May 5. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



339 



The index could hardly have been misplaced by 

 the carelessness of the binder, if it had originally 

 been sewed with the second volume. I infer, 

 therefore, that this index was subsequently 

 printed, and bound up with this copy of the first 

 edition, previously sewed, as L. J. suggested 

 might have been done in other instances (" N. & 

 Q.," Vol. vi., p. 384.). Vbbtaur. 



Hartford, Conn. 



[We insert this for the purpose of correcting the erro- 

 neous statement that the edition of Junius, which was 

 corrected by the author himself, is without date. The book 

 referred to by our correspondent is not Junius's own edi- 

 tion. That edition, wliich is the only one which ought to 

 be quoted as an authority, bears on its engraved title the 

 date MDCCLxxii. Junius knew what he was about when 

 correcting a misprint, and rightly pointed out the error as 

 being {not in line 10, but) in line 7, p. xx., where in the 

 edition of 1772 we read " unreasonable." The copy pre- 

 served at Hartford is obviously one of the edition de- 

 scribed in our sixth volume, p. 384. — Ed.] 



" HEALER ! HEAI, THYSELf ! " OR PHYSICIANS AND 

 I-EECHES ACCOUNTED FOB. 



In the list of castaway French terms, the 

 leavings of a dialect no longer acknowledged by 

 the English people's heart, there is a lingering in- 

 truder, viz. the foreign equivalent for healer, a 

 physician. It was less than courteous, in one of 

 the antiquarian winter-eve gossips at Macrobius's, 

 to rail at medicine as " the lowest dregs of phi- 

 losophy," notwithstanding that, during the dark 

 ages, it became the fashion of the schools to mis- 

 name the science of medicine " physique," and a 

 medical practitioner " physicien," as if the former 

 did not exclusively denote what is now called the 

 art of nature, or natural philosophy. Indeed, 

 down to the time of our primate, William d'E- 

 touteville, the Cardinal-Legate and Archbishop of 

 Rouen, who reformed the University of Paris, 

 1452, a mist of superstitious awe still hung over 

 the " clerks in physic," or professors of medicine, 

 none of whom were permitted to marry. The fol- 

 lowing scrap of early rhyme shows the French 

 origin of a title wai'ped from its true meaning : 



" Croire physique, c'est folie : 

 Maints en I'an en perdent la vie ; " 



and Hippocrates himself would, no doubt, smile at 

 the simplicity of the romancer, who once styled 

 him, — 



'^ Ypocras, li tres plus sages clers de physique, qui one 

 fu a son tans." 



Such being the history of an article imported 

 without much necessity, whether in England or 

 her dependent provinces, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, 

 and the rest, it is no wonder that Anglo- Saxony's 

 acceptance of so equivocal a terra is not very 

 cordial at this moment. Men rather take degrees 



in " medicine " than in " physic ; " and were it 

 not that the learned persist in misunderstanding 

 their own household word for God's minister, the 

 leech or healer*., I see no reason but custom 

 against the use of both. Leech is Celtic as well as 

 English, nor has it any reference to a blood-suck- 

 ing worm. 



It is a pity that our excellent translators should 

 have overlooked the alliterative beauty in the 

 Divine Proverbialist's carefully-worded model- 

 phrase : 



"ossio! Asso naphsok!" 

 "Healer! heal thyself ! " 



For it is, or may be, retained in all the versions 

 of England's north-western dominions and rela- 

 tionships, the Irish, the Gaelic, the Icelandic, the 

 Swedish, and the Danish, all of which gracefully 

 play on the sound of a slightly modified variety of 

 the word leech, that is, healer : 



Irish. A LiAiGH, leighis du fein ! 

 Gaelic. A leigh, leigh a thu fein ! 

 Swedish. Laekare, laek dig sielf ! 

 Danish. Lcege, Iceg, dig selve ! 

 In Icelandic, Lcekner. 



This is a theme that has led to more false inter- 

 pretations than the reader might imagine. A very 

 learned baronet, for instance, ascends no higher in 

 his etymological soarings than the childish fancy 

 that Danish England's solemn leech derives his 

 name from a well-known bloodthirsty worm. 

 Had the inheritor of Sir Walter's magic mantle 

 ridden, as we lately did, Lavengro's wild cob, 

 galloping' over the Devil's Mountain in the snow- 

 clad hills of Tipperary, he would have discovered 

 the deep and sure Celtic origin of leigh, a healer 

 or physician, and leighis, to heal. While listening 

 to Shorsha (who afterwards colported Bibles in 

 Spain), and to his grimy friend, the gobha, or 

 smith, who had just bewitched the young vaga- 

 bond's Pegasus, I overheard the following oracular 

 words: 



" Is agam an't leigheas." 



that is, " I have the power to cure, heal, or re- 

 lease him." 



Having trespassed thus far on your attention, 

 with the view of hinting the deficiency of an im- 

 portant element in England's word-book, allow me 

 briefly to notice a Norman-French term that 

 needlessly puzzles one of the continental lexico- 

 graf)hers. In Catalan talkee-talkee, the word for 

 mcdicus is metge, whence the old French miege, 

 and by an easy substitution of r for g, miere ; 

 witness our proverb : 



" Qui court apres le mifere. 

 Court apres la bi^re." 



* Blame us not, considerate reader of the Hebrew text; 

 we copy the sense of Martin Luther's just remark on the 

 Jtophe, or Mender, in God's book : 



" Unseres Hernn Gottes Flicker." 



