Superstitious character of his medicine.
As Marcellus appeals the most to experience, so he is by far the most given to superstition and folk-lore of our three authors. Practically his entire work is of the character of the passages devoted toPhysicaby Alexander of Tralles. He indulges in no medical theory, he does not diagnose diseases, nor prescribe a regimen of health in the form of bathing, diet, and exercise. His work is wholly composed of medicaments and for the most part empirical ones. Besides the elaborate compounds which were so frequent in Aëtius and Alexander, he is extremely addicted to absurd rigmarole and all sorts of superstitious practices in the application or administration of medicinal simples. His pharmacy includes not only herbs and gems, to which he attributes occult virtue and which he sometimes directs to have engraven with characters and figures, such as SSS or a dragon surrounded with seven rays[2405]—the emblem of the Agathodaemon, but also all kinds of animals, reptiles, and parts of the same, after the fashion of Pliny’s medicine. He is constantly calling into requisition such things as the ashes of a mole, the blood of a bat, the brains of a mouse, the gall of a hyena, the hoofs of a live ass, the liver of a wolf, woman’s milk, sea-hares, a white spider with very long legs, and centipedes or multipedes, especially the variety that rolls up into a ball when touched. But it is scarcely feasible to separate Marcellus’ materials from his procedure, so we will begin to consider them together in some prescriptions where animals play the leading part.
Preparation of goat’s blood.
For those suffering from stone is recommended a remedy prepared in the following fashion. In August shut up in a dry place for three days a goat, preferably a wild one who is one year old, and feed him on nothing but laurel and give him no water to drink; finally on the third day, which should fall on a Thursday or Sunday, kill him. Both the person who kills the goat and the patient should be chaste and pure. Cut the goat’s throat and collect his blood—it is best if the blood is collected by naked boys—and burn it to an ash in an earthen pot. After combining it with various herbs and drugs, there are further directions to follow as to how it may best be administered to the patient. Marcellus, by the way, affirms that adamant can be broken only by goat’s blood.[2406]
A rabbit’s foot.
The following prescription involves the familiar superstition that a rabbit’s foot is lucky: “Cut off the foot of a live rabbit and take hairs from under its belly and let it go. Of those hairs or wool make a strong thread and with it bind the rabbit’s foot to the body of the patient and you will find a marvelous remedy. But the remedy will be even more efficacious, so that it is hardly credible, if by chance you find that bone, namely, the rabbit’s ankle-bone, in the dung of a wolf, which you should guard so that it neither touches the earth nor is touched by woman. Nor should any woman touch that thread made of the rabbit’s wool.” Marcellus further recommends that in releasing the rabbit after taking its wool you should say, “Flee, flee, little rabbit, and take the pain away with you.”[2407]
Magic transfer of disease.
Of such magical transfer of disease to other animals or objects there are a number of examples. Toothache may be stopped by standing on the ground under the open sky and spitting in a frog’s mouth and asking it to take the toothache away with it and then releasing it.[2408]Even consumptives who seem certain to die and who labor continually with an unbearable cough, may be cured by giving themto drink for three days the saliva or foam of a horse. “You will indeed cure the patient without delay, but the horse will die suddenly.”[2409]Splenetic persons are benefited by imposing any one of three kinds of fish upon the spleen and then replacing the fish alive in the sea.[2410]Warts may be got rid of by rubbing them with something the moment you see a star falling in the sky; but if you rub them with your bare hand, you will simply transfer them to it.[2411]Another superstition connected with falling stars which Marcellus records is that one will be free from sore eyes for as many years as he can count numbers while a star is falling.[2412]The first time you hear or see a swallow, hasten silently to a spring or well and anoint your eyes with the water and pray God that you may not have sore eyes that year, and the swallows will bear away all pain from your eyes.[2413]With slight variations the same procedure may be employed to prevent toothache. In this case you fill your mouth with water, rub your teeth with the middle fingers of both hands, and say, “Swallow, I say to you, as this will not again be in my beak, so may my teeth not ache all year long.”[2414]Marcellus advises anyone whose nose is stuffed up to blow it on a piece of parchment, and, folding this up like a letter, cast it into the public way,[2415]—which would very likely spread the germs, if not take away the cold.
Pliny and Marcellus compared on green lizards as eye cures.
In his preface Marcellus refers to Pliny as one of his authorities and many of his quaint animal remedies will be found substantially duplicated in theNatural History. Both, for example, state that one can stop one’s nose from running by kissing a mule.[2416]Marcellus, however, adds much from other sources or of his own. This may be illustrated by comparing their accounts of the use of lizards to cure eye diseases.[2417]Marcellus omits the following portion of Pliny’s account: “Some shut up a green lizard in a new earthen pot,and they mark the little stones calledcinaedia, which are bound on for tumors of the groin, with nine signs and take out one daily. On the ninth day they let the lizard go, and keep the pebbles for pains of the eyes.” Pliny next proceeds: “Others put earth under a green lizard that has been blinded and shut it up in a glass vase with rings of solid iron or gold. When through the glass the lizard is seen to have recovered its sight, it is released and the rings are used for sore eyes.” This recipe is in Marcellus who, however, words it differently and adds that the lizard must be blinded with a copper needle, that the rings may be of silver, electrum, or copper, that the vase must be carefully sealed and opened on the fifth or seventh day following, and that one should not only wear the rings afterwards on one’s fingers but also frequently apply them to one’s eyes and strengthen the sight by looking through them. He further cautions to leave the vase in a clean grassy spot, to collect the rings only after the lizard has departed, to catch the lizard in the first place on a Thursday in September between the nineteenth and twenty-fifth day of the moon, and to have the operation performed by a very pure and chaste man. Marcellus also states that an amulet made either of the eyes of the said lizard enclosed in a lead bull or gold coin, or of its blood caught on clean wool and wrapped in purple cloth will effectually prevent eye diseases. Meanwhile Pliny for his part has gone on to tell how efficacious the ashes of green lizards are.
