posterum ausi fuerint practicare. 
 
 Lex 3. Idem. Quia nunquam scire potest scientia medicinae, 
 nisi de scientia logicali prgescribatur, statuimus, quod nullus studeat 
 in medicinali scientia, nisi prius studeat ad minus triennia in scientia 
 logicali : post triennium, si voluerit, ad studium medicinae procedat : 
 it quod chirurgiam, quae est medicinae, infra prcedictum tempus 
 addiscat. Post quod, et non ante, concedatur sibi licentia practi- 
 candi, examinatione juxta curiae formam praehabita, et nihilominus 
 recepto pro eo de prcedicto tempore studii testimonio magistrali. 
 Iste medicus jurabit servare formam curiae hoctenus observatam, eo 
 adjecto, quod si pervenerit ad notitiam suam, quod aliquis confec- 
 tionarius minus bene conficiat, curiae denuntiabat ; et quod pauper- 
 ibus consilium gratis dabit. Iste medicus visitabit legrotos suos ad 
 minus bis in die, ad requisitionem infirmi semul nocte: a quo non 
 recipiet per diem, si pro eo non egrediatur civitatem vel castrum, 
 ultra dimidium tarrenum auri. Ab infirmo autem, queni extra civ- 
 itatem visitat, non recipiet i)er diem ultra tres tarrenos cum expensis 
 infirmi; vel ultra quator tarrenos, cum expensis suis. 
 
 (471)
 
 4/2 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 Non contrahat societatem cum confectionariis,nec recipiat aliquem 
 sub cura sua ad suas expensas pro certa pretii quantitate ; nee ipse 
 etiam habebit propriam stationem. 
 
 Confectionarii vero facient confectionem expensis suis, cum testi- 
 moniis medicorum, Juxta formam constitutionis: nee admittentur 
 ad hoc, ut teneant confectiones, nisi pra;stito juramento, quod om- 
 nes confectiones suas secundem prsedictam formam facient sine 
 fraude. Lucrabitur autem stationarius de confectionibus suis secun- 
 dem istum modum: de confectionibus et simpHcibus medi.cinis, quae 
 non consueverint teneri in apothecis ultra annum, a tempore emp- 
 tionis, pro qualibet uncia poterit et licebit tres tarrenos lucrari. De 
 abis vero, quae ex natura medicaminum, vel ex aba causa, ultra 
 annum in apotheca tenentur, pro qualibet uncia licebit lucrari tres 
 (sex?) tarrenos. 
 
 Nee stationes hujusmodi erunt ubique, sed in certiscivitatibusper 
 regnum, ut inferius describitur. Nee tamen post completum quin- 
 quennium practicabit, nisi per annum integrum cum consilio experti 
 medici practicetur. 
 
 Magistri vero infra istud quinquennium libros authenticos, tarn 
 Hippocraticos quam Galeni, in scholis doceant tam in theorica 
 quam in practica medicinae. Salubri etiam constitutiones sancimus, 
 ut nullus chirurgicus ad practicam admittatur, nisi testimoniales lit- 
 eras offerat magistrorum, in medicinali facultate legentium, quod 
 per annum saltem in ea parte medicinae studerit, quae chirurgiae in- 
 struit facultatem ; et prsesertim anatomiam humanorum eorporum 
 in scholis didicerit, et sit in ea parte medicinae perfectus; sine qua 
 nee intisiones salubriter fieri patuerent, nee factae curari. 
 
 Lex 4. Idem. In terra qualibet regni nostri nostrae jurisdietioni 
 subjecta, duos viros circumspectus etfidedignos volumnus ordinari 
 et corporali per eos praestito sacramento teneri, quorum nomina ad 
 curiam nostram mittentur, sub quorum testificatione, eleetuaria, et 
 sirupi, ac aliee medicinae legaliter fiant, et sic factae vendantur. 
 
 Salerni maxime per magistros in physica hoc volumus approbari. 
 Praisentia etiam lege statuimus, ut nullus in medicina vel chirurgia, 
 nisi apud Salernum vel Ncapolim legat in regno, nee magistri nomen 
 assumat, nisi diligenter examinatus in prassentia nostrorum ofificila- 
 lium, et magistrorum artis ejusdem. 
 
 Conficientes etiam medicinas sacramento corporaliter prasstito 
 volumus obligari, ut ipsas fideliter juxta artes et hominium quali- 
 tates, in prssentia juratorum confidant; quod si contra fecerint, 
 publicatione bonorum suorum mobilium sententialiter eomdemnen 
 tur. Ordinati vero, quorum fidei praedicta sunt commissa, si frau • 
 dem in credit© ipsis officio c'ommisisse probentur, ultimo suplicio 
 feriendos esse censimus.
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 Ordonnances des Rois de Fiance, Sub Philippe IW, dit le Bel, 
 A. D., 1311. 
 
 Edicto present! statuimus, ut in Villa et Vicecomitatu Parisiensi'-, 
 nullus chirurgicus, nulla chirurgica, seu opus quomodolibet exer- 
 cere praesumat, seu se immiscere eidem publice, vel occulte, in qua- 
 cumque jurisdictione, seu terra, nisi per magistros chirurgicos jura- 
 tos, morantes Parisius vocatus per dilectus magistrum Joannem 
 Pitardi chirurgicum nostrum juratum Castelleti nostri Parisius tem- 
 pore suo, ac per ejus successores in officio, qui ex juramenti sui vin- 
 culo, chirurgicos alios prsedictos juratos vocare pro hujusmodi casu, 
 quoties fuerit tenebuntur, et prius examinati fuerint diligentcr, et 
 approbati in ipsa arte, ac ab ipso, vel ejus successoribus in officio, 
 ut est dictum, juxta approbationem aliorum chirurgicorum, vel ma- 
 joris partis eorum, ipsius vocantis voce inter alias numerata, licen- 
 tiam operandi in arte pr?edicta meruerint obtinere : ad quem ratione 
 sui officii, quod a nobis obtinet, et ad ejus successores in hujusmodi 
 officio habebit licenti?e concessionem, non ad alium volumus per- 
 tinere. 
 
 Qui quidem per eum et ejus successores, modo prpemisso exami- 
 nati et approbati, antequam officii sui ad ministrationem attingant, 
 juramentum prestare teneantur coram Preposito Parisiensi nostro,de 
 hujusmodi officio fideliter exercendo, quod insuper vulneratum 
 quemcunque non visitabant, seu parabant, in locis sacris, seu privi- 
 legiatis, nisi solum in prima vice, et quod statim facta ilia prima 
 visitatione, sen paratione, vulnerationem illam Preposito nostro 
 Parisiensi, vel ejus locum tenenti, seu Auditoribus Castelleti pra;- 
 dicti revelabunt, vel etiam intimabunt. 
 
 Damus itaque Praeposito nostro Parisiensi moderno, et aliis pro 
 tempore fuerint, prsesentibus in mandatis, quatenus sub virtute jura- 
 menti quo administrationis suae ratione tenentur, hujusmodi presens 
 nostrum statutum faciant nunc et alias, cum exjiediens fuerit in villa 
 et vicecomitatu praedictis publicari et firmiter observarj, banneri- 
 asque omnium chirurgicorum et chirurgicarum prcedictorum, non 
 approbatorum et juratorum, ut permittur, post publicationem hujus 
 Edicti domibus eorum appositas, coram domibus ipsorum publice 
 comburi, personas capi, et in Castellum nostrum Parisiensi conducti, 
 et tamdiu tenere quosque nobis fuerit legitime emendatum, eisdem 
 districte et firmiter inhibendo, ne de caetero in arte praedicto prac- 
 
 (473)
 
 474 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 ticare prgesumant, nisi prius per dictum magistrum Joannem Pitardi, 
 vel successores suos in officio dicto ut praemissum est, examinati et 
 approbati fuerint, et juramenta prsestiterint antedicta. 
 
 Si quis vero ipsorum ipsa praestare recusaverit. Nos eidem dictae 
 artis opus et exercitium penitus interdicere volumus. Et si contra 
 interdictum et prohibitionem nostram dictae artis practicae se im- 
 niiscere prsesumpserint, ipsos per Praepositum nostrum praedictura, 
 prout facti, qualitas poposcerit, et ad ipsum pertinuerit, volumus 
 prima ratione puniri. 
 
 Quod ut ratum et stabile permanent, in futurum praesentes litteras 
 sigilli nostri fecimus appositione muniri.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abracadabra, a charm to cure obstinate 
 maladies; written on paper and in- 
 cinerated, then drank with water, 98. 
 
 Abraxas, as preventatives of diseases, 94 
 -97. Puissance inherent in these 
 effigies, 95. Used for incantations, 
 lb. Made of glass paste, etc., 96. 
 Their potency originates in the deity, 
 Abrax, lb. Used as secret signals 
 by Gnostic filiates, 97. 
 
