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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We can form some judgment, from such observations, as to the therapeutic wisdom of these doctrines of the school of Salerno. It is true, however, that at this epoch but little medicine save that of an unique and fantastic order was prescribed. Gilbert, the Englishman, advised, with the greatest British sang froid, tying a pig to the bed of a patient attacked by lethargy; he ordered lion’s flesh in case of apoplexy, also scorpion’s oil and angle-worm eggs; to dissolve stone in the bladder, he prescribed the blood of a young billy-goat nourished on diuretic herbs.

Peter of Spain, who was archbishop, and afterwards Pope, under the name of John XXI., was a man whom historians claim was more celebrated as a physician than as Pope; it was this Peter who adapted the curious medical formulary known by the title of Circa Instans, and, had improved on the invention. Those who wore on their bodies the words “Balthazar,” “Gaspar” and “Melchior” need never fear attacks of epilepsy; in order to produce a flux in the belly, it was only necessary to put a patient’s excrement in a human bone and throw it into a stream of water.