More lizardry.
Marcellus employs green lizards in other connections which are not paralleled in Pliny. To stay colic one binds about the patient three times with an incantation a string with which a copper needle has been threaded and drawn through a lizard’s eyes, after which the reptile is released at the same point where it was captured.[2418]In another passage Marcellus recommends the drawing by a silver needle of threads of nine different colors other than black or white through the eyes of a new-born puppy before they open andita ut per anum eius exeant, after which the puppy is to be thrown into the river.[2419]But to return to our lizards. For those suffering from liver complaint the liver of a lizard is to be extracted with the point of a reed and bound in purple or black cloth to the patient’s right side or suspended from his arm, while the lizard is to be dismissed alive with these words, “Lo, I send you away alive; see to it that no one whom I touch henceforth has liver complaint.”[2420]To insure a wife’s fidelity one touches her with the tip of a lizard’s tail which has been cut off by the left hand.[2421]Here again the lizard is released but apparently is not expected to survive for long, since one is instructed to “hold the tail shut in the palm of the same hand until it dies.” In a fourth example the lizard is neither mutilated nor released but hung in the doorway of a splenetic’s bedroom where it will touch his head and left hand as he comes and goes.[2422]
Use of stones and an herb.
One or two other prescriptions may be added where the procedure is connected with herbs or stones rather than with animals. On entering a city one is advised to pick up some of the pebbles lying in the road before the city gate, stating that they are being collected for headache. Then bind one of them on the head and throw the others behind your back without looking around.[2423]A certain herb must be gathered on Thursday in a waning moon. When it is administered in drink, the recipient must take it standing and facing the east. He receives the cup from the right hand and then, in order not to look back, returns it to the left to him who gave it. Only these two persons should touch the drink.[2424]
Right and left number.
Right and left, as just illustrated, are much observed in Marcellus’ medicine. When a tooth aches on the left side of the mouth, a hot cooked dried bean is applied to the right elbow for three days, a process which is reversedif the tooth is on the right side.[2425]The following exercise recommended for a stiff neck would seem to stand more chance of success than most of Marcellus’ prescriptions. While fasting the patient should spit on his right hand and rub his right thigh, and then do the same with his left hand and thigh. Thrice repeated this is warranted to work an immediate cure.[2426]A ring worn on the middle finger of the left hand is said to stop hiccough.[2427]The power of the planets or of mere number is indicated in the advice, given several times, to make seven knots in a string.[2428]Once instructions are given to make as many knots as there are letters in the patient’s name.[2429]
Incantations and characters.
Incantations and characters, as has already been incidentally illustrated, abound in Marcellus’ pages. Some are in Greek, some in Latin, some perhaps in Celtic; many, as we have seen, are coherent statements, commands, or requests; many others are to all appearance a jargon of meaningless words, like the jingle,Argidam, margidam, sturgidam,[2430]which is to be repeated seven times on Tuesday and Thursday in a waning moon to cure toothache. Marcellus well calls one of thesecarmen idioticum.[2431]For stomach and intestinal troubles he recommends pressing the abdomen with the left thumb and saying, “Adam, bedam, alam, betur, alem, botum.” This is to be repeated nine times, then one touches the earth with the same thumb and spits, then says the charm nine more times, and again for a third series of nine, touching the ground and spitting nine times also.Alabanda, alabandi, alambois another incantation, variously repeated thrice with hands clasped above and below the abdomen. Yet another consists in rubbing the abdomen with the left thumb and two little fingers and saying, “A tree stood in the middle of the sea and there hung an urn full of human intestines; three virgins wentaround it, two make it fast, one revolves it.” As you repeat this thrice, you touch the ground thrice and spit, but if the charm is for veterinary purposes, for the words “human intestines” should be substituted “the intestines of mules” or horses or asses as the case may be.[2432]The following is a specimen of the characters prescribed by Marcellus:[2433]
ΛΨΜΘΚΙΑΛΨΜΘΚΙΑΛΨΜΘΚΙΑ
The art of medicine survives the barbarian invasions.
It is perhaps worth while to point out in concluding this chapter that apparently at no time during the period of barbarian invasions and early medieval centuries did medical practice or literature cease entirely in the west. We have seen that there is reason to suspect that portions of the work ascribed to Marcellus may be contributions of the centuries following him, and that there were early medieval Latin translations of the works of Oribasius and Alexander of Tralles. Furthermore, the laws of the German kingdoms, the allusions of contemporary chroniclers and men of letters, the advice of Gregory the Great to a sick archbishop to seek medical assistance, and many other bits of evidence[2434]show that physicians were fairly numerous and in good repute, and that medieval Christians at no time depended entirely upon the healing virtues of relics of the saints or other miraculous powers credited to the church or divine answer to prayer.