 Adonai, demons vanquished by the 
 name of, 222-3. Jews swear by, 457. 
 
 Aesclepiades honored with the amity of 
 Cicero, 6. His great erudition, lb. 
 Resurrects a cadaver, 7. 
 
 Agate, provides eloquence, 291. 
 
 Agnus Dei, or pellets of wax, protect 
 men and animals, 214. 
 
 Albert Magnus, the learning of; his 
 nickname of "Lace-shoe,'" 311. 
 
 Albucazi, commentary on the Arabic 
 writings of, 394. 
 
 Alchemy, vide Chemistry. 
 
 Alexandria, zoological collection of, 44. 
 Loses its literary accumulations under 
 Roman rule, 47. Roman emperors 
 favor, 48, 54. Gymnasium of, still 
 extant in 11 75, 246. Unfavorably 
 afifected by the edict of Milan, 116. 
 Still retains scientific culture, lb. 
 Eminent medical professors at, under 
 Julian, 117, 119. Their pursuits at, 
 until its destruction by the Arabs, 
 118. 
 
 Alexandrine schools and their influence 
 on medical culture, 41, etc. Organi- 
 zation of, by the Ptolemies, 42. A 
 fusion of nationalities sought for 
 through them, lb. The libraries of, 
 retain the books of Hippocrates, Ga- 
 len, Oribasius, etc., lb. The profes- 
 sors of medicine at the, 44. Their 
 fate under later Roman emperors, 50. 
 Loss to medicine through the confla- 
 gration of the libraries of, lb. They 
 declined on the establishing of scho- 
 lastic rivals elsewhere, 51, 53. 
 
 Learned professors frequent these, 52. 
 Dearth of scientists at these schools 
 in the 3d and 4th centuries, 62. 
 
 Almanazor, his devotion to letters, 248. 
 The medicinal writings of, translated, 
 261. 
 
 Amber, a panacea against cerebral 
 troubles, 291. 
 
 Ambulances and refreshments for sick 
 Roman soldiers under Trajan, 144. 
 
 Amulets, preventatives and cures of 
 maladies, 1 10. Used to cure ophthal- 
 mic ills, 126. Advised by Galen, 98. 
 Usually of mineral substance, 99. 
 Sanitary, of the Scandinavians, 207. 
 
 Anatomy under Trajan, 14. Ruphus 
 of Ephesus writes a treatise on, lb. 
 Apes dissected in the study of, 15. A 
 distinguished writer on, in the 2d 
 century, 16. Human cadavcra for 
 purposes of, granted in the reign of 
 Trajan, 38. Treatise of Boethius on, 
 52. Oriental Jews have skill in, 1 19. 
 Arabic work on, used by Roger of 
 Parma, 393. The latter declared to 
 be the first anatomist during the Mid 
 die Ages, lb. The obligation of 
 anatomy to Lanfranc, 398. Progress 
 of, 434. Restorer of, 439-41-2. 
 
 Angels as a physical force to incite or 
 cure diseases, 65, etc. Doctrine of 
 Aeons through whom deity influences 
 the denizens of earth, etc., 66. The 
 prayer angels, lb. The malevolent 
 and the benevolent, lb. They cause 
 illness of body, and cure the same, 
 67. Of good or evil arrayed as arm- 
 ies, 68. Their corporeal and spiritual 
 essence, 69. Evil angels cause pesti- 
 lence, etc., lb. The dead raised by 
 invoking do, 84. Names of, forbid- 
 den for magic uses, 297. 
 
 Antidote to a poison " drives it through 
 the veins to the toes," 230. 
 
 Antonius Musa, the scholar of Aescle- 
 piades ; his great skill in the curative 
 art, and successful treatment of Au- 
 gustus, 7. 
 
 (475)
 
 476 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Apothecaries, when first at Rome, 28. 
 
 Arabic Learning: Sought by Gerbert, 
 259. Peter of Clugny acquires a 
 knowledge of, and in the 12th century 
 he procures an assistant to translate 
 the Alcoran into the Latin language, 
 lb. Gerard of Cremorne makes prac- 
 tical use of his acquaintance with, by 
 translating medical text-books into 
 Latinity, 260. Of Scott, lb. Bacon's 
 friend uses this to construct charms 
 against maladies, 2S8. His own 
 knowledge of Arabic medicines and 
 pharmacy, 289. Its early extension 
 to England, lb. MSS. aggregated to 
 illustrate, by Frederick IL, 374. Ar- 
 abic writers on astrological science 
 studied at Bologna, 387. Litroduced 
 to Italian schools by Thaddeus, 390. 
 Servile use of Arabic text-books, 398. 
 
 Arabs : Their origin, 244. Love of 
 justice, lb. Appear in Europe, 245. 
 Slender stock of learning at this time, 
 lb. They destroy the literary accum- 
 ulations at Alexandria, 246. Allow 
 Christians to retain the practice of 
 their cult, 249, 250. Their transla- 
 lations of Greek text-books into the 
 Arabic tongue, 247, 248. Acquire 
 the sciences, 249. Influence of the, 
 on culture in Spain, 250. Found 
 great libraries there, lb. Foreign 
 savants reside among the Spanish, 
 253. Scholars of the, celebrated for 
 their medical culture, lb. Educate 
 their children in mediaeval Latinity, 
 
 374- 
 
 Archiatria, the dignity of, 20, 21, 22. 
 
 Archogathus, a Pelopponnesian surgeon, 
 obtains the Roman citizenship, 5. 
 His inhuman surgery, and hence 
 called " vulnarius et carnifex," 6. 
 
 Aretaeus of Cappadocia and his books of 
 medicine; their freedom from servile 
 guidance, 17. His anatomy lb. 
 
 Aristotle, the Ethics of translated by 
 Thaddeus in the 13th century, and 
 commended by Dante, 392. Influ- 
 ence of, in revival of science, 465. 
 
 Arzat, cognomen of early German sur- 
 geons, 189, 190. 
 
 Astrology, a translated treatise on, by 
 (jerbcrt, 267. Practical use of, in 
 medicine, 274. (Jlobes and orbs, 
 sidereal, important factors of, 275. 
 Medical. 287. Judicial, 288. Taught 
 
 at Smarcand, lb. Use of, in Con- 
 stantinople, lb. Under the Hohen 
 stauffen, 289. Its specific application 
 to the body, 295-6. Particular rites 
 in, 298. Separate forces of the stars, 
 lb. The union of Alchemy and 
 Astrology accepted, 387-8, 435. 
 
 Astronomy, the Arabs cultivate, 249. 
 
 Augustine, Saint, praises a medical pro- 
 fessor of his day, 13 1. 
 
 Averroes : the works of, translated into 
 mediEEval Latinity, 261. Commen- 
 tary on the treatises of, 443. 
 
 Avicenna : the treatises of, rendered in 
 Latin by Michel Scott, 261. Com- 
 mentary on the works of, 261, 434. 
 Early translations of, 443. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bagdad, the splendid literary culture of, 
 247. 
 
 Baths, the sanitarj', of Sicily, and the use 
 of effigies, 297. Filthy do. propagate 
 leprosy, 329. Properties of the, 435. 
 
 Benedict, the founder of Latin Mon- 
 achism, 15 1. His great services to 
 medicine in the creation of Monte 
 Cassino, lb. 
 
 Bezoar stone, an antidote to poison, 291. 
 
 Blindness, power of reliques to cure, 224. 
 
 Bologna, its eminence as a medical 
 school during the 13th century, 386. 
 Its famous professors, lb. Fame of, 
 attracts strange scholars, 388. Nich- 
 olas, an Englishman, attains high re- 
 pute at, 389. 
 
 Bonds of indemnity, given by illustri- 
 ous, patients that attending physician 
 shall be saved harmless, 391. Given 
 by practitioners akso, lb. 
 
 Books: medical codices or the MSS. of 
 saint Bertrarius, 169. Copies of, 
 multiplied by decree of Charlemagne, 
 217. This industry at Saint Gall, lb. 
 A large collection of, at do., 218. 
 On medicine, lb. Treatises of Hip- 
 pocrates possessed by this cloister, 
 220. Disciple of Constans Afer be- 
 queathes his, to Naples, etc., 240. 
 Text-books furnished by copyists at 
 prescribed rates, 371. Text-books, 
 the preparation of under sacerdotal 
 authority, 396. In monastic libraries, 
 41 1-2. Copies of, imported from dis- 
 tant lands, 414. Greed of friars for, 
 416.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 477 
 
 Bootlis or drug shops of the Greek 
 medicastres at Rome, 4. 
 
 Botanical garden of Saint Gall for med- 
 ical uses, 216. Of the Spanish Arabs, 
 252. Professors of botany, 387. Of 
 Padua, 442-3. 
 
