900. The sources of the information he ascribes to Oxa, Dun, and

Helias; there is a mixture of the Hibernian and Scandinavian elements also. Some of the prescriptions are traceable to Latin writers, and large extracts are made from the Greek physicians. Paulus Ægineta is responsible for the long passage on hiccupings (or Hicket, as the _Leech Book_ calls the malady), as chapter xviii. is almost identical with Paulus Ægin., lib. ii. sect. 57. Mr. Cockayne thinks that the number of passages the Saxon drew from the Greek would make perhaps one-fourth of the first two books. Whether they came direct from the Greek manuscripts or at second hand as quotations, it is not possible to say. Quoting M. Brechillet Jourdain,[645] Mr. Cockayne says that it is shown that the wise men of the Middle Ages long before the invention of printing possessed Latin translations of Aristotle; there is every probability, therefore, that they would be familiar with the works of the Greek physicians. Some of them could translate Greek. If an Italian or Frenchman could acquire Greek and turn it into Latin, a Saxon might do as much. Bede and his disciples could certainly have done so. Bede says that Tobias, Bishop of Rochester, was as familiar with the Greek and Latin languages as with his own. “It appears, therefore,” concludes Mr. Cockayne, “that the leeches of the Angles and Saxons had the means, by personal industry or by the aid of others, of arriving at a competent knowledge of the contents of the works of the Greek medical writers. Here, in this volume, the results are visible. They keep, for the most part, to the diagnosis and the theory; they go back in the prescriptions to the easier remedies; for whether in Galen or others, there was a chapter on the εὐπόριστα, the ‘parabilia,’ the resources of country practitioners, and of course, even now, expensive medicines are not prescribed for poor patients.”[646] In the very valuable Saxon Leechdoms[647] we have an excellent account of the state of medicine as practised in England before the Norman Conquest. The _Leech Book_ (Læce Boc)[648] is a treatise on medicine which probably belonged to the abbey of Glastonbury. The manuscript, thinks Mr. Cockayne, belonged to one Bald, a monk. The book, says the editor, is learned in a literary sense, but not in a professional, for it does not really advance man’s knowledge of disease or of cures. He may have been a physician, he was certainly a lover of books—“nulla mihi tam cara est optima gaza quam cari libri.” The work seems to imply that there was a school of medicine among the Saxons. In the first book, p. 120, we read that “Oxa taught us this leechdom”; in the second book, p. 293, we are told concerning a leechdom for lung disease that “Dun taught it”; again we find “some teach us.” So far as book learning was concerned, there was certainly a sort of medical teaching. It was perhaps merely taken from the Greek by means of a Latin translation of Trallianus, Paulus of Ægina, and Philagrios. As examples of reasonable treatment take that for hare-lip (or hair-lip as in the text): “Pound mastic very small, add the white of an egg, and mingle as thou dost vermilion, cut with a knife the false edges of the lip, sew fast with silk, then smear without and within with the salve, ere the silk rot. If it draw together, arrange it with the hand, anoint again soon.”[649] Against pediculi quicksilver and old butter are to be mingled together in a mortar, and the resulting salve to be applied to the body. This is precisely the mercurial ointment of modern pharmacy used for the same purpose. Religion, magic, and medicine were oddly mixed up by our Saxon forefathers. Thus the _Leech Book_ tells us[650] for the “dry” disease we should “delve about sour ompre (i.e. _sorrel dock_), sing thrice the Pater noster, jerk it up, then while thou sayest sed libera nos a malo, take five slices of it and seven peppercorns, bray them together, and while thou be working it, sing twelve times the psalm Miserere mei, Deus, and Gloria in excelsis deo, and the Pater noster; then pour the stuff all over with wine, when day and night divide, then drink the dose and wrap thyself up warm.” Here is an exorcism for fever. “A man shall write this upon the sacramental paten, and wash it off into the drink with holy water, and sing over it.... In the beginning, etc. (John i. 1). Then wash the writing with holy water off the dish into the drink, then sing the Credo, and the Paternoster, and this lay, Beati immaculati, the psalm (cxix.), with the twelve prayer psalms, I adjure you, etc. And let each of the two[651] then sip thrice of the water so prepared.”[652] The demon theory of disease was still in force; even at Glastonbury we find the following exorcism:[653] “For a fiend sick man, when a devil possesses the man or controls him from within with disease; a spew drink, lupin, bishopwort, henbane, cropleek; pound _these_ together, add ale for a liquid, let stand for a night, add fifty libcorns (or _cathartic grains_), and holy water. A drink for a fiend sick man, to be drunk out of church bell.”