V. S. Zervos, pp. k', 172, Leipzig,

1901.
KiTLov AfjtiSivov Aoyos SeKaros irenw- Tos, ed. S. Zerbos, 1909, in EiriaTt]- fiOVLKT) Eraipeto, KO-qva, Vol. 21.
My references to Alexander of Tralles are both to the text of Stephanus (1567) and the more
■^66
CHAP. XXV
POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE
567
but although Marcellus antedates the other two by a full century, we shall consider him last, since he wrote in Latin while they wrote in Greek, and since he includes Celtic words and probably Celtic folk-lore, and since he seems to have
recent edition by Theodor Pusch- mann, Alexander von Tralles, Originaltext und Uberseizung nebst einer einleitenden Abhand- liing, Vienna, 1878-9, 2 vols. This gives a more critical text than any previous edition, but unfortu- nately Puschmann adopted still another arrangement into books than those of the MSS and previ- ous editions, and also in my opinion did not make a sufficient study of the Latin MSS. His in- troduction contains information concerning Alexander's life and the MSS and previous editions of his works.
A valuable earlier study on Alexander was that of E. Mil- ward, published in 1733 under the title, A Letter to the Honourable Sir Hans Sloane Bart., etc., and in 1734 as Trallianus Reviyi- sccns, 229 pp. Milward was pre- paring an edition of Alexander of Tralles, but it was never pub- lished. His estimate of Alex- ander's position in the history of medicine furnishes an incidental picture of interest of the state of medicine in his own time, the early eighteenth century.
The old Latin translation of Alexander of Tralles was the first to be printed at Lyons, 1504, Alexandri yatros practica cunt expositione glose interlinearis Jacobi de Partibus et {Simonis) Januensis in margine posite; also Pavia, 1520 and Venice 1522. Next appeared a very free Latin translation by Torinus in 1533 and 1541, Paraphrases in libros omnes Alexandri Tralliani. The Greek text of Alexander was first printed by Stephanus (Robert fitienne) in 1548 (ed. J. Goupyl). The Latin translation by Guinther of Andernach, which is included in Stephanus (1567), first ap- peared in 1549, Strasburg, and was reprinted a number of times.
Another work by Puschmann may also be noted : Nachtrdge zu, Alexander Trallianus. Frag- mente aus Philuinenus und Phi- lagrius nebst eincr bisher noch ungedruckten Abhaiidlung iiber Augenkrankheitcn, Berlin, 1886, in Berliner Studien f. class. Philol. und Archaeol., V, 2; 188 pp., in which he segregates as fragments of Philumenus and Philagrius portions of the text of Alexander as found in the Latin MSS.
My references for the De medicamentis of Marcellus apply to Helmreich's edition of 1889 in the Teubner series. This edition is based on a single MS of the ninth century at Laon which Helmreich followed Valentin Rose in regarding as the sole ex- tant codex of the work. As a result Rose indulged in ingenious theories to explain how the editio princeps by lanus Cornarius, Basel, 1536, included the prefa- tory letter and other preliminary material not found in the Laon MS, whose first leaves and some others are missing.
But as a matter of fact BN 6880, a clear and beautifully writ- ten MS of the ninth century, con- tains the De medicamentis entire with all the preliminary letters. Moreover, it is evident that the editio princeps was printed di- rectly from this MS, which con- tains not only notes by Cornarius but the marks of the compositors.
The text of the edition of 1536 was reproduced in the medical collections of Aldus, Medici antiqui, Venice, 1547, and Steph- anus, Medicae artis principes, ^567.
Jacob Grimm, Uber Marcellus Burdigalensis, in Abhandl. d. kgl, Akad. d. Wiss. 2. Berlin (1847), pp. 429-60, discusses the evidence for placing Marcellus under the older Theodosius, lists the Celtic
568
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Medical compen- diums: Oribasius and Paul of Aegina.
been a native of Gaul, if not of Bordeaux,^ and thus is geo- graphically closer to the scene of medieval Latin learning. Aetius and Alexander have the closer connection not only with the eastern and Greek v^orld but also with the past classical medicine of Galen and so will provide a better point of departure. Presumably from the places and periods in which they lived, all three of our authors were Christians, but it must be said that the chief evidence of Christianity in their works is the use of Christian or Hebrew proper names in incantations, and there are some analogous relics of pagan superstition.
As Tribonian and Justinian boiled down the voluminous legal literature of Rome into one Digest, so there was a similar tendency to reduce the past medical writings of the Greeks into one compendious work. Paul of Aegina, writ- ing in the seventh century, observes in his preface ^ that it is not right, when lawyers who usually have plenty of time to reflect over their cases have handy summaries of their subject to which they can refer, that physicians whose cases often require immediate action should not also have some
words and expressions found in the De medicamentis, and also one hundred specimens of its folk-lore and magic. This article was reprinted in Kleinere Schrif- ten, II (1865), 114-51, where it is followed at pp. 152-72 by a sup- plementary paper, Ubcr die Mar- cellischen Formeln, likewise re- printed from the Academy Proceedings for 1855, pp. 51-68.
The magic of Marcellus was further treated of by R. Heim, De rebus magicis Marcelli medici, in Schedae philol. Hermanno Usener oblatae (1891), pp. 119-37, v/here he adds nova magica ex Marcelli libris collata which Grimm had omitted.
^ Marcellus is often called of Bordeaux, notably in Grimm's article, Vber Marcellus Burdiga- lensis, 1847 ; also by C. W. King, The Gnostics and their Remains, 1887, p. 219; and by J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, I, 23 ; but
there seems to be no definite proof that he was from that city.
Jules Combarieu, La musique et la magie, 1909, p. 87, says in ref- erence to the following incanta- tion recommended by Marcellus, tetunc resonco bregan gresso, "Je remarque en passant qu'il faut frotter I'oeil en disant ce carmen, et que dans le patois du Midi, bregua ou brege, signifie frotter. Marcellus, si je ne me trompe, etait de Bordeaux."
Grimm, however (1847), p. 455, interpreted bregan as "lies" — "breigan gen. pi. von breag liige," and the whole line as in modern Irish teith uainn ere soin go breigan grcasa ("fleuch von uns staub hinnen zu der liigen genos- sen !").
^Stephanus (1567),!, 347, . ^^ seq. For an English translation of the text see F. Adams, The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta, London, 1844-1847.
XXV POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE 569
convenient handbook, and the more so since many of them are called upon to exercise their profession not in large cities with easy access to libraries, but in the country, in desert places, or on shipboard. Oribasius, friend and physician of the emperor Julian, 361-363 A. D., had made such a com- pendium by that emperor's order. In this he embodied so much of Galen's teachings that he became known as "the ape of Galen," ^ although he also used more recent writers. But Paul of Aegina regarded this work of Oribasius as too bulky, since it originally comprised seventy-two books al- though only twenty-five are now extant, and so essayed a briefer compilation of his own. Two centuries ago, how- ever, Friend and Milward protested against regarding Paul, Aetius, and Alexander as mere compilers and maintained that they "were really men of great learning and experi- ence" ^ who "have described distempers which were omitted before; taught a new method of treating old ones; given an account of new medicines, both simple and compound ; and made large additions to the practice of surgery." ^ Pusch- mann more recently states that Paul's compendium was "composed with great originality and independence" and is of great value "particularly in its surgical sections." * After Paul, however, the Byzantine medical writers, such as Palladius, Theophilus, Stephen of Alexandria, Nonus, and Psellus, were of an inferior caliber.^ With Paul's work, however, we are not now further concerned, nor with that of Oribasius, but with the somewhat similar com- pendiums of Aetius and Alexander which lie chronologically between these other two. It is Aetius and Alexander whom Payne accuses of "introducing into classical medicine the magical elements derived from the East" ^ and whom we
^Simia Galieni, according to *Puschmann, History of Medi-
Guinther in his translation of cal Education, 1891, p. 153.
