18. His worth is six score and six kine, to be augmented.”

Elsewhere we meet with the following particulars:— “Of the three conspicuous scars this is: “There are three conspicuous scars: one upon the face; another upon the foot; and another upon the hand; thirty pence upon the foot; three-score pence upon the hand; six-score pence on the face. Every unexposed scar, fourpence. The cranium, fourpence.”[672] “For every broken bone, twenty pence; unless there be a dispute as to its diminutiveness; and if there be a dispute as to the size, let the mediciner take a brass basin, and let him place his elbow upon the ground, and his hand over the basin, and if its sound be heard, let four legal pence be paid; and if it be not heard, nothing is due.”[673] This singular test is explained in another passage, thus:— “Four curt pennies are to be paid to a person for every bone taken from the upper part of the cranium, which shall sound on falling into a copper basin.”[674] A very curious regulation was that if the physician got drunk and anybody insulted him, he could claim no recompense, because “he knew not at what time the king might want his assistance.” The physicians of Myddvai flourished in the time of Rhys Gryg in the early part of the thirteenth century. His domestic physician was Rhiwallon, who was assisted by his three sons Cadwgan, Gruffydd, and Einion. They lived at Myddvai, in the present county of Caermarthen. By command of the prince, these physicians made a collection of the most valuable prescriptions for the treatment of the various diseases of the human body. This collection was not reduced to writing previously, though many of the recipes were no doubt in use some centuries before. The original manuscript is in the British Museum, and there is a copy in Jesus College, Oxford, in the _Red Book_, which has been published with an English translation by the Welsh MSS. Society.[675] The descendants of this family of physicians continued to practise medicine without intermission until the middle of the last century. This most interesting volume also contains a second portion, which purports to be a compilation by Howel the physician, son of Rhys, son of Llewelyn, son of Philip the physician, a lineal descendant of Einion the son of Rhiwallon. Some medical prescriptions assumed the form of proverbs such as the following:— MEDICAL MAXIMS. (_From the Book of Iago ab Dewi._) “He who goes to sleep supperless will have no need of Rhiwallon of Myddvai. A supper of apples—breakfast of nuts. A cold mouth and warm feet will live long. To the fish market in the morning, to the butcher’s shop in the afternoon. Cold water and warm bread will make an unhealthy stomach. The three qualities of water: it will produce no sickness, no debt, and no widowhood. To eat eggs without salt will bring on sickness. It is no insult to deprive an old man of his supper. An eel in a pie, lampreys in salt. An ague or fever at the fall of the leaf is always of long continuance, or else is fatal. A kid a month old—a lamb three months. Dry feet, moist tongue. A salmon and a sermon in Lent. Supper will kill more than were ever cured by the physicians of Myddvai. A light dinner, a less supper, sound sleep, long life. Do not wish for milk after fish. To sleep much is the health of youth, the sickness of old age. Long health in youth will shorten life. It is more wholesome to smell warm bread than to eat it. A short sickness for the body, and short frost for the earth, will heal; either of them long will destroy. Whilst the urine is clear, let the physician beg. Better is appetite than gluttony. Enough of bread, little of drink. The bread of yesterday, the meat of to-day, and the wine of last year will produce health. Quench thy thirst where the washerwoman goes for water. Three men that are long-lived: the ploughman of dry land, a mountain dairyman, and a fisherman of the sea. The three feasts of health: milk, bread, and salt. The three medicines of the physicians of Myddvai: water, honey, and labour. Moderate exercise is health. Three moderations will produce long life; in food, labour, and meditation. Whoso breaks not his fast in May, let him consider himself with the dead. He who sees fennel and gathers it not, is not a man, but a devil. If thou desirest to die, eat cabbage in August. Whatever quantity thou eatest, drink thrice. God will send food to washed hands. Drink water like an ox, and wine like a king. One egg is economy, two is gentility, three is greediness, and the fourth is wastefulness. If persons knew how good a hen is in January, none would be left on the roost. The cheese of sheep, the milk of goats, and the butter of cows are the best. The three victuals of health: honey, butter, and milk. The three victuals of sickness: flesh meat, ale, and vinegar. Take not thy coat off before Ascension day. If thou wilt become unwell, wash thy head and go to sleep. In pottage without herbs there is neither goodness nor nourishment. If thou wilt die, eat roast mutton and sleep soon after it. If thou wilt eat a bad thing, eat roast hare. Mustard after food. He who cleans his teeth with the point of his knife may soon clean them with the haft. A dry cough is the trumpet of death.” One of the laws of Howel Dda permitted divorce for so trifling a cause as an unsavoury or disagreeable breath.