——He was grounded in astronomie. He kept his patient a ful gret del In houres by his magike naturel.
He knew the cause of every maladie, Were it of cold, or hote, or moist, or drie, And when engendred, and of what humour. He was a veray parfite practisour. The cause yknowe, and of his harm the rote, Anon he gave to the sike man his bote. Ful redy hadde he his apothecaries To send him dragges, and his lettuaries, For eche of hem made other for to winne: His frendship n' as not newe to beginne. Wel knew he the old Esculapius, And Dioscorides, and eke Rufus; Old Hippocras, Hali, and Gallien; Serapion, Rasis and Avicen; Averrois, Damascene and Constantin, Bernard, and Gatisden and Gilbertin. Of his diete mesurable was he, For it was of no superfluitee, But of gret nourishing and digestible. His studie was but litel on the Bible.
In 1421, under Henry V., an Act was prepared, providing that “no one shall use the mysterie of fysyk, unless he hath studied it at some university, and is at least a bachelor in that science. And saying, the sheriff shall inquire whether any one practises in his county contrary to this regulation; and if any one so practise fysyk he shall forfeit £40 and be imprisoned: and any woman who shall practise fysyk shall incur the same penalty.” But this appears never to have become law.
It was not, however, until the beginning of the sixteenth century that modern British medical practice may be said to have commenced. And in 1511 was passed the first |8| statute for regulating the medical profession [4]. From the preamble of this Act we learn that physic and surgery were then practised by “ignorant persons, who could tell no letters on the book, and by common artificers, smiths, weavers, and women, who took upon themselves great cures, partly using sorcery and witchcraft, partly applying very noxious medicines to the disease.”
Many years after this, however, were to be found those who though not “ignorant persons” approved of what would now be called sorcery, witchcraft and noxious medicines. Bacon gives the following as infallible cures for the whooping-cough: let a pie-bald horse breathe on the patient: give him fried mice, three a day for three days in succession: pass the sick person nine times under the belly and over the back of a donkey: feed the patient on currant cake made by a woman who did not change her name when she was married: or, hold a toad in the mouth that it may catch the disease. Burton, the Anatomist, says that an amulet consisting of a spider in a nut-shell, lapped with silk, is a cure for ague. Graham, in his “Domestic Medicine,” prescribes spider’s webs for ague and intermittent fevers.