Alexander of Tralles, Stephanus ^Milward (i733), P- H-
(1567), I, 131. °J. F. Payne, English Medicine
* Milward (1733), 9-11. in Anglo-Saxon Times, 1904. PP-
*John Friend (or Freind), His- 102-8. iory of Physick (1725), I, 297.
Amida.
570 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
might therefore expect to possess an especial interest for our investigation. Aetius of Of the life and personality of Aetius we know very little,
but inasmuch as he mentions St. Cyril, archbishop of Alex- andria, and Peter the Archiater, a physician of Theodoric, while he himself is cited by Alexander of Tralles, he seems to have lived at the end of the fifth and beginning of the sixth century.^ And since Alexander cites him only in his book on fevers which seems to have been composed after the rest of his work, it seems probable that Aetius was al- most contemporary with him and wrote in the sixth rather than the fifth century. His Tetrabihlos — each of the four books subdivides into four sections and often these are spoken of as sixteen books — occupies a middle position not only in time but in length between the works of Oribasius and Paul, and resembles the latter in making a great deal of use of the former. Aetius' extracts from the older writers are shorter than those of Oribasius, however, and he also differs from him in combining several authorities in a single chapter, the method usually adopted by the medieval Latin encyclopedists. It has been noted that the wording of the original authorities was often preserved in the oldest medieval manuscripts of Aetius, until the copyists of the time of the Italian Renaissance began to touch up the style in accordance with their erroneous notions of what consti- tuted classical Greek. ^ It may also be said that these sys- tematically arranged handbooks of Oribasius, Aetius, and the rest, where one could find what one was looking after, were far superior in systematic and orderly presentation to the discursive works of Galen which, like many other classical writings, often seem rambling and without any particular plan.^ This more logical, if somewhat cut-and-
* Milward (1733), p. 19; Pusch- to find confirmed by Milward
mann (1878), I, 104. {'i^72>Z), p. 29, in the particular
^ Ch. Daremberg, Histoire des case of Alexander of Tralles, of
Sciences Medicates, Paris, 1870, I, whom he writes : "As our
242. author's stile is excellent, so like-
' This general impression re- wise is his method, and there is
ceived from reading many classi- no respect in which he is more
cal and medieval works I was glad distinguished from the other
XXV
POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE
571
dried method, was also to be a virtue of medieval Latin learning. Whether Aetius directly influenced the Latin mid- dle ages is doubtful, since no early Latin translation of him seems to be known. ^ The work of Oribasius, however, exists in Latin translation in manuscripts of the seventh cen- tury as well as in others of the ninth and twelfth.^
The works of Aetius and Alexander of Tralles do not impress me as containing an unusually large amount of superstitious medicine. Much less am I inclined to agree with Payne that they are responsible for the introduction into classical medicine of magical elements derived from the east. These elements, whether derived from the orient any more than any other feature of classical civilization or not, at any rate had been a prominent feature of classical medicine long before the days of Aetius and Alexander, as Pliny's review of medicine before his time abundantly proved and as is also shown by the extraordinary virtues which Pliny himself, his contemporary Dioscorides, and even the great Galen attributed to medicinal simples.
It is true that Aetius and Alexander abound in recipes for elaborate medical compounds composed of numerous in- gredients. Of such concoctions one example must suffice, a plaster which Aetius recommends for tumors, hard lumps, and gout. "Of the terebinth-tree, of the stone of Asia, of bitumen three hundred and sixty drams each; of washing- soda {spumae nitri), calf-fat, wax, laurel berries, ammonia, and thyme three hundred and forty drams each; of the stone pyrites and quick-lime one hundred and twenty drams each; of the ashes of asps which have been burned alive one
Greek writers in physick than in this. The works of Hippocrates, Galen, and indeed of all of them except it be Aretaeus are not only very voluminous but put to- gether with little or no order, as is evident enough to all such as have been conversant with them." 'Daremberg (1870), I, 258-9, said that a mass of MSS in a score of European libraries con- tained as vet unidentified Latin
translations of Greek medical writers.
^BN 10233, 7th century uncial; BN nouv. acq. 1619, 7-8th cen- tury, demi-uncial ; BN 9332, 9th century, fol. i-, Oribasii synopsis medica; CLM 23535, 12th cen- tury, fols. 72 and 112. V. Rose, Soranus, 1882, pp. iv-v, speaks of a sixth century Latin version of Oribasius.
How
super- stitious are Aetius and Alex- ander?
Compound medicines.
572
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Aetius merely re- produces the super- stition of Galen.
hundred and forty drams; of old oil two pounds. First liquefy the oil and wax, then the bitumen, which should have first been pulverized. Add to these the fat, and pres- ently the ammonia and terebinth; and when these are taken off the fire mix in the lime and stone of Asia, then the laurel berries and washing-soda, and finally after the medica- ment has cooled sprinkle the ashes of asps upon it." ^ Such concoctions are to a large extent borrowed by Aetius, Alex- ander, and Marcellus from earlier writers. Moreover, while Pliny had excluded such compounds from the pages of his Natural History, he had also made it abundantly evident that they were already in general use by his time, and they are to be found in great numbers in the works of Galen who cites many from preceding writers.
Indeed, it was from Galen himself and not from the east that Aetius at least derived his most strikingly superstitious passages. This was accidentally and convincingly proven by my own experience. It so happened that I wrote an ac- count of the passages in the Tetrahihlos of Aetius before I had read extensively in Galen's works. When I came to do so, I found that almost every passage that I had selected to illustrate the superstitious side of Aetius was contained in Galen : for example, the use as an amulet of a green jasper suspended from the neck by a thread so as to touch the abdomen;^ the story of the reapers who found the dead viper in their wine and cured instead of killing the sufferer from elephantiasis to whom they gave the wine to drink; ^ the tale of his preceptor who roasted river crabs to an ash in a red copper dish in August during dog-days on the eighteenth day of the moon, and administered the powder daily for forty days to persons bitten by mad dogs.'* Such
* Tetrabiblos, IV, iii, 15.
^ Ibid., I, iv, 9, where Galen is not cited, and III, i, 9, where Galen is cited. In Galen, De sini- plicibus, IX, ii, 19 (Kiihn, XII, 207).
^Ibid., I, ii, 170, where Galen is not cited ; De simplicibus , XI, i,
I (Kiihn, XII, 31 1-4).