 Cabbala, the, helps to modify medical 
 culture into a demoniacal dogma, 72. 
 Secret or transmitted lore of, 73. 
 Traced to Adam, 74. Close union of 
 human parts and specific stars ; the 
 subtle influence of these according to 
 the Cabbalists, 75. Medical prop- 
 erty of the Cabbalistic figures, 76. 
 Theurgism of the Cabbala, lb. 
 
 Ccesar's life saved at the battle of 
 Philippi by a physician, 7. 
 
 Calculus, removal of assisted by holy 
 pathology, 222. 
 
 Cassiodorus favors the Archiatria and 
 suggests natural inquiry into maladies, 
 137. Refers to his medical books, 142. 
 
 Cataract of the eye, price to remove by 
 the Gothic code, 139. 
 
 Catholic prelates maintain Saracen sur- 
 geons, 258. 
 
 Cato, the Roman Censor, charges ])hysi- 
 cians with unscrupulous conduct, 2, 
 3. His domestic or patriarchial medi- 
 cine ; sovereign remedy of the figure 
 3, and his treatise on this subject, 3. 
 Advises his son to avoid studying 
 Grecian medicine, 5. Suggests an in- 
 tention of Greek surgeons to slay the 
 Latin race, lb. 
 
 Certificates to the licentiates of Salerno, 
 379-80. 
 
 Chaldaic system of magic art and cures, 
 80. Treatise on, urged to have ex- 
 isted in the fifth century, 81. Its use 
 tolerated, 1 12. 
 
 Charlemagne, age of and influence, 162. 
 Wars with the Saxons, lb. Through 
 his legislation arts and sciences are 
 preserved in the Wi5st, 164. Is a 
 student of astronomy, lb. His codi- 
 fication of the laws, 165. Abhors 
 physicians, 166. 
 
 Chemical analyses of Archigenes, 16. 
 
 Chemistry : Indebted to the Arabs, 262. 
 Doubted by Petrarch, lb. Dyeing 
 invented by Arabs, 263. Alchemy 
 early pursued upon formulas obtained 
 in Spanish convents, 290. Its revival 
 
 in the 13th century, 291. Alchemical 
 pursuits denounced by Agrijipa, 301. 
 Of greatest utility to mediaeval med- 
 ical culture, lb. " Drinkalile Gold," 
 lb. Early valuable discoveries by, 
 303. A([ua fortis, lb. Power to 
 transmute metals, 304. Charged by 
 Petrarch with inefficient results, 305. 
 Distillations at remote periods : of 
 aqua vitx, or eau-de-vie; oil of cin- 
 namon; medicinal salts, etc., 305. 
 Distillation of absintlie and rose 
 water, lb. Spirits of wine imported 
 from the Saracens, known to \'illan- 
 nova, 306. Dye stuffs of the Vene- 
 tians, 308. jNIediaeval treatise on 
 dyeing, 309. Their fast colors, lb. 
 Laws against chemistry,' 313. Pur- 
 suit of, granted by sign manual, lb. 
 Appliances for researches into, fully 
 possessed by Italian Universities in 
 the 13th century, 387. 
 
 Christianity adjusts a new system for 
 bodily curatives, 55. Proclaims a 
 superior puissance in Deity or Je- 
 hovah over Apollo or TEsculapius, 
 56. Rivals polytheism, and the riots 
 in consequence, A. D. 272, 60. P'or- 
 mal decree in favor of, accelerates the 
 downfall of medical science, 100. 
 
 Cicero honors a surgeon with his friend- 
 ship, 6. Great value of a copy of 
 Cicero's works in the 9th century, 413. 
 
 Claudius' history of Carthage annually 
 read before the Alexandria museum, 
 
 50- 
 
 Cleopatra's patronage of the Alexan- 
 drine schools, 47. 
 
 Clerics, sly satire against erudite, 279. 
 
 College of Surgeons established in Cor- 
 dova by Saracens in the i ith century, 
 
 255- 
 
 Concordance of Hippocrates, Galen, 
 and Soranus, prepared by a Chartres 
 Monk in the loth century, 231. 
 
 Constans Afer, 235. His services to 
 medical art in the lith century, 263. 
 Voluminous translations by, from 
 Arabic writers on cognate subjects, 
 264. His strange career, lb. 
 
 Contest of medical rivals before Otho 
 of Germany in the i6th century, and 
 its curious result, 229. The literary, 
 of the Arabs, 252. 
 
 Contracts for medical attendance regu- 
 larly drawn up and sealed, 396.
 
 478 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Coral, strengthens the body, 291. 
 
 Cornelius Celsus, and his great Encyclo- 
 pedia of Medicine, under Augustus, 
 12; as a compendiast of the writ- 
 ings of Greek, Arabic, and Jewish 
 authors, 13. 
 
 Copyists in the Middle Ages, 414. 
 
 Cross, fragments of suspended provoke 
 divine manifestations, 223. Piece of 
 the true, restores vigor to moribund 
 Louis IX. of France, 277. 
 
 Culture, decay of social, in the fifth cen 
 tury, 102. 
 
 Cures, saintly, 223. The potency of 
 Christian believers to cure accorded 
 through his death, 68. Apollonius 
 as inventor of magical, 93. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dancing pestilence, arises in 1 148, 159. 
 At intermittent intervals culminates 
 in the year 1349, 361. Strange habits 
 of the infects, 360. A nervous disor- 
 der affecting both sexes, lb. Desig- 
 nated also as Flagellants or Scourgers, 
 361. Sinister effect of, 363. How 
 robed and girthed, 364. The infects 
 abhor red, which color is interdicted 
 by municipal authorities, lb. Unjust 
 similitude between this and modern 
 religious saltimbulation, 365. 
 
 Decanus Operis and the Black art, 220. 
 
 Decretals of church synods forbid monks 
 practicing medicine, 242. 
 
 Degrees, of Doctorates, etc., 410. 
 
 Demiurgos as potential head of angelic 
 forces, 67. 
 
 Demonology in the 4th century as the 
 basis of the curative art, 64. 
 
 Demons claimed to have established 
 their own formulas by which they op- 
 erate and are controlled, 83. Reme- 
 dial, lb. As blind means of skill, 
 84. Care to be taken when spells 
 are forging to evoke, lb. Pains of 
 body produced by, 105. Actual phy- 
 sical ]5resence of, 277. An obstinate 
 demon takes refuge in the throat, 278. 
 The " familiar" of Agrippa, 314. 
 
 Dental surgery, the ]:)reijaration of pow- 
 ders and gold filing in the Middle 
 Ages, 285. 
 
 Diamonds, render man invisil)le, 291. 
 
 Didaslcelon, at Alexandria teaches a 
 gloss of exact sciences so as to com- 
 bat jK)lythcism, 56. Religious con- 
 
 tests between the partisans of the, and 
 of the Museum, 61. 
 
 Diet, table in the age of Charlemagne, 
 167. 
 
 Dionysius, scholastic medicist of the 
 Gothic era, 143. 
 
 Dioscorides, his treatise on herbal medi- 
 caments, 14. Known throughout the 
 Middle Ages, 14, 261. 
 
 Disarius eulogized by Macrobius, 
 
 .'33-4- 
 Disorders, physical, attributed to the 
 
 principle of evil, 105. 
 Distillation, vide Chemistry. 
 Divorce, insanity for three years, or a 
 
 five years' idiocy, a ground of, 25. 
 Doctrine of temperament in the Middle 
 
 Ages, 458. 
 Dress of medical students, semi-clerical, 
 
 447- 
 
 E. 
 
 Eau-de-vie or brandy possibly known 
 and used as a stimulant by the Sara- 
 cens of Spain early in the 12th cen- 
 tury, 256. Villannova's services 
 touching the publication of, 306. 
 Designated "life potion," and why, 
 lb. Tragic use of, in A. D. 1387, 307. 
 Distilled in mediaeval convents, lb. 
 
 Effigies, symbolic, used to promote 
 health, especially when uttered in 
 Chaldaic and Hebrew, 135-6. Runic, 
 and the mandragora as amulets, etc., 
 179. Their puissance, lb. Rem- 
 edial, interdicted by Clothair, 180. 
 Sanitary uses of, 181. Survive to the 
 later epochs of the Middle Ages, lb. 
 Virgin protects herds, 206. Gerbert 
 charged with fabricating effigies, and 
 speaking human heads, 269, 270. 
 The relation of, to alchemy, 292. 
 Role of, in mediEeval curatives, 299. 
 Of the part to be healed, fabricated, 
 etc., lb. Of infallible adaptation, 
 300. 
 
 Electricity as a' curative in the 2d cen- 
 tury, 9. 
 
 Emasculation of infants, and conse- 
 quent great mortality of do., 26. 
 The Emperor Domitian forbids the 
 custom, lb. 
 
 English physician's fame in the nth 
 century, 241. 
 
 Ennodius, a priest-physician in the 5th 
 century, 143.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 479 
 
 Etruscan enchanters in the time of 
 Alaric the Hun offer to destroy his 
 army by a thunderbolt, 88. 
 
 Examination, formal and rigid of stu- 
 dents of medicine as to capability, 23. 
 Members of the Romish faculty 
 obliged to instruct for, 24. 
 
 Exorcism, the Latin text of a formula 
 of, 202. 
 
 F. 
 
 Faith, Latin formulary for interrogation 
 of, and abjuration of Teutonic divini- 
 ties, 203. Part of, in accrediting the 
 fall of a tower as divine vengeance, 273. 
 
 Falconry, treatise on, by the Hohen- 
 stauffen rulers, and the "Wizard" 
 Scot, 375. Of Albert Magnus, lb. 
 
 Fathers of the church ridicule, the sug- 
 gestion that disease was a natural 
 development, 70. They charge that 
 it comes from demons ; the same 
 source as magic and astrology, lb. 
 
 Fees of medical practitioners : how set- 
 tled and paid under Roman Emperors, 
 22. Allowed by the Langobardic 
 codes, 173. Also by the Salic law, 
 176. Provide a lucrative compensa- 
 tion, 286. Of the professional lec- 
 turers, 372. Enormous, granted a 
 Lucchese professor, 387. Of do., 
 settled in kind, 388. Chargeable to 
 a nobleman, 391. Great, paid to a 
 disciple of* Thaddeus, 393. Royal 
 jewels pledged to pay the stipends of 
 physician, 428. Large, 433, 438. 
 Excessive, 461. Regulated by the 
 wealth, etc., of patients, 462-3. 
 
 Female professors of medicine and law 
 of the 13th century, 372. Appear in 
 male attire, lb. 
 
 Flagellants, vide Dancing Pestilence. 
 
 Flavius, a professor of medicine com- 
 mended by Saint Jerome, 132. He 
 writes in Latin metre, lb. 
 
 Flowers grown on tombs of saints, and 
 their efficacy, 279. 
 
 Focariee, vide Prostitutes. Forbid- 
 den London in the year, 1 129, 338. 
 Identical with the Froes, lb. Vest- 
 ment of, lb. 
 
 Formularies, written, for exorcising 
 demons, 109, 202. A professor pre- 
 fers the magical, in the 5th century, 
 131. Of abjuration, 203. Of the 
 Gallic rulers, lb. The Sanitar)', 279. 
 
 Fruits, as medicaments in the Middle 
 Ages, 449. 
 
 Funereal arrangements in the abbeys, 
 284. Bodies of the dead shipped to 
 sea, 381. A coin in the mouth of 
 deceased, 382. They are also girthed 
 with ropes, etc., lb. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gabriel, as angel of war, 55. 
 
 Galen, the influence of, in arresting 
 the decay of medicine. 29. Born at 
 Pergamos in the 2d centur}', 32. 
 Acquires a philosophical education, 
 and abandons it for medicine, through 
 a dream, 33. Numerous treatises on 
 do., 33-4. Goes to Rome and be- 
 comes an object of enmity to the 
 resident medicists, 34. Leaves the 
 capitol, and expresses his disgust of 
 these practitioners, 35. A voluminous 
 writer, 36. His favoritism of Hippo- 
 crates, 36-7. Increases the anatomical 
 knowledge of his era, 37. Vivisects 
 apes, and deterred from dissecting the 
 human cadavera by law, lb. His 
 system assumes a motion of the blood, 
 or pneuma, 38. Familiarity of, with 
 the teachings of Moses and of Christ, 
 
 40. Disagrees with them, lb. Note, 
 
 41. His great renown and fame ex- 
 tended throughout the Middle Ages, 
 and the principal text' authority of 
 their Universities, 40. Is the object 
 of an adoration almost divine, 41. 
 Text-books of, translated from the 
 original Greek into Arabic. 250. 
 
 Gallic disgust of medicines, 449. 
 
 Gems, vide Stones. 
 
 Gerbert, his scientific acquisitions and 
 services to Europe, 266. First in- 
 criminated with necromancy by Car- 
 dinal Birno, 269. 
 
 Gifts, procured through sanitary re- 
 liques, 278. 
 
 Glassware, elegant, made in Tyrian fac- 
 tories early in the 12th centurv', 308. 
 
 Gnosticism, predisposes a downfall of 
 medicine, 53. Its rise in Egypt, 54. 
 How aided by the writings of Philo 
 Judceus, 55. A combination of Ori- 
 ental, Judaistic, and Christian dogma- 
 tisms, 55, 57-8. Its immediate intlu- 
 ence in provoking magical remedies, 
 58. With its extension medical 
 science recedes, 62.
 
 48o 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Gothic mythology blends with the social 
 creeds of medieval Europe, 202. 
 
 Graves of saints resorted to for sanitary 
 purposes, 1 1 1. 
 
 Greek language, the knowledge of in 
 the Middle Ages of wide extent, 373. 
 Of a Corbey monk, 374. 
 
 Greek medicastres, alter the conquest 
 flock to Rome, 2. Low origin of 
 these adventurers, 4. They are slaves 
 and bondmen, lb. 
 
 Guilds, of physicians in the 13th cen- 
 tury at Milan and Florence, 385,453. 
 Of students and papal interdicts 
 against, 403. Of actors, etc., in 1040, 
 
 453- 
 
 Gymnasia, the ancient, have a surgeon 
 salaried at public expense, 22. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hail storms averted by charts affixed to 
 beams, 210. 
 
 Hairs of saints of specific potency, 273. 
 Cure heart troubles and resuscitate 
 the moribund, 274. Of Saint Vin- 
 cent eject vicious spirits, 277. 
 
 Herbs for medicaments gathered amidst 
 strange rites, 191. Treatise on, 43S. 
 
 Hidden arts, inquirj' into, forbidden by 
 Theodosian code, 113. 
 
 Highways, intersection of, in medical 
 economy, 206. 
 
 Hippocrates, commentary and oral lec- 
 tures on, 127. Aphorisms of, trans- 
 lated into Arabic, 248. Thaddeus 
 comments do., 390-2. 
 
 History of the curative art by Soranus 
 the younger in the 2d century, 12. 
 
 Hohenstauffen, great services of the, to 
 mediaeval sciences, 373. Their eru- 
 dition in natural history, 375. 
 
 Holy Virgin, reliques of — vestments, 
 spindle, drops of blood, and Christ's 
 cradle — guarded at Byzantium, 227. 
 
 Homer's writings used in magic cures, 
 125. 
 
 Honorius, the rescript of, classifies ma- 
 gicians with the mathematici, 114. 
 
 Horologe, gift of, to Charlemagne by 
 the Persian Al Raschid, 249. 
 
 Horses, maladies of, treatise on the, 
 written in the 13th century, 396. 
 
 Hospicia, students' apartments and 
 chambers so called, 403. 
 
 Hospitals in the 2d century for disabled 
 horses and soldiers of the Roman 
 
 armies, 11, 145. In general, an out- 
 growth of Christianity, 144. Their 
 existence in the social polity of Aztec 
 civilization, lb. Developed from the 
 Roman Valetudinarium and Veteri- 
 narium, lb. Regular, established by 
 the Spanish Arabs at Cordova, 255. 
 The early cloister, 281. How gov-^ 
 erned, lb. Robust monks feign ill- 
 ness to enter these, to obtain a more 
 delicate diet, lb. Such conduct rep- 
 rehended, 2S2. Resorted to as places 
 for news, gossip, and scandal, 284. 
 The management of conventual in- 
 firmaries, 317. Maintained in Spain 
 at public charge, 318. In Jerusalem 
 in the year 1173, 319. Diet for sick 
 in the, lb. Erected along the royal 
 highways for pious pilgrims, 321 . For 
 foundlings and orphans, 323. Ordi- 
 nances prescribing access to, in the 
 nth century, 324. 
 
 Human body divided into thirty-six 
 parts, each of which has its control- 
 ling spirit for health or sickness, 85. 
 The structure regarded usually as an 
 object of devout adoration, 128. 
 
 Hygienic recommendations of an an- 
 cient vSalernite poem, 237. Post- 
 prandial slumber, and parsimonious 
 use of wine, etc., 238. 
 
 I. 
 
 Images, three gilded, of Norse deities 
 A. D. 612, 203. 
 
 Impostors in the Middle Ages profess 
 to heal, 280. 
 
 Incantations for cure of diseases, 77. 
 And Medicine, 85. Hadrian cured 
 by, 86, 87. For cure of ophthalmic 
 disorders, 196. Conjuring of three 
 persons to aid in do., lb. Tread of a 
 vast army reproduced by the assist- 
 ance of, 295. 
 
