PREFACE. xxiii 



could such a book as this have had, at that time, much 

 interest. We see then a Saxon leech here at his studies; 

 the book, in a literary sense, is learned ; in a professional 

 view not so, for it does not really advance mans know- 

 ledge of disease or of cures. It may have seemed by 

 the solemn elaboration of its diagnoses to do so, but I 

 dare not assert there is real substance in it. Bald, 

 however, may have got some good out of it, he may 

 have learned to think, have begun to discriminate, to 

 take less for granted. Thus we see him in his study, 

 among his books becoming, for his day, a more ac- 

 complished physician ; and he speaks with a genuine 

 philosophs zeal about those his books. " nulla mihi tam 

 " cara est optima gaza Quam cari libri :" fees and stored 

 wealth he loved not so well as his precious volumes. 

 If Bald was at once a physician and a reader of learned 

 books on therapeutics, his example implies a school of 

 medicine among the Saxons. And the volume itself 

 bears out the presumption. We read in two cases ^ that 

 " Oxa taught this leechdom ;" in another ^ that " Dun 

 " taught it ;" in another " some teach us ;" ^ in another 

 an impossible prescription being quoted ;^ the author, or 

 possibly Cild, the reedsman, indulges in a little facetious 

 comment, that compliance was not easy. I assume that 

 Oxa and Dun were natives, either of this country or 

 of some land inhabited by a kindred people. Any way, 

 we make out, undoubtedly, a bookish study of medicine; 

 the Saxon writers, who directly from the Greek, or 

 through the medium of a Latin translation studied 

 Trallianus, Paulus of ^gina, and Philagrios, were men 

 of learning not contemptible, in letters, that is, not to 

 say in pathology. Some of the simpler treatment is 

 reasonable enough ; the cure of hair lip^ contains a true 



> Lb. p. 120. 

 2 Lb. p. 292. 

 ^Lb. p. 114. 



* Ibid. 



* Lb. L xiii. 