* Tetrabiblos I, ii, 175; Kiihn XII, 356-9. Galen is not cited in this, nor in any of the following passages from the Tetrabiblos listed in the notes, unless this is expressly stated.
XXV POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE 573
passages are usually repeated by Aetius in such a way as to lead the reader to think them his own experiences, a fact which warns us not to accept the assertions of ancient and medieval authors that they have experienced this or that at their face value, and which makes us wonder if Friend and Milward were not too generous in regarding Aetius at least as more than a compiler. He also repeats some of Galen's general observations anent experience as that the virtues of simples are best discovered thus, and that he will not discuss all plants but only those **of which we have information by experience." ^ He further reproduces Galen's attitude of mingled credulity and scepticism con- cerning the basilisk, combining the two passages into one ; ^ also Galen's questioning the efficacy of incantations and tell- ing of having seen a scorpion killed by the mere spittle of a fasting man without any incantation,^ Like Galen again, he omits all injurious medicaments and expresses the opinion that men who spread the knowledge of such drugs do more harm than actual poisoners who perhaps cause but a single death.* Like Galen he announces his intention to omit all "abominable and detestable recipes and those which are pro- hibited by law," mentioning as instances the eating of human flesh and drinking urine or menses muliehres.^ But also like Galen, he devotes several chapters to the virtues of human and animal excrement, especially recommending that of dogs after they have been fed on bones for two days.^ Somewhat similar to Galen's recommendation to fill cavities in the teeth with roasted earthworms is the recipe of Aetius for painless extraction of teeth "without iron." The tooth must first be thoroughly scraped or the gum cut loose about it, and then sprinkled with the ashes of earthworms. "There- fore use this remedy with confidence, for it has already often
* Tetrabihlos at the beginning, pp. 6-7 in Stephanus (1567).
* Tetrabiblos IV, i, 33 ; Kiihn XIV, 233, and XII, 250-1.
^Tetrabiblos I, ii, 109; Kiihn XII, 288.
* Tetrabiblos
I, ii, 84;
Kiihn
XII, 253.
° Tetrabiblos
I, ii, 84;
Kiihn
XII, 248, 284-S.
* Tetrabiblos
I, ii, III;
Kiihn
XII, 291-3.
574
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Occult science mixed with some scepticism.
been celebrated as a mystery." ^ Such use of earthworms continued a feature of medieval dentistry.
Of my original selections from Aetius very few are now left, and it is not unlikely that they too might be found somewhere in Galen's works if one looked long enough. Aetius asserts that drinking bitumen or asphalt in water will prevent hydrophobia from developing,^ and recommends for wounds inflicted by sea serpents an application of lead with a slice of the serpent itself.^ He takes the following prescription from Oribasius. To cure impotency anoint the big toe of the right foot with oil in which the pulverized ashes of a lizard have been mixed. To check the operation of this powerful stimulant one has merely to wash off the ointment from the toe.* On the other hand, an instance of a sceptical tendency is the citation of the view of Posi- donius that the so-called incubus is not a demon but a dis- ease akin to epilepsy and insanity and marked by suffoca- tion, loss of voice, heaviness, and immobility.^ It may also be noted that in discussing the medicinal virtues of the beaver's testicles Aetius does not include the story of its biting them off in order to escape its hunters.® He does, however, cite several authorities, Piso, Menelbus, Simonides, Aristodemus, and Pherecydes for instances of the remark- able powers of certain animals in discovering the presence of poisons and preserving themselves and their owners from this danger: a partridge who made a great noise and fuss whenever any medicament or poison was being prepared in the house; a pet eagle who would attack anyone in the house who even plotted such a thing ; a peacock who would go to the place where the dose had been prepared and raise
oil in which earthworms have
^ Tetrabiblos II, iv, 34; Kiihn Xll, 860. Perhaps a closer cor- respondence than this could be found. In his preceding 33rd chapter, headed Curatio erosorum dentium ex Galeno, Aetius in- cludes use of the tooth of a dead dog pulverized in vinegar, which is to be held in the mouth, or filling the ear next the tooth with "fumigated earthworms" or with
m been cooked.
* Tetrabiblos I, ii, 49. ' Tetrabiblos IV, i, 39.
* Tetrabiblos III, iii, 35-
" Tetrabiblos II, ii, 12. Mar- cellus, cap. 20 (p. 188) also speaks of "those who often think that they are made sport of by an in- cubus."
' Tetrabiblos, I, ii, 177.
XXV
POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE
575
a clamor, or upset the receptacle containing the potion, or dig up a charm, if it had been buried underground; and a pet ichneumon and parrot who were endowed with very- similar gifts, ^ Aetius shows a slight tendency in the direc- tion of astrological medicine, giving a list of "times or- dained by God" for the risings and settings of various stars, since these affect the air and winds, and since "the bodies of persons in good health, and much more so those of the sick, are altered according to the state of the air." ^ But on the whole, of our three authors, Aetius seems to contain the smallest proportional amount of superstitious medicine and occult science.
Alexander of Tralles was the son of a physician and, Alex- according to the Byzantine historian, Agathias,^ the young- Tralles. est of a group of five distinguished brothers, including Anthemius of Tralles, architect of St. Sophia at Constanti- nople, and Metrodorus the grammarian, whom Justinian summoned also to his court. Alexander had visited Italy, Gaul, and Spain as well as all parts of Greece * before set- tling down in old age, when he could no longer engage in active medical practice,^ to the composition of his magnum opus in twelve books beginning with the head, eyes, and ears, and ending with gout and fever. Aside from his citation of Aetius in the book on fevers, the latest writer named by Alexander is Jacobus Psychrestus, physician to Leo the Great about 474.^ It seems rather strange that Alexander says nothing of the pestilence of 542.'^
Alexander embodied the results of his own practice to a Origin- much greater extent than Oribasius and Aetius. His book his^work. is more a record of his own medical observations and experi- ences than a compilation from past writings, a fact recog-
' Tetrabiblos, IV, i, 86.
' Tetrabiblos I, iii, 164. This passage was printed separately in the Uranologion of D. Petavius, Paris, 1630 and 1703.
^ Agathias, De imperio et rebus gestis Justiniani, Paris, i860, p. 149.
*Milward (1733), p. I7, "he
travel'd through Greece, Gaul, Spain, and several other places whose mention we find up and down in his works."
^ Puschmann ( 1878) , 1, 288, Si6 Kai ykpoiv XoiTTov -Trei^apxw Kal K&nvtLV ovKtTi Swafxevos . . .
"Milward (i733),P-25.
'Puschmann (1878), 1,83.