 Indiculus Pagianorum, of Charlemagne, 
 204. 
 
 Infant, new born, wrapped in swine 
 skin, 222. 
 
 Infibulation, or artificial preputium, 
 known to Celsus, 13. 
 
 Infirmary, monastic, for the sick, 153. 
 
 Insane and imbeciles, as the abodes ot 
 demons, 276. 
 
 Institutions of learning, founded by 
 Spanish Arabs, open to foreign stu- 
 dents, 257. Scholars from Northern
 
 INDEX. 
 
 481 
 
 Europe study in the schools of Spain, 
 
 25S. In Bremen, 366. 
 Instruments of surgery, the Salernite 
 
 collection of, 234. Presence of, in 
 
 well-ordered cloisters, 282. 
 Insufflation, effect of, on the body, 201. 
 lonicus, the great Alexandrine writer on 
 
 pharmacy, 119. 
 Italian professors, tlie great dearth of, in 
 
 the 5th century, 133. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jacob, the patriarch, reliques of, obtained 
 at great price, 262. 
 
 Jasper cures epilepsy, 291. 
 
 Jewish philosophy at Alexandria, and 
 how it affected the curative art, 53. 
 Eminent physician at Amalfi in the 
 year 1170, 239. 
 
 Jews charged with complicity in the 
 leper troubles, 334. Accused of pro- 
 ducing pestilences, etc., 356-9. Span- 
 ish, at Montpelier, 393. Fury of 
 Oxford students against the, 407. 
 Pursue medicine and law, 449. 
 Charged with frequent poisoning, 450. 
 
 Jugglers, great proficiency of the me- 
 dia2val, 292, 293. Synonymous with 
 medical enchanters, 294. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kindness to lepers during the Middle 
 Ages, 328, 333. 
 
 King Louis IX. restored to vigor of 
 body through a piece of the true 
 cross, 277. Henry IV. of England 
 forbids alchemical pursuits, 313. 
 Louis XI. strives with avidity to com- 
 pose "potable gold," 315. 
 
 Knife of St. Peter prized as an inestim- 
 able relique in the 12th century, 226. 
 Monastic surgical knife or lanceola, 
 283. Use of, once each week for 
 cupping, lb. 
 
 L. 
 
 Languages, taught in the western clois- 
 ters. 175. Study of Arabic by Chris- 
 tian scholars at an early age, 258. 
 Knowledge of Oriental, 418. Cru- 
 saders have a knowledge of the Ara- 
 bic, 261-2. Friar Bacon's acquain- 
 tance with the, 262. Learning of a 
 bishop in, 373. 
 
 Latin monachism enlarges through so- 
 cial catastrophes produced by the 
 Gothic invasions, 147. 
 
 31 
 
 Law, the practice of allowed after three 
 year's study, 401. 
 
 Lazaretto, the early, of the convent of 
 Saint Gall, 215. 
 
 L'egends of monastic translation, 158. 
 Effects of, on social mind in the 14th 
 century, 362-3. 
 
 Lepers, antiquity of, 159. Holiness as- 
 cribed to, 160, 325. Regulations 
 touching, 326. Communes of, exclu- 
 sively for, 327, 331. Mortality of, 
 328. How detected, 330. 
 
 Leprosy, infects of isolated, 330. Vast 
 numbers of in the 12th century, lb. 
 Sound their presence with a bell, 332. 
 Dress of, lb., 338. Whole villages 
 of, 333. Desire vengeance, and their 
 inhuman assassination, 334. 
 
 Letters, cabbalistic, the power of to cure, 
 74. Great forces of the Ephesian, 
 and use as charms, 96. Awful puis- 
 sance of, 294. 
 
 Lexicon or glossary of human physiol- 
 ogy, by Raban Maurus, 216-7. 
 
 Liberal arts, as part of monastic educa- 
 tion, 169. Capellas' work on, 218. 
 
 Libraries, collected by Arabs in Spain, 
 250. Of monasteries, 411. Of an- 
 cient Rome, 415. Of the monks, lb. 
 Novices present copies of MS.S. to 
 monastic, lb. 
 
 Ligations, as a remedy forbidden under 
 ecclesiastical penalties, 1 14. Phy- 
 lacteries and ligatures, their potency, 
 206-7. Written with sacred script, 
 and hung on the neck, 207. Used in 
 St. Martin's day, 208. Women wear 
 them on arms and legs, lb. 
 
 Linen, use of, in the Carlovingian era, 
 165. At a later epoch, 328. 
 
 Literature, downfall of classical in the 
 5th century, 102. Pagan, perusal of, 
 as a crime, 103. Of classic Rome 
 known to mediaeval monks, 413. 
 
 Lithotomy, successful cure of, at Salerno, 
 234. 
 
 Liver of an athlete as talisman against 
 epilepsy, 9. 
 
 Luke, Saint, skeleton of, fairly divided 
 by the victors at Constantinople in 
 the I2th century, 227. 
 
 Lully, advice of to physicians and al- 
 chemists, 312. 
 
 Lunatic asylum at Bagdad in the year 
 1173,320. Its effective organization 
 described, 321.
 
 482 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Lung, excision of a, 393-4. 
 
 Lupanaria, or houses for licentious 
 women ; Romans sell their daughters 
 to crime in the, to raise taxes, 146. 
 In London, 339. Vide Prostitutes. 
 
 M. 
 
 Magic, as a remedy forbidden, 25. Per- 
 mission granted in A. D. 321 to use 
 a certain kind of, for curatives, lb. 
 Heliogabalus interests himself in, 60. 
 MS. books on, 294. Denunciations 
 of, by the Fathers of the Church, 78. 
 Philostratus' notion of a Magus, 79. 
 Joseph released from Egyptian servi- 
 tude by this art, 81. Christ accused 
 of having stolen this force from the 
 temples of Egypt, lb. ApoUonius and 
 the artisans of miracles, 82. Schools 
 for instruction in, at Alexandria, lb. 
 Presbyters use books on, 84. The 
 great Sully takes advice of magicians, 
 87. Domitian orders Egyptian MSS. 
 on, burned, 88. The special property 
 of evil spirits, 107. As a curative, 
 107, 112. Use of, to superinduce 
 imbecility, interdicted by canons, 185. 
 The soothsaying of ancient German 
 matrons, lb. 
 
 Maladies, cured by anointing with 
 saintly reliques, 224. Traced to Sa- 
 tanic sources, 271. 
 
 Mandragora, its magic remedial ele- 
 ments, 179. Provokes affection or 
 anger, 182. Secures judicial favor in 
 tribunals, lb. Use of interdicted in 
 duels, 183. 
 
 Manes, doctrines assimilate to the Per- 
 sian dualism, 103-4. 
 
 Manichean dogmas and their influence 
 on social mind, 102, 104. 
 
 Manuscript copies of Hippocrates and 
 Galen carried on journeys by student 
 monks, 230-1. Richerius and his, in 
 the year 991, 231. Cost of, in the 
 Middle Ages, 416. University of 
 Paris has pre-emptory right of pur- 
 chase, lb. Text-books kept at muni- 
 cipal charge, 418! 
 
 Marriage, forbid physicians, 397, 447. 
 
 Marseilles, medicine taught in, to Gallic 
 nobles, 179. 
 
 Master of Medicine, a title of honor, 
 386. 
 
 Medicaments, rules for detection of 
 adulteration of, by Dioscorides, 14. 
 
 Curious, in the 13th century, 448. 
 Conserves as attractive, lb. Juniper 
 berries as do., 449. For unnatural 
 uses, 450-1, 454. Exorbitant charges 
 for, 460-1. 
 Medicine, under sacerdotal control, 3. 
 Insecurity for sick in the practice of, 
 until Antoninus Pius, 19. The sjate 
 of, under the Ptolemies at Alexandria, 
 and the influence of the museum on 
 the development of, 45. In the 4th 
 century is based on demoniacal forces, 
 64. Lapses into demoniac pathology, 
 89. Theurgic operations in, lb. Influ- 
 ence of Manicheanism on, 104. Made 
 to conform to Christian ideas, 125. 
 Regulations of Valentinian on the 
 practice of, 129. Oriental, as a gift 
 to Charlemagne, 167. Prostration of, 
 in the early Middle Ages, 168. Culti- 
 vated at Monte Cassino in the 9th 
 century, lb. The study of in con- 
 vents mandatory by Charlemagne, 
 175. More costly for the affluent and 
 to be paid for ere being administered, 
 192-3. Suction element in, 193. 
 Magic, liable to a fine, 204. Terms 
 used in, familiar to monkish historian 
 of the loth century, 229. How di- 
 vided in this age, 231. Little progress 
 anterior to the 14th century, 243. 
 Master of, honored title, 386. Divis- 
 ions in, 387. Privileges of professors 
 of, 390. Knowledge of, transmitted 
 as heirlooms in secret by families, 
 430. The lucrative practice of, 444, 
 Practice of, interdicted the clergy, 
 453. Terrestrial, discountenanced, 
 457. The divisions of, 458. Satirized. 
 
