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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However, it is well to say that druggists never violated the rule relative to strict inspection of all drugs before using such articles. All medicines were passed at the central bureau before any apothecary would purchase for dispensing purposes.

As to bath-keepers, they belonged in antique times, as now, more to the order of empirics; their history dates far back to the period when the Romans introduced their bathing system into Gaul—a system which was perpetuated up to as late as the sixteenth century.

The baths constructed by the ancients and destroyed by the barbarians, reappeared again in the Middle Ages, under the names of vapor baths and furnace baths. These baths were shops, usually kept by barbers, where one could be sheared, sweated or leeched by a tonsorial artist. All the world then took baths—even the monks washed themselves sometimes; in fact, almost every monastery had its bath-rooms, where the poor could wash and be bled without pay.

In those days gentlemen bathed before receiving the order of chivalry. When one gave a ball it was customary and gallant to offer all the guests, especially the ladies, a free bath. When Louis XI. went out to sup with his loyal subjects, the honest tradespeople of Paris, he always found a hot bath at his disposal. Finally, it was considered a severe penance to forbid a person from bathing, as was done in the case of Henry IV., who was excommunicated.