576 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE cHAr.
nized in the first edition which entitled it Practica, and "though he pays a due deference to the ancients, yet he is so far from putting an impHcit faith in what they have advanced that he very often dissents from their doctrines." ^ Puschmann regarded him as the first doctor for a long time who had done any original thinking,^ and esteemed his pathology as highly as his therapeutics had been esteemed by his sixteenth century translator, Guinther of Ander- nach.^ Friend wrote of him in the early eighteenth cen- tury, "His method is extremely rational and just and after all our discoveries and improvements in physick scarce any- thing can be added to it." * Alexander seems to have been a practitioner of much resource and ingenuity, stopping hemorrhage of the nose by blowing down or fuzz up the nostrils through a hollow reed, and directing patients, a thousand years before the discovery of the Eustachian tube, to sneeze with mouth and nose stopped up in order to dis- lodge a foreign object from the ear.^ According to Mil- ward, Alexander was the first Greek medical writer to men- tion rhubarb and tape-worms, and the first practitioner to open the jugular veins. ^ Indeed, Alexander advises blood- letting a great deal, but Milward, whose age still approved of that practice, notes that he was "no ways addicted to those superstitious rules of opening this or that vein in particular cases which several of the ancients and some even among the moderns have been so very fond of." "^ Finally, Alexander's concise and orderly method of presenta- tion compares favorably with that of the classical medical writers. His Alexander's book traveled west, as its author had done,
influence. ^" from an early date.^ In fact, it was from the Latin version
* Milward (1733), p. 27. ''Ibid., pp. 48-9. ''Puschmann (1891), 152-3, * See V. Rose, Hermes, VIII, 'Stephanus (1567), I, 131. 39; Anecdota, II, 108. I presume
* Friend (1725), I, 106. that BN 9332, 9th century, fol. "Milward (1733), pp. 65-6, 57 139, "Alexandri hiatrosofiste
et seq. therapeut(i)con" (libri tres) is
^ Ibid., pp. 104, 92-3, 71. the free Latin translation in a
POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE
S77
that the work was translated into Hebrew and Syriac.^ Not only are Latin manuscripts of Alexander's work as a whole or of extracts from it - found from the ninth century on, while printed editions in Latin were numerous through the sixteenth century, but it was much used and cited by medieval writers such as Constantinus Africanus, Gariopontus,^ and Gilbert of England.'* It is not, how- ever, always safe to assume that citations of Alexander
Paris MS of the ninth century alluded to by Daremberg (1870), I, 258-9. Puschmann (1878) I, 91-2, in a blind and inadequate account of the Latin MSS, does not mention it, but lists a Monte Cassino codex (97) of the 9-ioth century and an Angers MS of the lo-iith century. He also alludes to a MS at Chartres without giv- ing any number or date for it, but probably has reference to Chartres 342, 12th century, fols. 1-139, "Libri tres Alexandri Yatros." He alludes to BN 6881 and 6882, both 13th century, libri tres de morbis et de morborum curatione ; but not to CLM 344, I2-I3th century, fols. 1-60, libri ni de medicina, — integra versio Latina Lugduni a. 1504 edita. Other MSS are: Gonville and Caius 400, early 13th century, fols. 4V-83V, "Inc. Alexander yatros sophista"; Royal 12-B-XVI, late 13th century, fol. 113, Practica Alexandri.
It will be noted that the text in all these Latin MSS is in only three books, but it follows the same order as the twelve books. It is also, at least in the edition of 1504, not as abbreviated as one might infer from Rose. Rather the later editors, Albanus Tori- nus and Guinther of Andernach, seem to have taken greater liber- ties with, and made unwarranted additions to Alexander's text. At the same time the early Latin text treats of some topics such as toothache which are not included in Puschmann's Greek text, and also includes (II, 79-103, and 104- 50) treatments of diseases of the abdomen and spleen for which
there seems to be no genuine Greek text and which Pusch- mann, Nachtr'dge, 1886, has pub- lished separately as fragments of Philumenus and Philagrius, medi- cal writers of the first and fourth centuries. His chief reason seems to be that cap. 79 is entitled, De reumate ventris iilominis, and cap. 104, Ad splencni philogrius, while cap. 151 is headed, Causa que est ydropicie alexandri. These pas- sages are, however, found in the Latin MSS of Alexander's work from the first, and the use of Romance words by the unknown Latin translator indicates that the translation was made in the early medieval period, — Puschmann (1886), p. 12.
* Puschmann (1878), I, 91.
^As in Vendome 109, nth cen- tury, fol. I, Mulsa Alexandri (Tralliani), fol. 68v, "De reuma ventris, de libro Alexandri" (not here ascribed, it will be noted, to Philumenus), fol. 71, "De secundo libro Alexandri de cura nefreti- corum." The Mulsa Alexandri is found also in two other nth cen- tury MSS of the same library: Vendome 172, fol. i, and 175, fol. 2.
In Royal 12-E-XX, 12th cen- tury, fols. 146V-151V, "Incipit liber dietarum diversarum medi- corum, hoc est Alexandri et aliorum." This extract, made up of a number of Alexander's chap- ters on the diet suitable in differ- ent ailments, is often found in the MSS, as here, with the Pseudo-Pliny and was printed as its fifth book in 1509 and 1516.
* Puschmann (1878), I, 97. *Milward (1773), P- I79-
sonal ex- perience
578 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
medicus, encountered in thirteenth century writers on the nature of things like Thomas of Cantimpre and Bartholo- mew of England, have reference to Alexander of Tralles, since a treatise on fevers is also ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias/ while a work on the pulse and urine in fevers is thought to be by some medieval Alexander.^ And medical treatises are sometimes ascribed even to Alexander the Great of Macedon in the medieval manuscripts.^ His per- We have already said that Alexander is no mere com-
piler but embodies the results of his own observation and experience during a long period of travel and medical practice. He frequently asserts that he has tested this or that for himself, or that the prescription in question has been "approved by long use and experience," ^ so that it is not surprising that we find the name Alexander still as- sociated with medical "experiments" in manuscripts dating from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.^ One of his cures for epilepsy he learned "from a rustic in Tuscany" (Thtisciaif) but afterwards often employed with success himself.^ "It is a marvelous and exceptional medicine which you will communicate to no one," concludes Alexan-
*Thus in Vendome 109 (see ra magni Alexandri Macedonii
note 2, p. 577) besides the extracts quod facit stomaticis epilenticis."
from Alexander of Tralles we Steinschneider, cited by Pusch-
find at fol. 58, "Alexander (Aph- mann (1878) I, 106, has also
rodisiensis) amicus veritatis in noted the attribution in Hebrew
tertio libro suo ubi de febribus MSS to Alexander the Great of
commemorat." The Arabs seem a work on fever, urine, and pulse,
to have confused these two presumably identical with that
Alexanders : see Steinschneider mentioned in the foregoing note.
(1862), p. 61; Puschmann (1878), * Stephanus (1567) I, 176, 204,
I, 94-5. 216, 225; and Puschmann, II, 575, ' See the discussion by Choulant are a few specimens.
in Janus (1845), p. 52, and ^Amplon. Quarto 204, I2-I3th
Henschel in De Renzi (1852-9) century, fols. 90-S, Experimento-
II, II, of a I2th century MS at rum Alexandri medici collectio Breslau, "Liber Alexandri de succincta. Digby 79, 13th cen- agnoscendis febribus et pulsibus tury, fols. 180-92V, "Alexandrina et urinis" ; also Puschmann experimenta de libro percompen- (1878) I, 105-6, concerning BN diose extractata meliora ut no- Greek MS 2316, which seems to bis visum est ad singulas egritu- be a late Greek translation of it, — dines." Additional 341 11, 15th another instance that a Greek text century, fol. 77, "Experimenta is not necessarily the original. Alexandri," in English.