 459- 
 
 Medicus or mediaeval physician, 171. 
 Attendance as witness in charges in- 
 volving wounds, 172. His testimony 
 before Gothic courts required by the 
 codes, lb. 
 
 Michael, as angel of prayer, 66. 
 
 Midwifery, Soranus' treatise on, 12. 
 Writings of Moschion on, lb. Glass 
 fragment or sharp wood used in, lb. 
 
 Midwives, presence of, compulsory in 
 judicial inquiry by civil law, 25. 
 
 Monasteries : denizens of, prescribed by 
 Valentinian II., 157. Arise in the 
 deserts, lb. Law against, revoked by 
 Theodosius, 148. Assumed sanctity 
 of, lb. Early demoralization in the,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 483 
 
 149. Study of Greek and Latin let- 
 ters in, 150. A system of militants 
 arrayed against demons, 152. 
 
 Monasticism, unfavorable influence of, 
 on art and science, 102. 
 
 Monks, advice of early, to study medi- 
 cine, 141. Attire of, skins, sandals 
 or clogs, 150. Physician, 154, 228. 
 Proficiency of, in toxicology, and the 
 debasement of one at Torfa, 170. 
 Eager for cupping to obtain delicate 
 diet, 1 76. Practice curative arts out of 
 convent, abandon professed vows, and 
 live luxuriously, 242. Forbid by 
 general church councils, this custom 
 in 1 136 and I179, lb. Interdicted 
 to teach do., lb., 436. Forbid the 
 practice of medicine, 444-6. Re- 
 script on do., modified, 446. Al- 
 lowed to attend lectures on law and 
 medicine, lb. 
 
 Monte Cassino, founded by Benedict, A. 
 D. 528, 151. Its site an ancient 
 temple of health, lb. The skill of 
 Bertrarius at, in the 9th century, 169. 
 
 Morals : medicinal potions fabricated 
 by indiscreet nuns to restore virginity, 
 280. Amulets as preventatives of 
 disclosure of conventual irregularities, 
 lb. .Men frequenting bordellos ren- 
 dered infamous, 342. Lovers flee 
 with lewd women expelled from Paris 
 in the 13th century, 342-3. Students 
 liable to the charms of loose females, 
 343. Marriage interdicted physicians 
 until the 15th century, 397-8. 
 
 Moses Maimonides, the mediaeval Jewish 
 scholar, 450. 
 
 Mozoar stone, its vast power to produce 
 puissant demons, 300. 
 
 Museum of Alexandria, how organized, 
 43. On the losses of, under Julius 
 Caesar, 47. 
 
 Mutes cured by saintly power, 276. 
 
 Mysteries, Emperor Marcus Aurelius, 
 initiated into the, at Athens, 59. 
 Heliogabalus devotes his time to 
 them, 60. 
 
 Mystic lore, mania for, under later 
 Roman emperors, 78. 
 
 N. 
 
 Names, power of the name of Jehovah 
 
 to vanquish disease-producing demons, 
 
 71. Potency of Persian and Egyptian, 
 
 84. Lost if translated, lb. Baby- 
 
 lonian used in Galen's time to cure, 
 85> 135- Use of, by Greek and 
 Roman magicians, and of angels, 89. 
 Chaldaic, translated lose their virtue, 
 
 90. Of Jah for incantation, etc., lb. 
 Its adaptation to cures by Polytheists, 
 
 91. Adonai as a substitute for Je- 
 hovah; synagogues order this repro- 
 nounced, lb. Of potential angels, 
 294. 
 
 Natural History : The first elephant in 
 Northern Europe, a gift to Charle- 
 magne; called Abdulabax, 249. Zo- 
 ological gardens of Cordova, 252. 
 Camels, lions, apes, etc., in Europe, 
 376. Collections of, at Padua, 443. 
 
 Necromancy taught foreign .students by 
 Spanish scholars in Seville, Toledo 
 and Salamanca, 258. 
 
 Nedfratres, the properties of the, 209. 
 
 Nero, elevates his friend to be an 
 Archiater, 9. 
 
 Nestorian scholars, contribute to the 
 rise of Arabian literature, 247. 
 
 Nodfyr, the Teutonic, 208. 
 
 Norse : temple worship, splendors of, 
 subrogated to Romish ritual, 205. 
 Soothsayers or haruspicii sought by 
 Greeks and Spaniards in the loth 
 century, for sanitary prognostics, 269. 
 
 Notker of Saint Gall, early acquisition 
 of science by, 219. Skill in the heal- 
 ing art, 220-1 
 
 o. 
 
 Oath of Jews, 457. To observe laws of 
 medicine, 455. 
 
 Occult science used by the Manicheans, 
 124. Division of, into practical 
 branches, lb. 
 
 Odo of Clugny doubts terrestrial medi- 
 cine, 323. 
 
 Onyx superinduces sleep, 291. 
 
 Ophthalmic disorders and cures, 126. 
 
 Opium, probable use of, by early mon- 
 astic surgeons, 234. 
 
 Optical instruments fabricated for sale 
 by Venetians, 310. 
 
 Ordinance requiring physicians to pos- 
 sess a horse, 385. Of Nice against 
 guilds of professors and pharmacists, 
 lb. Regulating charges to the indi- 
 gent, 386. 
 
 Oribasius of Pergamos and his erudite 
 treatise on medicine, 120. Imitates 
 Galen, lb. Describes a singular
 
 484 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 frenzy, 122. Uses opium, lb. His 
 social splendor, 123. Skill of, in 
 theurgic arts, 126. 
 Origen, his aid in combating pagan ad- 
 veisaries, 56. Assists to establish 
 divine or angelic system of curatives, 
 57. The syncretism of, 62. 
 
 P. 
 
 Paiderastia, attempt to crush the vice of 
 by Justinian, 26. 
 
 l^aracelsus, boasts ability to prolong life 
 and dies early, 316. The scheme of, 
 466. 
 
 Pathology of the soul, in the Middle 
 Ages, 458. 
 
 .Pellets, gold, recommended use of with 
 phlebotomy, 283. Boiled, aud the 
 water drank by the prelacy, 302. A 
 caution against the use of artificial 
 gold, 316. Of crude gold, their prop- 
 erties and purposes, lb. Administered 
 to edible animals and fowls, and why, 
 lb. 
 
 Penalty for non-compliance with regu- 
 lations touching practice, 378, 445. 
 
 Pergamos, medical library of, 32. 
 
 Pestilences, the diseased by carried to 
 chapels and left bound till cured, 274. 
 Precursors of, 348. MS. prognosti- 
 cations of approaching, 349. Early, 
 in Gaul, lb., 350-1. In England, 
 452. At Rome, lb. Ravage Venice 
 A. D. 1 172, lb. The great, of 134S, 
 353-4. Follow water courses, 354. 
 Demons seen during, 357. 
 
 Petrarch, charges physicians with men- 
 dacity, 305. And with servile adher- 
 ence to Arabic text books, 398. Dia- 
 stribes against medicists, 420-23. His 
 pitiless witticism against do., 423. 
 
 Pharmacies, 307-8, 309. When first 
 established at Rome, 27. Skill of lon- 
 icus in, 119. Sell confections, 447-8. 
 
 Phlebotomy, performed successfully in 
 moon's first phase, 283. 
 
 Physicians, increasing popularity and 
 pomposity of in the time of Galen, 
 18. Compound their own medicines, 
 27. Two selected as diplomats to 
 Rome, 46. By Gothic code to guar- 
 anteee cures, 140. Penalty to, for 
 blundering, lb. Ambulatory, 187-8. 
 Degraded condition of, 188. Rustic 
 in Norway and young monki.sh in 
 Scandinavia, 191. Unscrupulous con- 
 
 duct of in Cato's day, 2. Freed by 
 imperial rescript from taxation, 8. 
 Male and female in the 14th century 
 to be licensed, 387. Vulgar awe of, 
 propagated by corrupt Latinity, 200. 
 Chief of, at Saint Gall, in the 9th cen- 
 tury, 2 1 6, 222. Executed under 
 Gothic code, 350. Forbid unions 
 with apothecaries, 380. Eminent, 
 crowned with laurel, 386. Descent 
 of medical learning to, 434. The 
 great, of the 14th century, 438-9-40. 
 Jewish, 449-50. Safe conduct to 
 Hebrews, 45 1 . Vulgar awe of, 460. 
 Charged with avarice, 460-1. 
 
