ordures relieved fractures; the touch of the hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled poison; friction with a dead man's tooth cured toothache.[1]
The enormous development of miracles in the Church continued during century after century, and here probably lay the main causes of hostility between the Church on the one hand and the better sort of physicians on the other; namely, in the fact that the Church supposed herself in possession of something far better than scientific methods in medicine. Under the sway of this belief a natural and laudable veneration for the relics of Christian martyrs was developed more and more into pure fetichism.
Thus the water in which a single hair of a saint had been dipped was used as a purgative; water in which St. Remy's ring had been dipped cured fevers; wine in which the bones of a saint had been dipped cured lunacy; oil from a lamp burning before the tomb of St. Gall cured tumors; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St. Christopher, throat diseases; St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid, deafness; St. Gervaise, rheumatism; St. Apollonia, toothache; St. Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which bear their names; even as late as 1784 we find certain authorities in Bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a mad dog should at once put up prayers at the shrine of St. Hubert, and not waste his time in any attempts at medical or surgical cure.[2] In the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted by causing the invalid to drink water in which St. Bernard had washed his hands. Flowers which had rested on the tomb of a saint, when steeped in water, were supposed to be especially efficacious in various diseases. The pulpit everywhere dwelt with unction on the reality of fetich cures, and among the choice stories collected by Archbishop Jacques de Vitry for the use of preachers was one which, judging from its frequent recurrence in monkish literature, must have sunk deep into the popular mind: "Two lazy beggars, one blind the other lame, try to avoid the relics of St. Martin, borne about in procession, so that they may not be healed and lose their alms. The blind man takes the lame man on his shoulders to guide him, but they are caught in the crowd and healed against their will."[3][4]
Very important also throughout the middle ages were the
- ↑ On the low estate of surgery during the middle ages, see the histories of medicine already cited, and especially Kotelmann, Gesundheitspflege im Mittelalter, Hamburg, 1890, pp. 216 et seq.
- ↑ See Baas, p. 614; also Biedermann.
- ↑ For the efficacy of flowers, see the Bollandist Lives of the Saints, cited in Fort, p. 279; also pp. 457, 458. For the story of those unwillingly cured, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T. F. Crane, of Cornell University; London, 1890, pp. 52 and 182.
- ↑ For the efficacy of flowers, see the Bollandist Lives of the Saints, cited in Fort, p. 279; also pp. 457, 458. For the story of those unwillingly cured, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T. F. Crane, of Cornell University; London, 1890, pp. 52 and 182.