'Corpus Christi 189, ii-i2th ° Steplianus I, 156; Puschmann
century, fols. 1-5, "Antidotum pig- II, 563.
XXV POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE 579
der, a rather surprising prohibition in view of the fact that it was a popular remedy to begin with. Folk-lore, however, is often supposed to be kept secret. Another general rule which holds true in Alexander's case is that these empirical remedies are apt to be the most superstitious, and conversely that marvels are apt to be supported by solemn assurance of their experimental testing.
Two centuries ago Mil ward wrote of Alexander of Extent Tralles, "But there is another objection to our author's super- character which I cannot pretend to say much in defence stition. of, and that is, his being addicted to charms and amulets. It is very surprising that one who discovers so much judg- ment in other matters should show so much weakness in this," ^ Alexander certainly devotes more space to super- stition relatively to the length of his book than Aetius does and also is hospitable to a wider range of more or less magical notions and practices. One notices, however, in his book that the treatment of certain diseases, such as epilepsy, colic, gout, and quartan fever, is more likely to involve magical and astrological procedure than that of other ailments such as earache and disorder of the spleen. This is also apt to be the case with other ancient and medieval medical works. But it is doubtful if the distinc- tion can be sharply drawn that magic was resorted to more in those diseases which seemed most mysterious and incur- able.
The chief circumstance which renders some parts of Physica. Alexander's work more superstitious than others is that he sometimes, after concluding the usual medical descrip- tion of the disease and prescriptions for it, adds a list of what he calls physical or natural medicines (^uo-t/cd), which are for the most part ligatures and suspensions but involve also the employment of incantations and engraved images or characters. Apparently he calls these remedies physica, because they supposedly act by some peculiar prop- erty or occult virtue of the substance which is bound on ^Milward (1733), p. 168.
58o
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Occult virtue of substances applied externally.
or suspended and constitute a sort of natural magic. Alex- ander explains that "since some cannot observe a diet nor endure medicine, they compel us in the case of gout to employ physical remedies and ligatures; and in order that the well-trained physician may be instructed in every side of his art and able to help all sick persons in every way, I come to this subject." ^ This rather apologetic tone and the fact that he separates the physica from his other remedies show that he regards them as not quite on the same level with normal medical procedure. He goes on to say, how- ever, that although there are many of these "physical" remedies which are efficacious, he will write down only those proved true by long use. In discussing fevers he again justifies the inclusion of physica in much the same way and says that those now mentioned were learned by him during a long-extended practice and experience.^ It is to be noted that some of these chapters on physical ligatures do not appear in the Latin version in three books, at least as it was printed in 1504.
One ligature which is "quite celebrated and approved by many" and which instantly lessens the pain of ulcers in the feet, makes use of muscles from a wild ass, a wild boar, and a stork, binding the right muscles about the patient's right foot and the left muscles about the left foot. Some persons, however, do not intertwine the muscles of the stork with the others but put them separately into the skin of a sea-calf. Also they take care to bind the other muscles about the patient's feet when the moon is in the west or in a sterile sign and approaching Saturn. Others bind on the tendons and claws of a vulture, or the feet of a hare who should remain alive. ^ Alexander seems to regard the carcass of the ass as especially remedial in the case of epilepsy. In Spain he learned to use the skull of an ass reduced to ashes and he recommends employing the forehead and brain of an
* Stephanus I, 312; Puschmann n, 579-
* Stephanus I, 345, see also 296
and 339; Puschmann I, 407, 437. 'Stephanus I, 312; Puschmann
II, 579.
XXV POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE 581
ass as amulets.^ A suspension for quartan fever consists of a live beetle firmly fastened on the outside of a red linen cloth and hung about the neck. "This is true and often tested by experience," Alexander assures us. Also excellent for this purpose are hairs from a goat's cheek or a green lizard combined with clippings of the patient's finger nails and toe nails. It is confirmed by the testimony of all "natural" physicians that the blood qui primus a virgine fuerit excretus is naturally hostile to quartan fever. Even if the girl is not chaste, the blood will be efficacious, if applied to the patient's right hand or arm.^ Alexander knew a man who treated quartan fever by giving an undergarment of the patient to a woman in childbirth to wear, after which the patient wore it again and was cured "miraculously by some antipathy and occult influence." ^
The materials employed in Alexander's therapeutics are Other sometimes those which we associate especially with magic l^^^^l^ arts, such as the hair and nail-parings already mentioned, ligatures Against epilepsy he employs nails from a cross or wrecked amulets, ship, or the blood-stained shirt of a gladiator or criminal who has been slain. The nails are bound to the patient's arm ; the shirt is burned and the patient given the ashes in wine seven times. The use of a nail from a cross is a method ascribed to Asclepiades. Other materials recom- mended by Alexander against gout and epilepsy include the herb night-shade, the stones magnet and aetites, blood of a swallow and urine of a boy, chameleons in varied forms, and the stones found in dissected swallows of which we have heard before and shall hear yet again. For Alexander these stones are black and white, but he states that they are not found in all young swallows but are said to appear only in the first-born, so that one often has to dissect a great many birds before one finds any. In these passages on Physica Alexander cites such authors of magical reputation
* Stephanus I, 156; Puschmann I, 437.
' Stephanus I, 345; Puschmann rtft (cat Xo-yw dpp7T;o.
S82
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Incanta- tions.
as Ostanes and Democritus, and tells how the latter suffered in youth from epilepsy until an oracle from Delphi instructed him to make use of the worms in goats' brains. When a goat sneezes violently, some of these worms are expelled into his nostrils, whence they should be carefully extracted in a cloth without allowing them to touch the ground. Either one or three of them should then be worn about the epileptic's neck wrapped in the thin skin of a black sheep.-^
One passage has already been cited where astrological conditions were observed. Alexander sometimes prescribes the day of the month upon which things shall be done; an oil, for instance, is to be prepared on the fifth of March.^ In one place Alexander advises engraving upon a copper die a lion, a half -moon, a star, and the name of the beast. This is to be worn enclosed in a gold ring upon the fourth finger.^ That the lion may not stand for a sign of the zodiac is suggested by another instruction concerning an engraved stone to be set in a gold ring, and which is to be carved with a figure of Hercules suffocating a lion.* For gout, however, one writes a verse of Homer on a copper plate when the moon is in Libra or Leo.^ For colic one in- scribes upon an iron ring with an octangular circumference a charm beginning, "Flee, flee, colic." ^
The employment of such incantations is expressly justi- fied by Alexander, who maintains that even "the most divine" Galen, who once thought that incantations were of no avail, came after a long time and much experience to be convinced that they were of great efficacy. Alexander then quotes from a treatise which is not extant but which he asserts is a work by Galen entitled. On medical treatment in Homer.'^ "So some think that incantations are like old- wives' tales and so I thought for a long while, but in process
* For the passages in this para- graph see Stephanus I, 156-7, 313; Puschmann I, 561, S^7-73-
^ Stephanus I, 312.
* Stephanus I, 281 ; Puschmann 11, 475.
