290 PRIMITIVE LEECHCRAFT 



The Saxon convert was free to retain the fixed belief of 

 his fathers in the presence everywhere of incorporeal 

 spirits evil and good. For him the forest-glade or river- 

 cliff was still the haunt of the dreaded wood-mare, as he 

 called the echo ; and we have retained the term by which 

 he personified the visitation apt to follow too generous a 

 supper a nightmare. 



And thus men blundered on, using prayers and charms 

 and herbs, sometimes hitting on something really useful 

 and adding it to the store of sound knowledge. After all, 

 we owe these venerable quacks something. Somebody 

 had to begin the ascent: the lowest steps on the stair 

 were very dimly lighted, and the first foot set upon them 

 stumbled and wandered in a way we are apt to think 

 supremely ridiculous; but no height could be gained 

 without the help of these. Nothing is attained in science 

 per saltum; little by little, line upon line, is progress 

 made, till the light increases and the view broadens. In 

 musing upon the lucubrations of these pioneers in leech- 

 craft, one is disposed rather to admire the good purpose 

 to which they put the dull wits of their patients, than to 

 hold them up to derision for the preposterous remedies 

 they prescribed. They were the Beechams and the 

 Carters of the tenth century, and, on the whole, produced 

 literature more exciting than that of our twentieth-century 

 empirics. 



Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty 

 at the Edinburgh University Press 



