NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. i 47 



cures snake-bite ; red flannel, looking like blood, is supposed to 

 cure blood-taints, and therefore rheumatism ; bear's grease, being 

 taken from an animal thickly covered with hair, is recommended 

 to persons fearing baldness.* 



Still another injury was wrought by this theological pseudo- 

 science. One of the ideas it evolved was that of disgusting the 

 demon with the body which he tormented : hence the patient 

 was made to swallow or apply to himself various unspeakable 

 ordures, with such medicines as the livers of toads, the blood of 

 frogs and rats, fibers of the hangman's rope, and ointment made 

 from the body of gibbeted criminals. Many of these were sur- 

 vivals of heathen superstitions, but theologic reasoning wrought 

 into them an orthodox significance. As an example of this mixt- 

 ure of heathen with Christian magic, we may cite the follow- 

 ing from a mediseval medical book as a salve against "noctur- 

 nal goblin visitors": "Take hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort, 

 lupine, ash -throat, henbane, harewort, viper's bugloss, heath- 

 berry plant, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and 

 fennel. Put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, 

 sing over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's 

 grease, add much holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the 

 worts into running water. If any ill tempting occur to a man, 

 or an elf or goblin night visitors come, smear his body with this 

 salve, and put it on his eyes, and cense him with incense, and 

 sign him frequently with the sign of the cross. His condition 

 will soon be better." \ 



As to surgery, this same amalgamation of theology with sur- 

 vivals of pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution of medi- 

 cal science down to the modern epoch. The nominal hostility of 

 the Church to the shedding of blood withdrew, as we have seen, 

 from surgical practice the great body of her educated men ; hence 

 surgery remained down to the fifteenth century a despised profes- 

 sion, its practice continued largely in the hands of charlatans, and 

 down to a very recent period the name "barber-surgeon" was 

 a survival of this. In such surgery, the application of various 



* For a summary of the superstitions which arose under the theological doctrine of sig- 

 natures, see Dr. Eccles's admirable little tract on the Evolution of Medical Science, p. 140. 

 See also Scoffern, Science and Folk Lore, p. 76. 



f For a list of unmentionable ordures used in Germany near the end of the seventeenth 

 century, see Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizinischer Aberglaube in Bayera, Wiirz- 

 burg, 1869, p. 34, note. For the English prescription given, see Cockayne, Leechdoms, 

 Wortcuring, and Starcraft of Early England, in the Master of the Rolls series, London, 

 1865, vol. ii, pp. 345 and following. Still another of these prescriptions given by Cock- 

 ayne covers three or four octavo pages. For very full details of this sort of sacred 

 pseudo-science in Germany, with accounts of survivals of it at the present time, see 

 Wuttke, Prof, der Theologie in Halle, Der Deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, 

 Berlin, 1869, passim. For France, see Rambaud, pp. 371 et seq. 