* Stephanus I, 296; Puschmann
n, 377- ' Stephanus I, 313.
" Stephanus
11, 377-
' Stephanus n, 475.
296 ; Puschmann 281 ; Puschmann
XXV POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE 583
of time from perfectly plain instances I have become per- suaded that there is force in them, for I have experienced their aid in the case of persons stung by scorpions. And no less in the case of bones stuck in the throat, which were straightway expelled by an incantation." Alexander him- self thereupon continues, "If such is the testimony of divinest Galen and many other ancients, what prevents us too from communicating to you those which we have learned from experience and which we have received from trust- worthy friends?"
Both incantations and observance of astrological condi- Conjura- tions play an important part in the instructions given by an"herb Alexander for digging and plucking with imprecations an herb to be used in the treatment of fluxions of hands or feet. "When the moon is in Aquarius under Pisces, dig before sunset, not touching the root. After digging with two fingers of the left hand, namely, the thumb and middle finger, say, 'I address you, I address you, sacred herb. I summon you to-morrow to the house of Philia to stay the fluxion of feet and hands of this man or this woman. But I adjure you by the great name, laoth, Sabaoth, God who established the earth and fixed the sea abounding in fluid floods, who desiccated Lot's wife and made her a statue of salt, receive the spirit of thy mother earth and its powers, and dry up this fluxion of feet or of hands of this man or woman.' On the morrow ere sunrise, taking the bone of some dead animal, dig up the root, and holding it say, *I adjure you by the sacred names, laoth, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi,' and sprinkle a pinch of salt on that root, saying, 'As this salt is not increased, so be not the ailment of this man or of this woman.' Then bind one end of the root to the patient, taking care that it is not moist, and suspend the rest of it over the fire for 360 days." ^ The mention of mother earth in this charm perhaps indicates an ultimate pagan origin, but the allusions to one God, and to incidents in the Old Testament, and the use of names of spirits show Jewish * Stephanus I, 314; Puschmann II, 585.
584
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Medieval version seems less super- stitious than the original text.
Mar- cellus : date and identity.
or Christian influence, while the number 360 perhaps points to the Gnostics.
While in conformity with the character of our investiga- tion we have emphasized those passages in Alexander which are suggestive of magic and its methods, it should be said that many of the passages which we have cited are appar- ently ^ not found in the medieval Latin versions which seem to omit many, although not all, of the chapters devoted to physical ligatures. Here then apparently is a case where the early medieval translator and adapter, instead of re- taining and emphasizing the superstition of the past, has largely purged his text of it. But we have next to consider a Latin work, written apparently about the year 400 A. D. and known to us through two manuscripts of the ninth century, in which magic is far more rampant than in any version of Alexander of Tralles. Judging, however, from the small number of extant manuscripts, it was less influen- tial through the medieval period than was Alexander's book.
The De medicamentis opens in one of the two extant manuscripts with a dedicatory letter from "Marcellus, an illustrious man of the main office of Theodosius the Elder (?)" to his sons.^ This ascription is generally ac- cepted as genuine, and Grimm believed this to be the same Marcellus as the physician who is gratefully mentioned, to- gether with his sons, then mere infants, in the letters of Libanius, whose severe headaches Marcellus had alleviated, and as the Marcellus magister officioriim who is mentioned twice in the Theodosian Code under the year 395. The date of the De medicamentis may be further fixed from its including "a singular remedy for spleen which the patriarch Gamaliel recently revealed from proved experiments." This
^If the MSS, which I have not examined, agree with the 1504 edition.
' Both in BN 6880 and the edi- tion of Basel, 1536, "Marcellus vir inluster ex magno officio Theo- dosii Sen. filiis suis salutem d(icit)." In the MS, however, a later hand has written above
the now faded line an incorrect copy in which "Theodosii Sen." is replaced by "theodosiensi." Helmreich (1889), on the other hand, has replaced "ex magno officio" by "ex magistro officio." It is perhaps open to doubt whether the "Sen." goes with "Theodosii" or "Marcellus."
XXV POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE 585
Gamaliel was Jewish patriarch at Constantinople from some time before 395 on to 415 or later. The question, however, of Marcellus' authorship is complicated by the fact that he is twice cited in the work itself. One of these passages concerns an "oxyporium which Nero used for the digestion, which Marcellus the eminent physician revealed, which we too have tested in practice." ^ This sounds as if some later person had had a hand in the work as it has reached us, since Marcellus himself would scarcely have cited another person of the same name without some distinguishing epithet. Furthermore Aetius cites a Marcellus for a passage which does not appear in the De medicamentis concerning wolfish or canine insanity, in which men imagine themselves to be wolves or dogs and act like them during the night in the month of February. But the De medicamentis as a whole is of the character promised by Marcellus in the introduc- tory letter to his sons and so may be taken as his work.
The empiricism which we have already noted in Alex- "Mar- ander of Tralles becomes most pronounced and most ex- treme in Marcellus, who indeed is often called Marcellus Empiricus on this account, and many of whose chapter and other headings ^ terminate with these words descriptive of their contents, "various rationa-1 and natural remedies learned by experience" (remedia rationabilia et physica diversa de experimentis) . In his preface, too, he speaks of his book not as De medicamentis but as De empiricis. He has, it is true, utilized "the old authorities of the medical art set down in the Latin language," and likewise more recent writers and "the works of studious men" who were not especially trained in medicine ; but he also includes what he has learned from hearsay or from personal experience, and "even remedies chanced upon by rustics and the popu- lace and simples which they have tested by experience." One prescription, which he characterizes as efficacious be- yond human hope and incapable of being satisfactorily
'Cap. 20 (1889), p. 204. those which mark the openings
^ In BN 6880 there are other of the 36 chapters, headings written in capitals than
celhis Em- piricus."
