428 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



MEDIEVAL MEDICINE. 



By Rev. Professor G. Henslow, M.A., V.M.H., &c. 



It would be out of place to attempt a complete lecture on the history of 

 medicine, so all I propose doing is to give little more than some examples 

 of the healing art of the Middle Ages and try to discover the why and the 

 wherefore of the methods pursued. 



The " Dark Ages " covered the period between the ninth and twelfth 

 centuries, and from the latter to the sixteenth, when printing had been 

 invented, arts and learning, if not science, were beginning to turn to the 

 light again. 



Medicine, however, had little or nothing fresh to add to ancient lore. 

 It was buiit entirely upon the past. The Greek names, as .Esculapius, 

 Hippocrates, Dioscorides, &c, were held in reverence, and their remedies 

 persistently copied ; but the Arabians had almost monopolised the know- 

 ledge of medicine during the Middle Ages, and the Greek school of 

 Salerno in Italy, saw the revival of Greek medicine under Arabian 

 auspices. 



In the earliest days, as with modern savages, diseases were regarded 

 as supernatural. In Homer, sicknesses were said to come from sins, just 

 as Job's comforters believed his afflictions were heaven-sent.* 



The frequent use of Biblical expressions in charms appear* to point 

 in the same direction ; and lastly, the astrological nonsense, so con- 

 spicuous in Culpeper's works, shows much the same thing in another 

 dress. 



In Homer, .Esculapius was a Thessalian chieftain who was skilled in 

 the knowledge of drugs ; but he came subsequently to be regarded as the 

 god of medicine, as early as b.c. 770. 



Hippocrates was born in b.c. 460. He was a true scientist and 

 physiologist, as far as it was possible. He insisted upon observing, and 

 rejected the supernatural element ; so that every disease, according to 

 him, has a natural cause. He was consistently honest in his practice, and 

 detested all quackery. 



His good, common sense, however, disappeared from medicine in the 

 ages of darkness, when all kin .Is of superstitions were mixed up with it. 



At this period Salerno was rising into celebrity as a university for 

 arts, to which medicine was subsequently added. Its most flourishing 

 period was a.d. 1000-1200. 



The most famous work of the school was entitled ' Regimen Sanitatis, 

 Schola Salernitana, vel Flos Medicinae,' a poem of 300 hexameters, 

 dedicated to Robert of Normandy, son of 'William the Conqueror, who 

 stayed at Salerno to be healed of a wound. 



Much stress was laid on hygiene and avoidance of insanitary 



* Are not nil sicknesses '* heaven-sent," in the sense that they are the consequence 

 of the infringement, conscious or unconscious, by oneself or by others, of one or other 

 of the laws which G<>i> has imposed upon all parts of Nature ?— Ed. 



