148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ordures relieved fractures ; the touch of the hangman cured 

 sprains ; the breath of a donkey expelled poison ; friction with a 

 dead man's tooth cured toothache.* 



The enormous development of miracles in the Church con- 

 tinued during century after century, and here probably lay the 

 main causes of hostility between the Church on the one hand and 

 the better sort of physicians on the other ; namely, in the fact that 

 the Church supposed herself in possession of something far better 

 than scientific methods in medicine. Under the sway of this be- 

 lief a natural and laudable veneration for the relics of Christian 

 martyrs was developed more and more into pure fetichism. 



Thus the water in which a single hair of a saint had been 

 dipped was used as a purgative ; water in which St. Remy's ring 

 had been dipped cured fevers ; wine in which the bones of a saint 

 had been dipped cured lunacy ; oil from a lamp burning before 

 the tomb of St. Gall cured tumors ; St. Valentine cured epilepsy ; 

 St. Christopher, throat diseases ; St. Eutropius, dropsy ; St. Ovid, 

 deafness ; St. Gervaise, rheumatism ; St. Apollonia, toothache ; St. 

 Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies 

 which bear their names ; even as late as 1784 we find certain 

 authorities in Bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a mad dog 

 should at once put up prayers at the shrine of St. Hubert, and 

 not waste his time in any attempts at medical or surgical cure.f 

 In the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted by causing 

 the invalid to drink water in which St. Bernard had washed his 

 hands. Flowers which had rested on the tomb of a saint, when 

 steeped in water, were supposed to be especially efficacious in 

 various diseases. The pulpit everywhere dwelt with unction on 

 the reality of fetich cures, and among the choice stories collected 

 by Archbishop Jacques de Vitry for the use of preachers was one 

 which, judging from its frequent recurrence in monkish litera- 

 ture, must have sunk deep into the popular mind: "Two lazy 

 beggars, one blind the other lame, try to avoid the relics of St. 

 Martin, borne about in procession, so that they may not be healed 

 and lose their alms. The blind man takes the lame man on his 

 shoulders to guide him, but they are caught in the crowd and 

 healed against their will." J 



Very important also throughout the middle ages were the 



* On the low estate of surgery during the middle ages, see the histories of medicine 

 already cited, and especially Kotelmann, Gesundheitspflege im Mittelalter, Hamburg, 1890, 

 pp. 216 et scq. 



f See Baas, p. 614 ; also Biedcrmann. 



\ For the efficacy of flowers, see the Bollandist Lives of the Saints, cited in Fort, p. 

 279 ; also pp. 457, 458. For the story of those unwillingly cured, see the Excmpla of 

 Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T. F. Crane, of Cornell University; London, 1890, pp. 

 52 and 182. 



