238 Dr. T. Sterry Hunt on the 



of healing and to its medicaments. If we search for the origin 

 of this peculiar use of the word physic, we shall find it em- 

 ployed with the same meaning in mediaeval Latin*. In French 

 also, according to Littre, the term physique was in the thir- 

 teenth century applied to the science of medicine, the profes- 

 sors of which were then called physiciens"\ , a designation which 

 they kept till the time of Rabelais, and, as we know, still 

 retain in English, though the term physicien is at present ap- 

 plied in French only to students of physical science in the 

 restricted sense mentioned in § 2, including what, in didactic 

 phrase, is now called physique in French and physics in 

 English. 



§ 10. It is a curious inquiry how these terms came to have 

 this restricted use in the middle ages, and how the name of 

 physicus or physician, originally applied to the student of ma- 

 terial things — and by pre-eminence to Anaxagoras of Clazo- 

 menae, who was called "the physician" (6 $vglkos) — came to 

 signify in mediaeval France and England the medicus, medecin y 

 or mediciner — the master of the art of healing diseases in the 

 human frame. Menage assigns as a reason for this, that the 

 art " consists principally in the contemplation of nature;" and 

 in this imperfect statement will be found the answer to our 

 inquiry, upon which much light is thrown by the use, in 

 mediaeval times, of the words naturien and naturiste. Naturien%, 

 which is found in the fourteenth century, both in English and 

 in French, is etymologically equivalent to pliysicien, and was 

 applied to certain professors of the art of healing, being appa- 



Old Hippocras, Hali and Gallien, 

 Serapion, Basis and Avicen, 

 Averrois, Damascene and Constantin, 

 Bernard and Gatisden and Gilbertin. 



For gold in phisik is a cordial. 

 Therefore he loved gold in special." 



Ohaxjceb, Canterbury Tales, Prologue. 



* Du Cange, Glossarium ad Scriptores mediae et infimae Latinitatis, 

 ed. Herschel, sub voce Physica. 



t "Nous e'tablissons .... un fisicien jure et pensionnaire du couvent." 

 (Reglement de l'Abbaye Royale de Soissons, A.D. 1282 ; cited by Menage, 

 JDictionnaire Etymologique, sub voce Physicien.) 



X The following satirical rhyme of the fourteenth century is cited by 

 Littre, in his Dictionnaire, sub voce Naturien : — 



11 Ou. le physicien fait fin, La commence le me'decin. 

 Supposant pour physicien, Le tres-savant naturien." 



Gower, who uses the word more than once, writes:— 



" And thus seyth the naturien, 

 Which is an astronomien." 



Confessio Amantis, book vii. 