[654] “Githrife, cynoglossum, yarrow, lupin, betony, attorlothe, cassock, flower de luce, fennel, church lichen, lichen, of Christ’s mark or crosse, lovage; work up the drink off clear ale, sing seven masses over the worts, add garlic and holy water, and drip the drink into every drink which he will subsequently drink, and let him sing the psalm, Beati immaculati, and Exurgat, and Salvum me fac, Deus,[655] and then let him drink the drink out of a church bell, and let the mass priest after the drink sing this over him: Domine, sancte pater omnipotens.”[656] Again, “For the phrenzied; bishopwort, lupin, bonewort, everfern,[657] githrife, elecampane; when day and night divide, then sing thou in the church litanies, that is, the names of the hallows or saints, and the Paternoster; with the song go thou, that thou mayest be near the worts and go thrice about them, and when thou takest them go again to church with the same song, and sing twelve masses over them, and over all the drinks which belong to the disease, in honour of the twelve apostles.”[658] The _Leech Book_ has “a salve against nocturnal goblin visitors,” a remedy “against a woman’s chatter,” which is to go to bed, having eaten only a root of radish; “that day the chatter cannot harm thee.”[659] Red niolin, a plant which grows by running water, if put under the bolster, will prevent the devil from scathing a man within or without. There is “a lithe drink against a devil and dementedness,” and a cure for a man who is “overlooked.” If the man’s face is turned toward the doctor when he enters the sick room, “then he may live; if his face be turned from thee, have thou nothing to do with him.” “In case a man be lunatic, take of a mere-swine or porpoise, work it into a whip, swinge the man therewith; soon he will be well. Amen.”[660] A salve against temptation of the devil contains many herbs, must have nine masses said over it, and must be set under the altar for a while; then it is very good for every temptation of the fiend, and for a man full of elfin tricks, and for typhus fever.[661] Cancer is to be cured with goat’s gall and honey. Our forefathers made very light of such trifles as cancer and lunacy, it will be perceived. Joint pains (rheumatism) are cured by singing over them, “Malignus obligavit; angelus curavit; dominus salvavit,” and then spitting on the joints. “It will soon be well with him,” adds the Saxon leech, in his usual cheery manner.[662] Pepper is to be chewed for the toothache; “it will soon be well with them.” Horrible applications of pepper, salt, and vinegar were recommended to be applied to sore eyes. If the eyes were swollen, “take a live crab, put his eyes out, and put him alive again into the water, and put the eyes on the neck of the man who hath need; he will soon be well.” There are light drinks “against the devil and want of memory,” “for a wild heart,” and “pain of the maw.” There is treatment for the bite of “a gangwayweaving spider,” and remedies in case a woman cannot “kindle a child.” Neuralgia and megrims are not the new disorders they are generally supposed to be, as we find remedies “for headache, and for old headache, and for ache of half of the head.” “Poison” was lightly treated with holy water and herbs. Snake-bite was cured with ear-wax and a collect. For bite of an adder you said one word “Faul”; “it may not hurt him.” “Against bite of snake, if the man procures and eateth rind which cometh out of paradise, no venom will damage him. Then said he that wrote this book that the rind was hard gotten.” If, by chance, one drank a creeping thing in water, he was to cut into a sheep instantly and drink the sheep’s blood hot. Lest a man tire with much travelling over land, he must take mugwort and put it into his shoe, saying, as he pulls up the root, “I will take thee, artemisia, lest I be weary on the way;” and having taken it, he must sign it with the sign of the cross. “Over the whole face of Europe, while the old Hellenic school survived in Arabia, the next to hand resource became the established remedy, and the searching incision of the practised anatomist was replaced by a droning song.”[663] Such medical learning as existed amongst the Angles, Saxons, and Goths was found only in a corrupted state in the monasteries. As we have seen, the herbal remedies were, for the most, useless or worse, and the treatment was so intermingled with magic ceremonies and religious superstitious uses, that Greek science, so far as it related to the healing art, was all but smothered by absurdities. “The Saxon leeches were unable to use the catheter, the searching knife, and the lithotrite; they knew nothing of the Indian drugs, and were almost wholly thrown back on the lancet wherewith to let blood, and the simples from the field and garden.”