Читать книгу Medicine in the Middle Ages. Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. Minor онлайн

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The mise en scene was easily arranged: the King of France, after holy communion at Saint Francis Convent, left the building surrounded by men at arms and Benedictine friars; then he touched the spots on his people, saying to each of his afflicted subjects: “Rex tangit te, Deus sanat te, in nomine Patris et filii et Spiritus sancti.”[6]

Block pretends that the King of England also enjoyed the power of curing epilepsy, and remarks apropos to this fact that the invention is not new, since Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, possessed the power of curing individuals attacked by enlarged spleen by simply pressing his right foot on that viscera.

But this is no longer a superstition to-day, since the age of miracles is past and the divinity of kings a belief almost without a disciple. However, Gilbert and Daniel Turner, physicians of the thirteenth century, give it credence in their writings, but they are fully entitled to express their independent opinion.

The priests of the Middle Ages could not employ themselves as obstetricians, neither could they treat uterine diseases. The ventrieres were the only midwives of the period; these women were allowed to testify as experts in the courts of justice, but the burden of proof rested on the testimony of at least three sage femmes when a newly-married woman was accused of pregnancy by a husband, as witness the following: