MEDIAEVAL MEDICINE. 



429 



conditions, and in this the school followed Hippocrates ; and Salerno 

 was consequently called the " Hippocratic city." 

 Perhaps Longfellow's words — 



Joy, temperance, and repose 

 Slam the door on the doctor's nose 



were a free translation from the " Regimen " : 



Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant 



Haec tria : mens hilaris, requies, moderata diseta. 



Medical books, i.e. apart from surgical works, of the fourteenth 

 century consist of recipes, of which the following peculiarities may be 

 noticed. 



An immense number of plants were used for their supposed virtues, 

 but very few are still retained in modern pharmacopoeias. The probable 

 reason for their employment was, because a patient got well after using 

 some drug, therefore that drug must have had the power to cure him, and 

 as he got well when the same drug was used for a variety of complaints, 

 therefore the said drug became a specific for a great variety of diseases. 



Thus we find Pliny giving the Cabbage credit as a remedy for some 

 twenty-five complaints ; but it is scarcely likely that it had curative 

 powers for any one of them. Again, Betony is credited with some twenty 

 virtues, among which it is said : " Whoso beareth betony, the palsy shall 

 not come at him ; if thou eat betony fasting, thou shalt not be a-venomed 

 that day ; thou shalt not be drunk that day." 



A peculiarity of many recipes is the extraordinary number of drugs 

 included in one and the same prescription. Thus of a medicine called 

 " Save," * in two recipes, one contained forty and the other fifty-one 

 ingredients. It is not clear why it was so. Perhaps each had been 

 good for wounds ; so the physician thought one or two out of the 

 number miglit be effectual ; or perhaps the fee depended upon them, and 

 he increased the number accordingly. This second suggestion finds its 

 counterpart in Babylonian practice ; for Professor Sayce tells us : " It is 

 only occasionally that the names of special gods are introduced [into the 

 penitential psalms], and then a long list of them is sometimes given, in 

 the hope that among them might be the divinity whose anger had been 

 excited, and whose wrath the sufferer was eager to appease." f 



Fees may, however, have been an underlying motive ; since as they 

 copied ancient medicines they may have tried to follow the advice of Ben 

 Solomon in his ' Physician's Guide ' : " Treating the sick is like boring 

 holes in pearls, and the physician must act with caution lest he destroy 

 the jewel committed to his charge." " Make your fees as high as possible, 

 for services which cost little are little valued." Another example : 



* This drug is mentioned by Chaucer in The Knightes Tale (lines 1853-56) : 



' To othre woundes, and to broken armes, 

 Some hadde salves, and some hadde charmes, 

 Fermacyes of herbes, and eek save 

 They dronken ; for they wolde here lymes have.' 



f The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, p. 417. 



