The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser].

  • Bonser, Wilfrid, 1887-1972.
Date:
1963
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    48/492 (page 8)
    flattering, it has added all the resources of religion, a subject upon which, at the present day, man is still entirely in the dark. 1 The mysterious origin of some diseases, such as insanity, and of some natural processes, such as childbirth and its complica tions, led to the use of magic in dealing with them. But magic, as will be seen from the following pages, was associated with most branches of medicine, thereby ousting the healing art itself. The assessment of what was of value for healing purposes was therefore entirely different from what it had been in classical Greece and what it is today. Thus one must not necessarily look in a pre scription for any physiological effect which the ingredients might have had on a patient. Storms gives a good example of a recipe ‘against a swelling’, which occurs in the Lacnunga, § 9 (xxiv). He comments that ‘the three ingredients of which the paste’ in this prescription ‘consists show some thickening or swelling, and just as these swellings disappear by cutting them or pounding them, so the swelling of the patient will disappear’. 2 The choice of herbs or other ingredients often has some reason which is to us obscure, for the magical attributes of objects then used for effecting cures were those which had most value in the eyes of the Anglo-Saxon. Another cause of his attitude to disease may have been that he regarded it as endowed, like himself, with will and personality: the obvious inference was that pressure could be brought to bear upon it. One result of the combination of magic and medicine was an attempt by our ancestors to prognosticate. Prognostics of various kinds were made from the age of the moon, from observations of heavenly bodies such as comets, and from dreams. From these it was hoped to ascertain many hidden matters: whether a patient would recover, whether a woman would bear a male or a female child, or on which days blood-letting might be performed. Pro gnostications were also made for every conceivable kind of object, holy and unholy: for such things as indications of character, for propitious times for setting out on journeys, for catching thieves, for agriculture, for transacting business. This practice derives from Pliny and from later Latin sources, and was a result of man’s curiosity and credulity, untempered by any rational scientific principles by which he might have regulated his thoughts. 1 Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxx. 1. 1 G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic , The Hague, 1948, p. 29.