BOOKS OF SECRETS. 21 



Lovel's aggregations may serve as a transition to those on medicine 

 itself, with its related and ancillary sciences. They are in all languages, of 

 all degrees of merit, and treat of different sections of the subject. Leaving 

 out the medical authorities of the Middle Ages, Galen and Avicenna, and 

 the protagonists of the revolution of the sixteenth century, Paracelsus and 

 Erastus, with their respective followers and disciples, attention must be 

 confined to the books written for popular use, many of which went by the 

 name of secrets. They were not systematic but practical ; their aim was to 

 cure, not to theorize or expound ; and the remedies given were as straight- 

 forward and simple as possible. They therefore took the form of receipts, 

 which dictated to the patient, or nurse, the drugs to be used, or the course 

 of treatment to be followed, or the diet most suitable, without troubling him 

 about the origin or nature of the disorder. The author probably thought 

 that the patient had trouble enough with the disease itself, and his drugs, 

 without adding knowledge of the cause of it, always supposing that he 

 knew it himself, which was doubtful. In these times, so far as one can 

 gather, the practice of medicine by licensed persons with such training as 

 could be had, was restricted to populous centres, but in country districts 

 few physicians or surgeons were available, and, from what is stated here 

 and there, when they were, they charged large, if not prohibitive fees. So 

 it came about that the treatment of disease had to be managed by each 

 household for itself. As the men were occupied otherwise, it fell almost 

 inevitably into the hands of the women to attend to the health of the 

 children, as well as their own, and to that of the men folks who might be 

 ill or have met with an accident. The necessary knowledge they had to 

 acquire as best they could by experience and trial and from the skill of 

 their elder neighbours. It was for their use largely that the books of 

 medical receipts were compiled and they were often dedicated to ladies 

 and gentlewomen distinguished by their care of the sick, and especially of 

 the sick poor round about them, who could obtain no medical advice or 

 attention. A survival of these times was the manual of our grandmothers 

 and great-grandmothers, Buchan's " Domestic Medicine." 