S86 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
lauded, he purchased from an old-wife of Africa who cured many at Rome by it, while the author himself has employed it in the cure of "several persons neither of humble rank nor unknown, whose names it is superfluous to mention." This remedy is a concoction of such things as ashes of deer- horn, nine grains of white pepper, a little myrrh, and an African snail pounded shell and all while still alive in a mortar and then mixed with Falernian wine. Very detailed and explicit directions are given as to its preparation and administration, including an instruction to drink the dose facing towards the east.^ In another passage Marcellus says of certain compounds, "If there is any faith, both I myself have always found them by experience to be useful remedies and I can state that others are of the same mind; and I will add this, that other medicines can not compare to this liniment, which in similar cases several of my friends, whom I trust as I do myself, have affirmed on oath they have found by experience a remarkable cure." ^ Of an eye- remedy he remarks, "And that we may believe the author of this remedy from experience, he states that after he had been blind for twelve years it restored his sight within twenty days." ^ Marcellus also frequently couples marvel- ousness with experimentation, saying, "You will experience a wonderful remedy." In one passage he uses the word "experiment as a verb rather than as a noun, coining a new expression, experimentatum remedium/ but his commonest expressions are de experimento or de experimentis, ex- pertum, and experieris or experietur.^ Some of his "experi-
'Cap. 29 (1889), pp. 304-6. 123, is; 129, 21; 133, 10; 145, 33;
'Cap. 35 (1889), p. 361. 148, 25; 149, 26; 160, 18; 176, 5;
'Cap. 8 (1889), p. 80. 178, 25; 186, 15; 190, 20; 192, 31;
*Cap. 5 (1889), p. 49. 211, i; 222, 18; 224, 31; 230, 3;
''For such mentions of experi- 235, 15; 236, 14; 239, 8 and 26;
ence and experiment see the fol- 242, 8 and 23; 248, 20; 256, 9;
lowing passages in the 1889 edi- 258, 5; 264, 21; 276, 35; 281, 19
tion, numbers referring to page and 27; 282, 15; 308, 21; 312, 6
and line: 31, 7; 34, 3; 35, 14; and 19 and 22; 314, 25; 326, 28;
44, 2; 53, i; 58, 21; 64, 34; 65, 30; 327, 13; 334, 29; 343, 23; 351, 23
66, 26; 72, 22; 73, 7; 74, 2; 77, 9; and 25; 353, 4; 354, 19; 356, 6;
80, 28; 81, 29; 89, 3 and 29; 362, 32; 370, 22 and 37. 96, 14 and 31; 102, 27; 120, 32;
XXV POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE 587
ences" really are purposive experiments, as where one .dis- covers whether a tumor is scrofulous by applying an earth- worm to it. Then put the worm on a leaf and if the tumor was scrofulous, the worm will turn into earth.^ The follow- ing experiment indicates that sufferers from spleen should drink in vinegar the root or dried leaves of the tamarisk. Give tamarisk to a pig to eat for nine days, then kill the animal and you will find it without a spleen.^
As Marcellus appeals the most to experience, so he is Super- by far the most given to superstition and folk-lore of our character three authors. Practically his entire work is of the char- of his acter of the passages devoted to Physic a by Alexander of Tralles. He indulges in no medical theory, he does not diagnose diseases, nor prescribe a regimen of health in the form of bathing, diet, and exercise. His work is wholly composed of medicaments and for the most part empirical ones. Besides the elaborate compounds which were so frequent in Aetius and Alexander, he is extremely addicted to absurd rigmarole and all sorts of superstitious practices in the application or administration of medicinal simples. His pharmacy includes not only herbs and gems, to which he attributes occult virtue and which he sometimes directs to have engraven with characters and figures, such as SSS or a dragon surrounded with seven rays ^ — the emblem of the Agathodaemon, but also all kinds of animals, reptiles, and parts of the same, after the fashion of Pliny's medicine. He is constantly calling into requisition such things as the ashes of a mole, the blood of a bat, the brains of a mouse, the gall of a hyena, the hoofs of a live ass, the liver of a wolf, woman's milk, sea-hares, a white spider with very long legs, and centipedes or multipedes, especially the variety that rolls up into a ball when touched. But it is scarcely feasible to separate Marcellus' materials from his procedure, so we will begin to consider them together in some prescriptions where animals play the leading part.
*Cap. 15 (1889), p. 146. "Caps. 20 and 24 (1889), pp.
'Cap. 23 (1889), p. 239. 208 and 244.
588
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
For those suffering- from stone is recommended a remedy prepared in the following fashion. In August shut up in a dry place for three days a goat, preferably a wild one who is one year old, and feed him on nothing but laurel and give him no water to drink ; finally on the third day, which should fall on a Thursday or Sunday, kill him. Both the person who kills the goat and the patient should be chaste and pure. Cut the goat's throat and collect his blood — it is best if the blood is collected by naked boys — and burn it to an ash in an earthen pot. After combining it with vari- ous herbs and drugs, there are further directions to follow as to how it may best be administered to the patient. Mar- cellus, by the way, affirms that adamant can be broken only by goat's blood.^
The following prescription involves the familiar super- stition that a rabbit's foot is lucky : "Cut off the foot of a live rabbit and take hairs from under its belly and let it go. Of those hairs or wool make a strong thread and with it bind the rabbit's foot to the body of the patient and you will find a marvelous remedy. But the remedy will be even more efficacious, so that it is hardly credible, if by chance you find that bone, namely, the rabbit's ankle-bone, in the dung of a wolf, which you should guard so that it neither touches the earth nor is touched by woman. Nor should any woman touch that thread made of the rabbit's wool." Marcellus further recommends that in releasing the rabbit after taking its wool you should say, "Flee, flee, little rabbit, and take the pain away with you." ^
Of such magical transfer of disease to other animals or objects there are a number of examples. Toothache may be stopped by standing on the ground under the open sky and spitting in a frog's mouth and asking it to take the toothache away with it and then releasing it.^ Even con- sumptives who seem certain to die and who labor continually with an unbearable cough, may be cured by giving them
*Cap. 26 (1889), pp. 264-6. 'Cap. 29 (1889), p. 311; and
see cap. 28, p. 29I ' Cap. 12, p. 123.
XXV
POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE
589
to drink for three days the saliva or foam of a horse. "You will indeed cure the patient without delay, but the horse- will die suddenly." ^ Splenetic persons are benefited by imposing anyone of three kinds of fish upon the spleen and then replacing the fish alive in the sea.^ Warts may be got rid of by rubbing them with something the moment you see a star falling in the sky; but if you rub them with your bare hand, you will simply transfer them to it.^ Another superstition connected with falling stars which Marcellus records is that one will be free from sore eyes for as many years as he can count numbers while a star is falling,* The first time you hear or see a swallow, hasten silently to a spring or well and anoint your eyes with the water and pray God that you may not have sore eyes that year, and the swallows will bear away all pain from your eyes.^ With slight variations the same procedure may be employed to prevent toothache. In this case you fill your mouth with water, rub your teeth with the middle fingers of both hands, and say, "Swallow, I say to you, as this will not again be in my beak, so may my teeth not ache all year long." ^ Marcellus advises anyone whose nose is stuffed up to blow it on a piece of parchment, and, folding this up like a letter, cast it into the public way,'^ — which would very likely spread the germs, if not take away the cold.
In his preface Marcellus refers to Pliny as one of his piiny and authorities and many of his quaint animal remedies will compared
be found substantially duplicated in the Natural History, pn green -^ lizards as
Both, for example, state that one can stop one's nose from eye cures.
running by kissing a mule.^ Marcellus, however, adds much
from other sources or of his own. This may be illustrated
by comparing their accounts of the use of lizards to cure eye
diseases.^ Marcellus omits the following portion of Pliny's
account : "Some shut up a green lizard in a new earthen pot,
* Cap. 16, p. 166. "Cap. 23, p. 238. ' Cap. 34, P- 357-
* Cap. 8, p. 69. ' Cap. 8, p. 66.
Cap. 12, p. 125.
Cap. 10, p. 113.
Cap. 10, p. 112; NH 30, II.
Cap. 8, p. 68; NH 29, 38.