[676] Poppies bruised in wine were used to induce sleep. For agues the treatment was to write in three apples on three separate days an invocation to the Trinity; “on the third day he will recover.” Saffron was used for many complaints; it is a drug still largely used by the poor, who have unbounded faith in it, but it is almost inert. If a person lost his reason, he was ordered to take primrose juice, “and he will indeed recover.” There were regular tables of lucky and unlucky days for bleeding. Fennel juice was supposed to act as a sort of anti-fat, and the roots of thistles were given as a purgative. If a snake should crawl into a man’s mouth, the patient was to take camomile powder in wine. An irritable man was to drink celery juice; “it will produce joy.” As we might have expected, the leek was supposed to have many virtues; wives who desired children were told to eat leeks. Leek juice and woman’s milk was good for whooping cough. The juice was also used for deafness, heart-burn, headache, and boils. Mustard purifies the brain, is an antidote to the bite of an adder, is good for colic, loss of hair, palsy, and many other things. To ascertain the fate of a sick person, bruise violets and apply them to the eyebrows; “if he sleep, he will live, but if not he will die.” Radishes were supposed to prevent hydrophobia. “That is the greatest remedy, to remove a bone from the brain (to trephine) with safety.” Dittany was the antidote for pain. Mouse-dung was used as a remedy for spitting of blood, and a plaster of cow-dung for gout. An eye-water was made from rotten apples. The berries of mistletoe were made into a confection as a remedy for epilepsy. “Let the sick person eat a good mouthful (they gave large doses in those days) thereof, fasting morning, noon, and night. It is proven.” Sage was supposed to strengthen the nerves (nerves in those days!). Nettles, goose-grass, blessed-thistle, and rosemary were favourite remedies. Then we have numerous curious charms and “medical feats discovered through the grace of God.” Here is one: “Take a frog alive from the water, extract his tongue (frogs have long been subject to vivisection), and put him again in the water. Lay this same tongue upon the heart of sleeping man, and he will confess his deeds in his sleep.” A charm for the toothache runs thus: “Saint Mary sat on a stone, the stone being near her hermitage, when the Holy Ghost came to her, she being sad. Why art thou sad, mother of my Lord, and what pain tormenteth thee? My teeth are painful, a worm called megrim has penetrated them, and I have masticated and swallowed it. I adjure thee, daffin O negrbina, by the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and God, the munificent physician, that thou dost not permit any disease, dolour, or molestation to affect this servant of God here present, either in tooth, eye, head, or in the whole of her teeth together. So be it. Amen.” All the herbs and plants (so far as was possible) which were used in the doctor’s practice were directed to be grown by him in his garden and orchard, so that they might be at hand when required. In the table of weights and measures used by the ancient Welsh physicians, we learn that twenty grains of wheat make one scruple, four podfuls make one spoonful, four spoonfuls make one eggshellful, four eggshellfuls make one cupful. The physician also for his guidance had the following curious table:—Four grains of wheat = one pea, four peas = one acorn, four acorns = one pigeon’s egg, four pigeon’s eggs = one hen’s egg, four hen’s eggs = one goose’s egg, four goose’s eggs = one swan’s egg. “For treating a stroke on the head unto the brain, a stroke in the body unto the bowels, and the breaking of one of the four limbs, the wounded person was to receive three pounds from the one who wounded him; and that person had also to pay for the medical treatment of the sufferer a pound without food, or nine-score pence with his food, and the bloody clothes.”[677] The physicians of Myddvai recognised five kinds of fevers; viz., latent, intermittent, ephemeral, inflammatory, and typhus. The doctor’s “three master difficulties” were a wounded lung, a wounded mammary gland, and a wounded knee joint. “There are three bones which will never unite when broken—a tooth, the knee pan, and the os frontis.”