BOOK
IX.

an oil size of yellow ochre, or on a water size of gypsum, or white oxide of lead, or on similar substances. For gilding on paper or parchment, gold powder is now used as much as leaf gold. Our ancestors used both occasionally.

Another method of ancient chrysography; “ Melt some lead, and frequently immerge it in cold water. Melt gold, and pour that into the same water, and it will become brittle. Then rub the gold filings carefully with quicksilver, and purge it carefully while it is liquid. Before you write, dip the pen in liquid'alum, which is best purified by salt and vinegar."

ANOTHER method :“ Take thin plates of gold and silver, rub them in a mortar with Greek salt or nitre till it disappears. Pour on water and repeat it. Then add salt, and so wash it. When the gold remains even, add a moderate portion of the flowers of copper and bullock's gall; rub them together, and write and burnish the letters."

Other methods are mentioned, by which even marble and glass might be gilt. These descriptions are taken by Muratori from a MS. of the ninth century, which contains many other curious receipts on this subject. 22

They had the art of secret writing, by substituting other letters for the five vowels : thus,

b
f k

p
i

o u
The MS. in the Cotton Library gives several
examples of this 23 :-

nýs thks frfyin syllkc thknc to pædpnnf
pmnkxm knkmkcprxm sxprxm dpmkmbktxr
kn npmknf dk sxmmk.

х

a

e

Which are,

CHAP.
VII.

Their me dicine.

24

nýr this frezen ryllic thinc to pæbnne
omnium inimicorum suorum dominabitur.

In nomine Di summi.
Among the disorders which afflicted the Anglo-
Saxons, we find instances of the scrofula, the gout,
or foot adl; fever, or gedrif; paralysis, hemiplegia,
ague, dysentery; consumption, or lungs adl;
convulsions, madness, blindness, diseased head,
the head-ach (heafod-ece), and tumours in various
parts. But if we consider the charms which they
had against diseases as evidence of the existence of
those diseases, then the melancholy catalogue may
be increased by the addition of the poccas (pus-
tules), sore eyes and ears, blegen and blacan ble-
gene (blains and boils), elfsidenne (the night-mare),
cyrnla (indurated glands), toth-ece, aneurisms
(wennas et mannes, heortan), and some others.25
The king's evil is mentioned in a letter from pope
Zachary to Boniface. 26

Nations in every age and climate have considered diseases to be the inflictions of evil beings, whose power exceeded that of man. Adapting their practice to their theory, many have met the calamity by methods which were the best adapted, according to their system, to remove them; that is, they attacked spells by spells. They opposed charms and exorcisms to what they believed to be the work of demoniacal incantations. The Anglo-Saxons had the same superstitions: their pagan ancestors had referred diseases to such causes; and, believing

BOOK the principle, they resorted to the same remedies.

Hence we have in their MSS. a great variety of incantations and exorcisms, against the disorders which distressed them.

When some of their stronger intellects had attained to discredit these superstitions, and especially after Christianity opened to them a new train of associations, this system of diseases originating from evil spirits, and of their being curable by magical phrases, received a fatal blow. It had begun to decline before they were enlightened by any just medical knowlege; and the consequence was, that they had nothing to substitute in the stead of charms but the fancies and pretended experience of those who arrogated knowlege on the subject. Before men began to take up medicine as a profession, the domestic practice of it would of course fall on females, who, in every stage of society, assume the kind task of nursing sickness; and of these, the aged, as the most experienced, would be preferred.

But the Anglo-Saxons, so early as the seventh century, had men who made the science of medi. cine a study, and who practised it as a profession. It is probable that they owed this invaluable improvement to the Christian clergy, who not only introduced books from Rome, but who, in almost every monastery, had one brother who was consulted as the physician of the place. We find physicians frequently mentioned in Bede; and among the letters of Boniface there is one from an Anglo-Saxon, desiring some books de medicinali. bus.

He says they had plenty of such books in England, but that the foreign drawings in them were unknown to his countrymen, and difficult to acquire. 27

27 16 Mag. Bib. Pat. 82.

CHAP.
VII.

We have a splendid instance of the attention they gave to medical knowlege, in the AngloSaxon medical treatise described by Wanley, which he states to have been written about the time of Alfred. The first part of it contains eighty-eight remedies against various diseases; the second part adds sixty-seven more, and in the third part are seventy-six. Some lines between the second and third part state it to have been possessed by one BALD, and to have been written at his command by Cild.

It is probably a compilation from the Latin medical writers. Wanley presumes that Bald wrote it; but the words imply rather possession than authorship. 28 Their construction is ambiguous.

We find several Saxon MSS. of medical botany. There is one a translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius, with some good drawings of herbs and flowers, in the Cotton Library. Their remedies were usually vegetable medicines. 29

We have a few hints of their surgical attentions, but they seem not to have exceeded those common operations which every people, a little removed from barbarism, cannot fail to know and to use.

We read of a skull fractured by a fall from a horse, which the surgeon closed and bound up 30 ; of a man whose legs and arms were broken by a fall, which the surgeons cured by tight ligatures 31 ; and of a diseased head, in the treatment of which the medical attendants were successful. 32 But we

1

IX.

35

BOOK find many cases in which their efforts were un

availing: thus in an instance of a great swelling
on the eyelid, which grew daily, and threatened the
loss of the sight, the surgeons exhausted their skill
to no purpose, and declared that it must be cut
off.33 In a case of a great swelling, with burning
heat, on the neck, where the necklace came, it
was laid open to let out the noxious matter; this
treatment gave the patient ease for two days, but
on the third the pains returned, and she died. 34
Another person had his knee swelled, and the mus-
cles of his leg drawn up till it became a contracted
limb. Medical aid is said to have been exhibited
in vain, till an angel advised wheat flour to be
boiled in milk, and the limb to be poulticed with
it, applied while warm. To recover his frozen
feet, a person put them into the bowels of a
horse. 36

VENESECTION was in use. We read of a man
bled in the arm. The operation seems to have been
done unskilfully, for a great pain came on while
bleeding, and the arm swelled very much.37 Their
lancet was called æder-seax, or vein-knife. But
their practice of phlebotomy was governed by the
most mischievous superstition; it was not used
when expediency required, but when their super-
stitions permitted. They marked the seasons and
the days on which they believed that bleeding
would be fatal. Even Theodore, the monk, to
whom they owed so much of their literature, added
to their follies on this subject, by imparting the
notion that it was dangerous to bleed when the