[664] “For a very old headache” one must “seek in the maw of young swallows for some little stones, and mind that they touch neither earth, nor water, nor other stones; look out three of them, put them on the man; he will soon be well. They are good for head ache and for eye wark, and for the fiend’s temptations, and for the night mare, and for knot, and for fascination, and for evil enchantments by song.”[665] As a specimen of a regular Anglo-Saxon prescription, take the following, as given in the MS. Cott.: Vitellius; c. 3:— For the foot-adle (the gout), “Take the herb datulus, or titulosa, which we call greater crauleac—tuberose isis. Take the heads of it and dry them very much, and take thereof a pennyweight and a half, and the pear tree and Roman bark, and cummin, and a fourth part of laurel-berries, and of the other herbs half a pennyweight of each, and six peppercorns, and grind all to dust, and put two egg-shells full of wine. This is true leechcraft. Give it the man till he be well.” Venesection was in use, but it must have often done more harm than good, as its use was regulated, not so much by the necessities of the case as by the season and courses of the moon. Bede gives a long list of times when bleeding was forbidden. In the Cottonian library there is a Saxon MS., which tells us that the second, third, fifth, sixth, ninth, eleventh, fifteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth days of the month are bad for bleeding. MEDICINE OF THE WELSH. The Welsh claim that medicine was practised as one of “the nine rural arts,” by the ancient Cymry, before they became possessed of cities and a sovereignty, that is, before the time of Prydain ab Ædd Mawr, that is to say, about a thousand years before the Christian era.[666] As in other nations of antiquity, the practice of medicine was in the hands of the priests, the GWYDDONIAID, or men of knowledge: they were the depositaries of such wisdom as existed in the land, and they practised almost entirely by means of herbs. The science of plants was one of the three sciences, the others being theology and astronomy.[667] In the following Triad (one of the poetical histories of the Welsh bards) we learn that,—“The three pillars of knowledge, with which the Gwyddoniaid were acquainted, and which they bore in memory from the beginning: the first was a knowledge of Divine things, and of such matters as appertain to the worship of God and the homage due to goodness; the second, a knowledge of the course of the stars, their names and kinds, and the order of times; the third, a knowledge of the names and use of the herbs of the field, and of their application in practice, in medicine, and in religious worship. These were preserved in the memorials of vocal song, and in the memorials of times, before there were bards of degree and chair.”[668] The Welsh do not appear to have had any gods of medicine or to have pretended to derive their knowledge of the healing art from any divinities. In the reign of Prydian the Gwyddoniaid were divided into three orders, Bards, Druids, and Ovates. The Ovates occupied themselves especially with the natural sciences. In the Laws of Dyvnwal Moelmud, “medicine, commerce, and navigation” were termed “the three civil arts.”[669] This legislator lived about the year 430 B.C., at which early period it would seem that the art of medicine was encouraged and protected by the State.[670] As Hippocrates lived 400 B.C., it has been thought possible that the British Ovates may have learned something of his teaching from the Phoceans, who traded between Marseilles and Britain. Later we have proof that the physicians of Myddvai held the Father of Medicine in great esteem. It is customary amongst the English to ridicule the pretensions of the Welsh to the high antiquity of their knowledge of the arts and sciences, but classical writers bear witness to the wisdom and learning of the Druids. Strabo speaks of their knowledge of physiology. Cicero was acquainted with one of the Gallic Druids, who was called Divitiacus the Æduan, and claimed to have a thorough knowledge of the laws of nature. Pliny mentions the plants used as medicines by the Druids, such as the mistletoe, called _Oll iach, omnia sanantem_, or “All heal,” the selago (_Lycopodium selago_, or Upright Fir Moss), and the Samolus or marshwort (_Samolus valerandi_, or Water Pimpernel).[671] One of the Medical Triads in the Llanover MS. is that by Taliesin; it runs thus:— “There are three intractable substantial organs: the liver, the kidney, and the heart. “There are three intractable membranes: the dura mater, the peritoneum, and the urinary bladder. “There are three tedious complaints: disease of the knee joint, disease of the substance of a rib, and phthysis; for when purulent matter has formed in one of these, it is not known when it will get well.” Howel Dda (or the good) in the year 930 A.D. compiled the following laws of the Court Physician:— “Of the mediciner of the household, his office, his privilege, and his duty, this treats.