 Pliny the Second, his knowledge of 
 medical science, 13. His great ency- 
 clopedia of learning, etc., 14. 
 
 Plotinus, claims a sacerdotal transmis- 
 sion of the curative art, 123. 
 
 Podagra, or gout, cured by reliques, 223. 
 
 Poison, a greater crime than homicide 
 by the civil law, 26. The good and 
 the bad, 27. Extraction of, from 
 Robert of Normandy, 236-7. 
 
 Polytheism, suppression of, loi. 
 
 Popes favor students, 408. 
 
 Poor, medical relief for, by Spanish sar- 
 acens, 254. 
 
 Potions of subtle extract of gold, why 
 eagerly sought, 315, 316. 
 
 Professors, Italian : contemporary writ- 
 ers highly laud, 383. Teach monks 
 without fees, 401. Pomposity and 
 decoration of, 422. Eminent, in the 
 14th century, 425-6-7-9, 430. Sound- 
 ing titles of, 431-2. 
 
 Prognostications by soi'tilege for health, 
 etc., 206. For serious future events, 
 
 349- 
 Prostitutes : Their role in medical econ- 
 omy, 336. Status under the Roman 
 Empire, lb. Their vengeful tyranny 
 and avarice, lb. Mediaeval legisla- 
 tion touching, 337. Houses for, called 
 bordellos, or bawdy houses, lb. Am- 
 bulatory, lb. The Focari^, lb. At- 
 tend fairs and bargain with aiguillettes 
 as a medium, lb., 338. Their dress 
 and deportment in public, lb. What 
 attire forbidden, 339. Houses of, 
 owned by prelates and abbesses, lb. 
 Are segregated, and why, 340. Ac- 
 company Crusaders, lb. Templars 
 support thousands, lb. Governed by 
 public headsman or executioner, 341.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 485 
 
 Italian regulations on, lb. Inciting 
 girls to become, punished by death, 
 342. Laws of St. Louis again.st, lb. 
 They frequent students' chambers, 
 443. Retire to nunneries, lb. Re- 
 form of, lb. Bishops and the, 345-6. 
 A Jewess as a, 347. Intercourse 
 with, interdicted students of Oxford, 
 406. 
 
 Ptolemies, the, encourage medicine at 
 Alexandria, 45. 
 
 Pulse, throbbing, as a test advised by 
 Cassiodorus, 137. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quadrium, its signification and extent, 
 
 432- 
 Quarantine, 326, 331-2. 
 Querulous complaint of the lepers, and 
 
 their convocation for general council, 
 
 334- 
 
 R. 
 
 Raphael as an angel of sickness, 66, 296- 
 
 Regimen Salernitatis, metrical poem of 
 the, 235-6. 
 
 Regula of Saint Augustine, basis of 
 monachism, 149. Of Saint Benedict, 
 152. The, serve to maintain slight 
 medical culture, 151. 
 
 Regulations of Antoninus Pius on the 
 practice of medicine, 21. Imperial, 
 how divided by, 22. Regulations, 
 130. Of the Wisigoths in the 6th cen- 
 tury, 139, These survive to the Jeru- 
 salem'Code, lb. Of A. D. 1 140, 239. 
 By the Spanish Arabs touching prac- 
 tice, etc., 255. Early, of Roger of 
 Sicily, 376. Later, of Frederick I., 
 lb. Of Jerusalem, 377. 
 
 Reliques of saints, the possession of, by 
 convents a source of wealth, 211. 
 Translation of, attended with pomp, 
 lb. Invalids flock to, 212. Render 
 the monasteries affluent, lb. Vast 
 value of these, lb. Trade in, first 
 begun by Venetians, lb. Procured by 
 theft, 213. Used to obtain gifts by 
 the bishops, lb. Contested, divided 
 by church authority, 225. Sought for 
 at sacking of Constantinople by the 
 Franks, 226. Drops of Christ's blood, 
 and pieces of true cross, lb. Promote 
 pilgrimages to monasteries for health, 
 227. Miraculous force of, first pub- 
 lished by ecclesiastical authority, 278. 
 
 Remedies in Dioscorides' day, viz : gin- 
 ger, pepper, aloes, sugar, etc., 14. 
 Metallic, lb. Dove's milk for oph- 
 thalmic troubles and hysteria, lb. 
 Lizards, frogs, and snakes as, 448. 
 Confections as agreeable, 448-9. 
 
 Resurrection of cadavera, by Apollon- 
 ious of Tyana, 124. 
 
 Ring, Solomon's, potency of, 290. Con- 
 trols demons, 291. 
 
 Roman emperors have a passion for in- 
 quiry into secret arts, 134. 
 
 Rome, Greek artists flock to, after con- 
 quest, I, 2. Foreign physicians at, in 
 Cato's time, lb. Etruscan do, at, 
 lb. Greek do. obtain great privileges 
 at, before Cossar, 6. Condition of 
 medicists at, in Galen's age, 29-31. 
 Alexandrine professors of medicine 
 further their fortunes at, 52. 
 
 Rosewater baths used by Saracens of 
 Spain, 254. 
 
 Rosvvitha, the metrical gestce of, com- 
 pared to literary skill of Arabic dames, 
 
 254- 
 Rumoald, medical adviser to the pope, 
 
 385- 
 Runes : alraun plant eagerly sought in 
 midwifery, 179. Used as Lares by an- 
 cient Gennans, 180. Carved on min- 
 eral or metal effigies, lb. Potency of, 
 to incite affection or translate an 
 obnoxious lover, 186. Used for herds 
 as talismans against diseases, 197. 
 
 S. 
 
 Saint Gall, monastery of, its ri.se, 215. 
 Its infirmary, lb. 
 
 Saintly Remedies, 142, 155. Of Aredius 
 the Gallic priest, 156. Resorted to, 
 and cure a Teuton's daughter, lb. 
 Arm healed by, 158. Progress under 
 the Carlovingians, 211, 271. F0.1 
 luxations, parturition, and blindness, 
 
 272. Flowers on martyr's .tombs as, 
 
 273, 275. Pay for, in kind, 462. 
 Salerno, studies in medicine there at a 
 
 remote age, 229. Medii\;val Europe 
 seeks for scientific culture, 232. Baths 
 at, 233. Fame of, in the loth cen- 
 tury, lb. Infirm treated at, 234. 
 Great antiquity of, lb. Renown of 
 its scholars, 235. Saracen learning 
 claimed to aid its development, lb. 
 Celebrity of, subject of a metrical 
 poem in the 12th century, 383.
 
 486 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Sanitary precautions ; cupping, or phle- 
 • botomy, by lay and cleric, 176. Of 
 walking staff in hand, 284. Care of 
 soldiers, 353. Laws to prevent the 
 spread of infection, 358. Noble fam- 
 ilies as, go to mountains in summer, 
 
 379- 
 
 Saphir as a curative, 291. 
 
 Saracens, vide Arabs. 
 
 Sard, power of the, 291. 
 
 Satan, subrogated to the personality of 
 the Gnostic Demiurgos, 67. 
 
 Sawing wood, as sanitary exercise, 284. 
 
 Saxons, surgery of, 171. 
 
 Schools, Theological, etc., of Gaul, 367. 
 Anglo-Saxon children sent to, lb. 
 Sacerdotal government of Italian, 
 368. Studies at, prescribed by ponti- 
 fical allocutions and synodal decretals, 
 400. 
 
 Scotch physician in Italy in 1028, 241. 
 
 Sepulchres interdicted from violation 
 for curatives, 114. 
 
 Serenus Samonicus and his metrical 
 treatise on medicine, 98. 
 
 Serpent, effigy on the Abraxas talismans, 
 a curative, 96. May imitate serpent 
 twined staff of ^^isculapius, 96-7. 
 As an all-pervading spiritual essence, 
 
 97- 
 Sickness, all, traced to diabolical sources, 
 
 68. 
 
 Smargd', worn by noblemen, and why, 
 291. 
 
 Soranus, his works on medicine, 11. 
 Used by mediaeval monks, lb. 
 
 Sortes sanctorum, synods against the, 
 III. 
 
 Sortilege, for life or limb under inter- 
 dict, 206. 
 
 Soul force, in ancient Medicine, 15. 
 As such imitates philosophy, lb. 
 
 Specimen of German surgery in the 12th 
 century, 451-2. 
 
 Spirit, or angel puissance in minerals, 
 metals, etc., its extraction, 290, 292. 
 
 Stones, properties of, 291-2. 
 