590 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
and they mark the Httle stones called cinaedia, which are bound on for tumors of the groin, with nine signs and take out one daily. On the ninth day they let the lizard go, and keep the pebbles for pains of the eyes." Pliny next proceeds : "Others put earth under a green lizard that has been blinded and shut it up in a glass vase with rings of solid iron or gold. When through the glass the lizard is seen to have recovered its sight, it is released and the rings are used for sore eyes." This recipe is in Marcellus who, however, words it dif- ferently and adds that the lizard must be blinded with a copper needle, that the rings may be of silver, electrum, or copper, that the vase must be carefully sealed and opened on the fifth or seventh day following, and that one should not only wear the rings afterwards on one's fingers but also frequently apply them to one's eyes and strengthen the sight by looking through them. He further cautions to leave the vase in a clean grassy spot, to collect the rings only after the lizard has departed, to catch the lizard in the first place on a Thursday in September between the nineteenth and twenty-fifth day of the moon, and to have the operation per- formed by a very pure and chaste man, Marcellus also states that an amulet made either of the eyes of the said lizard enclosed in a lead bull or gold coin, or of its blood caught on clean wool and wrapped in purple cloth will effectually prevent eye diseases. Meanwhile Pliny for his part has gone on to tell how efficacious the ashes of green lizards are. More Marcellus employs green lizards in other connections
hzardry. which are not paralleled in Pliny. To stay colic one binds about the patient three times with an incantation a string with which a copper needle has been threaded and drawn through a lizard's eyes, after which the reptile is released at the same point where it was captured.^ In another pas- sage Marcellus recommends the drawing by a silver needle of threads of nine different colors other than black or white through the eyes of a new-born puppy before they open and ' Cap. 29, p. 313.
XXV POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE 59i
ita ut per anum eiiis exeunt, after which the puppy is to be thrown into the river.^ But to return to our Hzards. For those suffering from Hver complaint the Hver of a Hzard is to be extracted with the point of a reed and bound in purple or black cloth to the patient's right side or suspended from his arm, while the lizard is to be dismissed alive with these words, "Lo, I send you away alive; see to it that no one whom I touch henceforth has liver complaint." ^ To insure a wife's fidelity one touches her with the tip of a lizard's tail which has been cut off by the left hand.^ Here again the lizard is released but apparently is not expected to survive for long, since one is instructed to "hold the tail shut in the palm of the same hand until it dies." In a fourth example the lizard is neither mutilated nor released but hung in the doorway of a splenetic's bedroom where it will touch his head and left hand as he comes and goes.^
One or two other prescriptions may be added where the Use of procedure is connected with herbs or stones rather than and"an with animals. On entering a city one is advised to pick up herb, some of the pebbles lying in the road before the city gate, stating that they are being collected for headache. Then bind one of them on the head and throw the others behind your back without looking around.^ A certain herb must be gathered on Thursday in a waning moon. When it is administered in drink, the recipient must take it standing and facing the east. He receives the cup from the right hand and then, in order not to look back, returns it to the left to him who gave it. Only these two persons should touch the drink.^
Right and left, as just illustrated, are much observed Right in Marcellus' medicine. When a tooth aches on the left numb^er side of the mouth, a hot cooked dried bean is applied to the right elbow for three days, a process which is reversed
_ * Cap. 29, p. 314. Pliny has a rendaque eius dum cum ea cois
similar procedure with a frog and tange." a reed. ■* Cap. 23, p. 239.
'Cap. 22, p. 230. ° Cap. I, p. 34.
' Cap. 2)3, P- 347, "mulierem ve- ° Cap. 25, p. 247.
592
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Incanta- tions and charac- ters.
if the tooth is on the right side.^ The following exercise recommended for a stiff neck would seem to stand more chance of success than most of Marcellus' prescriptions. While fasting the patient should spit on his right hand and rub his right thigh, and then do the same with his left hand and thigh. Thrice repeated this is warranted to work an immediate cure.^ A ring worn on the middle finger of the left hand is said to stop hiccough.^ The power of the planets or of mere number is indicated in the advice, given several times, to make seven knots in a string.* Once in- structions are given to make as many knots as there are letters in the patient's name.^
Incantations and characters, as has already been inci- dentally illustrated, abound in Marcellus' pages. Some are in Greek, some in Latin, some perhaps in Celtic; many, as we have seen, are coherent statements, commands, or requests; many others are to all appearance a jargon of meaningless words, like the jingle, Argidam, margidam, sturgidam,^ which is to be repeated seven times on Tuesday and Thursday in a waning moon to cure toothache. Mar- cellus well calls one of these carmen idioticumJ For stom- ach and intestinal troubles he recommends pressing the abdomen with the left thumb and saying, "Adam, bedam. alam, betur, alem, botum." This is to be repeated nine times, then one touches the earth with the same thumb and spits, then says the charm nine more times, and again for a third series of nine, touching the ground and spitting nine times also. Alahanda, alahandi, alamho is another incanta- tion, variously repeated thrice with hands clasped above and below the abdomen. Yet another consists in rubbing the abdomen with the left thumb and two little fingers and saying, "A tree stood in the middle of the sea and there hung an urn full of human intestines; three virgins went
* Cap. 12, p. 126.
'Cap. 18, p. 178.
' Cap. 17, p. 176.
*Cap. 32, pp. 22,7, 338, 340.
'Cap. 8, p. 70.
° Cap. 12, p. 123.
' Cap. 3^, p. 379. Marcellus em- ploys the phrase, of course, to indicate a private or personal in- cantation, and as a matter of fact it is somewhat less absurd than a number of others.
XXV
POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE
593
around it, two make it fast, one revolves it." As you repeat this thrice, you touch the ground thrice and spit, but if the charm is for veterinary purposes, for the words "human intestines" should be substituted "the intestines of mules" or horses or asses as the case may be.^ The fol- lowing is a specimen of the characters prescribed by Mar- cellus : ^
A^MGKI A
A^M e KI A
A^M GKI A
It is perhaps worth while to point out in concluding this The art of chapter that apparently at no time during the period of sm-vives^
barbarian invasions and early medieval centuries did medical the bar-
1- • 1 • 1 TUT- 1 banan
practice or literature cease entirely in the west. We have invasions.
seen that there is reason to suspect that portions of the work
ascribed to Marcellus may be contributions of the centuries
following him, and that there were early medieval Latin
translations of the works of Oribasius and Alexander of
Tralles. Furthermore, the laws of the German kingdoms,
the allusions of contemporary chroniclers and men of letters,
the advice of Gregory the Great to a sick archbishop to seek
medical assistance, and many other bits of evidence ^ show
that physicians were fairly numerous and in good repute,
and that medieval Christians at no time depended entirely
upon the healing virtues of relics of the saints or other
miraculous powers credited to the church or divine answer
to prayer.
' Cap. 28, p. 301.
*Cap. 29, p. 310. For further instances of incantations and char- acters in the De medicamentis see page no, Hnes 18-27; in, 26-33; 112, 29 - 113, 2; n6, 8-n ; 133, 18- 22, 26-31; 139, 17-26; 142, 19-26;
149, 4-11; 151, 18-33; 152, 9-14, 19-24; 180, 1-3; 220, 11-20; 221, 2-6; 223, 15-18; 241, 1-6, 14-22; 244, 26-28; 248, 16-19; 260, 22- 24; 295, 18-22; 333, 9-is; 382, 16-18. ^Daremberg (1870) I, 257-8.