M/-:DICA i. SCII-:.\CES. 



'37 



there gratuitously the best attention that charity, still very devoid of science, 

 but animated by the precepts of the gospel, could offer to the indigent. The 

 \v;mts both of the body and the soul* Were ministered to. The first Irjx-r- 

 houses, in which were treated not only leprosy, but the other skin diseases 

 which were so frequent at that day, were erected close to the church. The 

 hydropathic treatment, which was in accordance with the Christian as it had 

 been with the Hebrew faith, became general under the combined influence of 

 religious symbolism and hygienic principles. Many mineral sources and 

 fountains which, though they had lost the patronage of the local divinities, 

 were not the less crowded at fixed epochs, were placed beneath the tutelary 



Fig. 96. Celtic Monument discovered at Paris, beneath the Choir of Notre-Damo, in 1711. 

 (According to several archusologists, the bas-relief represents the Gallic -iEsculapius.) 



protection of various saints, to whom popular opinion attributed a special 

 action in the cure of diseases. 



In the beginning of the fifth century the practice of medicine, like that 

 of surgery, which was not yet a distinct branch, continued to be free, without 

 any authorisation being required. There were even women who, like the 

 Druidesses of the Gauls, treated the sick. Charmem, unconscious, no doubt, 

 of the occult forces which they set at work, proceeded by means of magnetism 

 to cure, or at all events to relieve, neuralgic pains ; country bone-setters were 

 very expert in remedying fractures and dislocations of the limbs ; and nume- 

 rous oculists, impostors of the worst kind, who had learnt while serving in the 

 army what little they knew about ocular diseases, made large sums of money 



T 