 Students: of medicine and the Aphor- 
 isms of Hippocrates in the loth cen- 
 tury, 232. Christian, reviled at 
 Saracen academies, 257. Liable to 
 the fascinations of abandoned women 
 in the Midlde Ages, 343. Chambers 
 of, the resort of these females, lb. 
 Anglo-Saxon, in Rome, 9th century, 
 367. Vast numbers go to Bologna 
 
 and Salerno, 400-1. Great roll of, at 
 Oxfortl, 402. Poor, aided by cities, 
 lb. Dress of, etc., lb. Age of, lb. 
 Many at Padua, 442. Quarrels and 
 riots of, 404, 405. Vagabond or pre- 
 datory, 408. Price of lodgings for, 
 409. Sit upon straw at lectures, lb. 
 Ceremonious graduation exercises, 
 410. 
 
 Surgeons, salaried by law under the 
 Csesars, 8. Army, lb. Manumitted, 
 male and female, lb. Note 31. Im- 
 munities to, by law, 31. Midwives, 
 wound- dressers and dentists under the 
 college of, 24. Regirnental in the 13th 
 century, 385. Accompany the Cru- 
 saders on pay, 388. Royal, 437. So- 
 cial degradation of, 454. Obliquity 
 of, 455. Male and female, regulations 
 touching, 464. 
 
 Surgery, terrestrial, not to be ti"ied after 
 the celestial, 136. Deep debasement 
 and slow revival of, and why, 199. 
 Possible operation of trepanning, 453. 
 Curious case of, 456. 
 
 Symbol of the white cap, 460. 
 
 Syrups, knowledge of, in the Middle 
 Ages, 238, 302. 
 
 Tables, the Alfonsine, prepared by Mos- 
 lem scholars, 259, 289. 
 
 Talisman, name of Jehovah carried as 
 a, against maladies, on parchment in 
 tubes, 91-2. The art of making, be- 
 lieved innocent by the early Chris- 
 tians, 93. The fabrication of, on the 
 plan of sympathetic conjunction, 94. 
 Norse, 205. The phylacteries and 
 the, 296. 
 
 Talmud helps to create demoniacal dog- 
 ma of curative art, etc., 72. 
 
 Telescope, or lens, possibly used in A. D. 
 999 to calculate a side real clock, 268. 
 
 Tempestarii, or German storm-producers 
 by Runic effigies, 186-7. 
 
 Tetragrammaton, puissance of, to revive 
 the dead, 290, 296. 
 
 Teutonic medicine or surgery confined 
 to simple remedies, 178. Involved 
 magic, lb. 
 
 Text-books, or manuscripts kept at pub- 
 lic expense for copying or corrections, 
 417, 418. A criminal offence to sell 
 do, lb. 
 
 Thaddeus, Master of Villannova, at-
 
 INDEX. 
 
 487 
 
 tains universal celebrity, 389. Great 
 erudition of, lb. At Bologna, 390. 
 Introduces Arabic sciences into Italy, 
 lb. Comments Hippocrates and Ga- 
 len, lb. His Arabic translations, lb. 
 Eulogized by a commentator of Dante, 
 lb. Called to Athens for professional 
 consultation, 391. Heavy bequests 
 by, lb. Laurel crown awarded a dis- 
 ciple of, 392. 
 
 Thaumaturgists; Basalideus and Apol- 
 lonius as, 134. Claim to cure mala- 
 dies, 135. Divide the science into 
 branches, lb. 
 
 Theodorick, the Gothic king, re-organ- 
 izes the Archiatria, 138. His own 
 surgeon, lb. 
 
 Theology, schools of, in Paris, 367. 
 Norse children sent to, lb. 
 
 Thessalusof Tralles: originally a slave, 
 and practices medicine in itspleasant- 
 esl phases, 10. Declares the art can 
 be acquired in six months, lb. Is at- 
 tended by a troop of roving artisans, 
 lb. Xhe noisy movements of, satir- 
 ized, II. 
 
 Toxicology of Teutonic women, 186-7. 
 Episcopal acquaintance with and 
 use of, 230. 
 
 Translations of Hippocrates, Galen and 
 Dioscorides in the 5th century, 142. 
 Of Constans Afer, held in slight favor 
 by mediaeval scholiasts, 265. By 
 Thaddeus in the 13th century, lb. Of 
 Isaac, an Israelite, from the Arabic 
 language, contemned, 266. Of Arabic 
 text books by Thaddeus, 390. Fur- 
 ther of, 398. 
 
 U. 
 
 Unguents, mercurial, used by a surgeon 
 in the 13th century, 395. The pirep- 
 aration of, lb. 
 
 Universities early in Italy, 368. Have 
 personal jurisdiction by decretals of 
 the popes, lb. Celebrity of the 
 Parisian, Bologna and Salerno, in the 
 1 2th century, 369. The edicts at 
 Roncevaux in behalf of, lb. Civil or 
 secular jurisdiction of, lb. Value of 
 popular professors to the, 370. An 
 assemblage of scholars designated as, 
 lb. Matriculate to present himself 
 thrice a year, 371. Of Naples and 
 their special prerogatives, 378. Dan- 
 gers to, arising from students' riots, 
 
 406. Of Oxford, and the revolt against 
 a papal legate, lb. 
 Unutterable name, as a saintly cure, 
 167. 
 
 Vagrant monks study the physiological 
 constitution of women, 2S5. Fleeing 
 from their cloisters assume the robes 
 and practice of medical men, 286. 
 
 Valentinian, the rescripts of, in the 4th 
 century, touching the practice of med- 
 icine, 129. Alluded to by Symmachus, 
 130. 
 
 Variola, the existence of in the 2d cen- 
 tury, 16. 
 
 Vase of saintess possesses great potency, 
 225. 
 
 Venetians, service of to practical chem- 
 istry, 308. Trade of, in pharmaceuti- 
 cal commodities, and their supply of 
 to the West, 309. Their glassware, 
 310. 
 
 Vestals, Roman, have a salaried surgeon 
 at public cost, 22. 
 
 Vestments, of a sanitary goddess, 194. 
 Of medical practitioners, 421-2. 
 
 Vinous lotions, the application of, 395. 
 
 Violence to women punished by death, 
 341. 342. 
 
 Vivisection alleged to be pursued at 
 Alexandria, 118. 
 
 Voice of Christ, sound of, heals diseases, 
 108. 
 
 Votes, by white and black beans upon 
 applications to enter university, 370. 
 
 Water, pure, led through leaden pipes 
 into Cordova, A. D. 826, 252. Im- 
 mersion of saint's ring in, a cure for 
 fever, 277. Of gold, 310. In which 
 Runic effigies are steeped, good for 
 herds, 182. Baptismal, as a ready 
 curative, 109. 
 
 Wax, pellet of, cures headache, 109. 
 
 Whales up the Seine in the 7th century, 
 and their oil, 158. 
 
 Widows, through pestilence at Rome, 
 seek consorts from adjacent cities, 352. 
 
 Wine, use of, as a medicament in an- 
 cient Rome, 7. 
 
 Wintarius, a Jewish surgeon to Charle- 
 magne, 167. 
 
 Wisigoths, the, affect to patronize medi- 
 cine, 139. Decretals of the, lb.
 
 488 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Women surgeons among ancient Teu- 
 tons, 183. Skill of Norse, in medi- 
 cine, lb. Names of famous, in do, 
 lb. Sepulchres of, sought for reme- 
 dies, 184. Eminent Germanic, as 
 midwives, lb. Use magic to produce 
 insanity and to heal luxations, lb. 
 Medical culture of a Danish lady 
 fascinates a lover, 186. A gentle- 
 woman of Salerno rivals a distin- 
 guished professor in medicine in the 
 nth century, 235. Skill of, in sur- 
 gery and medicine, 372-3. 
 
 Word, or Logos, forces of the, as type 
 of divine puissance, 73. Oriental, 
 for exorcising fiends, 289. Magic, 
 restores a paralytic, 290. Power of 
 like the repercussion of thunder, 
 294. 
 
 Writings, mediaeval, on medicines : an- 
 tidotal and simple selections of the 
 1 2th century, 239. Aromatic com- 
 pendium, 240. Services of Constans 
 
 Afer in Ihis connection, lb. On the 
 preservation of health, 392-3. 
 
 X. 
 
 Xenodochium, the conventual and its 
 
 uses, 159. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Youth of Scandinavia sent to the schools 
 of theology at Paris, in the 12th cen- 
 tury, 367. Anglo Saxon, sent to Gaul 
 for instruction in letters, etc., lb. 
 
 Youthful mental inactivity of Thaddeus, 
 and his subsequent colossal erudition, 
 389- 
 
 Z. 
 
 Zablustorm, his works and pomp, abjur- 
 ation of, 203. 
 
 Zoological gardens : of Alexandria, 44. 
 Opened to the people of Cordova by 
 the Spanish Arabs, 253. Maintained 
 in the Orient by the Soldans, 376. 
 At Padua, 443. 
 
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